Pod Save the World - The Terrorist Interrogator

Episode Date: January 12, 2018

Tommy talks with former FBI Special Agent Ali Soufan about his work interrogating terrorists and investigating the bombing of the USS Cole and the 9/11 attacks. They discuss the changing threat from al Qaeda and ISIS and what we need to know about these terrorist groups to stop them.

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. This is Tommy Vitor. Thank you guys for tuning in. I am recording this from backstage at our event in Amsterdam. So even while on tour for Pod Save America, still got some international flavor here. My guest this week is Ali Sufhan. He's a former FBI interrogator and one of the people who investigated the USS coal bombing and investigated Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden before they were household names.

A little housekeeping before we go to the interview. I'm doing a live event in Los Angeles on January 17th at 8 p.m. If you're in town, come see it. I'll be on stage with Ben Rhodes, Samantha Power, and the director of the final year, a documentary about the last year of President Obama's foreign policy, Greg Barker. It should be a cool conversation. It's an awesome film.

I watched it on the plane to Europe, and I think you guys will all enjoy it. Tickets are on sale now. Go to the Potsday the World Facebook page, and you can find out how to get them. So with that, here's the interview. My guest today is Ali Sufhan, who is a former FBI agent who investigated a number of major, major terrorism cases. That includes the East Africa embassy bombings, the attack on the USS Cole, the 9-11 attacks. He's the author of two books, the black banners, the inside story of 9-11, and the war against al-Qaeda, and more recently, Anatomy of Terror from the death of bin Laden to the rise of the Islamic State.

And he is the CEO of the Sufong Group. Ali, thank you so much for doing the show today. Thank you, Tommy. You have such a unique perspective on terrorist groups and terrorist activity and how it has changed and adapted over time because you were tracking these guys since long before most Americans had ever heard of al-Qaeda or heard of Osama bin Laden probably before some of my listeners were born. So I was thinking maybe we could go back in time a little bit to about 17 years ago in

October of 2000 and the U.S. coal bombing. This was an al-Qaeda attack on a U.S. Navy destroyer that was refueling at the port of Aden and Yemen. 17 U.S. sailors were killed, 39 others were injured. You arrived in Yemen just days after that attack. Can you talk about what happened, what you were investigating, and what it told us about al-Qaeda's strength at the time? Well, thanks, Tommy, and thank you for reminding me that I'm old. You know, I started work in Al-Qaeda back in 1997, and I was involved in the East Africa embassy bombing.

I was involved in multiple terror disruption plots around the world to include the Millennium Operation in Jordan that took place around December 1999, around the millennium, where we basically disrupted a plot that was aimed to blow up hotels and attack some boarding crossing with Israel around the Pope's visit to the Holy Land. So we've been very familiar with the organization of al-Qaeda, we're working the group, we're arresting people, were disrupting a plot. And on October 12 of 2000, a boat came next to a Navy ship that was refueling in Yemen, and two people were on the boat.

They salute the soldiers on the deck, and then they detonated their deadly cargo. As you correctly mentioned, 17 people were killed. and about 40 injured. And that was, you know, at the time, just an attack that a lot of people did not know Al-Qaeda is capable of doing. After the East Africa embassy bombing, people were not interested in listening or hearing us talking about the terrorist threat. At the time, everybody wanted to focus on the election.

You know, the name Al-Qaeda or bin Laden or terrorism didn't even come up. during the debates or during the election between Gore and Bush, if you recall. And, you know, we continued working the case. We were able to link the attack to people connected to al-Qaeda to some senior lieutenants of Osama bin Laden. And by then, you know, in the States, a lot of people, even the media, didn't want to hear about bin Laden doing an attack against the ship. Everybody was thinking about how many chads are hanging out on a ballot, if you remember. Right, right.

People were focusing on the election. So at the time by a new administration took over, the Bush administration, frankly, people in the administration did not want to hear about al-Qaeda. We were frankly told that the White House does not want to hear about bin Laden in being involved in the USS Cole. Half of the American people are not behind the president. Half of the American people don't think of him as a legitimate president. If we say al-Qaeda was behind the attack,

then he needs to do something about it and he does not have the political capital to go to war in Afghanistan. Later on, even after 9-11, when, you know, a lot of inquiries happened regarding the actions, the previous actions of al-Qaeda. The question was asked to Wolfowitz, Paul Wolfowitz at the time, why didn't the United States retaliated on the USS call? And he said by the time we took office, that was a stale case. And I totally disagree with that assessment. That wasn't stale case. We know it wasn't stale case. When 9-11 happened, we were in Yemen still working the USS call

and trying to bring justice to the sailors who gave the ultimate sacrifice in the port of Aden back in October. And unfortunately, the administration didn't want to do anything about it. And that encouraged Bin Laden to go ahead and conduct his big attack on September 11, 2001. So the USS Cole was kind of a crossroad for our understanding of terrorism. I would understanding how al-Qaeda was mutating at the time since the East Africa embassy bombing, how now al-Qaeda includes many people in the Arabian Peninsula, Saudis and Yemenis, and how they were planning to do other attacks around the world. The 9-11 Commission, for example, one of their findings concluded that if information

regarding some individuals who were later involved in the attacks of September 11, if these information were shared with the FBI team investigating the USS call, 9-11 could have possibly been stopped at its early stages. So the call is extremely important case to understand to study what led to it and study what happened after it. I read that you were 29 at the time. You were the only FBI agent in New York City who spoke Arabic, one of only eight in the country. That's alarming. And like you said, you were still in Yemen when the 9-11 attacks occurred and you apparently wanted to rush back to New York

but the FBI made you stay and that work you did in Yemen became a critical piece of the effort to identify the 9-11 hijackers. We were able to identify the hijackers that they are members of al-Qaeda in Yemen. And the reason I was asked to stay is because of a lot of the stuff

that, you know, I mentioned about the connections between what happened in Yemen and between what happened later on 9-11. And, you know, there was a bodyguard, basically the bodyguard of Osama bin Laden, we were able to catch him in Yemen, and I interrogated him over there. And not knowing, he identified at least seven or eight, I believe, of the hijackers as being kind of members. And that was, you know, everything that we needed at the time in order to convince the world that Osama bin Laden did 9-11 and, you know, get ready to retaliate against him.

men against the Taliban. So you were an interrogator and you quickly became one of the best interrogators in the FBI and probably the entire U.S. government. What made you so good at that job? Is it because you were really good at waterboarding and EITs or was there something else? Well, first of all, in the FBI, we don't have a job title of interrogators. So everybody is a case agent. And when I was in Yemen, I was a case agent for the USS Call, which was at the time a major case, which means, you know, a significant big case in the FBI. So, you know, my job as a case agent for the call was to run the investigation, but also on the same time, I find myself interviewing people or interrogating people and sometimes,

you know, acting diplomatically with the Yemeni government and the Yemeni security forces in order to, you know, find plans where we can work together and how we can work together in a way that sets five both. countries, laws, and regulations, and national interest. And I conducted dozens and dozens of interviews and interrogations. And, you know, one thing that I talked about, and I actually testified under oath in Congress and the Senate on, that the so-called EIT torture does not work, and it hurts American interests. None of the significant interrogations that I did, and some of them were mentioned in the U.S. government and in congressional hearings and Inspector General reports

as some of the best interrogations in the war in terror. None of them were done in a way that violated our values or morals or, you know, legal statutes. We did it within the rules, and we always find that that's what works. I stood up against EITs. I told my headquarters at the time in the FBI what was going on on some of the so-called black sites, and Director Mueller supported me, and we pulled out, and the FBI pulled out, and the FBI was not involved in any of the interrogations that included EITs or torture. And until today, you know, there is no evidence, and this is according to the CIA's own IG report, for example, and the Senate Select Committee of Intelligence Report, there's no evidence. The Tuan terrorist attack was stopped because we waterboarded someone. All the information

that has been claimed publicly to be the results of torture in EIT, I can tell you firsthand, we did not obtain it because of waterboarding or EITs. And I testified against that in Congress. So a lot of these people who say otherwise, I always tell them when they are ready to raise their right hand and testify under oath, and we can discuss it. Otherwise, their words mean nothing. This debate drove me nuts when I was in the White House. And you are the most credentialed person that I've ever heard speak on the issue. You literally sat across from the worst Al-Qaeda detainees we had and you interrogated them. And I read that you used techniques like knowledge and empathy. One time you actually gave a detainee a book about U.S. history that was written in Arabic so that

he could learn about the United States. Like, why did those approaches work and why do you think this debate stays as stupid as it is? And you have President Trump talking about bringing back waterboarding, for example. Well, you know, every case that they mentioned publicly and claim that waterboarding and torture gave us the information that we needed at the time is a false case and those people were not in the room. And I wrote my first book, The Black Banners, about many different occasions, how we get the information. And my book was heavily redacted by the CIA. So if you redacted, something, you're acknowledging it's a true because you don't redact lies. And basically, the way we get the information has nothing to do with waterboarding and has nothing to do with torture. I'll

give you an example. You know, they talk about the dirty bomb in the Washington, D.C. area, the Pidiya case. And this is mentioned in the Office of the Legal Council memos. In the Office of the Legal Council memo, Stephen Bradbury mentions that, you know, he writes that you told us, waterboarding, you know, forced Abu Zubeda, Akada operatives. Or he was working with al-Qaeda. He was in Akita operatives. Because of waterboarding, he provided information that helped us disrupt a plot or a dirty bomb attack on the Washington, D.C. area back in March of 2003.

Interestingly enough, that information was way before March 2003. The information was given in April of 2002. And the arrest of Piedia, the so-called Dury Bomber, did not happen until March of 2002. That's month and month before waterboarding. So when they went to Bradbury and say, hey, why did you say 2003 here? It's 2002 before waterboarding. So how can you claim this case is what made you believe that we need to institute waterboarding in the Office of the Legal Counsel and one of your Office of the Legal Counsel memos?

And he said, look, my job is not to check facts. my job is to give legal opinions. Well, it's interesting that they had a very significant what they called then typo, that they said 2003, not 2002, because in March of 2003, it makes it after waterboarding that didn't start until August 1st of 2002.

In March of 2002, that makes it a few months before they even start the ITs on waterboarding. So this is just an example, you know, in front of all of us in plain sights about how large, were manufacturers. When are you interrogating

some people or, you know, individuals? You have to know about them. You know, these individuals or that terrorist is not sitting in front of you just because you know, you stopped him on the street and he brought him in. You know something about him. You know something about

what he was doing. You know where he fits in a case. You know the reason, the reason why you arrested him and put cuffs on him in the first place. So you have to start building that case. You have to start using a lot of, you know, kind of, for the lack of better term, chest games or poker mental game with that individual.

Faze them with circumstantial evidence. Try to fool them that you know something more than they think that you know. You know, for example, with Bin Laden's personal bodyguard, Abu Jandall, the reason he identified seven of the hijackers is because I fooled him that some of the pictures that I'm showing him are people who either like me undercover and they are in al-Qaeda or in jail and they are talking or people who are sources of mine and they are telling me all about him. So he didn't want to get caught of a lie and he identified seven of the hijackers and after he identified seven of the hijackers, we told him, look, bin Laden did 9-11. He said, no, he didn't. How do you know bin Laden did

9-11? I told him, you just told me that bin Laden did 9-11. He was so angry and upset. He thought that I was putting words in his mouth. And then I showed him the seven photos that he he identified and I said, what do you think? Those are the hijackers. Those are not my sources nor people that I know. You just told me that the hijackers, seven of them, are Qaeda members. And he was totally not only shocked, he just felt that he admitted to be involved in 9-11. He admitted that he trained some people who were involved directly in killing at the time, what we thought, 50,000 Americans. He was totally shocked. And then he was. He was willing to cooperate.

He was willing to do anything. And that's how you do interrogations. That's an example that we can talk about. A lot of other stories, unfortunately, they still have it as classified, and we cannot talk about it. But it's not waterboarding. It's not yelling. It's not screaming. It's not beating people up.

You know, for somebody who's willing to blow themselves up for what they believe, you know, putting water on them is not going to help. Look at KSM. He was waterboarded 183 times. and he didn't tell us where bin Laden was, even though he is the one who assigned the courier, the Kuwaiti, to be looking after bin Laden. It does not work. Abu Zubeda was water-boarded 83 times,

and he didn't provide one piece of information that we didn't get from him before. He told them a lot of lies after that, like he admitted, for example, to be the number of three in Al-Qaeda, even though he was in a member of Al-Qaeda. But that's a different story. You know, interrogations, the way I look at it,

is, you know, we need to know the truth. We don't want people to tell us what we want to hear. We want people to tell us the truth. It's not about compliance. It's about cooperation. I wish more people would listen to the facts you're outlining and we could move away from discussing these policies because they continue to do us harm. I mean, look, you know what? Legally, they cannot do anything about it. Legally now, it's against the law. And the president can talk as much as you want. He needs to go back to Congress to change the law. Granted, with this Congress, everything is false. But this is where we are today.

Yeah. So people now heard about your extensive experience, literally sitting in the room with these terrorists. In May of 2017, you published a book called Anatomy of Terror from the death of bin Laden to the rise of the Islamic State. And it's a unique book because you're trying to get inside the minds of terrorists like bin Laden to understand them. You actually talk about trying to build empathy. How did you attempt to do that? And what did you learn in the process of writing that book that you did it? know after so many years of chasing these creeps around the planet?

Well, you learn new things every day. And when you're analyzing events and reading evidence, some stuff that probably you didn't pay attention to before, some stuff that you paid attention to, but you didn't put it in the context of other things. You always learn stuff. And that's what I like about the anatomy of terror, because for me, it was a journey. It's a journey in kind of like reviewing. everything that I know about this, but also on the same time going in the depth of the

personality and the character of people who want to make us harm, they want to kill us. People like bin Laden, people like his deputy, Amun Zawahiri, people like the person who became the godfather of ISIS, you know, Abu al-Mas al-Zerkawi, who was bin Laden's representative in a way in Iraq war and how it contributed to the disaster that we have today in the Middle East, you know, the rise of ISIS. A lot of these things, you know, happens around us. And we look at the news and we look at the event that took place, but we don't look at the people who are behind that event. So I wanted to see the world through their eyes. And when I talk about empathy, I don't talk about, you know, I personally differentiate between empathy and sympathy.

Right. You know, I think every time there is an investigation about something, let's take the 9-11 Commission, for example. The 9-11 Commission, when they looked into the events that led to that disastrous day, they came with a conclusion that, you know, it was a failure of imagination. They said that every time they spoke with someone in Washington, in the intelligence community, you know, almost everyone, every analyst said that we could not imagine planes flying into a building. If you look at the war in Iraq, Wolfowitz, when he testified in front of Congress, basically at the time representing the Bush administrations of view on the war in Iraq, he said, we cannot imagine it's going to take more troops to secure post-Saddam Iraq than it will take to take him down.

Well, you know, $2 trillion, $5,000 coalition losses on hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths and the whole Middle East to change. And we still cannot secure Iraq post-Saddam. So it's always a failure of imagination. Every time something happened, we could not imagine. We did not imagine. We did not think of that. And, you know, frankly, our imagination is very limited, Tommy. It's limited by our own experiences.

It's limited by our own knowledge. It's limited sometimes by our own ignorance. It's limited by our own views of the world, our own kind of like way of looking at things. And I think it's better. I think we need to couple imagination with empathy. And empathy is just understanding your enemy on a personal level. You know, Sun Tzu said if you know your enemy and know yourself, you will win 100 times in 100 battles. And unfortunately, 17 years after 9-11, we still, until today, do not know the enemy in a way that San Su want us to know the enemy.

You know, Al-Qaeda and the terrorist, you know, the Salafi-jahdi terrorism, if you want to call it, evolved over the years. Bin Laden had only about 400 members on the eve of 9-11. 19 of them were killed on that day. And today, Al-Qaeda, or the ideology of bin Laden, let's call it bin Ladenism, have thousands and thousands of people all around the world. You know, ISIS, we forget that ISIS was Al-Qaeda in Iraq. So this is where we are today. And that's the reason I decided to write the book. I decided to write it in order to bring that sense of empathy in understanding the enemy.

And when I say empathy, I mean it in a clinical sense, not in a colloquial sense. And I believe that we need to understand how the threat evolved. We need to understand the historical, the cultural, the economic, the political, incubating factors that fed into the threat that we have today. And we deal with, you know, frankly, we dealt with every day for more than 17 years since way before 9-11, you know. We talked about the call. We talked about the East Africa embassy bombing. And we can go years and years, you know, even before that. Yeah. I mean, it's a nuanced book. It's such a reasonable approach, right? Instead of just declaring these guys evil and saying we're going to wipe them off the planet, you want to understand their motives. That's smart. That's reasonable. But our political conversation when it comes to terrorism is almost never smart or reasonable. Do you think we can absorb these lessons and what you learn politically and get beyond? this approach to terrorism that is almost 100% emphasizes killing? Well, you know, it's a very good question.

And I think the problem is we don't have that understanding. And every time the American people hear about the threat, they hear about it either through media coverage that's very hyped. You know, the other day, for example, we had an idiot here in New York who blow himself up, you know. He didn't hurt anyone. He only basically hurt himself. He burned his, you know, his private.

But in the process, we had wall-to-world coverage, free advertisements to the terrorist groups, to ISIS. And I think we have to be very careful with that. And that's one of the reasons that I wrote the book, because I want the American people to understand it beyond policy. Let's not talk about policies. Let's not talk about rhetoric. let's talk about these guys and what are they made off. They are very dangerous and they want to kill Americans and they want it to disrupt world security.

And let's understand them on that level. And only when we understand them on that level, we can fight them and we can beat them. And unfortunately, nothing like this has been done. Nothing just about seeing the world through their eyes and understanding the threat as the threat really exists today, that hasn't been done. And that's one of the reasons that I wanted to do the book.

Unfortunately, as you correctly mentioned, you know, there is demagoguery in dealing with the issue of terrorism. But there's also demagoguery in dealing with immigration. There's demagoguery in dealing with a lot of other stuff today, especially in today's America. And I think we have to be very careful with this because the more we talk about, clash of civilization, the more that we are basically playing into the enemy's handbook. I think it's not about a clash of civilization. What we see today, for example, is intra-civilization or clash. We see Shia fighting Sunnis, Kurds, fighting Turks, Arab fighting Persians, everybody fighting everyone in the Middle East. So this is far away from being a clash of civilization.

And most of the people who are fighting ISIS in Musul or in Syria or in Nino or any of the Iraqi provinces, most of them are Muslims. The Kurds are Muslims. We forget to mention that. The Iraqi army are Muslims. So we have a problem within Islam to kind of capture the soul of Islam. And I think to just come and say, well, you know, all the Muslims are terrorists and everybody is the same. And I want to do a Muslim ban. I don't want to allow people to come here. I think that will definitely play into the enemy's handbook and plays into the enemy's hand. And we have to be very, very careful with this rhetoric.

Because towards the end, what the terrorists used to recruit is rhetoric. And we have to be very careful with that. I was still in the White House when the Arab Spring began. And there were definitely people who were deeply concerned about the instability that could come of it. But there was also a hopeful tenor to a lot of the protests we saw, especially places like Syria, where we thought, you know, people might finally get rid of a dictator, live out their political aspirations.

The results has been very different. I mean, how much, when you look at the Arab Spring, how much do you feel like that instability has exacerbated the threat? And do you think the U.S. should have done something different along the way to nudge things in a better direction and prevent the security vacuum we see in places like Syria and parts of Libya and Yemen? Look, you know, the Arab Spring had significant impact on the rise of extremism in the Middle East. I think and bin Laden realized that it's going to be a great opportunity for him and for Al-Qaeda. Actually, just before the Navy SEAL's bullets took him down, he instructed his commanders to be sure that nobody will be able to fill the vacuum that's happening in many other countries. Because, you know, Tommy, if you look at the Middle East, most of these countries, They have no real sense of nationalism.

I mean, what's Libya without Gaddafi? Right. It's Iraq without Saddam, right? So the moment you take the head of the state, those people, those dictators did not build institutions, right? Did not build civil society, did not build democratic systems and an independent judiciary. So the moment you take the head of the state out, the state collapsed. go down to the common dominating factor. And that can be Shia, Sunni, like we see in Iraq, or Kurds and Arab like we see in Iraq, or tribes from the east or tribes from the West, as we see in Libya, and different sects as we see in Syria and so forth. So Osama bin Laden realizes this is a great opportunity for him not to allow anybody to fill that vacuum that's going to exist, especially after what he sees, you know, or what he saw unfolding in Libya and in Yemen and other places.

So one of the instructions that he gave them that, you know, everything I told you before, I'll only focus on the United States, only focus on the West, forget about it. This is an opportunity. He told his commanders that we did not see or we did not experience since the time of Saladin, since the Crusades, and we have to take advantage of it. And he ordered Rakhida to focus locally, to work within the countries where they are, take advantage of the chaos that exists, and guarantee that nobody else can. and bring stability. And in one of his orders, he said, that means what I'm telling you, means a lot of Muslims need to be killed. And then he continued saying, we need to kill them to save them. We need to kill them to save them. And frankly, his strategy has been very successful. And we see the success in Yemen. We see the success in Iraq. We see the success in Syria. We saw the success in many different countries around the world. And this is one of the issues that we have to figure out how to deal with because al-Qaeda really, you know, you take significantly after the Arab Spring.

And al-Qaeda has been able to mutate throughout the years. I mean, even after the Soviet jihad in Afghanistan, when bin Laden left, they thought, okay, it's the end of bin Laden. Then he went to Sudan. He established a new structure. And after the Sudanese kicked him out, we said, okay, now this is the end of bin Laden. And then he went to Afghanistan,

and he was able to change al-Qaeda from being a network to being an organization with a very strong command and control structure. and he built an alliance with the Taliban. After 9-11, we swiftly defeated him, and he switched al-Qaeda from being the chief operator to being chief motivator. So Al-Qaeda became less a terrorist organization and more a terrorist message, and they accepted other affiliates to join al-Qaeda to include the affiliate in Iraq that later became ISIS and the affiliate in Yemen and the affiliate in the Maghrib,

which, you know, a remnant of the Algerian Civil War, and so forth. So now, after the Arab Spring, bin Laden again mutated al-Qaeda to become a network of local, you know, guerrilla and insurgency groups in different countries that's establishing relationships and alliances with local factions in order to guarantee that nobody can fill that vacuum that exist in these places. And that's part of bin Laden's strategy. The strategy, al-Qaeda strategy, is called management of state. savagery. And the management of savagery is the three faces. Phase number one, you do a lot of terrorist attacks in order to destabilize the government. Phase number two, when the government collapse, you manage what exists and prevent anyone from filling that vacuum and continue to build relationships and build your own society within that bigger society. And phase number three,

you establish a state. And the only difference between al-Qaeda and ISIS, ISIS believed that they went straight to phase number three after they controlled land in Iraq and Syria, Al-Qaeda continued to stay in phase two. That is the only ideological differences between al-Qaeda and ISIS, frankly. So yeah, the Arab Spring has a lot to do with that. And I believe the United States, we did not put into account how al-Qaeda and how extremism and how terrorism will benefit from that. Also, in the same time, we did not take into account that regional countries has their own interest and they're going to mess this. Arab Spring up. As we've seen in Egypt, for example, regional countries orchestrated a coup against

Morsi. I mean, he wasn't, you know, the smartest guy in the world. However, he was an elected, democratically elected president, the first one in the history of Egypt, I think. And we've seen the same thing happened in Yemen when also regional countries were involved in fighting each other, who's going to have more control in Yemen after the Arab Spring. We've seen that in Libya also. So we did not take into account how regional countries, the Saudis, the Emirates, even the Qataris, the Iranians, will look into the Arab Spring and we'll see how they can benefit regionally from, you know, orchestrating groups or trying to push a political situation where they benefit from what's happening. When you look at the changing strength of ISIS, I mean, the Trump administration, the Iraqi security forces have had considerable. success lately and taking back territory from ISIS, how important do you think that territorial success is and how much does regaining that territory matter if, you know, Syria is still largely ungoverned

and their ideology can still sort of reach wherever they want it to reach? Yeah, I think it's essential to defeat them on the ground and it's essential to deprive ISIS from this so-called caliphate and a state. And as long as they have areas that they control and they can operate from, I believe the threat will be, even bigger than it is. However, just destroying the physical caliphate does not mean that we destroyed the factors that feed into the threat that groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda poses. Back in 2005, we put a report in the Saffan Center and our own think tank. And we basically said that, look, you know, with all its provado, ISIS will go back to be an underground terrorist organization. It's going to go a full circle. They started underground terrorist organization. They

went to be an insurgency group. Then they became a proto state. And now, you know, they will go back to be an underground terrorist organization. And that's exactly what's happening. So defeating them in the streets of Mosul or in Derezure or on a Raka, this is only half of the battle. The more difficult half of the battle is to defeat them in the places that they occupy in the, in the minds of the disenfranchised and of those who believe in the rhetoric of ISIS and Al Qaeda. And this is a big battle. And this is where rhetoric, what we say publicly, what we do, has a lot to do in preventing more and more people in joining these individuals.

So we're not trying to basically convince people who are already members of Al Qaeda on ISIS or ISIS that they are on the wrong path. This is a very difficult situation. And every study tells you that people who are inside terrorist organization, they're not going to listen to people from the outside. They become very tribal. They are busy with operations. But I think our goal now is trying to prevent more people to look into these groups

and find reasons to join them. You know, we have to be very careful. These groups won't serve as a magnet to thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people around the Middle East. Look at the humanitarian disaster in Syria. Look at the millions of Syrian children that's growing up in refugee camps with no education whatsoever. Syria has more than 90% before the war literacy rate. And now basically this has been totally eliminated.

Look at what's happening in Yemen. Look at the famine that exists in Yemen. Colora is back in Yemen. Millions of children are suffering every day because of the Saudi coalition and the war in Yemen in general. So we have a new generation in the Middle East that now have no hope. And the only people who will benefit of something like this, terrorist groups, groups like Al-Qaeda, groups like ISIS, or new groups that's going to come out from ISIS and Al-Qaeda and other organizations later on. They want to take advantage of this.

And they're going to find an outlet for a lot of these children to take revenge of what's happening to them today. So we have to be very careful. I'm fighting terrorism militarily and intelligence means is extremely important. But also we have to fight it diplomatically. We have to fight it to fight it to humanitarian. We have to fight it, you know, in the eyes and minds and the consciousness of these children that's growing up with no hope whatsoever. Because if we don't do that, then we're going to pay later. So I think that's a great segue to the last question I have for you, which is essentially what can a citizen do?

I'll never forget, you know, I had just left the White House when the Boston bombings occurred. And I no longer had access to any information. I wasn't in the situation room that night trying to manage it. I mean, I was a measly little press guy, but at least I felt like I could be a part of working on the problem in some small way. So what can someone like me listening today, a private citizen, do to sort of push back and combat terrorism? I'm not looking for like signups to go fight with the Pejamerica Forches, but like, is there a middle ground that it is. is, you know, between that and sitting around waiting for an administration that probably a lot of people listening don't trust to deal with the problem?

Well, actually, it's as simple as standing up against bigotry and hate. You know, believing in American values. Our values are the best thing that ever happened to us. You mentioned earlier, Tommy, that I gave Akkad a member, basically a high-ranking individual of Akai, a history book about America, you know, written in Arabic. And he was totally shocked to see America, you know, that George Washington was a rebel, for example. He never even knew about something like this. Our values, I always find them to basically benefit us on every level. I look at, why did I say

stand against hate and stand against bigotry? Look at the threat that we have in the United States versus a threat that they have in Europe. A country like Belgium, for example, they have 500,000 Muslims in Belgium. It's a nation of about 11 million. From the 500,000 Muslims, there is more than 10% who joined ISIS in Iraq and Syria, more than 528, I think, or 550 people. In the United States, we have about 4,5 million Muslims, and we have only 150 that had joined ISIS in Iraq and Syria. And there's a big reason for that. There's a big reason that in the United States, we have 150 people who actually made it

to Iraq and Syria, and in Europe, they have more than 5,000 people who went to Iraq and Syria to join groups like ISIS. And the reason is the American dream. American values. People here are assimilated in the American system. They feel that they are part of this a great nation. They fight for this great nation. They gave their life to this great nation. And when we start talking about hate and when we start talking about Islamophobia and when we start discriminating against others and when we start making them feel less Americans or second-class citizens or they are living under suspicion, then Al-Qaeda and ISIS will be able to recruit them as

we've seen happening in Europe. So we have a great nation. We have an amazing system. We have a great constitution and our nationalism is not based on the bloodline. Our nationalism is based on a basic concept of the American dream and many people feel part of that American dream and every statistics and every polling shows that Muslim Americans like all kind of other Americans, they feel of that system and they are very integrated and assimilated into that system. And if we make it feel or to make communities feel targeted, then groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda will be able to recruit individuals here to act on their behalf. That's why standing against hate, standing against bigotry, being together as Americans against all forms of discrimination, I think that is probably

the first step to build a resilient society where everybody is facing, you know, the same dangers, but everybody together is basically battling these kind of diseases that we see today in our society. Yeah, that's a great answer. Alie Sufant, thank you for joining the show today and all the work you did in the FBI and for helping us understand these people that we fear so much for your books. We really appreciate it. And thanks for doing the show. Thanks, Tommy.