we were hotter on the trail of abu musab al zarqawi than ever. >>> we implemented this blending of operationselligence. >> and i was increasingly confident that we were hotter on the trail of abu musab al zarqawi than ever. in late april of 2006, our intelligence people, using unmanned aerial vehicles were watching a location. and they saw activity. >> and it was just not natural. it looked like a gathering of cars and people in a place where they shouldn't have been. >> one of our intelligence sergeants majors said, we need to go there right now. so the force flew to the objective and immediately did a raid on it. >> there was no fighting at that objective but they captured 12 iraqi men. this was a farming community, but the people they captured were clearly not farmers. >> you're talking engineers, teachers, a cleric. we narrowed the 12 down to five. we bring the five up to balad for questioning and through interrogations we narrowed that down to the one guy. and that was abu alawi. >> we did not mistreat prisoners. the two interrogators, a male and female that worked with them, built a rea

aqi. >> abu musab al zarqawi was a good organizer and a good leader. travel around 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

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