03x09 - Al Qaeda in Queens

[bunniefuu]

- I have nothing to do
with al-Qaeda and--

any link or anything
with al-Qaeda.

- You've got a guy
that was trained

by al-Qaeda,
a bombmaker,

who's going to New York.

This is a real deal.

- We don't have that
he's actually made a b*mb,

so we don't have
enough to arrest him.

- Are we just gonna let him
drive into Manhattan?

- We got everyone together,

and we're ramping up

like we've never ramped up
before.

We have b*mb-making material.
These are household chemicals.

- It blows sh*t up
really effectively.

That's when all
of our suspicions

were just... boom.

All of a sudden,
we have just been compromised

- It was
an "oh sh*t" moment.

- It's growing exponentially.

Every time this guy
makes a stop,

the case gets bigger.

You get a backpack.
You get a backpack.

Everybody get on the subway
and blow something up.

The last thing you want
on your watch

is another smoking crater
in New York.

- In the FBI,
we make a lot of headlines.

Drug busts, mob stings,
t*rror1st takedowns...

- Get down!
Get down!

- We understand
why people want

to tell stories about us.

- Mark it.
- Freeze.

- fbi.
- fbi!

- Action!
- But they don't know

the half of it.

What really goes down?

We save that
for each other

when we're talking
agent to agent.

This is "FBI True."

- Kristy Kottis is
a 15-year veteran of the FBI.

She worked gangs,
crimes against children,

as well as human
and drug trafficking.

Kottis was the supervisor

of the FBI's
threat response squad,

overseeing
the bureau's response

to terrorism threats
in New York City.

- September 9th, 2009.
- Yeah.

- It's close to 9/11,
which is a huge day

in New York and in the FBI.

Rich, what are you doing?

- We're coming up on 9/11,

so we're getting ready
for the 9/11... anniversary.

Not only are we dealing

with just the mental knowledge
of 9/11,

but also, hey, it's
a threat day,

and we have
to be prepared for it,

so we're running out
on every threat we have

and doing all that.

- Richard Frankel
got his start in the FBI

investigating the infamous
Gambino crime family.

After the attacks on 9/11,

he moved
into national security.

By 2009, Frankel
was responsible

for domestic t*rror1st threats

at the FBI's New York
field office.

He rose to become
associate director

of national intelligence.

- Richie and I were both ASACs
at the time,

and I think--you'll agree--

the ASAC desk is the confluence
of everything shitty

in the FBI, right?

Every threat, everything
that can go wrong.

- Every administrative problem,

every issue that comes in.
- Anything that can go wrong

comes through the ASAC desk,

and it's--you know,
it's a tough job.

- Don Borelli worked cases

ranging from drug trafficking
to white-collar crime.

He supervised FBI operations

in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.

By 2009, Borelli oversaw

international terrorism
investigations

in Canada, Africa,
and western Europe.

He investigated
domestic bombers,

Somali pirates,

and al-Qaeda operatives.

- The phone rings...

And it's one of my counterparts
from FBI headquarters.

And he says, "Do you know
about Najibullah Zazi?"

I'm like,
"Who's Najibullah Zazi?"

Like, no.

I put the phone down.

It run into the SCIF

so I could read
the highly sensitive stuff,

'cause it was all coming in--
a lot of it was TS information.

The original information
came from the Brits.

They're keying
on this email address

that they know
is an al-Qaeda operative,

and they've been monitoring it.

So, all of a sudden,
it pings,

and it's this guy,
Najibullah Zazi.

They trace him to the U.S..

Al-Qaeda-trained guy

with some expl*sive training.

So the Brits crunch
the information.

They send it over
to FBI headquarters.

The assumption is,
the guy's a bombmaker

until proven otherwise.

The FBI start doing
all their analysis,

figure out, then,
that he is now in Denver.

Denver starts doing
surveillance,

and at some point,

he actually makes
a phone call,

calling back
to one of his handlers

to get clarification
on the bombmaking recipe

that you can make
from these chemicals

you could get
in a beauty supply store.

And there were phone calls
and talk about the, you know,

the "wedding cake."

It was like one
of those old-time code words

you don't think
anybody uses anymore

for--in expl*sives.
- Mm-hmm.

All these specifics.

I mean, we don't get
these specifics.

You never get those specifics
in a case.

- We got the notification
that Najibullah

was in the car

driving to New York.

All of the information we had

was in classified channels.

Once you make an arrest,
due process applies,

and all that stuff goes public,

and we're not ready to do that

'cause we need to know
more details.

You know, the main thing is,
where is he going,

and what is his intent?

That was, like,
the key question.

What is his intent?

- How are you feeling, Don?

It's getting towards 9/11.

- You know, the last thing
you want on your watch

is another smoking crater
in New York.

- Two commercial jet liners

crashed into
the World Trade Center

here in New York City

and sent
the giant twin towers,

filled with workers,

crumbling to the ground.

- Not even just 9/11.

We've had several instances
in New York

of real attempts
or real successes

where t*rrorists have been able

to light off a b*mb
in New York.

- At 12:18 p.m.,

World Trade Center tower
number one

became a tower of smoke.

- I was a prosecutor
before I joined the FBI.

I was having a great life.

Suffolk County
district attorney's office.

In 1993,

the first b*mb went off
at the World Trade Center,

and I watched it on TV,

and I said on that day,

"I'm going to join the FBI."

- You're both in charge
of operational response,

tactically and investigatively.

You're the first line
of, like you said,

tomfuckery that's gonna happen.

- But you don't have enough
to arrest Zazi.

- Didn't we have
some surveillance film

of him in Walmart,
buying some products?

- It might've been--
- It was a beauty supply place

in Denver

a few weeks earlier,

before he drove to New York.

And then he got picked up
by the Denver office

at that point.

They interview him
with a lawyer,

but they don't have enough
to hold him.

We don't have that
he's actually made a b*mb,

but we've got
real good information

that he wants to.
- Yeah.

- But there's no overt act
that we've observed

that he's committed.

And we didn't know
if there was a spider web,

if he had other people
at this point.

- Right.
- You know,

did it go further out?

- So how are we monitoring
this cat?

- First order of business is,
we gotta follow this guy.

He's in a car,
and he's going to New York,

so you're handing him off

as he's driving from Denver.

- We have field offices
all across the United States

coming into New York.

So as Najibullah Zazi's
driving,

we're just handing it off
from one surveillance team

to another surveillance team.

We're able to go
from field office

to field office,

as opposed from department
to department.

And also, we had helicopters
in the air.

We had planes in the air.

This was
a full surveillance blowout.

- He's in the car.
He's coming to New York,

and we're learning more
and more as he gets closer.

- You got a bombmaker.
He's going to New York.

Are we just gonna let him

drive into Manhattan?

- We put a team
at every crossing, which--

there are only about five,

but we put it
at every crossing,

so all the bridges and tunnels

that you would come across
from New Jersey

into New York,
we had a team there.

- Eventually, he comes
to New York.

He bypasses the tunnels.

He goes over to
the George Washington Bridge.

- And the Port Authority
is there,

and they are stopping cars
on a random basis.

- "Random."

- We want it to look routine.

If the FBI stops him,

it could tip him off

and cause him
and other operatives to react.

So finally,
he comes to the bridge,

and he's stopped.

And they have a dog
walk around the car.

And they're just looking
for anything suspicious.

- The dog circles.
The officer looks in the car.

Nothing jumps out.

And...

- The problem is that
the dog is not trained

for these chemicals

because it's not
put together as a b*mb.

- And the K-9 officer

didn't know all the details

because he wasn't cleared

because there was
so much classified information.

- Any mention of chemicals
or a b*mb--

that's all classified.

- The decision is made.

We don't really have a choice
but to let him

continue his journey

and...
- And they let him go.

- The show goes on.
- Yeah.

- We're ramping up
like, you know,

we've never ramped up before.

We're following Naji,

and we're trying
to piece together his network.

- I mean, this stuff
has come in so fast,

you know, just like
the timing of everything.

- Oh, yeah, I remember
it was like crazy.

- You've got the analysts.
They're trying to figure out

as much as they can
about Najibullah Zazi.

He grew up in New York.

He had a job in New York.

- But we wanna know if there's
other people involved.

He's a bad actor,

but does he have
a supporting cast?

- The analysts identified
two friends:

Adis Medunjanin
and Zarein Ahmedzay.

- Adis is a doorman,

and Zarein is
a taxicab driver.

- The analysts--they're looking
at travel records.

They're looking
at financial statements.

They're looking
at phone records.

And the analysts
were able to identify

that Zazi
and his two coconspirators

had traveled to Pakistan
to do training.

You've got a guy
that was trained by al-Qaeda.

We didn't know the full extent
of the training,

but we could surmise
that it was bombmaking.

We're watching Najibullah.

We're also doing surveillance
on Adis and Zarein.

And Najibullah--
anybody he talks to,

they're radioactive
at this point.

We think he wants
to blow something up,

but we don't know what.

We don't know how many people

he's got with him
that are gonna help.

So ultimately, he winds up
at what I call

a flophouse.

He had a room with
I don't know how many other...

I mean...
- Oh, that was--

- 10, 12 guys that--I think

they were mostly
all taxi drivers.

But you don't know
if these guys

are all part
of the master plot.

He's staying there,

so, you know,
you've got to assume

maybe they're culpable

and, you know, coconspirators
along with him.

So this thing--I mean,
it's growing exponentially.

Every time this guy
makes a stop,

the case gets bigger.

- It's September 11th.

Najibullah--his car's
out on the street.

They see him--
I think his suitcase.

He puts some stuff
in the trunk of his car,

and he leaves,

not in his car.

He leaves,
going into the subway system.

- Right.
He's a New Yorker.

No New Yorker actually drives
in the city.

- So you've got
kind of two things going on

at the same time.

Where is he going?
You have to follow him.

And now we've got his car...

- By itself.
- By itself...

- Just sitting there.
- Just sitting there.

But we gotta see
what's in that car.

We know that there's
something in there.

- But you don't want
to tip him off

that you're on to him.

- Finally, it became
pretty evident

that this is an opportunity
that we can't pass up.

Let's grab the car.

There are
very few opportunities

that you get in the FBI,
I think,

where you can really save lives
by decisions you make,

and that turned out to be
one of the most critical

correct decisions

made in the case.

- We tow the car.

And we bring it
to a Port Authority hangar

out of LaGuardia.

We bring in
our evidence response team.

In a span of approximately
six hours,

they toss
the entire car,

but then they put it together

exactly how they found it.

Then they bring it
to an impound yard

because we wanna create
the impression

that the car has been towed

from an ill*gal parking spot.

One of the items
we take out is the computer,

and they mirror the computer.

They copied everything
on the hard drive.

- This was
into the evening now.

Go home,
maybe get a little sleep.

There's no smoking craters
in Manhattan.

Let's go get a beer,
and then we're gonna go home.

I'm driving back
to my apartment

in the city, and I get a call,

and he says,
"You gotta come back."

- Ugh.
- I'm like, "What?"

- It's the worst.
- He's like,

"You gotta come back."

- And I'm like,
"What's the problem?

And he goes, "We have
bombmaking material

on the computer."

Handwritten notes
that had been scanned

into the computer,

and they look real.

- These were lab notes.
These were chemistry notes.

So I remember,
on the phone, describing

to the chemist
what's going on and all this.

They said, "This is TATP."

At that point, that is when
all of our suspicions

were just, boom, that--
- What's TATP?

Why is it important?
Why do we care that it's TATP?

- It blows sh*t up
really effectively.

You can make it
out of hydrogen peroxide.

You distill it down.
It becomes very volatile.

And it's used--
a lot of times, they'll use it

in suicide vests,

things like that,

because you can then put
shrapnel,

nails, whatever,
and it becomes

a very effective b*mb
used like that.

- Has this ever been used
in other t*rror1st events?

- Yes.
TATP was used to b*mb

the subways in Madrid.

- 191 people were k*lled

and more than 1,800 others
were injured.

- Then al-Qaeda used
the same sort of b*mb

a year later in London.

- 52 innocent lives
were taken,

many more injured.

- These are
household chemicals.

You can buy them at Home Depot.

You can buy them
at a beauty salon.

You can buy them
at a pool store.

So what happens?

We are asking now to go out

and actually do interviews

of every place that sells this

in the tristate area.

All along, we've been
balancing our case work

with the risk to the public.

Now we have no choice
but to tip our hand.

But nothing substantial
turns up,

and no one has seen
anything suspicious.

- Is it gonna be
a suicide mission?

Is it gonna be, you know,
a mission

where he's gonna escape

and do multiple missions?

And it's logical.
Look, you've got

a guy making TATP.

Okay, I'm--you know,
you get a backpack.

You get a backpack.
Everybody get on the subway

and blow something up.

We have no idea.

We did know that before
he moved to Denver,

Najibullah used
to have a coffee cart

down by Wall Street.
- Yeah.

- So we were thinking,
could you put

an expl*sive device
in a coffee cart

by Wall Street?

- Why didn't you arrest him?

Why isn't he arrested
at this point?

- The best, juiciest stuff
is all classified,

and we're still not ready
to make all that info public.

- We got through September 11
with no smoking craters,

thank goodness,

but it's still not over.

- So we got the car.
We've done the search.

The computer's been scanned.

But then we got
a little bit of bad luck.

- A law enforcement officer
told his source,

"Hey, if you hear anything
about, you know,

this guy Najibullah Zazi,
we wanna know about it."

- And the source knew
Najibullah's family.

- Okay.
- And then they wound up

talking to Najibullah himself,

which is, of course,
being recorded by the FBI,

and all of a sudden, it's like,

we have just been compromised.

- It was an "oh sh*t" moment.
There's no doubt.

Everyone was like, "Oh, my God.
What the hell is going on?"

- And shortly after that,
Najibullah--he's on the phone,

making plans
to go back to Denver.

- He's spooked
that we're on to him.

- We're still tracking him,
of course,

and we learned
that when he got home--

- He tried to destroy
his computer.

Remember that?
- Yeah, mm-hmm.

- So he's thinking,
"Ooh, I dodged a b*llet.

They didn't find
my computer."

- We're also hoping
he might make a call

to Adis or Zarein

that we would pick up
on surveillance,

and that would help
bolster our case.

The Denver office
brings him in to talk,

they release him,

and then the media
picks up on it

that they've got
a suspected t*rror1st.

- A reporter seeks him out,
finds him.

- Sir...

- When "9 Wants To Know"
found Najibullah Zazi

at his apartment in Aurora,

he and his attorney insisted

he was not a t*rror1st.

- Of course not.
I have nothing to do

with al-Qaeda and--any link

or anything with al-Qaeda.

- Then the Denver office
searches Zazi's apartment.

- Today's raid
was at an apartment building

in the Denver suburb
of Aurora,

home to a man
authorities say

is at the center
of the alleged al-Qaeda plot.

- And that triggers
another interview

where he's dodging questions
about bombmaking

on his computer.

- When they confronted him
about the computer,

he did not know
that we had taken the computer

and got all
of his bombmaking notes.

- That was a great interview.
- Yeah.

- I mean,
he was denying things,

but you can tell,
as things go along,

he sees the writing
on the wall.

- That's when I think
he had his, you know,

"aha" moment,
like "They've got me."

- And while he doesn't
cooperate at that point,

he's arrested.

- Najibullah Zazi's
under arrest,

and then he is brought
back to New York...

- Mm-hmm.
- And...

- Terror suspect
Najibullah Zazi

is in a New York City jail

after pleading not guilty

to charges of planning
a b*mb attempt.

- But over
the next three weeks,

he gives up
the entire plot.

Once he got through his mind
that he was gonna cooperate,

he cooperated.

- Zazi has admitted

that he brought expl*sives

to New York City
on September 10th, 2009,

and that he and others intended

to detonate them on board

the New York City
subway system.

This was one
of the most serious

t*rror1st threats to our nation

since September the 11th, 2001.

- What happens then?
- We had Adis and Zarein

under surveillance because
they're still dangerous

and unpredictable,

and we still have
to build a case against them.

- We've gotta dig and dig
and dig and figure out,

how are we gonna take

everything that we've learned
so far

and put it into a package

that we can prosecute
a case with?

- And that takes months.

At one point, we send
some agents

over to Adis' house in Queens

with a warrant.

- The FBI returned
to his home yesterday

for a second search,
looking for his passport.

- We wanna get his passport
so that we can look

at where he's traveled
officially.

While agents are inside,
searching the apartment,

Adis waits outside
and looks at the warrant,

realizes that he's being
investigated for terrorism,

and kind of loses his mind.

And he starts running
and jumping in the car.

Well, we have surveillance
on that car,

and if you know
the Whitestone Expressway,

it's not the fastest expressway
you've ever dealt with.

And he gets on the phone,
and he calls 911.

- And he goes,
"My name is Adis.

My name is Adis."

- 911 operator responds.

- And, I mean, it's like
out of the cartoons.

And he goes, "My name is Adis.

I love death more
than you love life."

And then it goes silent.

- We now know
what he had wanted to do

was commit an act of jihad.

He wanted to--and you can take
my beer for this...

- He wanted to take his car

and make a fiery b*mb out of it

by crashing it
into another car.

Luckily for us,
he doesn't understand physics.

There's a car in front of him
driving in the same direction.

And he's going
around 55, 60 miles an hour,

this car's going
around 45, 50 miles an hour,

and instead of a fiery flame,
it's a fender bender.

- So now it's a traffic jam.

Adis gets out of the car,

and he starts to run,

and he's gonna jump
over the median.

Behind him is an off-duty
Suffolk County police officer

who sees this,
yells at him, and goes,

"What are you doing?
Get back to your car."

Adis, for whatever reason,
stops and returns to his car.

The cop goes,
"Why are you running away?

It's a fender bender."

Adis basically answers,

"The FBI wants me
for terrorism,"

and he turns and he points,
and running down the road

are the surveillance guys.

'Cause of all the traffic
that got stuck,

they can't drive.

And when the cop sees this,

he pulls his g*n

and puts Adis on the ground
and prones him out.

And Adis is now
under arrest...

but what for?

Leaving the scene
of a vehicular incident.

- That's awesome.

- About an hour
after Medunjanin's apartment

was searched,
the 24-year-old Flushing man,

who reportedly has been
under surveillance by the FBI,

was involved
in a traffic accident

near the Whitestone Bridge.

One law enforcement official
says Medunjanin

may have been either
flustered by

or trying to avoid
police surveillance.

He was treated
for minor injuries

and then taken into custody

by the Joint Terrorism
Task Force.

- They bring Adis back
to our location.

He waives everything.
He waives the right to counsel.

He waives the right
to be presented.

He waives everything.

And during that time,
he gives up the entire case.

He says who they met with
over in Pakistan.

- Oh.
- And he said

when they came back,

the goal was to blow up

a New York City subway

and that they wanted to live

and do another one.

But at the same time,
we realize

that we still have Zarein
out on the road,

who's the taxicab driver.
- Yep.

- Surveillance has him
driving around Times Square.

And we just had a guy
try to k*ll people

on a highway.

If Zarein hears about this,

what's he gonna do?

So we immediately have
a felony car stop done of him

by our surveillance teams.
They arrest him.

Najibullah--he cooperated.

And later on, Zarein
basically gives up

the entire case too.

So it looks like the case
is all sewn up,

but then Adis recants

and decides that he's
gonna remain loyal

to al-Qaeda.

His own testimony
used against him,

because he was given
his rights.

Zarein testified against him,

and Najibullah
has testified against him.

- Bad breakup.

- A lot of what we do
is reactive.

When you can be proactive
on a person

that you believe to be
a true t*rror1st

that wants to k*ll

your friends and neighbors
in New York,

it's real.
- Absolutely.

- It doesn't get more real
than that.

- Thank goodness
you don't have to make

those decisions every day,

but when they come around,
you just wanna answer the bell.