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His eyes opened wide. “Why?” he asked.

“Well, I can’t believe that I was just sitting and eating pizza with an al-Qaeda guy.”

He laughed. “Not anymore. I’m not an al-Qaeda guy anymore.”

“That makes me feel better,” I told him with a smile, “and that means you’ll be happy to work with us.” I put my arm around him and we both laughed.

Back at the safe house, Kherchtou began discussing terms for cooperating. “Will I go to jail?” he asked.

“We can’t make any promises,” Pat told him, “but here’s what you need to do. You will fly to the United States and plead guilty to being a member of an organization dedicated to killing Americans, but you will become a cooperating witness, and a judge may decide to not sentence you. I will ask the judge to show you leniency because you’re helping us.”

Pat did some questioning to ascertain whether Kherchtou would be a good cooperating witness. I paid close attention and learned many techniques, such as how to play your cards close to your chest and lull someone into a false sense of security and then trap him on small details. While interrogation techniques are taught at the FBI Academy, being in a classroom is very different from being in an interrogation room and seeing an expert questioner at work. With Pat I saw, firsthand, how to use what you know to your advantage. We told Kherchtou that under the Witness Protection Program he would be given a new identity to ensure that no al-Qaeda agents or sympathizers could find him. And in the program he could lead a new life, enjoying all the good things America had to offer.

“Okay,” he replied simply. And with that he began telling us all about al-Qaeda, how it operated, how they recruited, training camps they used, what bin Laden did daily, and so on. We started debriefing him by asking him to tell us about his path to al-Qaeda, which would teach us about their recruitment as well as their training process. He told us that after high school he had gone to a catering school and had worked in France and Italy. In Milan he had attended an Islamic center, where he was encouraged to travel to Afghanistan. He trained for combat, met bin Laden, and joined the organization.

“What happens in al-Qaeda guesthouses?” I asked.

“On entering the guesthouse you give in all your valuables—your money, passport, and all forms of ID—and they give you a nickname, usually linked to where you’re from. They tell you that you’re giving in all your valuables and ID so that if you’re killed or caught, your captors won’t know who you are.” He said that his nickname was Abu Zaid Maghrebi and that he had also picked up the alias Abu Talal.

“What camp did you train in?”

“Al-Farouq.” The camp turned out many of al-Qaeda’s premier fighters.

“What did you learn there?”

“How to use regular firearms, antiaircraft weapons, and other basic guerrilla warfare skills.”

“Who were your trainers?” I asked, and thus the debriefing went. After al-Farouq, Kherchtou had attended the Abu Bakr Sadeek camp, also located near Khost. It was run by Khalid al-Fawwaz—we were very familiar with him from Operation Challenge. With Kherchtou at Abu Bakr Sadeek was Odeh, operating under the alias Marwan.

Kherchtou went on to tell us about how he was trained, at one point, by Ali Mohamed, Zawahiri’s man in the U.S. Army. Abu Hafs had told him in advance that “Abu Mohamed al-Amriki is very strict, and you have to be patient with him. He often uses bad words and is not an observent Muslim, but he’s very skilled.”

Kherchtou was later sent to Kenya to learn how to fly, so that one day he could become bin Laden’s personal pilot. While in Nairobi attending flight school, he helped operatives who were passing through Kenya on their way to Somalia and other locations. Sometimes on trips between Nairobi and Khartoum he was given money to take to operatives in Kenya; the largest sum was ten thousand dollars.

Kherchtou filled in for us where Junior had left off. This was 1999, and Junior had left in 1996. Those were important years for al-Qaeda, so