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. >> narrator: at cia headquarters, it was a threat they co

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 symbolism of t

this attack as long as he could. >> ayman the same security expert, said this was the largest loss of life from an individual terrorist ever, and it will be interesting to see if that bears out. also, called this truck an im o improvized weapon, and it sounds preverse, and too gragrandios, s a 6,000 pound weapon of death and destruction. >> i spent sometime in iraq, and we have seen trucks of this magnitude, and cement trucks used to -- >> yeah. >> absolutely blow up hotels and buildings in baghdad. in war zones we have seen vehicle-borne improvized, vbid, v-borne improvized device. and we've seen the smaller use of vehicles as a weapon. it's not lost on us, the planes were high jacked and used as weapons. tactics have constantly been evolving and changing by terrorist groups. if you add the dynamic aspect of this particular attack, which is a vehicle with an a e-massailan an attacker, this would have been something you can't even been to describe if an individual had been capable, de detonating an explosive device. it is something french officials warned about as recently as within t

. cal? >> i'm just going to hop on the back of what ayman was talking about and jump in before malcolm nance. i've done some digging here. this is from "inspire" magazine. this is from an issue in 2010, and they talk about the inability to get your hands on certain weapons, and they write, quote, you can still carry out attacks by burning down forests and buildings or by running over them with your cars and trucks. it continues. if you can kill a disbelieving american or european, especially the spiteful and filthy french or an sprawlian or a canadian or any other disbelievers from the disbelievers waging war. what i would submit is most of the middle east is watching horrendous images come in from syria, from libya. barrel bombings every day. and this is a broader war on peaceful nations. this is a war against nations that are not in this state of constant war. i spend the majority of my day looking through isis propaganda videos, looking through horrible images of bombings in syria, in libya. and if you live in the middle east and you turn on al jazeera as your main news source, that