{"podcast":{"title":"John Kiriakou's Dead Drop","slug":"john-kiriakou-s-dead-drop-7529115","podcast_index_feed_id":7529115,"rss_url":"https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13","website_url":"https://shows.acast.com/john-kiriakous-dead-drop","image_url":"https://assets.pippa.io/shows/cover/1759941899317-186901d5-69b8-40c5-9a84-1671d66f0c9c.jpeg","author":"Costard & Touchstone Productions","episode_count":41,"summary":"Join ex-CIA officer John Kiriakou on a very personal deep dive into what makes a spy tick. One of the most famous spies in the whole world, John - a spy with a conscience - blew the whistle on the CIA's torture program after the war on terror and spent 23 months in federal prison for it. As John explains, no spy is ever an \"ex-spy\". Why is that so? Listen to the podcast and you'll understand why. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.","last_synced_at":"2026-07-05T06:21:49.586029+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/john-kiriakou-s-dead-drop-7529115"},"episode":{"title":"S1E17 Zain","slug":"s1e17-zain","published_at":"2026-03-02T08:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/john-kiriakou-s-dead-drop-7529115/s1e17-zain","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/john-kiriakou-s-dead-drop-7529115","url":"https://shows.acast.com/john-kiriakous-dead-drop/episodes/s1e17-zain","audio_url":"https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/699e511e123f9740820fec2f/media.mp3","summary":"THE BLURB: For 70 hours, almost three days, John was responsible for handling Abu Zubaydah, the terrorist the agency believed was Al Qaeda's number three. Though their time togeter was relatively short - and Zain (Abu Zubaydah's actual name) spent much of it unconscious - John did manage to build a human connection with him and began to appreciate the person inside the nom de guerre. Zain is renditioned elsewhere. John goes back to work interrogating all the other terrorists they'd grabbed alongside Abu Zubaydah while Abu Zubaydah begins to encounter the treatment that would ultimately lead to torture. SHOW NOTES For more great podcasts like Dead Drop, please visit https://costardandtouchstone.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.","meta_description":"THE BLURB: For 70 hours, almost three days, John was responsible for handling Abu Zubaydah, the terrorist the agency believed was Al Qaeda's number three.…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":1706,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/john-kiriakou-s-dead-drop-7529115/episodes/s1e17-zain/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/john-kiriakou-s-dead-drop-7529115/s1e17-zain.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}