The Spy Who - The Spy Who Lived Inside Al-Qaeda | Morten Storm on his extraordinary life, being 'one of the worst spies' and the true cost of espionage | 4

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

The ex spy at the heart of our story joins host Charlie Higson to unpack his days in a biker gang, his immersion in radical Islam, his rise within al-Qaeda’s ranks, and the dramatic fallout that followed. This high-stakes espionage led to the death of his friend - one of al-Qaeda’s top commanders. In a cruel twist of fate, Morten was subsequently betrayed by the spy agencies he risked everything for, and was left to grapple with PTSD and death threats. Here, he reflects on the cost of his choices and the life he’s rebuilt in the aftermath. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wonderry plus subscribers can binge full seasons of the Spy Who early and add free on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. From Wondery, I'm Charlie Hickson, spy novelist, actor, comedian, and this is The Spy Who. Thank you for joining us for our final episode of The Spy Who lived inside Al-Qaeda. where I'll be sitting down with Morton Storm himself. It's hard to sum up Morton Storm's journey from Danish boxer, boozer and dropout

to one of Al-Qaeda's most trusted soldiers. This, despite being a pale, ginger-haired, six-foot-one man speaking accented Arabic. To the people of Yemen, where he was based, he must have been quite the sight. Then, suffering a crisis of faith, he is disgusted by plans to. kill civilians. It's here that three spy agencies find him. What followed was a cat and mouse game

of friendship, loyalty and betrayal. The spy agencies cast him out, only to entice him back again with suitcases laden with cash. His final mission fell apart, but not before he suspected he was to be collateral damage in the hunt for another al-Qaeda general. To hear how his story unfolded, make sure you've listened to episodes one to three of this season. In this episode, I'm going to sit down with Morton to discuss his early days in Denmark the moment he walked into that library and found Islam and that explosive ending to his spying career.

I always get a little nervous before doing these interviews, mainly because I don't want to mess it all up and they storm out halfway through, saying how day you ask me that. And in Morton's case, I'm sitting down to a man who was a Muslim fundamentalist who was desperate to go on jihad. He's a big guy. He's much bigger than me. So I hope that Morton and I are going to get on okay. We should also say that these are Morton's views. They're sometimes strong views and there may be a little swearing. So welcome, Morton. Thank you so much for joining me.

on the spy who? And how are you doing today? Well, I'm doing okay, I think. I keep fighting. Excellent, excellent. Now, we know a lot about your story. Perhaps not absolutely everything. I'm sure you still have some secrets. But, I mean, when you look back at the spying aspect of your life, how do you reflect on all that? For me, it's somehow surreal. And I have sometimes to pinch myself in the arm to say, More than this is actually you. Well, it was a hard battle.

It was worth it. I'm not sure. But I did it. And I'm here now. And I'm so honored to talk to you. Likewise, I mean, there's so much to talk about. You've had such an extraordinary life. The central thing you had to do in order to become an effective spy

was to get people to trust you. So how did you manage that? I mean, not just as a spy, but also from the perspective of being an outsider to radical Islam. Yeah. It was a little bit different from maybe other spies. It was easier for me to continue to live as Murat Storm, like the fundamentalistic Muslim, than it was to be a spy who just came in to infiltrate the Islamic terrorist organizations. So for me, it was easier to find to continue.

to live as Abu Usama, Murat Storm, as it was to live as Morton Storm, the spy who infiltrated Al-Qaeda. When you started, you weren't thinking about having to, having any level of pretense. It was genuine. Yeah. I actually didn't, I don't think I understood the scale of what I was entering. So do you think you had natural attributes and aspects of your person? personality that made you a good spy? Honestly, maybe I was one of the worst spies in the world in history.

And why do I say this? It's because you're not supposed to reveal yourself. You're not supposed to talk about who you are. But I'm not a hypocrite, and I don't want to live like a hypocrite. And that was somehow for me to reveal who I was to these people a way to forgive myself. for who I was. Okay. We'll come back to that later, I think.

Let's go back to your school days in Denmark, in the late 70s and early 80s. What was your childhood like? So my childhood was filled with violence. It was a lot of neglectance, betrayal. I had a really evil dead act who was very violent. And whatever I did, I would always face violence in my house. And this language or this communication between, me and him, I turned it into other people in my life.

So I became a very violent person myself in my very youth. I became a very unpredictable, a very dangerous person. So I have later on understood that he also lived a very tough young life, and he also have been exposed to violence. So I forgave him, and I think that's the only way forward. And you joined your first gang when you were only 13, and that was the raiders. And they would commit armed robbery,

you'd fight with skinheads, and the gang was mostly local Turks, Palestinians and Iranian Muslims. What attracted you to that group? So we were not really a gang, but we were nicknamed the raiders by the police and authorities, but we were more like immigrants, and they took me in to their family, like their son.

and while I was lacking this attention to be belonged somewhere, these people gave it to me. So you were attracted to them for their, it sounds like, for their outsider status. But also, did you find amongst that group sort of strong family bonds that you had missed out on? Yeah, absolutely. Some of the best family bonds I have ever experienced in my life. And throughout my adventure as a Muslim and non-Muslims is absolutely the Muslims have some of the best family values that I have ever experienced and I still communicate with some old friends and I love them. And I tell them that you guys definitely give me what I never had before.

Now, back at the time, you say the Raiders weren't officially a gang, that was just what you were named by the police. But after that, you joined the Bandidos. Were they an actual gang? So after the so-called Raiders, I joined the Banditos, B&MC, one of the biggest motorcycle clubs in the world. Normally, that's something that I don't talk about because we have an unwritten rule that we don't talk about what we have done there. Did you ride a motorbike? Can you tell us that? I didn't, but I did afterwards. But I was in a war. I was in a war for two years against the Hells Angels. We won't go into that. You'd been in prison and you'd said that you were,

feeling lost, and when you're 21 years old, you go to the library to take shelter, and you find a book about the Prophet Muhammad. What drew you to that, and what did you find in Islam that seemed to fairly instantly resonate with you? I think I was looking for some kind of structure in my life, and a foundation, something that I could relate it to. In Islam, you don't turn the other cheek, you hit back. There is permission to fight. And that appealed to me, and also that Prophet Muhammad was married.

He had a life. It's not like Jesus who was in celibate. So for me, Islam was more a realistic way of life and also an appeal, that Prophet Muhammad was a human being who fought jihad, who also was forgiven and also was married. There was a lot of aspects in this book that made me convince that Islam was the truth. At that time. Had you had any sort of Christian religious beliefs before that, or had you been largely atheist, do you think?

Most of the Danish people, including myself at that time, was just Protestant by culture and not by practice or belief. We always thought that Christianity was some kind of, it was just like a story. But today, I have to tell you, after leaving Islam and after leaving Christianity and all this, I came back to Christianity and I'm now a Christian. Oh, okay.

That's interesting. So in order to embrace Allah, you had to sort of reject drink, drugs, whatever that was part of your bandito's lifestyle and take on the teachings of Islam, and you became Murad Storm. I mean, how important was that identity change? Did you feel that you'd left Morton behind completely? I did.

for a little while I felt this was my mission Allah has chosen me to to leave Denmark to join up

with the Muslims in the UK which I did I met a Danish Muslim who took me to the UK and from there

I was praying five times a day I ask Allah for forgiveness and I was asking Allah for guidance that's what I followed for the last

after that 10 years and there And I will say I have met in those 10 years. I've met some of the nicest people you can never imagine and also some of the worst that you can ever imagine. When you embrace that new lifestyle, what was your family situation at the time?

Yeah. I was engaged to a Christian Palestinian woman, Samar. She left me because of this. I think my family was happy about it because they knew that I'd change for the better. They knew I wouldn't drink. They knew I wouldn't take drugs. But then again, they didn't know that I became more fundamentalistic

and I became more radicalized and more hateful. And I didn't even know this myself until I stepped out of it. After you started in Yemen and after you learned the Arabic and after you learned the Quran and so on, you became even more dangerous than when you used to be as a banditist. You talk about it there as if it was like a sort of gradual process that you only realized, okay, I've become much more radicalized. Was there a particular tipping point or was it that gradual process?

You don't realize it when you are living in this moment because it becomes your life. It's a lifestyle. If you do find something that is not according to what you believe in, do you have the balls to step out of it and then question all of it? That's what I did. And that's why my faith felt apart like a carthouse. Your first wife had left you.

Did you then hook up with a Muslim woman? Yes. I married again in Morocco. And I have three kids from the Moroccan woman. And then after her, I have also been married to a Yemeni. You mentioned being in Yemen, which was Al-Qaeda's favorite training ground. Can you remember landing at the airport in

Sanar? What did that feel like? Yeah. Denmark to London to Yemen. I mean, that's quite a culture shift. It was indeed, yeah. So, in 1997, I was just a new Muslim.

So, a guy in the region park, Mosque, Mahmoud al-Drib, who was from Saudi Arabia, he said, Murat. He said, yeah. I'll give you a ticket to Yemen, go and study. And I said, all right, I go. And I don't have any hesitations.

And two weeks later, I ended up in Sana'a. When I had to go through the airport in the Saddam, I honestly thought with my hands or my heart that Sana'a and Yemen was in Oman. So you thought you were going to Oman, which is much safer than Yemen. I thought it was going to Oman. So when I landed in Sana'a, I saw the guys with their big knives in the belts. It's called Jambia. I saw them with Kalasnikov over the shoulders.

I saw them holding hands. And it was like I traveled into a time machine and we went back in time in a museum. I couldn't believe where I landed one of the most intensified places to study the Quran and Arabic. and also Islamic science. I didn't know anything about this, and I have not met any people in the world who's been more generous to me than the Yemenis. Tis the season to save money.

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You phoned P.E.T., Danish intelligence, who had paid you a visit previously. And, well, I guess you made a decision, okay, I'm actually going to fight on the other side now. As a spy, did you believe you could make a significant difference? Yeah. I mean, that's a huge decision. Yeah, it's huge. I understood who I was connected to and what kind of. of network I had, and also what kind of people I can have connection to.

But at the same time, I also realized I don't want my children to live in a world where there's a lot of control by Muslim terrorists and so on. That was my thought, actually. There was my maybe naive thought. I knew the consequences. I knew the people who was going to infiltrate. I knew my abilities to reach the top of. of Al-Gaida, the top of the enemies who wanted to fight democracy.

And it wasn't just P.E.T. who were interested in you. Other intelligence services, I mean, the British and the CIA get very interested in you. And there was almost a sort of tug-of-war for your information. Can you tell us about the similarities, the differences between those different agencies? Yes. So in Denmark, we say the British MRI-5, MI6, is our, cousins and then we say CIA is our big brother so we used to call

hey Morton yeah our cousins want to speak to you I knew it was either MRI 5 or MI6 and if you say Morton a big brother I want to talk to you I knew it was the CIA so the CIA sent us to Iceland for team building

the MI5 paid by the queen of the United Kingdom at the time thank you so much They sent us to the Arctic Circle up in north of Sweden. So there was always that rivalry between the British and the Americans. But we, the Danish people always love the British because they were so formal. They were always, you could always trust the Brits.

The Brits never really wanted to fuck you over. They always wanted to do you the best so they can continue to work with you and get the best results. And they were more details, like to gather information. I went to Edinburgh in Scotland I went for a counter and anti-Sovarian training program with AMI 5, AMI 6

the British intelligence and they said modern we're not like the Americans we cannot give you money and all this but we can give you a future but you have to know that one day the Americans going to fuck you

and they were right they were right about this whereas the Americans want fast results they were more more superficial, they were more finance and, you know, this is what we're going to give you and so on and so on. The Americans were just money is black and white. And what about the Danish? What were they hoping? So the Danish said, more than listen, it's more fun with the Americans. So, I mean, do you regret choosing the Americans? In a way, yes, because I always felt

secured with the British. I always I have the best protection. My kids had the best protection from the UK. They always been very, very serious. There was not as much money. It was not as funny as the Americans, but they were so dedicated

and so honest to the course than the Americans. That's why I personally I do respect the MI6 and MI5 so much and much more than the CIA. And what sort of training did the CIA give you? Did you get a sort of training montage

rush course? This is the whole point. So the CIA was just cool cash. That's the way to bribe you. But let me tell you about the MI6. I went with the SIS. I mean, the British have really invested a lot of energy and a lot of time in me and the Danish government. And I think they don't get the served credit as the Americans do. earlier on we were talking about your character and how you got people to trust you

there must always in a situation like that be some level of suspicion do we believe morton is he double-crossing them might he be double-crossing us did you get any sense of that no I wouldn't do I have never double-crossed and I've never lied to any one of them if I have done just to say that I have life one time don't you think that the media would have known about it

right now, and they will use that against me. I have always been honest. I always dedicated my work. I put my life at risk. I sacrificed my freedom to fight terrorism. You did double cross Al-Qaeda. You turned against them. Yes, yes, yes, of course.

Crossing the Al-Qaeda and this was natural for me because I was not a Muslim and it's the fight to protect people. And Al-Qaeda is not that. So for me, Al-Gaide, a good terrorist, is a dead terrorist or is someone in prison. I didn't have any bad feelings about that, to be honest. And the CIA trusted you from the start? I don't know if they trusted me for the start, but I never had a reason to lie to them. And I never lied.

So they always checked me. I knew this. I mean, they would check my phones. They would check my emails. They would check my house, my car, whatever. But me and the British, one time I came home, I saw my Jaguar. I had a Jaguar. It was open the panels in front of the panels.

And I told the British intelligence and I said, I said, listen, guys, I know you put microphones in my car and all this. But, you know, I'm with you guys. I'm not here to spy against you or be against anyone. I'm here to fight with you against our common enemies. Okay, Carrie. Quick, quick, quick, quick. List three gifts you'd never give a cowboy.

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Before Turning Spire, you had met and befriended the jihadi preacher Anwar al-Awalaki. To the CIA in MI6, he was the future of Al-Qaeda, and he called for some brutal terrorist attacks across the world. When Osama bin Laden was killed, to many, he was considered the next in line to lead the group. But when you met him, what did you make of him? So, Enwald, I look here, when I met him, he was very honest, straightforward. I think he sounds really weird now to say this, but I could probably trust him more than I could trust the CIA because he would have put his life to protect me, whereas the CIA wouldn't have done the same.

So in this way, he was, and him and his affiliation. were more genuine to the course. They were more genuine to me and genuine to their belief. At the same time, the reason why they were like this to me was because they used to think that I was a Muslim. If they knew that I was a non-Muslim, the situation would have been different and I would have been executed in the most brutal ways.

You have seen beheadings from ISIS in Iraq, Iraq, how they crucified people and cut their throats and so on and be hit them. That would have been in my way. But they didn't know, and I was playing my game. They were playing their game, obviously, thinking that I was on their team. But Amor himself was a very outgoing person. He was very educated, very well-spoken. he reached people to the hearts who were like-minded.

But at the same time, he is organizing terrorist attacks. I mean, could you see the threat that he posed? Yeah, I absolutely see that. But a terrorist attack in our eyes, in your eyes, in our eyes, is not the same as the way that he looked at it. So for him, it was very justified to kill non-Muslims, if they don't believe and submit to what he believe in. I was actually sad because in a way I tried to convince him

that I didn't want to be a part of attacking civilians. He confirmed that Al-Qaeda was targeting civilians. And for me, I'd rather see Enra in prison and then change maybe later on than so. who got killed. The CIA promised you $5 million to find him again. I mean, how conflicted were you? This guy was once your friend,

and that's a lot of money as well. To be honest, if I died, that money will be worthless. The money, of course, is good because the money I had before that, the $250,000 that people forget to tell about and the media is that I spent half of that money to create a cover called Storm Buscraft and Storm Outdoors. I went to

instruct the courses in the Arctic Circle even with Ray Mears. I know the British people know Ramirez in the Bushcraft. I went with him and I went to his school in the UK, studied for survival and so on.

And then we spent two weeks in the Arctic Circle together. People don't understand how much I spent out of my own energy and money to continue this war. And I was not promised at that time $5 million. It was only after when the Americans said, we can't find him. The CIA basically denied that your input had led to them finding where he was and reneged on the deal and denied you the $5 million. What state were you in at this point?

Well, to be honest, in the beginning, I believed them. I said, you know what, that's fine. And I have no issues with this until I read the Sunday Telegraph, explaining how CIA finally tracked down and were a lot of them. And that was my mission. And there was just after he got killed. So when I read that message or that article, I contacted the Danish government

and said, guys, can you please read this one? Because it looks like wine. They read it. They said, yeah. That's you, man. The CIA met me in the Helsinur in Copenhagen and told me that I played the highest role

in tracking down, in killing Anwar Al-Av. You played the highest role. But yet, they couldn't even say thank you to me for what Well, it's a dark and dirty world, isn't it? It is very ungrateful and, you know, it's even getting darker than this because I continued after this.

I'm not going to stop here. I'm going to stop at the top. And then in the end, the CIA, there was an attempt or there was a plan, a plot to assassinate me on my last mission. And I got, you know, I was warned by one of their own agents from the CIA in China that they were going to assassinate me because they didn't want this news to get out. It's just really dirty, really ungrateful,

and I'm so disappointed about this, to be honest. I never imagined the people I used to risk my life for, my own colleagues, would turn the back to me like this. How did you feel when you heard that Anwar had been killed? Well, because I knew him before and after as a Muslim, I was saying, I knew who's going to get killed. I knew. And I also knew that he plotted to kill a lot of innocent people.

But in a way, I hoped it was not me. I was hoping that it was somebody else. Until I read that article in the Sunday Telegraph was happy that he was away, but I was also because a lot of innocent people will survive. But at the same time, I was also sad because I knew his son, I knew his family, I knew him. So I was somehow hoping that it was not me. But it was, yeah, it's something that I have to live with.

So, Morton, let's talk about the third act of this story. How easy was it switching from Murad back to Morton? Oh, p. So difficult, man. I'm still trying to find myself. I'm still trying to find the purpose of life and the purpose of their belonging. Probably, I mean, a huge identity crisis.

It's not easy. It's not easy. It's been very, very difficult. I'm suffering a lot of life. I lost from PTSD. And the Danish government, I won, I'm the first one in Danish history who beat the Danish intelligence and got a compensation for PTSD. But I'm honestly trying to find myself and it's not easy.

Well, you'd had so many versions of yourself, I suppose, and including ones that you had to keep secret. And then now it's, this is the real me. Yes, it's a culture shock from being a Muslim and being a cigarette agent. And then sometimes when I listen to my own, I watch my own interviews, it's like it's not me who's talking there. And it's been very emotionally painful. I met up, by the way, I met up with some of my old colleagues from the Danish intelligence.

And also the British MRI, actually, they were so honest and so noble. And to give me a hawk and just to make sure that I am on the right path, I'm doing the right thing. And do you ever regret your decision to go to the press about your spying? No. To clear your name, to explain to your family who you were? No, I had to go public because if I didn't do, I thought my life would be more in danger. And actually, he was a psychiatrist from the MI5. And I asked him and said, look, am I crazy or what?

Because I'm going to the news. Am I crazy? Did the Americans really want to kill me? He said, no. your fear is not paranoia, is it? And having spent so much of your life being secretive, for one of a better way of explaining it, I mean, seeing your name in all the papers

must have been quite surreal. It was like, I watch another person. I think the time where I really realized how big our work and who I was was when the Spy Museum in Washington made an exhibition of me for more than 10 years and also there are scholars at the museum, former head of the CIA and so on,

when they stood up, and historians stood up and said that I'm the most important spy in the war and terrorism and the post-Cold War. And I said, what the fuck, man? It's this really me they're talking about. And how did your family react to it?

My mom doesn't... She haven't even wrote the book and she doesn't really she doesn't care she doesn't know and my most of the people in my circle

they don't read the book they don't really want to know and it's like trying to deny they just want to be me before I was a Muslim before I was an agent and all this

they just want me to be morden the old morton the old ones well you have touched on this but what was your life

like after all those years of spraying and returning to normal life in life. It's very frustrating. I'll tell you, there's a lot of, there's a big vacuum. I miss my colleagues. I miss the actions.

I love living their life on the edge. I am not scared of danger. I'm not scared of death. I live with very few money. But I have done what I believed in. I fought for what I believed in. and I didn't compromise that for any price

actually and well you talk about having no fear of death but you must be at risk as your family at risk as well I mean yes yes they tried to kill me there's a fatwas when they shoot at my pictures

and there's fatwas for my guy there and they tried to kill me in Denmark like physically and but I wasn't scared actually yeah no that's a lie I was scared but I didn't want to show them that I was scared and I survived obviously that's why I'm talking to you now

but I knew that this is the consequences and the price to pay for what I've done and it is what it is I just thanks the Lord for this and do you live your life in any way differently because of the threats? I chose not to

I chose to live my life normally I know that the chances I could just hide actually the MI5 gave me an offer to live in witness protection programs and change my name and all this and I said no what did I do to deserve this and what did my children deserve for me to be dead born and storm is alive and I fought this evil and I'm proud of it and I will not bow down or sell my freedom or sell my life for threats or terrorism.

So it sounds like you have no regrets over what you've done. I have no regrets in regards of the threats and the people I've worked against but I'm not a good father. I failed. I should have been better in this way, maybe less selfish,

being too arrogant maybe and that has obviously that's reflected on the way that my children and I are interacting today, But one day I was traveling from Birmingham to Copenhagen to Jakarta and then Doha and Sanaha in Yemen, in Nairobi in Kenya. And I was Murat Stone, the infiltrator.

But then as well I had to be also the father of my children. Today, while we're talking, I'm not, I haven't seen my daughters for eight years. I didn't give them a hug and kiss. I didn't whisper in the ears that I loved them. I lost my children and I personally thought that I would manage to be successful as an agent and also as a undercover Muslim fundamentalist. But as for the terrorists and as for my enemies, I have no regrets and I will do it everything again and again and again.

So if the fundamentalist Murad was to meet the Morton of today, what would he say to you? The fundamentalistic. Wow. Okay. So I think the fundamentalistic Morad and their... Christian or whatever you call, Wharton would probably have a big fight today, to death.

So one last question, a very serious one. Do you still listen to Metallica? Do I still listen to Metallica? Is Satan still in hell? So let me tell you this. If you Google Morton Storm Spy Museum, Washington, you will see me at the museum in the exhibition. with a Metallica T-shirt on.

I stood there with the Metallica T-shirt on because I could have a suit on, I could have everything else, but they asked me more, please dress the way you want, because they did this long interview that they showed me in the museum. And I said, what, right, that's fine?

So I put on a Metallica t-shirt and Thor's hammer. And Laos Ulai, the drum player for Metallica. Read my book, and he saw me in the museum. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for talking to us. today, Morton. I mean, there's so much more we could have talked about, but it's really interesting to see your side of that story and just what an extraordinary life you've led.

Thank you, sir. I needn't have been worried about interviewing Morton. He's a really very charming guy, disarming and charismatic. And one of the first things we talked about in the interview was how he got people to trust him. And he said it wasn't a technique. He's just naturally interested in other people, likes talking to other people, likes putting them at their ease. And I can see how he could easily earn people's trust and respect, and yeah, indeed friendship. But the fascinating thing about talking to people from the world of espionage are the layers of secrecy that perhaps you can never unwrap.

Thank you for listening and do join us for our next episode of The Spy Who, hosted by Indra Vama. Wondery Plus subscribers can binge full seasons of the Spy Who early and add free on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. From Wondery, this is the final episode in our series, The Spy Who lived inside Al-Qaeda. This episode of The Spy Who is hosted by me, Charlie Higgson. Our show is produced by Vespucci for Wondery, with story consultancy by Yellow Ant. The producer of this episode is Ashley Clivery. Our sound designer is Ivor Manly.

The supervising producer is Natalia Rodriguez. Music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Frissons Sink. Executive producers for Vespucci are Johnny Galvin and Daniel Turkin. The executive producer for Yellow Ant is Tristan Donovan. Executive producers for Wonderry are Estelle Doyle, Theodora Laudis and Marshall Louis.