Uncover - S18: "Pressure Cooker" E3: Point of No Return

Episode Date: January 13, 2023

John and Amanda’s struggles with addiction complicate their fledgling plot. Will these oddballs be able to pull off an attack? Police spending escalates as Project Souvenir gets more elaborate by the day. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/pressure-cooker-transcripts-listen-1.6563380

The music teacher says it was consensual sex. His former students say it was rape. He had sex with me once in the classroom, in a closet. Something happened to me too. I thought he was our little predator. Why wasn't he stopped? These women seek answers and justice. I'm Julie Ireton, host of The Banned Teacher.

It's available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. Just that somebody could be this diabolical. This is a CBC Podcast. On the morning of May 5th, 2013, Amanda Karody is curled up on the bathroom floor. Omar had come home the night before and said, we have to come up with a plan.

And I said, what do you mean a plan? And he said, a plan for jihad. She's dry heaving into the toilet when John barges in with his army boots on. It's time to go to Whistler, a two-hour drive north of their home in Surrey, B.C. I dragged her. I said, on your feet, soldier, as she's vomiting. I said, I don't care if you vomit along the floor as we go. Today's the day that John's supposed to deliver his plan for a terrorist attack to Uncle

Abe, the mysterious benefactor who's offered to finance John's jihad. I was just so sick with anxiety all the time. I didn't want anything to do with this. Up until this point, Amanda has mostly stayed out of John and Abe's

business. But Abe invited her along on the trip to Whistler, and John took it as an order. I said, you need to get your shit together right fucking now and get your fucking ass into that truck. Pack your shit, get ready, we're going. They're both under the impression that Abe is a dangerous terrorist. He's waiting outside their basement suite in his black Ford pickup truck.

Amanda pulls herself off the floor and pops some pills for her nausea and anxiety. I'd have to take so much gravel and so many tranks just to be able to get out in public and not be dry heaving all the time. When they get into Abe's truck, Amanda closes her eyes and tries to sleep in the back seat. But before they deliver John's hard drive, Abe needs to know that he's

really serious. He tells John he has to be absolutely certain that this is what he wants to do. I don't talk bullshit. If I say I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it. I told my wife, this is your last chance to back out. I said, I'm going. With or without you, I'm going. And when we get into this truck, we've crossed the line of no return. The fact that Amanda's in the truck means she's decided to stand by her husband. She has no idea that she's been dragged

into a national terror investigation in the most chaotic months of her life. I'm Dan Pearce, and this is Pressure Cooker. Thank you. You've heard a lot about John up until this point, and you might be wondering, what's Amanda's story? Amanda grew up in St. Catharines, Ontario, an outcast from her family and high school. Her hair was usually spiked, dyed, shaved, or some combination of all three. Instead of shopping at the mall, Amanda would sew her own outfits. Well, I would always make pants with like 40-inch bottoms,

so they'd be like loose all the way down. I made a hoodie out of black fun fur. There's a term in the raver community called a graver, which is like a cross between a goth and a raver, and I guess that's kind of what I was. Amanda spent a lot of her weekends partying in the park with friends, which led to some conflict at home. At an early age, she moved out to live with a boyfriend. When I was 16 or 17, I moved out of my parents' house and into a house with two other guys. One of them was my boyfriend at the time. One of them was a homosexual,

transsexual vampire, and he drank real cow's blood and everything. Amanda wasn't a vampire, but she connected with other artists and outcasts and without lifestyle came a lot of drug use. This boyfriend of mine was always saying stuff like, you don't know anything about life. You're just a child. I used to do heroin for fuck's sakes. So I went out and I fucking bought some heroin.

It starts as a party, but ends as a big mess. I was snorting like a gram of coke every day, and I was drinking every day, and I just wanted to get away from it all and go and live in the forest for a bit. Amanda took a Greyhound bus across Canada to B.C. and lived in a tent on Salt Spring Island for a while. It's around 2006, when Amanda was 23, that she crossed paths with John and Victoria. I saw two girls who I knew and they were sitting with this really cute guy playing guitar and you can guess who that cute guy turns out to be. John's busking on the sidewalk. He's trying to cobble together some cash so he can get drunk with his friends.

Amanda stops to say hi. She asks John if she can play his guitar. And he said, you can, but you have to come with me to the whale wall, which is this place downtown Victoria where a lot of people hang out and drink and have fun. And there's this big wall with a painting of whales on it, and it's right on the ocean. The whale wall is John's everyday drinking spot, and Amanda agrees to come along. She likes John immediately. He would always give me guitar lessons, but I was never very good at guitar.

I just don't have the skill to shred. But, man, when I freaking put a bass in her hands, she could play. Like, we would play some Metallica and Iron Maiden. They're hard songs, man. They're not easy. Amanda learns that John has been in punk and metal bands for most of his adult life. For a while, he played guitar for a group called Rat Salad. War in the street is not a long, long time.

I'm a man of the news. I'm a man of the news. I'm a man of the news. I love watching the news. The moment we know, the moment we know. Final of watching the news. Well, we bonded over our mutual love of Black Sabbath and the Dead Kennedys and, you know, cult movies and stuff like that. He was kind of a weird dude, and I think that's what appealed to me. I'm kind of a weird dude myself. This is Steven Drager, bassist and lead singer for Rat Salad.

He was one of John's best friends growing up. In 1991, John moved out of his grandmother's house to live with Steven in Victoria. When we decided we were going to play music together, it was like hell or high water. This is what we're going to do. And that's what really sort of solidified our friendship was, okay, we're going to play music together. John and Steven were into extremes. The fastest, the heaviest, the foulest joke lyric.

They partied together in basements and dive bars. Steven remembers plenty of fistfights and acid-fueled benders. Friends watch John take every drug he's offered. Mushrooms, cocaine, crystal meth. What started as fun pretty soon descends into chaos. He's convicted of trafficking and possession in 1995. John never had an addiction until he went to prison for the first time. He came out a heroin addict. As far as I know, he had never shot dope in his life.

Heroin rips a hole in John's life. His band breaks up, and many of his friends can't trust him anymore. This is when I totally noticed it, like all the really twitchy addict behavior, you know? Hey, oh, just stop right here. I got to go see this guy over here, right? I got to go to the needle exchange to pick up condoms. Can we stop at the pawn shop with my leather jacket? I got to get... And before you know it, the guy's got dope, right? When he meets Amanda, John's managing his addiction by taking methadone.

He spent the night one time and he didn't bring his carries with him. And he woke up in the morning and he was just like, I'm sick. That's when I had to tell her. By this time, Amanda's tapered off both heroin and methadone. She's back in school, taking courses in traditional Chinese medicine. And I was like, what's wrong? Let's just go get some beer and we'll have a good day. And he's like, no, I'm on methadone. We're not going to be having a good day.

The two are dirt poor and living on welfare. Instead of playing shows in dive bars, John's riffing on the street for extra cash. Eventually, he picks up heroin again. It starts as a secret, but Amanda finds out. And I was like, he can't do heroin in front of me and not give me some. You think just one time it ain't gonna hurt, you know. Oh, let's just do it once and just for fun.

And then the next day you think, yeah, that was really good. Why don't we try it again? You know, it'll only be twice in a row. So long as we don't do it three times in a row, we'll be good. But it was too late. It only takes once, man.

A heroin habit gets expensive quickly. But John and Amanda say they'll never talk about the things they did to pay for drugs. Just think of the worst things imaginable that people do to get drug money, and that's what we did. Eventually, I just didn't want to do it anymore. I didn't want to do the things that we had to do to get the money for it. I didn't want to be a junkie anymore. So I said, let's just get back on methadone. The couple moves in with John's grandmother while they're getting back on their feet.

This is around 2010. It's a small apartment in Victoria, not far from the methadone clinic. Every day we had to walk from her house down to the methadone clinic. And we would walk by this mosque every day. This is the mosque you've heard about before. The one John visited with a bottle of whiskey tucked into his jacket. This routine continues day after day, until the landlord gets involved. It wasn't cool with the landlord having two people that weren't on the lease living there,

and so we were on the streets homeless. And we figured it would be easier in Vancouver than in Victoria, and it was. John and Amanda scrape together a living on the streets of Vancouver. Both of them lean on substance use as a means of escape. Well, I drank because I was depressed and because I had no purpose in life. I just didn't see anything good coming out of my life, so why not get drunk? Summer turns to fall, and it becomes more of a challenge to stay warm. We went to buy him some new boots at this army surplus store one day, and they had a

book called The Key to Understanding Islam. And I said, how much is this book? And they were like, it's free, take it. So I took it and we read it, and then we went back the next day and said, do you have a Quran? They learned the store owner is connected to a larger Muslim community. In fact, there's a prayer room right above the surplus store. Within days, John and Amanda tell him they want to convert. And he said, okay, I'll get you in touch with my friend. So we went to meet up with this friend, but we were drunk. And he's like, no,

you can't do it if you're drunk. So we didn't go back the next day because we were drunk again. But the third day we went back and we were sober. So we called his friend and his friend showed up and took us to his place. And we said the shahada, which is the confirming yourself as a Muslim. John and Amanda receive a warm and generous welcome to the faith. They were introduced to myself and other members of the community to gain some more knowledge, to get some guidance in what the faith is and what that entails. Haroun Khan is a trustee at Vancouver's Aljamiyah Mosque. He's a well-known community figure.

My dad founded the first mosque in B.C. back in 1963. Our family goes back a couple of previous generations as well. That's another story. A few days after their conversion, he offers John and Amanda a place to crash in Surrey. For the first five nights, we slept in the Masala downtown. And then Haroon came and said he had a house that was empty so then we moved there. Haroon says he's encountered many people just like John and Amanda. People who've fallen on hard times and are looking for meaning, purpose and escape. We're in an

addicted city, Vancouver. The issue with drug and alcohol addictions is that it's a very pernicious thing and it affects all people. So I don't hold that against them. It just happened to them. But they also look for help. They attend prayer in Surrey and start to cut back on drugs and booze. Day by day, week by week, they start to get their act together. They even move back in with John's grandmother, this time in a basement suite in Surrey. That's where they meet another new friend, Imtiaz Poppet. Imtiaz gets to know John and Amanda

through a methadone delivery program. He sees how their faith is central to their recovery. They told me how they converted, and how they started reading the Quran, and how they found that this was their recovery. They told me how they converted, you know, and how they started reading the Quran and how they found that this was their path. For them, Islam and prayer, reading Quran, was that path to sobriety. John and Amanda don't always properly observe their own beliefs.

Sometimes they fail to stay sober. MTS says their interpretation of Islam shifted over time. They try out a few different mosques, but don't settle anywhere for too long. They were drawn to a more orthodox Islam, where music isn't allowed and so on. And I saw a guitar in his suite, and I said, wow,

you're a music player. And he said, well, that's haram. And so we had that dialogue about how Sufi Islam is very celebratory music, and it's a way of expressing a devotion. But Imtiaz isn't the only person John is talking to. There's also his friend Kaz, the one who taught him how to pray and showed him all those extremist videos.

After months of debate, John turns away from Imtiaz and decides to stop playing music. He gives away his acoustic Gibson guitar and sells off his other instruments. John's bandmate, Stephen, learns about all this when he sees John in the summer of 2012. There was a jam going on at the Ivanhoe where we were drinking. And he was like, oh, dude, we got to play. We got to play. I'm like, whoa, whoa, dude, man. It's like 17 years since we've played music together, right?

And he was insistent about it because he was going to sell or just had recently sold all his guitars. I'm like, well, why would you do that? And his answer to me for that was that Allah frowned on the music that we played. Some friends and family don't understand their conversion. But John's half-sister Hannah sees it as a positive transformation.

John was really excited about learning a new language and immersing himself into something that gave him joy. And I'm just like, I'm so happy for him that John was able to get clean and have Anna there with him too. Amanda, who goes by anna is especially devoted to the faith even john agrees that she's the better muslim at the same time amanda's deeply devoted to john so much so there's this one conversation hannah can't get out of her mind she had told me that like she doesn't even see herself as a person anymore, that her and John are just one singular entity.

John and I have just melded into one kind of thought process, I suppose, or existence. She's just there to maybe serve him, I guess. I don't know. People have lots of different ways that they express love and their own relationships together. So I don't know. I try not to judge. I just hope the best for them and if they're happy together, they're happy. They never forget the care that Muslim brothers showed them when they converted. Imtiaz and Haroon went above and beyond to welcome them into the Muslim faith.

When they were out on the street, Haroon gave them a place to live and sleep. When they had questions about the faith, Imtiaz took the time to talk to them. And the couple absorbed these profound lessons in generosity as gospel. At the time, if you said you were a Muslim, we took you at your word, and we would do pretty much anything to help you. Not pretty much anything. We you. Not pretty much anything. We would literally just die for you. So if you said you were a Muslim and you were homeless,

well, then you're coming home with me. I'll give you the last dollar that's in my pocket, because that's what we're supposed to do. So when the mysterious Uncle Abe appears in John's life looking for his niece, John does everything he can to try and help a fellow Muslim. And Abe is also generous with John and Amanda. When he shows up bearing gifts, money, and big promises, they cut Haroon and Imtiaz out of their lives entirely.

But by May 2013, in a truck driving up to Whistler, with Amanda sleeping in the back seat, there's something Abe wants from John. In the days leading up to this Whistler trip, John had promised Abe that his plan would be ready. How long will it take to get to Whistler? But on the drive up, John tells Abe that the plan isn't finished yet.

It's still in his head. Abe's clearly annoyed, but he tries to say chill as John rattles ideas off the top of his head. The train John's pass some rockets at the naval base and within walking distance is that train station I was telling you about. The train John's talking about is a Vancouver Island rail line between Victoria and Nanaimo. We could run down to that train and then we could take the hostages. We're going to handcuff every one of them and tell them to stand in front of the windows. John wants to trade the hostages for the release of all the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Abe asks him how many people he's going to need to pull this off. Me and my wife for sure. I have a guy in Sudan right now. He'll be here on the next plane tomorrow if I have the money to send to him.

He's talking about his friend Kaz, his extremist buddy from before Abe came along. He's a good brother. I vote for him and he will come. So there's three of us. Abe seems open to bringing Kaz back. But John still hasn't typed a word of his plan. Instead, he plays Abe a recording of himself reciting lines from the Quran in Arabic. Somewhere on the way to Whistler, Abe makes a pit stop. John and Amanda are left alone in the truck.

He's making a phone call right now. Because there ain't no turning back. That's fine. We've already said so much in this car. He's not here to look for a bug? In case it's not entirely clear what's going on here, we're listening to a secret recording of John and Amanda rummaging around an Abe's truck looking for secret recording equipment.

Look in the dashboard. In the glubby? No, it's nothing. They don't find anything, despite there being multiple bugs in the truck. We haven't looked under the seats. You know what? It doesn't matter. It's too late. It's too late. It's around noon when they get to Whistler, and the sun is blazing.

They find a shady spot in a parking lot, and John finally starts typing up his plan on a laptop. He starts with a list of weapons he's going to need. AK-47 or AK-74. 9mm Beretta or Glock triple burst. Three tack vests with explosives wired inside. Flashback. He then moves on to the actual plan. Abe turns on the engine to run the air conditioning.

Everybody up against the windows now and put your hands behind your backs. Amanda's been sitting quietly in the back seat. John fills her in on her role. Seeing as how you're weaker than me, you're gonna cover them with the gun in case there's any heroes, all right? I don't want any heroes. They've been sitting in the sweltering parking lot for more than two hours. The courier's waiting in a black Audi. He's been there this whole time. Abe eventually tells John to save his plan and wrap this thing up. Okay, here we go.

John crosses the parking lot and hands the hard drive to the courier. The package is delivered. But they've been in Whistler a lot longer than expected. When police bring the hard drive back to RCMP headquarters, it's the culmination of months of investigation. Dozens of officers have logged hundreds of hours with one goal in mind. They need proof that John and Amanda are taking real steps to commit a crime. The hard drive John delivered contains exactly the kind of evidence police have been waiting for,

a specific plan for a terrorist attack. There's just one problem. Investigators Google the passenger train that John wants to hijack and discover it no longer exists. It was decommissioned years earlier. The Whistler trip is a total bust. Now what do you do? This is Scott Wright, Amanda's lawyer. Mr. Nuttall has come up with this plan that doesn't, it's not just unworkable, it's possible.

The train doesn't exist, right? And beyond that, he doesn't appear to have shown any initiative to do anything. So now what do you do? Do you sort of pull back? Do you push harder? This leads to a heated debate between the different players within Project Souvenir. Tension started early between the two branches, right? You have the undercover shop, and then you had the investigative side, right?

Where the undercover shop runs the undercover scenarios, they structure things, they find out from the investigative side what they're hoping to accomplish, and then they put it into action. The team commander is Sergeant Bill Colcat. He's a specialist in domestic terrorism cases. The guy running the undercover shop is Corporal Stephen Matheson. He works behind the scenes planning the scenarios and directing Abe. There's usually a clear separation between the two branches. Very quickly, the lines began to blur. There was a tension between Sergeant Calcat and Corporal Matheson. Particularly Sergeant Calcat seemed to question Corporal Matheson's experience. He didn't appear to have a lot of confidence in him.

Calcat wants to take a more aggressive approach and amp up the pressure on John. But Matheson worries that if they push him too hard, they'll risk entrapping the couple. Entrapment is basically when police coerce someone into committing a crime. That can come in the form of threats, bribery, or promises of future benefits. Colcatt admits that the optics of John writing a plan with Abe sitting right next to him are not good. Still, he wants to confront John about his train plan and send him back to the drawing board. Corporal Matheson urges caution in how they approach a challenge to John's plan. In an email, Matheson writes,

In an email, Matheson writes, The last thing we want to tell the target is that he needs to go away and come back with a real plan. The target may come back with another plan simply because we told him to. This would be coercion at best, and at worst, it would be us making a terrorist out of someone who might otherwise not be. But Matheson loses that debate. The challenge to John's plan will go ahead. Not only that, but Colcat makes assurances to his superiors that they should have enough evidence to charge the couple by early July.

That's less than two months away, so the clock is ticking. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. On May 10th, five days after the Whistler trip, Abe picks John up at his house.

John hops into the truck with a huge grin. He's wearing a black leather jacket with a keffiyeh scarf tucked underneath. He gives Abe a hearty handshake and immediately begins discussing the news. Something about airstrikes in Syria. But Abe interrupts him. And just a reminder, we have an actor voicing what Abe said. Okay, Achi, wait. Today, you're going to have to talk.

You're going to listen to me. I have some questions. This is important. He tells John the passenger train no longer exists, and grills him about the bogus attack plan. John admits he hasn't been on the train in years. Abe says his partner reacted poorly to the train hijacking idea. It lacked preparation. Abe's walking a fine line between the friend who wants to support John's jihad and the

man who's been let down by sloppy planning. He makes it clear, if John's serious, he needs to come up with a feasible plan. John gets emotional, and Abe notices he's on the verge of tears. John closes his eyes and bows his head slightly. He says he's not crying and presents another plan of attack. to fire some rockets at the target and then I want to go from there. If all goes well, we can make it from there to the base. I want to storm the base and take them by utter surprise. Okay. Headshot, headshot, headshot. Pop, pop, pop. and take them by utter surprise. Okay? Headshot, headshot, headshot. Pop, pop, pop.

He's back to his plan from when they first met, firing rockets at the provincial legislature and storming a military base. I need to go and... I need to go to Victoria then. I have to go to Victoria, brother. This time, John wants to do the proper reconnaissance. He says he'll need to spend time in Victoria to check out the targets. Abe seems to be okay with the idea.

But it's at this moment that he spots a bulge under John's leather jacket. It's the marble gun. The paintball pistol John had modified. Abe is alarmed, and he asks John directly if he planned to kill him. If you tried to kill me, yes. John thought he was about to be executed, that he'd become a liability.

But Abe laughs it off and manages to quickly diffuse the situation. He jokes that if he was planning to kill John, he'd let him say his shahada first, essentially letting him say his final prayers before he offs him. Abe laughs and John cracks a smile. Well, I'm sorry I brought him. Abe tells him to go relax, and the men end their emotional meeting with an awkward hug across the center console.

John gets his hard drive back the next day, and planning begins for a trip to Victoria to scout targets. But two days before they head to Vancouver Island, Abe has a strange call with John. As-salamu alaykum, Aki. I've been kind of sick. I was poisoned with strychnine. I almost died. John tells Abe the basement suite had a major ant problem.

Zillions of ants all over the place. He says he used a liquid ant poison. I put down the poison and I killed many ants, but I felt bad. You know, they were dead. There's so many, like thousands of them I killed. John says he must have contaminated a samosa. It sounds like a total nightmare. My muscles stiffened up and my bone joints, they felt seized up like they weren't joints anymore. It was like they were cemented with crazy glue. And I couldn't turn my head.

I was vomiting blood. And I had blood coming out of my urine and my stool. My vision started going dark. And subhanAllah, I saw out of the corner of my eye the angel of death. He was behind me like the Grim Reaper. And the angel of death wore black robes. He had a scythe and he scraped his scythe against the back of my neck. I knew I was going to die. against the back of my neck.

I knew I was going to die. I could hear voices, but I couldn't understand what they were saying. It smelled like death. I held my wife's hand and I said, I'm gonna die. And she said, she was calling 911, and I said, no. John's afraid the police will get involved. And then there's the spiritual question. He tries to call Abe twice during the three-day ordeal to

ask if it was okay to call 911. John wanted to ask if it was permitted to accept help from the Kufar, the non-believers. But the phone didn't even ring. Abe says he was somewhere without cell service. It's striking that there was nobody else in John's life that he was willing to call for help during his near-death experience. He turns to Abe and Abe alone for spiritual guidance. But his calls go unanswered. He accepts death and says a prayer with Amanda. I deserved it and I said, oh Allah, please forgive me.

John tells Abe the poisoning was retribution for hurting the ants, creatures of Allah. He shares a haunting vision he had of what the insects would do to him in the grave. The ants are going to crawl in my nose and in my mouth and in my ears and they're going to bite me. Abe lets John tell his story for a while, before asking if he's doing better now. I'm doing much better. I'm still very ill, but I'm not going to die. There's something weird about John's story. Strychnine isn't used to poison ants. I asked John about the poisoning and his story didn't change. But the impact on him is profound. I'm never ever going to kill another ant again. I don't care if they're crawling all over my food, where my prayer mats.

Allah created them, and if it's his decree that they live amongst me, then so be it. Abe tells John there's a reason for everything we go through. The incident has left John with a greater appreciation for living things. He frames it all as a giant accident. But it's hard to imagine this episode isn't connected to his looming terror attack and the realization that he might actually kill people. Before long, Abe pivots away from the near-death experience. The officer is more concerned with the investigation at hand. He's calling to tell John the Victoria recon trip is going ahead.

In late May, three months into the investigation, John still hung up on carrying out a rocket attack. He has his sights set on two military bases and the Victoria Legislature on southern Vancouver Island, where he grew up. He's also still asking Abe for money to fly in his friend Kaz to be part of the squad. To his delight, John learns Kaz is back from Sudan, living with an aunt in Alberta. He tells Abe they've chatted on Skype. I said, brother, I have a job for you here. I got a plane ticket, no problem. chatted on Skype. Rocket Man is code for their plan to build homemade rockets. I said, are you interested or not?

And either we got disconnected or he hung up. So I don't know what that means. According to John, Kaz is acting really sketchy, being evasive, not calling him back, suddenly going offline. Abe shuts the door on bringing him into the operation. He tells John, you can't count on Kaz. Now it's just you and your wife. One point of contention is whether to bring Amanda along on their Victoria recon trip.

John wants to leave her at home, since fewer people will mean less heat. But Abe has a different take. It's clear his objective is to get her there. You know what? She's involved too. Like she wants to do it. Then I won't take that from her. The other thing, your cover, it's going to be you're doing the sightseeing. That's why you're there. Abe asks John, what's better?

A couple and their friend? Or just two men? They have a good laugh at the thought of two men sightseeing together. Yeah, you're right. We're going to bring her then. And just like that, it's settled. Amanda's coming to Victoria too. Abe lets John know that another brother

will be joining them in Victoria. He has special skills that will help keep them safe as they scout for targets. When the day of the Victoria trip rolls around, Abe calls John in the morning. John's voice is fried. He's been up all night. And the one task he had to complete, downloading maps of the targets, isn't finished. isn't finished.

Listen to me, listen to me. These things should have been done, we talked about it. Abe tells John to take the next few hours to pull together whatever maps he can. He'll be there to pick them up at 12.30 in the afternoon. John never downloads the maps. On the way to the ferry,

Amanda sleeps in the back seat, her niqab covering her face. John sits in the passenger seat, wearing his suit. But he's clearly in rough shape. His eyes are rolled into the back of his head, and his mouth hangs open. Do you know of any hadiths you could tell me about? About jihad? I'm searching for, you know, a true Islam. As they wait in the ferry lineup, it's obvious that John is super high.

It turns out Amanda isn't the only one taking drugs to deal with the stress of the situation. John's been using some of the cash Abe had given him to feed a destructive habit, one he thought he'd conquered years ago. I'm a recovering heroin addict, and unbeknownst to him, I was still sneaking in a few hits here and there, you know. Unbeknownst to her, even, I would get some heroin and get high when she didn't even know. I'd go in the bathroom and come out and be like, And then I'd be like, what the fuck is wrong with you?

Heroin isn't the only thing John is on. There's also a cocktail of tranquilizers and anxiety meds. Grab all Xanax, clonazepam, and methadone, and it was all crushed up and shaken into the methadone and we would just chug on that like all day long. John doesn't tell Abe about the drugs but it's clear he's messed up.

Ever since I was poisoned brother I've been so so tired brother. I've been working and working and working so hard i'm just doing research and on everything and i've been poisoned and i've been trying to recover and it's just so much it's so much and then my my poor wife she's always always sick i need spiritual guidance Amanda's sitting in the back seat, but John talks about her like she isn't even there. He recounts a conversation they recently had about their impending attack. She said, I've got to start taking this more seriously.

She said, I am taking this seriously. And I said, there's a possibility that people are going to die because of us. And she just stared blankly at the wall for like five, ten minutes. She was in total shock. for like five, ten minutes. She was in total shock. John says Amanda went to bed and stared at the ceiling for hours without saying a word.

The next day, she came back to him and according to John, this is what she said. Even though we've been talking about this, I never actually once thought that people, they were going to die. And I said, you know what, neither did I. Abe tells John that if he doesn't want to go through with it, he can walk away at any time. John suggests that maybe the rockets don't need to have exploding warheads. The rockets, they could just be symbolic

and say Samud and Free Palestine on them as an act of protest. Abe reminds John that he needs to be sure about what he wants to do. This is what I'm talking about, though. I need some spiritual guidance. What's spiritual guidance going to give you? It's going to tell me, you know, what's halal and what's haram and will my jihad be accepted. This is my soul we're talking about, my wife's soul. Allah, if he doesn't accept my jihad, then I'm going to go to hellfire and I won't go to jannah.

then I'm gonna go to Hellfire and I won't go to Jamal. Abe then crosses an invisible line into a realm that's generally off limits for police. We don't have to forget that our path is predetermined by Allah. Allah chose it for us. We don't choose it for ourselves. As they board the ferry to Victoria, Abe takes on the role of John's spiritual advisor.

And that's what you have to think, brother. It's what's in your heart. That's what Allah wants. This kind of rationalization, it's been adopted by extremist groups to justify acts of violence. But this line of thinking has long been rejected by most Muslim scholars and leaders. Now that logic is being used by Abe, a cop,

to justify John's plans for violence. And it works. I'd like in your heart what you're planning to do. Do you think it's the right thing to do? Yes. That's the main thing. It's what in your heart you believe. With John back on board, Abe puts him to bed for the remainder of the two-hour ferry ride. John falls asleep to a sermon by Anwar al-Awlaki, an American imam who inspired many Western jihadists,

until he was assassinated by a U.S. drone strike. The three companions spend the night in a hotel and get an early start the next day. They rendezvous with the other brother in the parking lot of a Tim Hortons coffee shop. He's another undercover cop whose identity is protected, so we're going to call him Hassan. John takes a shine to him immediately. He's excited to meet another jihadi like him.

I feel psyched, you know. Like, I can do anything with the power of Allah. Abe says John is calling the shots today. Hassan is just there to keep them safe. And with that, John and Amanda set off on their recon mission with their new bodyguard. John records a shaky video of their adventure on a camcorder. Well, just keep an eye out for me. Their first destination is the parking lot of the Esquimalt Naval Base. John walks up to different vehicles and films the license plates. It's a silver Acura, blue 4x4 Ford truck. This is definitely a soldier's vehicle. Next, they walk around the Victoria Harborfront and make their way to the legislature. Amanda smokes a cigarette and sips a Monster Energy drink.

She no longer wears the niqab. They agreed it would be best not to draw attention. At one point, she goes up to a carriage to pet some horses. We weren't seriously looking for something to do. We were just trying to appease these people. We treated it as a joke. We tried to heat ourselves out and get caught. I walked up to a cop even.

John approaches a police officer outside the legislature and points the camcorder at him. Do you still offer tours? Yeah, but it's got nothing to do with us, right? Yeah, you can go to the umbrella over there. The three spies join a free tour of the legislature, along with a gaggle of tourists. John really hams up the sightseeing act. Just beautiful, beautiful architecture. Wow, look at the stained glass. It's beautiful. An actor dressed in Victorian garb steps into character.

Good afternoon. How lovely to see you all. Is this day not a splendid one? An actor dressed in Victorian garb steps into character. She wears a blue dress with white lace, a parasol, and a tiara in her hair. Long live the Queen. Thank you, sir. Does it seem at all? If John's trying to blend in, he's failing miserably. The tour ends back on the front lawn. If you have questions, I'll be around and enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for watching. Thank you. After the tour, they bid farewell to Hassan and rendezvous with Abe. When they get back into his truck, John is beaming. I just, man, I'm blown away by that guy. He's just amazing. You're always right, brother.

He recounts the events of the day like a kid who just got back from a field trip. On the drive back to Surrey, Abe asks John if he's still having doubts. I need to know how to fight and my wife especially and how to shoot and how to make the explosives. That's the only doubts that I have is doubts of myself. You might be wondering, where's all this headed? Remember, dozens of cops are watching and transcribing hours and hours of surveillance tape. It's hard to tell whether they're swept up in the chaos or if it's all going according to plan. We know at least one of the cops is having serious doubts. In late May and early June, cover officer Stephen Matheson starts looking into ways to safely shut down Project Souvenir,

without sending John and Amanda off the deep end. Remember, they both become totally dependent on cops for any sort of human contact. I feel like just so lonely. Me and my wife are so lonely, you know, just the two of us. So lonely. Me and my wife are so lonely, you know, just the two of us. And you have no idea how happy it makes us to know you guys. But lead investigator Colcat pushes forward, arguing the threat to public safety is too large. Matheson's research into possible off-ramps gets blocked. And Sergeant Colcat takes over planning the undercover scenarios. The trial judge will call this an unprecedented move in undercover operations.

It's in the wake of this shakeup, on June 6th, that John brings in a new plan for Abe to consider. Okay, so here's a little diagram. John pulls out several sheets of paper. The first page is full of trigonometry equations. The second page is a bunch of random math and some jihadist propaganda. And on the third page is a childlike drawing of a rocket and a pressure cooker bomb. Yeah, that's what they used in the Boston bombings. That's the same bomb they used.

And I figured, heck, it worked for them, it can work for us. John says he copied the plans from an Al-Qaeda magazine. But he makes it clear. The pressure cooker idea is just an appetizer. The homemade rockets are the main course. The pressure cooker is just for testing, playing around with, and, you know, for practice. He says they won't have the same symbolic effect as the rockets, but they'd be fast, cheap, and would send a message.

It would be pure terrorism, and it would cause the people to rethink their position of sending troops overseas to kill Muslims. As bad as this makes John sound, these days he has an explanation for all that radical talk. Remember, I'm playing a part here where I'm pretending to be embedded with a group of terrorists who are also playing a part. And they don't know that I'm pretending and I don't know they're pretending. And I'm just trying to buy myself time. John might be indulging in a bit of revisionist history here, but in his action movie logic, it kind of makes sense. In any case,

if police were having doubts about John, the pressure cooker idea gets everything back on track. John has presented a concept that's realistic, feasible, and something they can control. After John finishes his pitch to Abe, he tries to take the materials back. Okay, so I'm going to burn this now. You've seen it, right? But Abe tells John to give the papers to him. John rips the pages out of his notebook and hands them over. He makes Abe promise to burn them. See, I trust you.

Right here is enough to get me thrown in prison for the rest of my life. Of course, Abe isn't going to burn the drawings. Instead, they'll become key evidence in the case against John and Amanda. Project Souvenir is heading into the homestretch. With less than a month until July 1st, Canada Day, police are tightening the noose. Their goal is to keep John motivated and sober enough to bring his plan to fruition. But it's going to be a lot harder than they think.

That's next time on Pressure Cooker is written and produced by Sarah Berman, Rafferty Baker, and me, Dan Pierce. Mixing and sound design by Rafferty Baker. Our digital producer is SK Robert. Jeff Turner is our senior producer. Our executive producer is Chris Oak. And Arif Noorani is director of CBC Podcasts. Uncle Abe's voice has been replaced by Siavash Desvare.

Our theme song is by Humans. Special thanks to Graham MacDonald and Taranam Kamlani. Thanks for listening. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.