BALLEN: That's correct,
Zedi.
DAVIES: Right, who says he spent a lifetime as a warrior for Islam, killed countless people, and his - I mean, you have his words running many, many, many pages. It's quite a story. He is kind of shocking, he's a braggart, and I had to wonder at times whether I could believe him. He was first in his class at this, and he was a better killer than anyone at that, and knew all of these important jihadis. How - could you corroborate much of his story?
BALLEN: Actually, I did, and I corroborated it with American intelligence officials. But also if you - over the last couple months there's been several reports in the New York Times of people very much like him, if not perhaps him, who have also been talking now to outsiders.
So I was able to corroborate some of the principal facts of what he told me, and it was pretty shocking.
One thing he told me at the time, and this - when he first told me this was 2008, and nobody thought this at the time. But he said the Pakistani ISI was protecting bin Laden in northwest Pakistan, and basically he nailed it.
DAVIES: That's the inter-intelligence services, right, the...
BALLEN: That's correct.
DAVIES: And that's been very much in the news lately as, you know, Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, accused them of - the ISI of being involved in some way in attacks on American forces in Afghanistan. And I wanted just to ask you a bit about this because he - part of what he said was, you Americans, you're all so obsessed with bin Laden - this of course was when bin Laden was alive - you're missing the real story, which is what the Pakistanis are up to. What did he tell you?
BALLEN: He said that's exactly right, you're missing the real story.
And you sit across the table from generals who talk the democratic talk, who dress up and speak in queen's English to you, yet harbor sympathy towards radical Islam as fervently as bin Laden himself.
Zedi said these people are the real danger. They have access to nuclear weapons. They're inside the government of Pakistan. They have access to money, they have access to arms, and in fact, he said, they were arming the Taliban and that they were in alliance.
So think about this, Dave.
We spent $20 billion since 9/11 directly in payments to the Pakistani government. Meanwhile, the Pakistani government is hiring this fellow, Zedi, to run a training camp where he trains terrorists who fight against us in Afghanistan, who fight against India, and he's smuggling arms to the Taliban that we're fighting.
As Zedi said to me, you Americans really are funding both sides in the war on terror, literally.
DAVIES: Right, what's interesting about his account is he's not simply saying there are ranking Pakistani intelligence or military officials who are sympathetic to the Taliban or al-Qaida. They're doing it. He would go to a meeting at which there was - the Taliban were to move arms or set up some operation, and there would be these ranking officials of Pakistani intelligence in the room running it, right?
BALLEN:
That's correct, that's correct. He even went to one meeting after 9/11 where he met with one of the top al-Qaida operatives near Abbottabad, where bin Laden was, and a leading high-level ISI Pakistani army guy, and they talked about how to smuggle illicit weapons from the former Soviet Union, nuclear.
DAVIES: And Zedi was never caught and brought to justice, right? He...
BALLEN: Zedi was never caught and brought to justice.
He lives comfortably today in Pakistan, as all of these folks do 
. No one has ever come - been held to account for their activities in that country when it involves radicalism. So he was a very colorful figure, very well-educated. His English was impeccable, very bright guy and disillusioned by his time as a terrorist, very bitter about what happened to him, which I think provided part of the motivation to open up.
I mean, he carried a lot of guilt with him. It was almost a confessional.
DAVIES: Yeah, and what was he bitter about, what disillusionment?
BALLEN: First he was very - and this is a story that's not told in the West. He worked for the radical Islamic party in Pakistan, and he was very embittered by the corruption. The radicals, there was a tremendous amount of theft. This is true. Another one of the Taliban fighters that I spoke to talked about the corruption of the Taliban, people stealing money.
And this is a story we don't expose very much here in this country, and people are really unaware of the kind of rampant corruption that's inside these radical groups. You have - it's very interesting, Dave. You have almost two sides to the movement. You have the true believers, who are religiously convinced that what they're doing is the right thing and they're going to fight for God and die and go to heaven.
And then you have some of the people involved in the movement who offer a religious veneer but are as ruthless and corrupt as the worst politicians anywhere.