Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - Jake Tapper: The Trial That Exposed the War on Terror

Episode Date: October 9, 2025

Jake Tapper is a CNN anchor and chief Washington correspondent, currently anchoring an award-winning two-hour weekday program, The Lead with Jake Tapper. He is also the best-selling author of six books. Get his latest book, which I learned a lot from Race Against Terror: Chasing an Al Qaeda Killer at the Dawn of the Forever War here: https://amzn.to/48rIQFz Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio. He is the host of the podcast Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci. A graduate of Tufts University and Harvard Law School, he lives in Manhasset, Long Island. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. We are joined by journalist and author Jake Tassie. to talk about his new book, Race Against Terror. It's a gripping true story about one of the most remarkable terrorism cases in American history, tracking a decade-old murder, a sudden confession, and a race to deliver justice with no evidence. Jake takes us inside the investigation, the evolution of terrorism, and the ongoing

tension between national security and civil liberties. So this was a fascinating book for so many different reasons, but why does this case matter? Well, first off, it gives us a very good understanding of the history of al-Qaeda, the manifestation of terrorism, and how pluralistic societies like the United States that have criminal procedures and a criminal process and a presumption of innocence for its citizen and, frankly, others are secure in the system. So even though we're fighting with and dealing with a murderer, we've got to treat that murderer like he's innocent. And it's just a fascinating story. Think about where we are today in America where the President of the United States is ordering missiles to be. be shot at boats that he's saying are drug dealers. No due process, no civil procedure, no criminal procedure. But yet in this case, we're following the book and we're following the book with great success. So listen, I loved it. Also tells us about some of the threats that we have

today, not just terrorist threats, but how we handle our society and how we handle our constitution. So applaud us to Jake Tapper for writing Race Against Terror. Let's get into it. Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci, joining us. now is Jake Tapper. In addition to being a world famous CNN anchor, he's a bestselling author, and he's out with a new book, Race Against Terror, Chasing an Al-Qaeda killer at the dawn of the Forever War. I mean, first of all, it's an amazing title, but it's an even better book. And Jake has been on the show before, so he knows the drill here. I learned so much in this book that I did not know about al-Qaeda, about our tactics in terms of how we were deploying

ourselves to kill these people or capture these people. But why this book, what drew you to this? And I know, I know you've researched it over a year ago, et cetera, put it together. What got you interested in this topic, Jake? The truth is, I just heard the story in a situation of happenstance. And I just thought it was fascinating. The story begins about how I came across the story. Three years ago, I threw a birthday party for my son. It was a paintball party. So it was out in the boonies in Virginia. So adults were invited to stick around and have pizza and refreshments. Right. Exactly. One of the dads, one of the dads came over to me and said, oh, I know so-and-so from your book, The Outpost. And I said,

oh, yeah, that book was really tough to write because the Pentagon keeps such crappy records and they don't share them. And he said, tell me about it. And he starts telling me this story, starts spinning this yarn about how he's an assistant U.S. attorney in Brooklyn. He gets a call. The Italians have picked up this guy who claims to be al-Qaeda. They go to Italy. They hear him confess to killing Americans and conspiring to blow up the U.S. embassy. and then he and his colleagues at the U.S. Attorney's Office and also in the FBI have like a finite

period of time to prove it, to prove the case. It's like the opposite of a who done it. Here's the done it. Here's the guy who done it. You have to prove the case. And he just tells me how they prove the case. And I love that stuff on like police procedurals, just the finding the fingerprint, finding the witness, you know, all that investigative stuff. And I just, and it was just so interesting. I said to him when he was done telling the story, has anybody written about this? And he said, people wrote about it when he was tried in 2017 and sentenced in 2018, but nobody really had ever captured the story of like how improbable all of this was. I mean, this was, as of now, still, the only foreign terrorist ever tried in a criminal

court in the U.S. for killing service members in a war zone. That's never happened before, although there is a guy in. Virginia right now, who might become the second foreign terrorist. He was behind the Abby Gate shooting, uh, bombing, suicide bombing. So anyway, it was just this once in a lifetime story and it had not been covered. And I, most of the stuff, the nonfiction stuff that I write is because I want to know more about it and nobody else is reporting it. So I go and report it. I mean, there's just so many different things in here, though. You've got to build a criminal case against this person. Uh, you've got the justice versus terror as civil courts versus military tribunal.

But let's go directly to Ibrahim Haran. I'm assuming I'm pronouncing his name roughly right. But he's called, he's called Spin for what reason? Why do they call him Spin? Spinn Gould is Pashto for the White Rose. And when he was in terrorist training camp, this guy was from originally, his ethnicity is Niger. He was raised in Saudi Arabia, but he's from Niger. So he's very, very, very dark, very.

very dark African, not a drop of non-African blood in his ancestry. And, you know, there's racism in Al-Qaeda and there's racism in the Arab world. And he was called the White Rose because he was very black. And that's, that was the big joke in the terrorist training camp. But it was his nom de guerre, his war name. And when the Italians called the FBI and said, have you heard, he says his name is Spinn Gould. ever heard of him. The Americans had heard of them because there were detainees at Gitmo that had talked about him because he was somebody who had successfully participated in a deadly

ambush against U.S. service members and also was then sent to Nigeria to blow up the American embassy there. But he did not end up doing that. But, you know, the Al-Qaeda operatives knew who he was and had talked about him. So let's go to David Bitcower. he's the assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of New York. He's one of the central prosecutors. He's the dad that told me the story at the paintball party. So, I mean, this is unbelievable. You're at the paintball story.

You literally have a Jean-La Carre novel being regaled to you, but it's actually true. It's a good lesson for reporters. Like, ask people when you're in a social situation, ask people their best story that they have in their back pocket. maybe you get a book out of it. Well, I mean, what I'm impressed with, with, he, I mean, I don't know him, but he seems like a very by the book guy, though, right? He's going through the process. He's using the judicial system.

He's even concerned about things like civil procedure. And there's something in our country called the Constitution, Jake. I think you've heard of the Constitution. I have heard of it. A few people in the country that want to ignore the Constitution, but not this guy. Big Cowr is like a buy-the-book guy. So tell us a little bit about him. And tell us a little bit about the juggling dilemma of bringing the case and how he has to work the case into the matrix.

So he's an assistant U.S. attorney, which sounds impressive to me, but it's not that high up on the total poll of the judicial system. So he and his colleague, Shreve Ariel, start working this case. but they have to, you know, they have to work it. Because it's 2011. Their choice is let the Italians deal with him and the Italians will just let them free. They'll put him in a refugee camp and he'll escape. And then, you know, he's, he has said he wants to kill as many Americans as possible. He has said the 1998 embassy bombings are his, you know, that's his matrix, his, is, his life's ambition.

So they have a, they really have an impossible choice. Do they try to prove this incredibly difficult? case or do they not do it and risk having this guy go free? So to them there's no choice. They have to, they have to try to prosecute him. And it just becomes this very difficult challenge. First, they have to figure out which ambush he participated in in Afghanistan. Then they have to track down all the information they can about that ambush, track down all the soldiers they can. They have to track down any sort of physical evidence from that ambush that might exist. And, and, you know, you know, even if there's a record of it, photographs of it,

they have to then try to find the physical objects, which, you know, this is a battle that took place in 2003. And they're in 2011, 2012, trying to track down evidence. And they have the challenge of having very, very skeptical bosses who give their case a lot of scrutiny. Well, how are you going to prove this? How are you going to prove that? At the time, it's tough to imagine, but a lot of people might remember, that in 2011, 2012, the idea of bringing a foreign terrorist to the United States to be tried was so controversial.

Republicans, Democrats, nobody wanted them here. There was almost this, I mean, you know, it had only been 10 years after 9-11. People were still terrorized. And there was this fear that if they come here, maybe they'll escape and maybe they'll walk around the streets just killing people. In addition, in 2010, there had been the trial of the first and only Gitmo detainee tried in a criminal court, this guy Galani. He was tried and he was acquitted of 284 of the 285 charges. This has to do with the 1998. I'm sorry, yeah, 1998 embassy bombings.

So he was acquitted of all but one of the charges. So there was a real fear. If we bring him here, what happens if we don't get a conviction or what happens if he has, if he escapes and this and that. So there were all these hurdles that they had to clear. And all these people in the Justice Department and the Obama White House and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Brooklyn, all of these people that they had to satisfy. In addition to them, of course, that's the U.S. Attorney's Office. Then there's the FBI. They're investigating the case with Bitkauer and Shreve. And they are also doing their investigation and trying to find as much information as they can.

what's amazing is that they pulled this all off, that they got all the evidence that they needed, that they tracked down physical evidence, witness testimony, et cetera. But the case was just so fascinating. And the expertise that you learn. I mean, this is, it was written, I wrote this because I just thought it was an interesting story.

And I wanted to write it like a thriller so that people would enjoy it, but also like learn something that I learned about this case. but also it is kind of a love letter to a functioning government where prosecutors and the FBI and politicians and public servants, everybody works together and tries to protect Americans. And I don't know that we have the same situation going on today because a lot of the prosecutors who are really experts on these types of investigations are being sidelined or even fired for political reasons. There's a guy in the book named George Toskis.

He did not cooperate with the book. He didn't talk to me ever. Not a friendly to media kind of guy. But I know that he was amazing at his job. And he's been sidelined because he signed off on the Moralago classified documents warrant. And there are a number of decisions like that that have been made in the last nine months. And I think they make the country less safe.

You know, I mean, they may have so many different reactions to the book, but that was one. You got there a little bit ahead of me. I read the book. I took criminal procedure in law school. I obviously took constitutional law. And it was like, it was so refreshing to see that process. There's another narrative going on right now in our country that I'd like you to address. And that is what you just said. People are like, well, the book is messy, Jake, right? It's messy. You've got to go through process.

You've got to deal with people that are double and triple checking your work. And the presumption is always on the innocent. And the presumption is always that the government has to be off the back of the person, even if it's a person that's a wretched terrorist. And yet now we have people who, if they don't like a court ruling, they'll say that there's an insurrection going on or there's an act of judicial terrorism. And so there's a group of people in the country that have said, hey, this process that got us 250 years of success and great prosperity and industrialization, innovation, et cetera, we want to

throw that out the window for something that's cleaner, in their minds at least, cleaner and more expeditious. And so when you write a book like this and you see what's going on right now, what do we do wrong? Do we do anything wrong? Or is this just the way the civilization works? And we and we burn a fuse and we eventually get to people that no longer want to respect the process or did we do something wrong that triggered all of this? Well, it's a complicated question. I mean, so this was the first foreign terrorist ever tried in a criminal court for killing American service members abroad. Donald Trump is attempting to bring the second foreign terrorist to a criminal court for killing American service members abroad. This guy, Jafar, who's in a prison or a jail in Virginia right now for his role in the Abbey Gate suicide bombings. So there is to a degree, a recognition, I think, that the criminal justice, the criminal justice pursuit of terrorists can be an effective way to do it. And early, in Trump's first term, Attorney General Sessions was upset to hear about the prosecution of Spingool.

There was an attempt to bring another terrorist to the U.S. for prosecution, and he would not have it because he doesn't think terrorists deserve to have rights. And he was not having it. He was not happy to hear about Spingool. But he didn't interrupt the trial because that was already about to happen. But we are now in a situation where the prosecution, criminal court of Jafar is going to happen. So on one level, I think that society has evolved, including the Trump administration, to keep pursuing this lane that I think proved successful. And if you just look at the comparison of how many people, how many terrorists have been tried

into military tribunal versus how many in criminal courts. Criminal courts has just been far more effective. It's more than 600 terrorists have been tried. Most of them convicted. And in military tribunals, I think it's two people have been convicted, and one of them, one of the charges was overturned. So it's not even close. Now, on the other hand, as you note, there is this push to label judges that come up with rulings that the administration disagrees with, to call them terrorists. That's Stephen Miller, you're quoting, I believe. Yeah. And in addition, in addition to Georgia, Toscus, who was legendary and has now been sidelined. Last week, the guy in charge of the Jafar prosecution, a line prosecutor named Michael Ben Airy was fired. Why was he fired? Because some MAGA

activist named Julie Kelly said online that he was against, she guessed that he was against the Comey indictment, which our sources suggested. CNN that that's not true at all. He had nothing to do with it. But they fired him. He put up a letter on his door on his last day, Friday, in which he said that his firing hurts the case against Jafar and that current Justice Department leadership is more interested in going after the president's perceived enemies than protecting the American people. That is a stark warning from a line prosecutor for the American people. Now, why is that not bigger news? I don't know. I, I, I, I say it every time I can.

I did it on my show. I wrote about it for the Atlantic and for CNN. I can't explain it. But we are in a situation where this lack of respect for expertise could end up really hurting us. Well, I mean, I think we both honestly know the, it's the Steve Bannon flood the zone. They've flooded the zone with so much stuff that, you know, we've sort of gotten numb to a lot of the things that are going on. and it's difficult and hard to react to everything. So I want to get to the radicalization of this man.

You know, he's undocumented. He's in Saudi Arabia. He goes, I guess he goes on a pilgrimage, as you're describing. He's, and he stays in Saudi, and he gets radicalized. And so what's going on in Saudi Arabia that creates al-Qaeda, also known as the base? What, you know, tell us about the Wahhab. Tell us about the secular Saudis versus the more orthodox Saudis. And how does this terrorist community develop there and why?

So Spengul is raised in Saudi Arabia. His parents are from Niger. They went to Saudi Arabia to do pilgrimage to Mecca. And then they just stayed. And they basically were just indentured servants that lived in basically in poverty. So there weren't a lot of options for Spengul. And if people think racism's bad in the United States, they should see how black people are treated in Saudi Arabia because it's not even close.

He was raised at a time when in the 1990s and the late 80s, jihadists were regarded as heroes. And it wasn't even particularly controversial before 9-11 in that part of the world. It was the heroes fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the heroes fighting against Russia in Chechnya. A lot of the victims of aggression in the Balkans were Muslim. So he was raised in a place where, you know, successful jihadists were his childhood heroes. And there was one in his neighborhood who worked for the Saudi government and was able to forge for him travel documents so that when he was old enough, he just went into the rat line and just

flew to Pakistan, where he was easily hooked up with al-Qaeda operatives that brought him to Afghanistan and where he trained. This is before 9-11. This is where he trained in the al-Faruk terrorist camp and the like. And you can almost, I wouldn't say see the appeal of it, but you can almost understand why a young man with no future might find appealing the notion of going on an adventure of some sort. And if he's being propagandized his whole life about the importance of fighting the infidel, going to some training camp with his bros might be appealing. And then 9-11 happens. And then all of a sudden, it's a different war altogether. But that's, That's how he ended up there.

But his zealotry was lifelong. And, you know, this becomes part of the debate in the case. Is he sane? Is he even sane? And that's always a discussion, I think, when you deal with any sort of zealot. Where does zealotry end and insanity begin? It's tough to say. Again, that would also affect his civil liberties if he's insane too, right?

So we have that element of criminal procedure. So, you know, when I opened the book at first and I read The Forever War, it always hurts me. It's like a dagger in my heart. So there was a very large group of people right after 9-11 that were actually begging the Bush administration not to overreact to the terrorist attack. And one of those people, frankly, was a Wall Street luminary that's now been demonized by the right.

It was George Soros. He wrote an op-ed. It was either in the Wall Street Journal of the New York Times. James, Jake. He said, listen, it's a horrible tragedy. Don't overreact. You'll play into Bin Laden's hands, you know. And Bin Laden wrote about this on the dark web. He said he would hit us on our homeland. We would respond aggressively. We would bomb their mud huts. We would kill a lot of people, but we would bleed out our treasury. We would kill our military over there. And then we would go after our own civil liberties.

And when I think about this case and the Forever War, you know, not to overuse a baseball analogy, I feel like it's 6-0-Bin Laden. Yeah, bin Laden's been replaced. He's dead and gone. There's a relief pitcher in now. But he got a lot right. We blew a hole in our treasury.

We've mounted a 30, we went from George Washington to George W. Bush 7 trillion, Jake. we added 31 trillion Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Biden, Trump. And so I'm just wondering if the Forever War, if we're 50 years after the Forever War, sometime 50 years from now, 2076, are they saying, wow, they, this was the, they hurt themselves so badly. And then they tribalized. They couldn't pull it back together. Because this book, if it was written, about a 2,025 case would give me great hope. But this book is not written about a 2,025 case. It's written about a 2011 case. So what say to you to all of that in the context of the forever war, Jake? It is a depressing and bleak thought that bin Laden could have been correct

in his prediction of an overreaction. And it reminds me of two things. It reminds me of President Biden going to Israel and telling Israel not to... Don't make the mistake that we made. Remember he said that? Don't act out of anger. Right.

Don't make the mistake we made. And I don't think Netanyahu was listening. And it also reminds, I just randomly saw a clip on threads of this very professional. profound movie in retrospect called The Siege that what's unbelievable about

it's a Denzel Washington Annette Benning, Bruce Willis thriller that I think it's by Edward Zewick or Marshall Hershowitz. I forget which one. But it's about first of all it came out in 1998.

That's what's the most amazing thing about the siege. It's about Islamic Terrorists. happening in Brooklyn. And then it's about basically declaring martial law in Brooklyn because of the big Muslim population there. And the argument is it's a bad idea. Bruce Willis plays the general who is telling them, do not declare martial law and send us in there. You don't want us to do it. And then there's another scene where Denzel Washington is saying, what if what they want us to do is to declare martial law and get rid of our civil liberties? What if what they want us to do is, round up kids and you know and it's everything and and like it it's the fact is that this

the fact that this came out in 1998 is what makes it so profound not if this movie had come out in you know five years ago who cares but like the fact that it predicted the overreaction uh i think it's fair to say what's interesting um about the war on terror in terms of this book in my view is i go into it with an open mind about, I go into, I think, assuming that President Bush and Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld are all trying to keep us safe and they're thrown, you know, their 9-11 was a horrible day and it terrified the country, it terrified the world, it changed everything, and they're trying to do what they need to do to keep us safe. The question is, and it's easy to do this with the luxury

of, from the luxury of 2025, is did what they do make us safer? And in terms of this small slice of the war on terror, the idea of, is it better to take these foreign terrorists and throw them in Gipmo, or put them in a military tribunal, or prosecute them in a criminal court? I came away. I did not go into it with this mindset. And I don't write this like a polemic. It's people can reach whatever conclusion they want. But my view is that the way that they did it with Spingool, prosecuting him, getting evidence, building an airtight case, makes us safer. Because I think about an alternative world where he's picked up by the Italians in 2008. And instead of going to a criminal court and having this huge investigation into what he did,

he's just thrown in Gitmo. And then I got to assume after five or ten years, somebody would have his case and they'd say, you don't even have any evidence against him. All you have is this crazy confession. And he's a lunatic. Who knows? And then the Americans would probably be like, oh, you're right. And then they'd send him to Niger, Saudi Arabia, or Oman.

And then he would go and kill as many Americans as he could. And so I came to the conclusion. And again, this isn't in the book. This is just my view of what I learned. And maybe people will leave the book and have a different interpretation. That's how I wrote it. I wrote it like a thriller. And people can make up their own mind.

But I think that prosecution made us safer because Spingool, this doesn't spoil the book, but the Spingool was found guilty. And he's in prison for the rest of his life. and those Gold Star families and the military men and women who were affected by the attack, they don't have closure. They're still in pain, but they have a sense that their government cared. And they do have an ability to, okay, the killer is in prison and whether or not they can go on with their life, I don't know. But that's, you know, all the families, all the 9-11 family's waiting for these trials of 9-11 co-conspirators that still haven't happened yet.

Because the military commissions can't do it. It's incredible. I'm with you, Jake. It made a safer, but it also, it made the innocent safer. It made the innocent safer. You know, I mean, you know, I mean, the unjustly accused. It's also made safe. Yeah.

So, all right, so you remember this for my podcast. This is something people like, so we do it every time. I've got your book down to five words. I'm going to say the word, and then you react to the word. Okay, ready? If I say the word terrorism, Jake, you say what? Scary. justice

elusive that's a really good one actually I'm going to use that extremism common what about al-Qaeda organized yeah it's incredible

it's literally like a corporation when you really think about the layers of it all right let's go to your protagonist or your antagonist ibrahim spin heron zealot crazy

mental illness? No, I don't think so. And that's a debate in the book. And it's one that... That was my conclusion. Yeah, I'm sorry not to interrupt you. There's a big debate about how crazy he is, how crazy he isn't.

And I don't ultimately think he's crazy. I think he's doing what they called in the book The Jihad of Annoyance. He was... He had nothing to do... He had no way of getting the Americans back other than to act insane. but it was an act.

Yep. And then, you know, obviously the disruption, the fear, that's what they were looking for. That's why it's organized. That's why it's organized terrorism as opposed to organized crime. The title of this book is Race Against Terror, Chasing an Al-Qaeda killer at the dawn of the Forever War. I'll tell you why, you got a great review in the New York Times. Congratulations on that. And people should go out and buy this book to learn a lot about our system.

and it's as good as your fiction, Jake. You've written some fiction books, too. I learned a lot of lessons from fiction in terms of writing a propulsive narrative. I wanted to turn to page. I had known the story, but I didn't understand the detail of the complexity of the story. And I was turning the page quickly in this book. Thank you for writing it. And thank you for coming on Open Book.

As always, a real pleasure. Thanks, Anthony. I am Anthony Scarabucci, and that was Open Book. Thank you so much. for listening. If you like what you hear, tell your friends and make sure you hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. While you're there, please leave us a rating or review. If you want to connect with me or chat more about the discussions, it's at Scaramucci on X or Instagram. I'd love to hear from you. I'll see you back here next week.