Pod Save the World - Infiltrating al Qaeda

Episode Date: December 15, 2017

Tommy interviewed undercover FBI agent Tamer Elnoury about his work penetrating and disrupting an al Qaeda cell plotting attacks in Canada and the United States. They discussed what it was like to live with and pretend to become a terrorist, including having to visit the Ground Zero memorial with a man who took pride in the 9/11 attacks and wanted to repeat them. His book, AMERICAN RADICAL, is great - read it!

Welcome back to Potsave the World. I have a very special guest today. His name is Tomer El Nouri. Actually, it's not that, but that is the alias he assumed when he worked undercover for many years for the FBI investigating terrorism cases. He wrote a book called American Radical, which is about a case where two men were plotting to derail a train in Canada, an attack that would have killed hundreds and hundreds of people if it hadn't been disrupted by Tamer's work. We talked about what it was like going undercover, assuming a role of someone that is anti-American, that is spewing the most hateful venom you could ever imagine, how you try to have a semblance of a normal life when half the time you are embedded with people who are pure evil. We talked about the work the FBI does, the threats from al-Qaeda and ISIS and how they're different, and our shared frustration that whenever there's one of these attacks, there's a rush to demand all Muslims condemn an attack. they are not associated with in any way, except for sharing the same religion, and how we can do

a better job separating out true Islam from this perverted extremist worldview that these sorts of men espouse. It is my first ever alias interview. His voice will be changed for the purposes of protecting his identity because he is still undercover. But the book American Radical is fascinating. I highly recommend you by it. And I think it was a hell of a good interview, too, if I do say so myself. So thanks for listening. Here's the interview. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks to the work you did to prevent those attacks and countless other cases that you're probably not allowed to talk about and for doing the show. Thanks so much for having me, Tommy. It's my pleasure. Cool, man. So, okay, you started your career as a cop working under cover to take down drug dealers. It's a gripping intro of you, like, you know, running into some house to buy heroin or whatever it was. Are criminal networks and terrorist networks similar enough that this work helped you prepare to infiltrate al-Qaeda down the road? Or like, how did you view, you know, your average? thug on the street, like heroin dealer versus, you know, someone plotting to kill Americans on

Al Qaeda's behalf? You know, they're similar in some ways, but they're actually wholly different in their principles. For example, the criminal network, it's always who do you know, how do you get introduced, sometimes you use informants, whereas terrorism, it's all about selling ideology. They have this belief that this is the way the world is. This is the way the religion is. And if you are a quote-unquote like-minded brother and you can sell that, then you will be one of them and be able to infiltrate them and hopefully evaluate whatever threat there is. But in the criminal world, obviously, nobody cares about your ideology or what you think about or whether you lean right or left. All they care about is, are you a cop or not? If you can sell

that, you're good to go. So to the point of whether you're a cop or not, a lot of these operation ended with the group you were with, the house you were end, getting busted. I would imagine that those take down moments when agents come flying in with guns drawn and, you know, you're with a bunch of people who may or may not be armed would be terrifying. You seem to have a good time with it. You seem to enjoy resisting arrest when your friends were the cops who were supposed to be arresting you. Is that a fair characterization?

Yeah, it is because once you get to the point where your SWAT team's coming in after you, you're not alone anymore. So you can have some fun with you. that actually the terror part is gone. Your friends are there, so you might as well enjoy it. So you slap them around a little bit and- Absolutely. Well, they trust me, when I tell you,

I got and slapped around a lot more than they did. My buddy Bobby actually called me, goes, that's the one story you wanted to put in the book, huh? I love it, sir. It was the best shot I got on you, so. I laughed out loud. Because of your work on terrorism cases, two men, Jeheb, Esagari,

and Rayaed Yasser were convicted. of a plot to derail a passenger train in Canada that would have killed, I believe, hundreds of people. Can you talk a bit about what they were planning to do and how seriously the FBI and the Canadian authorities took that threat? Absolutely. It all started, obviously, with Shihab Asa and who he is and how we discovered that he was a true threat and evil living amongst us. And when we were able to get close to him and figure out what his thoughts and plans were, the blots were coming from al-Qaeda's senior leadership overseas. It wasn't his idea.

He was directed to do that. And his sole purpose was to figure out how to derail it, whether it's break up the tracks, blow up the tracks, over a bridge with as little water as possible, because at that moment, al-Qaeda's mindset was maximum casualties, minimum exposure. Why? Because they learned from 9-11 that martyrdom wasn't for them. They lost Muhammad Atta. They lost some of the greatest minds in their network with these suicide attempts and these bombings and these martyrdom expeditions. So they learned just like we learned. And they decided we're going to do these different plots and plans in an effort to scare the enemy. So you were like infiltrated with these guys. You got to know them. How did you convince them to bring you in on their plot that you believed what they believed, that you weren't what in fact you were, which was an FBI informant sent to disrupt them? Well, I definitely prefer.

I'm definitely not an informant. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. There was a big difference. We joke around actually internally with agents when they make the mistake of calling us a confidential source as opposed to undercover, only because there's obviously a big difference. I would get so razzed at the bureau right now. This sucks.

Yes, but no, it's all about developing relationships, Tommy. If I were to come to you in the bar today, you're a successful man, you've got all this wonderful resume, what would it take for me to bump you at a restaurant when you're out with your friends or family to get you to want to talk to me the next day, to give me your cell phone number? I don't know about you, but I got a plenty of friends and family. I don't really want anybody invading my personal space. But if I study you and I know who you are and what makes you tick and what you want, what you need, that's the difference. And that's how we, I cheat. I call it cheating because I get to study my marks prior to. I know what they want, what they need.

And I try to be recruitable so that they come from me and they want me. And they go to bed at night thinking about how they can be my friend. And that's the psychological aspect of my job. And once I'm there, I'm able to accurately gauge the threat level that we're looking at. So it's like the worst kind of dating. It's like terrorist Tinder. That's a good way of putting it, exactly. So making your job a lot harder, I think, was the fact that these guys were not idiots.

Like, they owned businesses. They had advanced degrees. One was studying to get his Ph.D. In my opinion, you know, that makes them savier probably. It also makes them the scariest kind of terrorist. Did you get a sense of what drew these guys to Al-Qaeda? and convince them to try to do such horrific things. And is there anything we can learn from that experience

to prevent others from getting radicalized in the way they were? I wish there was an easy answer, but what I can say, Tommy, is you're absolutely right. Sheeb did scare me because of, I can honestly say his IQ is probably the highest of anyone I've ever been around. He had a different level of smarts. He was a world-renowned scientist on the precipice of curing infectious diseases.

I mean, the stuff that he was studying was, borderline science fiction as opposed to science, nanobots and all kinds of stuff that was absolutely amazing work for humanity. And then he went from that person, okay, within two years being one step removed from the leader of Al Qaeda, Aimanazawa Hiri. And that scares you because how does that happen? And I think the only common thread that I've seen throughout my career would be the fact that they're lost souls. They're looking to hang their hat on something. don't fit. They don't fit in their family. They don't fit with friends. They don't fit at the mosque. They don't fit in social situations. And they're angry. They're internally angry. And they cling to

something that they feel that will lead them to a better place than the one they're in. So to infiltrate these guys, to gain their trust, you had to live the part. You had to stay with them at times. You had to eat with them. You had to pray with them. How did you gain their trust? And did getting so deeply into character ever mess with your head and make you feel like, oh my God, am I becoming this alias that I've assumed? Never to the point where I forgot who I was because I had a safe house, no matter where I was operating on the planet.

There was always a safe house that I went to where I could be me, my true self, around my backup team, because I needed that. Sometimes I'm off the grid for a few weeks, and then it does weigh on you, and I'm not going to sit here and pretend that it doesn't. but thankfully, I've never, ever been in a position to ever question what it was that I was actually doing and why I was doing it. So, fortunate or just being able to keep that wall up. The book is really good.

It's a page turner. I read it. I almost read the whole thing in a day because I just couldn't put it down. And one anecdote in the book that I thought was so cool was you got like two weeks of formal acting training. And you said it that you're convinced that it saved your life. Can you explain what is a legend? And how did you use that acting training to do your work for the FBI? You know, it's funny, Tommy, because when we were told we were going to Hollywood to meet some acting coach, we're like, you're kidding, right?

You seem happy. I was actually somewhat offended. Are you kidding me? I'm not an actor. Those guys, you know, we're the real deal. Come on. We don't need to learn any of that. But we were like, all right, let's go to L.A.

Let's enjoy a week's vacation on the bureau. So, well, we get there and we meet Howard Fine. And he is, to this day, still a good friend of mine. I can honestly say that he absolutely changed the way I did undercover work. I was minor leagues before I met Howard. And the reason being is he didn't teach us anything other than how to use what we already have. How to tap into emotions that we already have, personal ones, i.e., the story of my mother, how to make that work. for you in an undercover capacity for your legends.

And so I was able to take this training to be able to seem believable and create different legends, recruitable legends, based on the subject that I was looking to get in front of. And thankfully, you know, I got pretty decent at it. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about the story of your mother and how you drew on that to sell these guys on how you became truly radicalized? Well, absolutely.

If you meet a subject, okay, and you just say, yeah, I'm ready to kill the infidels, you know, let's do this, let's do that. I mean, it comes across, it's obvious, it's not real. Even if you, they can't articulate why you're lying, they're going to sense it. As a human beings, we're not programmed to lie. So we don't lie. We keep it as close to reality, as close to who you are to seem believable, because then those nonverbal cues are never given.

So in this particular situation, the most devastating thing that's ever happened to me was the loss of my mother, who was, you know, my be-all end-all. I was truly a mama's boy. She got sick and got some of the greatest care on the East Coast. Best surgeons around. And yet the tumor was aggressive. She had a brain tumor and she died within one month of being diagnosed. It was quick. So I took that horrific story in my life.

and I radicalized it. I made it where the doctors and nurses didn't pay attention to her because she was a Muslim. They didn't like her when in reality she was the star of the whole wing. Every nurse, my mother was on a first name basis with every nurse in the two weeks that she was there. I had said that the doctor didn't do what he wanted to. They were disrespectful to my father because he had an accent. They disregarded us because we're a Muslim. Here I am.

I spent my entire life looking like them. I'm sounding like them trying to be American. And when I needed them the most, they left me behind. There was a sadness and an anger. As I'm talking to you now, I'm getting emotional. That's real. And that's not something I ever have to fake, but it's not the exact words that I'm saying, obviously. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. Well, I'm sorry you had to deal with that. Oh, thank you. My dad got cancer and it moved way too fast. And it's, it's terrible. I was reading the story in the book and sort of remembering what it was like and uh oh it hits home i could draw on some anger from that too but we'll move on but you know what time if i can i will tell you towards the end and i don't even i mentioned this

slightly at the book you may or may not have picked up on it but one of the things you have said to me before we all got arrested was when he asked me he said what made you trust me and i repeated the question to him he said that night at the moroccan restaurant in san jose california when he told me about your mother, I knew there was no way you were government because that was real. Yeah. And I said that to Howard, the acting coach, after the case was over, so it could be a feather in his cap as well. Yeah, I do remember that.

And it impressed me and disturbed me all at once. Yeah. They're always testing us, though. Yeah. So these guys you put away, they were real deal, frightening potential terrorists. There is no doubt that the work you did, that the Bureau did, that the kids. Canadians did save lives and put away very, very dangerous people. There are other times where there are operations that have put away guys who are younger,

more naive, downright stupid. I mean, I think there actually, there were some, you know, you sort of talk about this in the book that, you know, the U.S. attorney pushed back on you and said, thinking horrible things, saying horrible things is not illegal. You have to sort of cross a line to commit a crime. How do you walk the line as an undercover agent in those cases? Like, how do you separate out a young, stupid, naive kid that's going to the wrong websites and watching a loki and saying stupid shit and the people who are real threats and getting these guys to give you the evidence you need to prosecute them without coming close to what could be called entrapment or, you know, sort of bringing them along? That's actually a great question.

I wish more people would ask me that because I will love to yell this from every rooftop. The bottom line is this. You hit the nail on the head, Tommy. it's a fine line. Yes, I have a job to do. I'm there to collect evidence. I'm there to meet the elements of each crime that we are looking to prosecute. But I'm also having human contact with them. I'm not a lawyer in a courtroom. I'm not a cop in an interrogation box. I am having a meal with someone. I'm going on a drive with someone. So the conversation while staying in role, while staying in character has to be real.

And I will never, ever be the driving force. You will never hear any of my tapes or any of my cases where I'm the driving force behind any terrorist plot. If it were up to me, I wouldn't blow up a train. There's 30,000 things I can think of that would be much more sinister and evil. But I'm not going to be the one that's going to suggest anything. I'm going to be the driving force. And I'm going to take it to the next level.

Not only am I not going to be the driving force, but I'm going to be the driving force. but I'm going to be the voice of reason. So when I'm in that courtroom and you're listening to all the jihadis speak, it's never going to come out of the mouth of an undercover agent. It's going to be coming out of the targets convincing me to do so. Right. So when I said to Shahed, and I, you know, refer to this as my Christian burial speech, when I said to him, listen, I don't want you to think I'm wavering.

I'm with you. You're my brother. I believe in what we're doing. But we're talking about killing innocent women and children here. Are you sure it's not haram, meaning forbidden, and that Allah wants us to do this because they're going to call us terrorists. They're going to show pictures of dead babies. This is what we're going to do. And then I didn't speak for 22 minutes after that.

The last you heard from the undercover was reservation about killing innocence. I got justifications in two languages and points through his point of view, his jihadi perspective and surround sound stereo for the court to hear. So I gave him an out. He could have said, well, maybe you're right. We shouldn't hurt innocence. Maybe we should focus on just the military targets or maybe we should do this. There's your out. There's your lifeline. Right. So that's the difference. I think it's imperative to see and know who the driving force behind these plots are. That's my job. It's not to create the plots or to further them. I'm there to be essentially a sounding board for these subjects. Yeah. And he doubled down and credits you for

listening to 22 minutes of that bullshit because that must be annoying. Exactly. I thought one of the most powerful scenes in the book was when you had to go on a tour of Ground Zero with a man named Abasi who had talked about killing thousands of Americans in a biological attack who talked about outdoing the 9-11 attacks. What was that like for you to have to walk through that memorial with a man who took pride in what happened at that site? That was one of the hardest things I had to do in an undercover capacity.

because 9-11 was very personal to me, Tommy. It's personal to all of us here in this country, obviously, but I had not seen the memorial when Abbasi was pushing to see it. And he was pushing to see it for obviously all the wrong reasons. Muhammad Atta was his idol. Osama bin Laden, he idolized him. He spoke about them with such reverence that it turned your stomach. And it just so happened that he happened to be staying in an apartment,

one of my so-called apartments, downtown. and he was right near ground zero. So he pushed and pushed and pushed. And because the U.S. attorney, because of that conversation, when he said to me, having terrible ideas and thoughts aren't prosecutable, he's right. Yeah. But I needed to get his juices flung,

so I had to bite the bullet and walk him through there. And walking through there with him, with that look of pride and that look of, like the way he looked up where the towers stood, sick in me to my question. asking me to take pictures of him, where everyone else in there was solemn and grief-stricken, he was there reveling in a victory of his idol. Yeah.

Lucky for all of us, you got to testify against these men in a Canadian courtroom, you know, almost as yourself, as the closest approximation of yourself as you got to be, I think, in this process and not your alias. What was that like? I mean, it seemed to me like you had sympathy for what he could have been, but not for the man. Is that fair? That's very close. Like I said, his brain was a gift to us.

I know it sounds ridiculous, but I mean, he dedicated his thesis to me. I couldn't read a word of it. You know, I consider myself an intelligent person, but nothing that he did professionally made sense to me. He created those nanobots where they would go in and attack cancer cells. On a personal level, on a human level, I'm thinking, oh, my God, he's wandered in Singapore, California, Mexico, all these research. facilities are dying to get into his brain because of his knowledge of human anatomy.

And think of all the good he could have done in this world. Think of the good person he could have been. I mean, we're talking Nobel Peace Prize. And instead, he gets radicalized and wants to kill and maim when you have a talent and a skill like that. Yeah. Never for a second that I ever think he belonged anywhere other than in jail. in jail. And I hope he wroughts in jail. It was his soul, his mind. That's the person that I felt sorry for. Yeah. This was a big time case. These were guys who had lines back to Al-Qaeda management

in various places. And in the book, you write about being frustrated that the case got wrapped up maybe too quickly because your hope was to pull on this thread a little longer, maybe, you know, get introduced to Al-Qaeda management abroad, and more importantly, find an American who was a sleeper for al-Qaeda. You talk about how that kept you up at night for weeks and weeks, if not months. Is that something you still worry about? Do you think there's a possibility that guy could still be out there? Everything I see on the news, every day we hear or see a terrorist attack or something happening here in the U.S. That's always my first thought. There hasn't been a day since the day, since April of 2013, Tommy, that I don't think about it. I get it, okay? And I tried to

make this abundantly clear in the book. I get the politics of it. I do. I understand that we are two allies, the U.S. and Canada, okay, but slightly different agendas at times. I get all that. Looking back on it now, I do. I was probably a bit of a petulant child at the time, but we all did. The guys on the ground, the grunts on the ground, the case agents, the analysts, we all felt like there were so much more meat on the bone and we could do so much more. We just had to to, you know, take a leap of faith and keep moving. We had a platform set up to vet bad guys on both sides of the border here and in Canada, overseas.

We were the jihadi lottery. I mean, come meet Tamer al-Norri. He's got money. He's got access. He's ready to kill the infidels. Who wants to join us? And people were coming out in droves. We had an opportunity to vet threats globally.

But time, money, politics, everything kicked in. Like I said, I get it. But at the time, yeah, I was. wasn't too thrilled. Yeah, I thought you were very fair about it in the book. I get the frustration. And this is a really hard thing that I think that law enforcement agencies deal with all the time, which is getting people off the street, eliminating an immediate threat, getting a prosecution on the books, and, you know, working with someone leaving them in the wild to continue to get, you know, invaluable information from a human source that you literally not could be able to get anywhere else, right?

I mean, that must be the most precious asset you could possibly have is an access that you had in this case. Oh, absolutely. And I still feel that way. I think technology is a wonderful thing, and I think it's helped us out tremendously. But nothing will ever replace human intelligence. Yeah. I can't believe how much these idiots were emailing. It was interesting to read about al-Qaeda again. Al-Qaeda has sort of taken a backseat in the public consciousness to ISIS. Al-Qaeda obviously radicalizes people and inspires attacks through their propaganda. You know, Anwar Al-Laki was, you know, as dangerous as they come on that front. But they also, they seem to me like they have more. more of a structure. They have an organization. There's command and control. As you said earlier, they want to dictate the type of attack gets carried out, the target, sometimes the one and the wear. That need for command and control gives law enforcement and intel guys like you access points to intervene, disrupt plots. I've been out of government for a long time, and so I don't have access to anything like current information, so correct me if I'm wrong. But ISIS seems to have a different approach and their strength comes from their ability to inspire attacks without

complex planning or command and control. They sort of encourage individuals to say, use a truck to mow people down to where you are. How does the FBI and other counterterrorism agencies adapt to that changing nature of the threat? Does that undercover component that you are serving in get moved over to the CIA and the need to penetrate these networks abroad? Like, what's your take on? Well, first off, whether or not you're still plugged in, I think you're pretty spot on. That was a perfect description detailing the differences between al-Qaeda and ISIS. I would say, and again, I'm sure, and I have to give this disclaimer because I'm still on the clock. I am not speaking on behalf of the FBI, the Department of Justice, or any intelligence agency.

I'm giving you my personal opinion from my 22 years experience on this job. That don't sleep on Al-Qaeda. Yeah. That is a sleeping giant. Yeah. Right now, you're right. ISIS is getting all the headlines because they are the millennial version of terrorism. They are out there.

They're going on the computer using social media. media say pick up a meat cleaver, go kill someone, go mow somebody down. And then the radicalization process, and I'm not giving any specific terms, but it went from nine months to 30 days. Wow. That doesn't give us much time for someone who's a social recluse in his mother's basement who decides, you know what? Yeah, I want to do this. Raise the black flag. Go rent a truck, and it's game over. Yeah. It is scary. And but the FBI has adapted brilliantly. after 9-11, okay, and they are adapting brilliantly now to this threat. It's always going to be a threat, that lone wolf mentality, the people who are off the grid and things of that nature, obviously, is going to be a threat.

And it will continue to be a threat until we win the global war on terror. But I really think that the reason why we're not seeing it, the way we're seeing it overseas in Europe is because of the brave men and women that I get to work with every day and the hard work that they do and the dedication that they give to our country. So the work you guys do is by definition secret and undercover and not public. Were you given permission to write this book so that people can actually understand what their government is doing to keep them safe because it can feel nebulous and hard and you feel like you hear the same assurances often and I was the person giving those assurances. But were you allowed to do this to help tell the actual story and flesh it out? You've worked for the government long enough time to know that I wasn't given permission to do

it for any reason. I kind of had to get it sort of kicking and scream. I went through all the processes. I dotted every eye, crossed every T, because I am still active duty. I still maintain my clearances. I love what I do and I don't want to stop doing it. The problem is it was time for me to raise my hand and say, time out, here's the differences between radical Islam and mainstream Muslim that Muslims and non-Muslims are both at the tip of the spear of this global war on terror. And the only way that we're going to figure all this out is together. And I got a platform when Shaheb and Jasser decided to take me to Hute. They got this declassified.

Do you know it would have been, you know, it would have been 50 years before DOJ ever declassified this. But they hit the fast forward button. They took me to trial. We had to declassify 90% of the op. and everything that I testified in open court became fair game. So I played by the rules and the FBI did give me permission. I went through their pre-publication process, CTD, every national security branch got a look at the manuscript before even the publisher did. Sounds fun.

Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Amazed your book wasn't just entirely redacted, so good for you. I want to get to the point you just made. Whenever there's an ISIS attack or an al-Qaeda-inspired attack, there's a rush to, to demand that every Muslim on the planet condemn that attack and somehow be accountable for someone else's actions that they didn't know because they share a religion. What is your response to the people who leap to that conclusion and what can everyone do to push back on, root out this perverted extremist worldview that has nothing to do with Islam or

a religion? Ironically enough, Tommy, that's one of the main reasons why I wrote American Radical. everything that's said in the media has always kind of rolled off my shoulders. That's my job. You know, be a professional. Do your job. Don't worry about what anybody says. But for whatever reason, that one day when an anchor said, how many millions of Muslim Americans are there in this country?

Why are they not denouncing these terrorist attacks? Well, for whatever reason, that's stuck in my craw. And that's when I raised my hand and said, well, this one is. And the reason being is, I would make the argument. argument that they are. They're screaming it from the rooftops. My sister cannot say the word ISIS because it's associated with our religion. She's that disgusted by it. My father prays every day that they get wiped off the planet. They don't see these American Muslims because the only ones with a voice are Al-Qaeda and ISIS. So in writing American radical, I was hoping to kind of dispel some of

those myths. And I urge the Muslim Americans to not be nervous or afraid. Just stand up, tell your neighbors. This is Islam and this isn't Islam. This is how they desecrate it and this is how they twist it. It is a complicated subject. Muslims themselves don't understand some of the way they warp it. Okay. But there's always violent texts in every major religion. Okay. But usually it's in defense. So in a roundabout way again, it was my turn to raise my hand and say, okay, this is what it is. And that's why I wrote the book. And I think that was a powerful part of the book because just for people listening, not an atheist who pretended to be a radical, you are someone who seems like you had a deep faith and you could run circles around these guys in terms of talking about Islam. And like the knowledge

you had seemed like an asset, although you weren't really allowed to fight the intellectual argument because you were playing a part. Well, that's correct. And again, I'm far from an Islamic scholar or scholar in any word or definition. But my Sunday school was Islamic Sunday school. Right. I played soccer and baseball growing up. There was a synagogue in my backyard, a church across the street, and a mosque up the road. It didn't matter. We were all Americans. It didn't matter whether you were white, brown, black, yellow, what religion, whether you went to church or synagogue or a mosque. None of that mattered until 9-11. And after that, it just started taking on and on. And that is not the Islam I know. So everything that was taught to me, I had to learn this. I worked narcotics and I knew, you know, I knew how to say fat. I knew how to make my prayers. Obviously, I was religious enough. Okay.

But the words and the way they describe certain stories were familiar to me because I learned them growing up, but they were so different in the sense that they were warped. They left out the important parts, the good parts where expiation and I'm not going to get into all religion, but basically forgive and forget and let God judge, that's all gone. Yeah. Okay. That's what they hang their hats on. I love the scene when you were with Abasi, I think, in Vegas, and you had dinner with someone he thought might be a like-minded brother, i.e., someone that he could bring along into the plot and work with you to execute a terrorist attack. And the guy just wouldn't go along with the rhetoric of the table.

And you weren't sure if that was hesitance about not knowing you or a worldview. And at the end, he sort of pulled you aside and said, don't let Abasi pervert your view of Islam, like stay true to yourself. And you said, you almost hug the guy. Yeah. Oh, my God. Well, you know why Tommy? It was such a relief because I met this guy, and he scared the shit out of me. He was built like he was big.

He was strong. He spoke eloquently. He knew six languages. He was a smart guy. I'm like, how many of these freaking people are there? And it was really, it got to the point where I'm like, are you kidding me? If this guy starts talking jihadi, I'm just, I'm going to lose it. And he was being very polite to Abbasid because of their childhood when they grew up in Tunisia.

And as I was starting to pick him apart. and read him, I realized it wasn't an act. He wasn't hiding anything. He was appalled by Bossy's desecration and bastardization of the religion. And it wasn't until he spelled it out to me that it was such a huge sigh of relief. And it was a win for me spiritually during the case. Can you get that guy in the FBI? Can you recruit him to another team?

I feel bad. I think, yeah, let's... Next question. Next question. Yeah, right, exactly. So my experience in dealing with the FBI is there were a lot of like buttoned up older. I don't want to say nerds, you know, because like Bob Mueller is not a nerd. But like, you know, Vietnam vet like top of your class, their background checks.

I think were a lot squeakier, clean than your counterbarts over at the S.CIA where you can have a little more of a misspent youth. What do you make of this sort of recent reporting narrative, mostly in conservative media that the FBI is somehow liberal? or biased or anti-Trump? Like, what's your experience of the FBI agents you know? I'm going to tell you, and I've been traveling the country and the world, different league acts, different legal attaché's offices and the FBI.

And every single division that I've worked with 56 divisions here stateside, I'm going to tell you every case agent supervisor all the way up to executive management, at FBI headquarters is a true American patriot. It doesn't matter if they're right, left. Nobody talks about that. Nobody cares. It doesn't matter.

There are one big family whose mission and dedication is to do right by the American people. I was honored to be a part of the JTTF and get brought in this way. People ask me all the time, oh, well, the FBI is using you. I'll make the argument that I'm using them. They're giving me a platform, okay, to combat this evil that's personal, to me while protecting me, my family, and my interests all the way. They are the ultimate patriots and they deserve every bit of credit and any criticism that they're getting right now I wholeheartedly disagree with because I've worked with them

all across the board and I've never seen anything but patriotism and professionalism. Yeah. And, you know, I don't know the FBI well, but I know demographics, but I think a bunch of older white guys who are into law and order don't sort of match your standard liberal voter. cohort, so whatever. Take that for what it is. There's been a lot of rhetoric that is anti-Muslim, since 9-11, but, you know, in political campaigns. What does that rhetoric do, do you think, to the FBI's ability to recruit men like you, women like you, to take on dangerous missions, to put their lives at risk, to be able to reach into communities that are often on the front

lines of tipping off law enforcement about individuals who are being radicalized or susceptible to being radicalized. Well, you know what? I would imagine, I mean, I'm not 100% sure. I would imagine it's harder, okay, but if I can use this moment, okay, to speak to fellow Muslim Americans and tell them that they're not the enemy. The FBI isn't watching anyone based on any race, religion, or color. They follow the evidence.

And for whatever reason, I've heard the same exact things that you're talking about, the different rhetoric. It's not coming from the FBI. And if you don't trust the FBI, okay, then trust me who works with the FBI to tell you I'm a Muslim American. I have never, in all my years of doing, has seen anything contrary to the reality of their fair, they're just, and they only follow the evidence. And the only way we're going to defeat this evil is if every American Muslim and non-Muslim band together to weed out those who are trying to live among amongst us as us. That's good.

That's a good message. Last question for you, you assume these identities for weeks, months at a time, and you come back out. What's it like trying to assimilate back into your own life, be with your own family? I mean, are you able to tell them enough so that they get it? Or do people wonder, where the hell are you? Why did you miss a birthday party or whatever? You know, that's a great question, Tommy.

And it wasn't until I wrote this book that I realized that I wasn't very good. at that. Yeah. I was proud and Kevin and I were writing this. I could tell you how I went to beach and I got enrolled and I lost my true identity and I was able to, you know, jump on a plane as Tamer or any of my other aliases and be that person until I came home. But what I forgotten or I guess never thought of was how when I did come home, sometimes depending

on whatever mission or op I was on, I need to live. a little more time to assimilate back. And yeah, I think people in my personal life have suffered because of that. They get it, I'm sure. But I wish I had done that part of my job a little better. Well, that's hard. I mean, that was one of the great things about the bin Laden operation, right? It's like, finally these people who are behind the scenes forever could talk a little bit about the work they did.

And, you know, I mean, it's like you guys like the offensive line of, you know, the national security state. The quarterback gets sacked. It's the only time you get attention. That's not fair. That's right, exactly. Tamara Lnoury, the book is American Radical. It is a page turner. You will love it.

There are incredible stories throughout it about embedding with these creeps and taking them down and keeping a lot of people from getting hurt. So thank you for all the work you did. Thank you for doing the show. I really appreciate it. And stay safe out there. Tommy, thank you so much for having me, your gentleman, sir. I really appreciate it.

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