An insider's tell-all account of one of the darkest chapters of the War on Terror: "A must-read for anyone trying to understand our post-9/11 world" (J. Malcolm Garcia, author of The Khaarijee).

The Convenient Terrorist is the definitive inside account of the capture, torture, and detention of Abu Zubaydah, the first "high-value target" captured by the CIA after 9/11. But was Abu Zubaydah, who is still being indefinitely held by the United States under shadowy circumstances, the blue-ribbon capture that the Bush White House claimed he was?

Authors John Kiriakou, who led the capture of Zubaydah and, years later, was prosecuted by the Obama administration for blowing the whistle on the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" program, and Joseph Hickman, who took custody of incoming prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and wrote a book about the mysterious deaths of three Arab prisoners at the base, are uniquely qualified to shine a light on this disturbing case. They draw a far more complex portrait of the al-Qaeda "mastermind" and symbol of modern US torture. The one-time American collaborator became a "convenient terrorist"—a way for US authorities to sell their War on Terror to the American people.

"This disturbing book . . . should enlighten anyone who thinks that '1984' did not arrive in the United States until the Age of Trump." —Mark Crispin Miller, bestselling author of Fooled Again and The Bush Dyslexicon