. >> abu musab al zarqawi started to build a network with the sunnis who were frightened by their losstical position inside the country. >> people at the end of the day are the same the world over. they want to matter. in zarqawi's case, he found people who thought they could matter. applied their time and talent. to the cause that he described. therefore, he got much more support for what should have been a terror organization and it now became much more like an insurgency. >> we are not satisfied of america at all. we are islam. we want our government to be islamic. they said we would bring you freedom. the freedom, we don't want it. >> you have to look at it and go, why did we do that? nobody thought these second, third, fourth order effects of telling an entire army, go home. what the hell are they going to do? and the middle east is not some great vacation spot. >> zarqawi rose to where he did because he took advantage of the hopes, dreams, aspirations of a group of people who felt they'd been disenfranchised. a largely sunni population felt their interest had been pushed aside fo

aqi. >> abu musab al zarqawi was a good organizer and a good leader.round the country. he'd visit local leaders of sunni groups who were potential supporters of al qaeda and he would deal with them. and he was a very reasonable, very charismatic leader in a small environment. >> he could solve damn near any problem you give him because he was that kind of person. >> i remember once we listened to a radio program that he had done, and he talked to a bunch of his forces around the nation and he basically gave credit to the heroes of samara and whatnot. and it was the kind of thing a corporate leader would do, saying sales did a great job this week. supply chain is doing wonderfully. it was good leadership. >> zarqawi motivated thousands of his followers to commit their lives to the cause. and troops across the coalition were suffering on a daily basis because of improvised explosive devices, insurgent attacks. >> he was walking the walk. he wasn't just some bin laden in a cave kind of thing spewing hatred to the west. he was the field commander for al qa

a plan designed and carried out by this man: abu musab al-zarqawi, the founder of isis. >> narrator: the secret history of isis began at the cia in the aftermath of 9/11. there was an urgent question about abu musab al-zarqawi. >> i was an analyst working on the team that was charged with evaluating whether or not al-qaeda and iraq had conspired together to conduct 9/11 attacks. >> narrator: at the agency's counterterrorism center, analyst nada bakos was tasked with learning everything she could about zarqawi. >> on the team, as an analyst, the big question was whether or not zarqawi was part of al-qaeda at the time. >> narrator: bakos began by piecing together zarqawi's life. >> zarqawi grew up in zarqa, jordan, which was also near a palestinian refugee camp. he was a tough kid in a tough neighborhood. >> narrator: poor and angry, it didn't take long for zarqawi to get into trouble. >> he was a thug. he was in and out of prison. he was a petty criminal. it was rumored that he had worked as a pimp. >> he was into drugs. he was into tattoos. you know, his friends in zarqa used to call