“I’ve been looking for [Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi] for three years. I’ve been looking for him — I started getting some very positive feedback about a month ago… and then we got a confirmation… The only people that knew were the few people that I dealt with…

“This was the big one. This is the biggest one perhaps that we’ve ever captured, because this is the one that built ISIS and beyond, and was looking to rebuild it again…

“This is the biggest there is. This is the worst ever. Osama bin Laden was very big, but Osama bin Laden became big with the World Trade Center. This is a man who built a whole, as he would like to call it, a country, a caliphate, and was trying to do it again…

“I’ve been looking at this for three years. They’d come in, sir, we have somebody under — I said I don’t want somebody, I want al-Baghdadi. That’s the one I want. They’d say well, we have somebody else. I said, that’s great, fine, take them out, but I want al-Baghdadi. That’s who I want… and I don’t get any credit for this, but that’s OK, I never do.”
Oct 27, 2019 -

“[Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi] should have been killed years ago. Another president should have gotten him. But to me it was very important. I would say all the time, they would walk into my office, ‘sir we killed this leader at a level, this leader at-‘ I said I never heard of him, I want al-Baghdadi, that’s the only one I know now, I want al-Baghdadi, get him, and they got him.”
Oct 28, 2019 -