it was right across the pakistani hills from where balawi was operating. had heavy security and had come you know, all the people who need to be there for debriefing could quickly coming. it seem like an ideal place but it was strictly because accident of geography. the cia wanted to control this thing and wanted to make sure nobody else would recognize this guy. no spies would seem and be able to betray him later. >> guestlater. >> host: you described balawi -- of you clip of a doctor and others that sets all of official washington buzzing. why was that so important? why was that reaction to that tape. >> guest: it shows how clever that this al qaeda operation was. they essentially, they understand us better than we like to think to do. there are more sophisticated. and giving it thought they knew the few ways to push the cia's buttons, to make them mad to meet this guy, so they did it using very clever western style tools. one of them was to send video that showed that balawi had gotten inside the tent of al qaeda, had come face to face and was meeting w

in this particular case, there were concerns that this man, balawi, might be not what he claimed. there was even a direct warning that he might be leading them into an ambush. but there are reasons the cia was able to look at these warnings and say that this is just infighting among jordanians, and they were able to disregard it and not take it seriously. >> warner: but then, right before he comes to this cia outpost, didn't the american, the cia agent who was closest to the operation, send a warning back to the station chief, saying something is really bad here? >> and it's part of the reconstruction of what went wrong. there were not only warnings from the jordanians, but some of the americans had concerns and suspicions, too. so, there was a back and forth between the americans at khost, the base where they were all staying, and also a back and forth to washington. "how do we handle this man? do we trust him or not?" it was quite a robust argument. in the end, the imperative was to meet the person, and so the cautions were just disregarded. >> warner: now, they could've stopped