The former CIA counterterrorism officer John Kiriakou looks at counterterrorism scenes in movies and TV and breaks them down for realism.

Kiriakou explains the counterterrorism efforts done to directly address the September 11 attacks — commonly known as 9/11 — such as the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound, which ultimately led to his killing, in "Zero Dark Thirty," featuring Jessica Chastain, Joel Edgerton, and Chris Pratt; and the CIA's interrogation techniques — such as waterboarding and sleep deprivation — to detainees, such as the Al-Qaeda members Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in "The Report," starring Adam Driver. He breaks down the plausibility of weapons used by terrorists, such as the use of weapons of mass destruction, particularly nerve agents, in "Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation," with Tom Cruise and Simon Pegg; and the cyberterrorism attack in "Skyfall," featuring Daniel Craig and Judi Dench. Kiriakou looks at more counterterrorism strategies, such as the drone attack in "Homeland" S4E1 (2014), starring Claire Danes; and the collaboration of intelligence agencies in "Body of Lies," featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crow, and Oscar Isaac. He also reacts to the depiction of other real-life terrorist attacks, such as the 2008 Mumbai attacks in "Hotel Mumbai," starring Dev Patel; the Munich Massacre, which involved the Palestinian militant organization Black September, in "Munich," with Daniel Craig and Eric Bana; and the depiction of the hijacking of the Indian Airlines Flight 814, which landed in Kandahar International Airport in Afghanistan — then a stronghold of the Taliban — in "IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack" E5 + E6 (2024).

Before 9/11, Kiriakou served as a counterterrorism operations officer in Athens, Greece; and after the 9/11 attacks, Kiriakou was appointed chief of counterterrorist operations in Pakistan, where he oversaw a series of military raids on Al-Qaeda safe houses, resulting in the capture of numerous Al-Qaeda members, including leading the raid that captured Abu Zubaydah — who was then believed to be Al-Qaeda's third-highest-ranking member. He left the CIA in 2004, and in 2007, he went public with his information about the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques," a program of systematic torture of detainees. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison, where he pleaded guilty to a charge of revealing information that identified a covert agent. He went on to become a senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a terrorism consultant for ABC News. He has written various books and teaches and speaks around the country, focusing on the CIA, terrorism, torture, and ethics in intelligence operations.

You can follow Kiriakou on LinkedIn:

Here is a link to Kiriakou's books.

FIRST ON FOX: A Republican congressman is disputing Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s insistence that the State Department did not block citizens from leaving Mazar-i-Sharif Airbase in Afghanistan during the frenzied withdrawal. 

Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, wrote a letter, obtained by Fox News Digital, demanding to know how many planes the State Department blocked from leaving the airbase, who made the call on whether to clear flights for takeoff, what the criteria for blocking delaying flights was and whether there had been communication with the Taliban.

Following the withdrawal, reports emerged that 1,000 people, including Americans, were stuck at Mazar-i-Sharif Airport awaiting clearance for their charter flights to leave. 

Many had made the 400-mile trek from Kabul to be able to get out more quickly at the airport in northern Afghanistan. 

HOUSE GOP RELEASES SCATHING REPORT ON BIDEN'S WITHDRAWAL FROM AFGHANISTAN

One flight organizer told Reuters the State Department had failed to tell the Taliban of its approval for flight departures in Mazar-i-Sharif or validate a landing site. 

Davidson said in the letter that when he was in talks with the State Department, an official asked him "which tail number" he was referring to, insinuating more than one flight had not received authorization to take off and been delayed. 

Col. Francis Hoang, who worked on Afghanistan evacuations with his group Allied Airlift 21, told the Foreign Affairs Committee, "We spent three weeks hiding these nearly 400 people from the Taliban, keeping them alive and fed using funds from American donors."

During a hearing last week, Davidson asked Blinken, "Did the State Department block American citizens from departing from the airfield in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan?" 

"Absolutely not," said Blinken. 

"You know they were blocked!" said Davidson. 

MAST BLASTS BLINKEN OVER 'TENS OF BILLIONS' OF US TAXPAYER DOLLARS SENT TO TALIBAN POST-AFGHANISTAN WITHDRAWAL

"I'd be happy to look at any information you have on that. I'm not aware of any American citizens who were blocked."

"I have the emails. I have the photographs of American, blue passport-holding American citizens who were on the airfield awaiting departure that got clearance for safe third countries to depart to, and the order came down from the United States government. Was it the State Department?" Davidson asked. 

Blinken's testimony came three months after the committee voted along party lines to recommend he be held in contempt of Congress, when he refused to appear to testify again about the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal. 

Republicans released a lengthy report in September highlighting how State Department officials had no plan for getting Americans and allies out while there were still troops there to protect them. 

The report claimed that Ross Wilson, U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan at the time, grew the embassy's footprint instead of sending personnel home despite warnings from military officials that a Taliban takeover was imminent. 

"You ignored warnings of collapse from your own personnel," Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul told Blinken. 

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Blinken defended the Biden administration's handling of the withdrawal, saying every American who wanted to leave had been given the opportunity to do so and thousands of Afghans have been resettled internationally. 

President-elect Donald Trump has promised to ask for the resignation of every senior official "who touched the Afghanistan calamity."

Democrats, meanwhile, insist the blame for the 20-year war's acrimonious end lies with a deal Trump negotiated with the Taliban for U.S. withdrawal.

EXCLUSIVE: A Marine lieutenant colonel from Ohio who publicly spoke out against the Afghanistan withdrawal will lead rank-and-file service members door-to-door in the Senate next week in support of defense nominee Pete Hegseth.

Stuart Scheller, who was imprisoned in a Jacksonville, N.C., brig for his public criticisms of military brass, told Fox News Digital Wednesday he is organizing enlisted men and women to engage with senators next Wednesday.

Scheller stressed that service members who are participating are not prominent fellows at think tanks or in any governmental or related seats of power. 

"Pete has made public comments that he wants to move to a meritocracy, and he believes that we need more courage in the ranks. So, I'm not saying that I wouldn't have been reprimanded [if he was secretary]," Scheller said.

MCCAUL: SADLY IRONIC THAT MARINE HELD IN BRIG AT LEJEUNE WHILE BIDEN WH LACKS ACCOUNTABILITY

"I still think there probably was some reprimand that needed to happen, but it would go across the board.

"The difference is, if Pete was the secretary of defense, the general officers would have also been held accountable [for the botched withdrawal], and I would not have had to go to the lengths that I had to go to bring attention to the situation."

Scheller said that, in the last decade or two, the U.S. military is "not winning anything, and we need to turn it into a winning organization."

Scheller said Hegseth has planned to hold accountable Pentagon leaders who have "become stagnant" in the lieutenant colonel’s words.

SCHELLER ATTORNEY RIPS ‘PUNITIVE' GENERALS

He also stressed that Hegseth is the first Pentagon nominee in decades who is not from the officer corps or defense contracting firms.

Outgoing Secretary Lloyd Austin III is a retired CENTCOM general but also came from the board of Raytheon.

"Forty years to become a four-star general really removes you from the forces," Scheller said of the past several officer-corps secretary choices overall.

"Pete’s middle management — a major. I mean, he’s like the perfect guy ... and he's been sitting here talking to veterans when he was developing his book, trying to understand their pulse and the heartbeat. So, that book that he wrote probably prepared him in terms of the current culture and sentiment and frustrations more than any other secretary of defense."

As for his plans for the Hill next week, Scheller said he and fellow service members are focused on those who may appear to be on the fence about Hegseth.

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"I'm looking for more [of] the right people than the total quantity," he said.

Scheller will also release a video announcing his Wednesday mission.

"[Hegseth] is a combat veteran from our generation and … he’s not a puppet for the military industrial complex. He's not going to end up on one of their boards like every general officer of our generation," Scheller says in the video.

"I'm going to be in Washington, D.C., walking through the halls of the U.S. Senate, talking to all the U.S. senators, advocating for peace."

Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., excoriated Secretary of State Antony Blinken over the estimated "tens of billions" of U.S. taxpayer dollars he says have been sent to the Taliban since U.S. troops withdrew from Afghanistan. 

Mast, who was selected a day earlier to become the new chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee next month, grilled Blinken over the Biden administration's handling of the chaotic August 2021 withdrawal. 

The current committee chair, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, issued multiple subpoenas in September for Blinken to testify. Under threat of a contempt of Congress vote, he finally agreed. 

Mast asked the U.S.' top diplomat if he had been in Afghanistan since the killing of 13 U.S. service members and roughly 170 Afghan civilians by a suicide bombing attack at Hamid Karzai International Airport's Abbey Gate, and Blinken responded that he had not. Noting that the United States no longer has control of the U.S. embassy in Afghanistan, Mast said, "yet we are still giving the Taliban tens of billions of dollars." 

"There's an American citizen out there, literally woke up this morning losing 30% of their paycheck. And a good percentage of that is going to the Taliban or other programs abroad," Mast said. "And this is something that we all need to think about, and we will be thinking about deeply for the next two years. There's a joke that's made often out there about kids going to college to learn basket weaving, and what a joke that would be. But the United States right now is literally sending tens of millions of dollars to the Taliban. 14.9 million, to be exact, to teach Afghans how to do carpet weaving." 

GENERAL INVOLVED IN AFGHANISTAN WITHDRAWAL HAS PROMOTION CONFIRMED BY SENATE

"We are giving $280 million to the United Nations to do cash transfers for food in Afghanistan," Mast continued. "Yet we're not sending an ear of corn from Iowa, a sack of potatoes from Idaho, or a cucumber or an orange from Florida. And that discounts the fact that there's no American tonnage going through our ports to send those things out of here, either. It's just cash transfers." 

Citing reports by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), which tracks the status of U.S. funds appropriated for reconstruction efforts, Mast said another $75 million has been sent to teach women to become farmers. 

"I don't believe that we spend $30 million in the United States of America to teach women to be farmers," Mast said. 

Earlier, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., stressed how since Afghanistan fell to the Taliban "women have effectively been banished from public life, unable to speak in public or holding a job, including nursing." 

"My colleague Mr. Wilson brought up that they can't even dance in the streets or speak to one another or go to school. I'm not sure that we can trust that that $75 million is being used to teach them agriculture," Mast said. "And as you pointed out, we don't have any diplomats on the ground to confirm the validity of these programs." 

Mast also asked Blinken to explain the $3.5 billion transferred to the Afghan fund "that is tended to protect the macro financial stability on behalf of the Afghan people." 

TALIBAN BANS WOMEN 'HEARING OTHER WOMEN'S VOICES' IN LATEST DECREE

"What the hell does that mean? Can you tell me? I don't know, that's a bunch of gibberish to me," Mast pressed. "Even worse, by the numbers, we spent $9 billion to resettle 90,000 roughly Afghan refugees here since the fall of Afghanistan. My simple Army math tells me that's about $100,000 a person. That's absurd. So my question for you. We do not even have an embassy in Afghanistan. We have no diplomats there. What are we doing giving them $1?" 

Blinken's response centered on how the money the United States and other countries provide is implemented through partners, such as United Nations agencies and NGOs. 

"Yes, we could say that about all the State Department dollars, foreign NGOs, foreign countries, foreign companies, and in this case, foreign adversaries," Mast interjected. 

"Mr. Secretary, you know for a fact that people literally, especially outside of this country, they directly lied to us," Mast said. "Your people had to come back and correct. Hey, it turns out we were, in fact, spending half a million dollars to expand atheism in Nepal. through the third party implementer of Humanist International. They were lying to us. They didn't show us the exact slide show that they put together for half a million dollars. And all this, they lied to us. We have no eyes on the ground. And I would simply close with this. We again, we do not even have an embassy there. We have no business putting one dollar into that place." 

Mast was referencing how a two-year investigation by House Republicans forced the State Department to admit that a $500,000 grant intended to promote "humanism and secularism" in Nepal may have been misused. 

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In response, Blinken said he respectfully disagreed with Mast's opposition to the Afghan funds, saying, "The work we have done through these partners, and many other countries have done, has saved many, many lives in an incredibly difficult situation." 

David Packouz is a former arms trader. In 2005, he joined the arms dealer Efraim Diveroli at AEY, bidding on contracts for the US military. In 2007, AEY won a $300 million contract to supply munitions to Afghanistan. Packouz was part of a cover-up to disguise the true identity of the ammunition, concealing that it was of Chinese origin.

After an investigation by The New York Times, he was charged with 71 counts of fraud and faced 355 years in prison. He was sentenced to seven months of house arrest and issued with a 15-year arms-dealing ban. His story was the subject of the 2016 movie "War Dogs" and Guy Lawson's book "Arms and the Dudes."

Packouz speaks with Business Insider about corruption in shipping and transport, the influence of middlemen and politicians, and links to organized crime.

After leaving house arrest, Packouz developed Instafloss and founded the music company Singular Sound, which developed the BeatBuddy. He also cofounded War Dogs Academy, a contracting training service.

Arms trafficking involves the illegal trade and smuggling of weapons across borders, bypassing laws and fueling conflicts. Arms dealing is the legal sale of weapons by authorized dealers, conducted under strict regulations like background checks and export licenses and overseen by bodies such as the UN Arms Trade Treaty.

For more, visit:

www.davidpackouz.com/

www.singularsound.com/

wardogsacademy.com

Lt. Gen. Christopher Donahue – who was seen in the viral, night vision photo showing the final American soldier out of Kabul, Afghanistan – was quietly confirmed by the Senate on Monday to lead U.S. Army forces in Europe and Africa. 

Donahue, who headed the 82nd Airborne Division during the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, was tapped by President Biden for the promotion to four-star general, but the confirmation was left out of a series of a hundred other military promotions green-lighted by the Senate before Thanksgiving recess. The delay was caused by one senator holding Donahue's confirmation, according to Politico. 

Several outlets reported that Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., was responsible for the procedural hold. 

MAJ. GEN. CHRIS DONAHUE: WHO IS THE LAST AMERICAN SOLDIER TO HAVE LEFT AFGHANISTAN?

Mullin has been a vocal critic of the Biden-Harris administration's handling of the botched withdrawal mired by the killing of 13 U.S. service members and roughly 170 Afghan civilians during a suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport's Abbey Gate. Donahue was responsible for the 82nd Airborne as it was tasked with securing the airfield at the Kabul airport during evacuations before the country fell to the Taliban. 

The senator called out Donahue, as well as other officials, in an Aug. 24, 2024, statement on the three-year anniversary of the suicide bombing attack. 

"Three years later, not one person has been held accountable for the disaster–not Gen. Milley, Gen. McKenzie, Gen. Donahue, U.S. Ambassador to Tajikistan John Pommersheim, or anyone at the State Department," Mullin said at the time. "To this day, no one has testified before Congress as to who gave this directive. No one has been held accountable for the 13 brave American heroes who died at Abbey Gate, or the countless Americans who lost their lives trying to escape Kabul." 

President-elect Trump's former defense secretary turned Trump critic, Mark Esper, had defended Donahue's nomination, and urged last month for the hold to be lifted. 

"Responsibility for the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 rests with the White House, not the Defense Dept, and certainly not with the uniformed leaders who faithfully executed Pres Biden’s misbegotten decisions," Esper wrote on X. 

ARMY UNIT POSTS PHOTO OF LAST US SOLDIER TO LEAVE AFGHANISTAN

Trump had promised on the campaign trail to fire senior officers involved in the withdrawal, though not Donahue specifically. 

One U.S. official told NBC News last month that the Trump transition team was compiling a list of senior current and former U.S. military officers to be potentially court-martialed over the pullout. 

The Senate ultimately confirmed Donahue's promotion to be the commander of US Army Europe-Africa by unanimous consent on Monday, as the hold was dropped. Mullin had not publicly commented about the hold. 

Donahue has headed the 18th Airborne Corps at Fort Liberty, North Carolina, since 2022. 

He has also been leader of the Special Operations Joint Task Force Afghanistan and served as the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s deputy director for special operations and counterterrorism.

FIRST ON FOX: Facing the threat of a contempt of Congress vote, Secretary of State Antony Blinken finally agreed to testify in front of the 118th Congress' House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) on the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal after being sought to do so for months, according to a spokesperson for the committee's GOP majority. 

President Biden's Secretary of State is set to appear for a public hearing on Dec. 11, an HFAC majority spokesperson told Fox News Digital. His testimony will take place over three years after the Biden administration's disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Blinken did testify directly after the withdrawal in front of the Democrat-controlled HFAC in September 2021. 

Blinken has previously refused to comply with the GOP-led committee's subpoena for testimony in 2024 on the Afghanistan withdrawal.

His initial testimony to the Democrat-controlled committee was not sufficient for Republican HFAC Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas.

CONGRESS HAS JUST WEEKS TO AVOID A PARTIAL GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN AFTER THANKSGIVING

In the recent Blinken contempt report, McCaul noted the 2021 "appearance was prior to an investigation being launched by the Committee, meaning this Committee had yet to conduct any transcribed interviews or document discovery. As a result, the Committee did not have the benefit of its investigative findings to probe Secretary Blinken’s testimony, which contained misleading accounts of the withdrawal and NEO under his leadership."

"After months of good faith efforts that were too often met with stonewalling from the State Department, I’m proud to have secured Secretary Blinken’s appearance before my committee. I trust his testimony will provide some long-overdue accountability and transparency for the American people, our Afghan allies, and our Gold Star families," said McCaul in a statement to Fox News Digital.

"It’s unfortunate the secretary agreed to appear only after my committee advanced contempt proceedings against him. While I wish he had not delayed this crucial appearance until the end of his tenure as head of the State Department, I look forward to hearing his testimony and asking poignant questions to help House Republicans and the next administration ensure nothing like this ever happens again."

Blinken's decision to finally testify came as a floor vote to hold him in contempt of Congress drew closer, with the House Rules Committee expected to soon begin setting terms for a vote on the resolution. 

SENATE GOP MOTIVATED TO RAPIDLY CONFIRM TRUMP NOMINATIONS AHEAD OF PARTY TRIFECTA IN WASHINGTON

Per the committee spokesperson, McCaul began seeking Blinken's testimony in May. McCaul's investigation into the withdrawal has spanned three years, but when Republicans were in the minority during the 117th Congress, he had limited oversight capabilities. 

During a general hearing on American diplomacy with Blinken in May, McCaul first asked for the secretary to testify in September when the committee's report on its investigation on the Afghanistan withdrawal was set to be released. 

Blinken would not commit to do so, telling the chairman, "Well, we can have our teams talk about that Mr. Chairman. Thank you."

'CONVEYOR BELT OF RADICALS': GOP SLAMMED OVER SENATE ABSENCES THAT HELPED BIDEN SCORE MORE JUDGES IN LAME DUCK

The committee spokesperson told Fox News Digital that, in the months following, Blinken was afforded repeated accommodations and received various warnings, but the Department of State (DOS) refused to name a date he would be willing to appear in September. He sought instead for his two deputies to testify, despite the fact that neither of them had been with the department during the withdrawal. 

The committee ultimately decided to issue a subpoena for Blinken's testimony in early September. The chairman then moved the date that he was subpoenaed to testify upon learning that Blinken was abroad, in order to ensure his attendance. 

But on September 24, Blinken did not report to Congress to testify. 

Following his absence, the HFAC voted to recommend that Blinken be held in contempt of Congress for defying the subpoena. The vote was 26 to 25, along party lines. 

The committee spokesperson detailed the lengths to which the Republican majority went to work with Blinken to avoid using its subpoena power. According to them, the committee reminded the DOS of the report just before September, when McCaul sought to have Blinken testify. However, the department and Blinken still refused to pick a date during the month. 

DSCC HOPEFUL GILLIBRAND SAYS DEMS SHOULD HAVE PUT IMMIGRATION FIX ON TABLE '2 YEARS AGO'

On Nov. 7, HFAC majority staff met with leadership from the DOS and informed them about the report recommending Blinken be held in contempt advancing out of the committee. They further relayed that if he still refuses to provide dates to testify in front of the committee that the contempt resolution was prepared to head to the House floor for a vote. 

By Nov. 14, the contempt proceedings were noticed for consideration in the rules committee, which is one of the last steps before a House vote can occur. On this same day, the DOS made its first date offering to the committee. The department offered either Dec. 17 or 18, according to the committee spokesperson, but the two dates were in the last week of the session when many representatives will already be gone. 

On Nov. 15, the committee countered the DOS with an offer of Dec. 10 or 11. The department ultimately chose the 11th and Blinken accepted, per the committee spokesperson. 

The DOS did not immediately provide comment to Fox News Digital.