. >> neither osama bin laden nor his deputy ayman al-zawahiri were terribly impressed with him. he seemed and acted like a thug. he was not very sophisticated. in fact, they considered him a rather poor recruit to al-qaeda. >> narrator: zarqawi would leave kandahar determined to continue jihad, and to prove bin laden wrong. in 2002, he saw his chance. as president bush signaled saddam hussein had to go, zarqawi moved to a terrorist camp in northern iraq. it set off alarm bells at the cia. cia operations officer sam faddis, who ran a kill/capture team, was assigned the case. >> headquarters is extremely, extremely interested. i mean, the number one time-sensitive priority, as of june '02, when i left headquarters, was go collect on this islamic extremist enclave along the iran/iraq border. >> narrator: it didn't take long for faddis to find zarqawi and learn what was going on in the camp. >> we literally had guys that were working for us that were inside the camp. they're working on chemical and biological weapons. they were doing a lot of work with cyanide-based things. >> narra

you know, your discussion there with ayman and the reporting just before, that he was going to -- was trying to dial a cell phone, trying to dial a cell phone could be -- it's very common in the middle east, and around the world for terrorists to use a cell phone as a trigger. so they plant a receiver, a cell phone inside the bomb, they rig it up to an electric detonator and when they dial the phone t detonates the device. it could be in the back of the truck as we're surmising, and that's a very good guess, we should be suspicious of that. the bomb squad has to take it out, but it also could be another location. also, he could be calling, you know, trying to call someone to claim credit, 911 if you will. we don't know the answer to those things. he had the lights out. he slowed down. the motorcycle cop was next to him. it's like a whale and there are a couple dolphins. they're not stopping the whale. it's too big and it's going, and he had this open area to just wind through the pedestrians. the way to stop that truck is never let the truck get there in the first place. you have all

joining nee now, nbc news foreign correspondent ayman mow mohyeldin, let's put this in the context of the last month. just in the last month, orlando, 50 dead, 49 killed, including the shooter who pledged allegiance to isis. the attack on the istanbul airport, which appears to have been also the work of isis, although no formal credit, though we believe it was them. dozens dead there. the dhaka attack, just in the same week as that, and now this in nice. >> and don't forget about iraq. >> 250 -- >> bigger than all of these. and it's not to say that one is bigger than the other in terms of the magnitude of the loss, but what it demonstrates is the capability of whoever is behind all of these attacks. i don't mean behind it from an operational point of view, but operationally in the sense that there's an ability to inspire these types of attacks. and you know, we're not -- we're still in the very early stages, not sure who is behind this in terms of an organization, but the deliberate attack, and when you start putting it on a -- analyzing it through a matrix of possibilities, the symbo