- By Ajeet Kumar
- Sat, 25 Oct 2025 10:07 AM (IST)
- Source:JND
John Kiriakou, a former CIA Officer, has said that the US spent millions of dollars to Pakistan under the leadership of former President of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf, in a way, to 'purchase' him.
In an interview with news agency ANI, Kiriakou said that Pakistan was deeply buried under corruption, and that Former Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto led a lavish life in the Gulf while the common people starved.
US loves working with dictators: Ex-CIA official
Kiriakou, who served 15 years in the CIA, first as an analyst and later in counterterrorism, said, "Our relations with the Pakistani government were very, very good. It was General Pervez Musharraf at the time. And look, let's be honest here. The United States loves working with dictators. Because then you don't have to worry about public opinion, and you don't have to worry about the media anymore. And so we essentially just purchased Musharraf."
He said that Musharraf then let the US do anything they wanted.
US gave millions in aid: Kiriakou
"We gave millions and millions and millions of dollars in aid, whether it was military aid or economic development aid. And we would meet with Musharraf regularly, several times a week. And essentially, he would let us do whatever we wanted to do. Yes. But Musharraf also had his own people that he needed to deal with," he said.
Kiriakou said that Musharraf just kept the military 'happy,' and pretended to side with the US on counterterrorism while carrying out terrorist activities against India.
"He had to keep the military happy. And the military didn't care about Al-Qaeda. They cared about India. And so in order to keep the military happy and keep some of the extremists happy, he had to allow them to continue this dual life of pretending to cooperate with the Americans on counterterrorism while committing terror against India," he said.
"India and Pakistan were on the brink of war in 2002. December 2001 was when the Parliament attack also happened. During that time," Kiriakou said.
Kiriakou said that he was worried that the Pakistani political issues could spill over, as they are known to get spun up in their own web of disagreements.
"I'm worried about continued disagreement in Pakistani politics that has the potential to spill into the streets because the Pakistanis have a tendency to get themselves spun up, and people die during demonstrations and there are attacks against political figures and assassinations and the country is not known for its transformative leaders making positive decisions," he said.
In a similar vein, Kiriakou recounted a Marie Antoinette moment with Bhutto. She complained to him of Asif Ali Zardari, the President of Pakistan of buying a Bentley 'again'.
"When Benazir Bhutto was in exile in Dubai, I went to see her with another senior officer. I went as the note taker. And she lived in this $5 million palace on the Gulf. And we were sitting in the front room, the salon of the house, and we heard a car pull up. And she said, her exact words, so help me God, if he came home with another Bentley, I'm going to kill him!" he told ANI.
On being asked, "Is that Zardari?"
"Yeah. Her husband."
"And I said to my boss afterwards, she makes $60,000 a year," he recounted.
"Osama bin Laden escaped disguised as a woman"
In a key revelation, Kiriakou has 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.
He also said they did not know that the translator for the commander of Central Command was actually an "Al Qaeda operative who had infiltrated the US military".
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"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 not to let emotion cloud our judgment. And we waited a month until we had a 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.
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"We did not know that the translator for the commander of Central Command was actually an al-Qaeda operative who had infiltrated the US military. And so we knew we had bin Laden cornered. We told him to come down the mountain. And he said through the translator, can you just give us until dawn? We want to evacuate the women and children and then we'll come down and give up. The translator convinced General Franks to approve this idea. What ended up happening was bin Laden dressed as a woman and he escaped under the cover of darkness in the back of a pickup truck into Pakistan," he added.
He said when sun came up at dawn, there was no one in Tora Bora to give up. "They had all escaped. And so we had to move the fight to Pakistan proper."
(With inputs from agency)