From Osama Bin Laden to Ind-Pak war, Ex-CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou's bombshell claims
PTC News Desk: Former CIA officer John Kiriakou has revealed chilling details during his period when he led CIA’s counterterrorism operations in Pakistan after 9/11 in an interview with ANI. He said the US took the threat seriously enough to evacuate American families from Islamabad.
In a significant revelation, former CIA Officer John Kiriakou said that Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, who was the most wanted terrorist for the United States after terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, had escaped from Tora Bora hills in the guise of a woman.
#WATCH | On the aftermath of 2001 terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament, ex-CIA Officer, John Kiriakou says, "... We believed India and Pakistan might go to war... Once a junior officer who worked for me and I went to lunch in the embassy cafeteria, a space that normally held… pic.twitter.com/a27UwMKYcM — ANI (@ANI) October 24, 2025
"First, the United States was reactive at the time rather than proactive. You remember, we waited for more than a month before we started bombing Afghanistan. We were trying to be deliberate. We were trying to not let emotion cloud our judgment. And we waited a month until we had proper buildup in the region. And then we began attacking known Al-Qaeda sites. Again, mostly in the Pashto areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan. We believed in October of 2001 that we had Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership cornered at Tora Bora," he said.
Kiriakou further revealed that the US intelligence community once believed India and Pakistan were on the brink of war in 2002, following the Parliament attack (December 2001) and the tense military standoff that followed under Operation Parakram.
While underscoring India's restrain following terror attacks and Pakistan's terror approach, he said that the bigger issue was Pakistan’s duplicity and global inaction. "Pakistan was committing terrorism in India, and nobody did anything about it," he said.
- PTC NEWS
