Danger Close | David McCloskey

0:00This episode was brought to you by Hux Works Safety Company, innovators of flow through technology. Miss Ali ends up getting rolled up by the FBI prior to night. And if the FBI had gotten access to his computer, if they had gotten the flights of war to actually go in and search this thing, they would have been able to see his connections inside the plot, connections to Okita, and potentially unraveling the Navy. But the FBI doesn't get the phisal. They decide it's not worthy of it, and he is languishing in prison in the U.S. and the J.O.P. cell on the Board of the G.S. 11th. Thank you for doing this. I'm so excited. Thanks for having me up. Absolutely. Well, first off, congratulations on all the books and the rest is classified.

1:03Thank you. So good upcoming London station, which just go. So I have it right here. I've not cracked it yet because it just arrived last night, but I'm looking forward to it. I have all your other books. Of course, I bought them. I can only find two as I was running around. Like said, like a crazy person. I do have them all because I always buy them first week for you because I know how important that is to others for those first week. You know indeed. Yes. Yes. Well, congratulations on all that. But so before we get to London station though, this podcast is going to drop next week. So it's no a couple days before before 9 11 and then that's a couple of weeks before your before London station comes out. But I wanted to really dive into the rest is classified specifically the six part series you just did on 9 11. I've listened to them all because I'm a member of the declassified club. Oh, man. Thank you. I appreciate that. I encourage everyone to do the same. Rest is classified. It's fantastic. You and Gordon Carrer, who's one of his books I have right there. Of course.

2:08Yeah. You guys are so great on this on this podcast. I learned so much. And I thought I knew a lot about 9 11. Of course, a lot of these books are about it. How about that? Yeah. But I learned so much by listening to so you guys in the six part series plus the Michael Morel, whose book I have here. The Michael Morel bonus episode, the man who briefed the president. That's why you have to do the declassified clubs that you can get the bonus episodes. That's right. You don't have to wait for the next episodes to come out in many cases. So those are all fantastic. The man who briefed the president. So I learned so much by listening to you guys on the six part series. And I hope everybody takes some time to listen to it to subscribe, come a declassified member. And then listen to the six part series, especially around the 25th. And I couldn't believe 20. And it's crazy, isn't it? It's like hard to imagine. I know. It's absolutely insane. So, so yeah, I want to talk about what I've been to that. And also, we should probably say that we've known each other for years.

3:09I think we first spoke before my first book came out. I think you were moving on from. I'm going to give everybody a little background on on what you did before becoming an author and and podcast host. Yeah, so I worked at the CIA as an analyst, primarily focused on on the Middle East, on Syria, Lebanon, Iraq. Did a little bit of time in the counterterrorism center. And I left the agency. I took a job as a manager consultant, which I'm still recovering from. I think, you know, sort of spiritually, physically. And then I decided. That's how your name is, by the way. You're very kind, Jack. I had written a little bit in this period right after I left the agency before I took this this corporate job. And it was, it started as a way to kind of, I think process a lot of the stuff coming out of the time working on the Syrian Civil War, living in Damascus, prior to the war.

4:15I just found I had no history. Right. I've been an avid reader my entire life, my dad is a very written book. But I had never written creatively before and I just kind of took this period and said, I'm just going to, I'm going to see what this is like to start writing. I don't even exactly know where the German idea came from, but I started doing it. And I got addicted to it. I just, you know, it was this process of life you get into flow and then six, seven, eight hours disappears. And by the end of that summer, I had, I basically had the guts of what would become my first novel. But I didn't, I didn't go on and be kind of publishing journey. Then I literally put the thing in a drawer to this corporate job. And then got burned out, came back and I was like, I look, I'm going to take some time. I'm actually just going to write this thing. And so I dusted it off, you know, like a lot of first drafts, it was absolutely terrible. And it required a lot of work, but that thing became my first novel to mask a station. And since that came out, I've basically been writing it then a few years ago.

5:18And I started doing this podcast. So we do the rest is classified on kind of real espionage stories. And then of course, the novels I write, the, the one coming out later this month is called London station. They're obviously fiction. So it's like taking real world espionage and care to spread about it and trying to spin, you know, fun fictional plots out of it. Yeah, and that's September 29th for those listening. And this will come out, like I said a couple days before 9-11. But yeah, it's so crazy just that it's been 25 years and without just think of, I mean, I mean, listen to your podcast listening to, you know, all the, and we'll get to this at the end. Some of those dots that could have maybe connected to some of those just strange things like one of the hijackers getting pulled over, you know, by the wild, isn't it? Things like that. There's just, it's just, it's so crazy to think that without 9-11 or something had happened to prevent that somewhere in the lead up to 9-11. There would have been no wars in Afghanistan, no wars in Iraq, other places around the world, other second, third or effects that came not just on the world stage, but, but domestically as well.

6:28So to think about that, what a different world it would be without 9-11, I think this 25th anniversary is a natural time to reflect on that and then pull some lessons from the lead up to 9-11, 9-11 itself, and then the wars that that followed and your podcast is an incredible, not just a primer, but it's based primer for the wars post 9-11. But it's such a great foundation that people can listen to and then you sign all these books and sources that you guys dove into and put this thing together. But, but, but let's quickly set up bin Laden for those who are maybe a little younger listening to this. I mean, there could be people listening to this that weren't born on 9-11. And this is ancient history for them. So maybe set up bin Laden just a little bit as we go in here. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, just to that, what went on the ancient history, one of the things that I did as I was preparing the episodes was I went back and I looked at the census data to try to figure out what percentage of Americans don't have any real recollection of 9-11.

7:36And the answer is that depending on sort of when you think people actually start to develop core memories, it's somewhere between 30 and 40% of our society today who either weren't born on 9-11 or were like four or five, six years old. And so for me, you know, for a lot of us who grew up in that era who actually have memories of that day itself, it was it was this realization that there is a significant plurality of the country that actually engaged with this in history textbooks and hearing stories about it and grew up in a world that was totally shaped by this day and all of the events that came out of it. But don't don't remember it. So it's just it's this like a pockle moment where history shifts and turns and yet for somebody people it is history. Right. So I mean, bin Laden, right? He's he's I find I mean, he's a really evil character, but I find him to be a very interesting character. Right. So he's he is the son. There we go. There we go. Right there. Yeah. There he is. Yeah, this is after the embassy bombings right there. Yeah. Yeah.

8:47So so he's a Saudi just born this kind of marginal son to the Habibid Laden. There's this really becomes this massively successful construction magnet and Saudi Arabia. And when I say one of the sons, I think the number of he has I think bin Laden has maybe 50 siblings by the time all is said and done. So he's got a massive and massively complicated family. But longs kind of on the ends of it. He is a shy kid. He's tall. He's pretty reserved growing up. He becomes very devout religiously and like so many people who get who end up engaged with or sort of you know in his case, founding a major terrorist organization. His sort of road to this is through personal radicalization with the school teacher. Who he comes into contact with when he's at school in jettin is a Syrian school to you, sure.

9:48You know, sort of Muslim brotherhood aligned guy who's extremely charismatic, who uses these kind of after school meetings and soccer programs to essentially find kids who are interested then to enjoy these prayer groups and bin Laden joins these groups becomes. You know, very devout so much so that people in his family are noticing how often he prays the fasting, this kind of religious devotion and then he grows up in this period where in particular 1970, the world that he's living in ships because you have in a single year, you have the Iranian revolution, right, which shows that you know, obviously it's she and bin Laden is soon. It shows this kind of political Islam on the marks this idea that you could actually have, you know, an Islamic movement overtake a state, you have at the siege of the great mosque in Mecca where radicals taken over for weeks and there's this bloody standoff and battle to get them out.

10:55And then you have the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 79 so bin Laden comes of age in this period where you have this kind of strange paradox of like Islam is being threatened by the Soviet infidel, so we're marching into Afghanistan and it's also on the march and bin Laden is very deeply influenced in this period by the ideas of a Egyptian name, Syed Kato, who comes up with, I think what now does that. Because we've most of us have grown up in this world where there's terrorist movements, there's all kind of franchises, we have bin Laden's ideology. The coup d'avidiology at this time, the means of getting, he's hanged by the Egyptians, right, so he doesn't necessarily sit in this through but the idea is basically that all of these so-called Muslim regimes in Egypt, in Saudi and Jordan, are apostate government. So apostate governments who have allied themselves with the Americans and it is the duty of all Muslims to fight against it.

12:02And bin Laden, I think through this Syrian school teacher and his education in this extracurricular education, comes into contact with these ideas, so by the time he's in Afghanistan, you have this guy who, he's not the founder of al-Qaeda at this point, he's a really marginal player in the Afghan war. But he's got these big ideas about the nature of jihad, the obligation of Muslims to fight, and he's starting to help pour money and resources into these kind of movements that have the crucible at that period in Afghanistan. And I'm even clear something up because we will for sure, even without anyone listening to the podcast, we'll for sure get this comment. So CIA backing of bin Laden in Afghanistan against the Soviets, true or false? Absolutely false. This is a very common misconception. I know that because I'm a member of the declassified club, but for those who might not be, there is absolutely no evidence.

13:03And of course, if you know anyone with a bit of a conspiratorial bent, we'll say of course the former CIA guy is making this case, right? But there is absolutely no evidence that bin Laden ever received body or weapons from the CIA. And it's an important detail in this period is that the way that the agency supported the Mujahideen was through Pakistan, right? The body of material went through Pakistan's ISI, their intelligence agency. And there's been a lot of big again to this. There is no evidence that the agency ever ever armed or supported him, although of course the agency was filing weapons and body to the to the mujahideen by the Russians. And talk to me a little bit about the importance of the first goal for on bin Laden because we'll kind of come full circle to that at the end with whether he achieved the stated goal of 9-11. Yeah, so this is a so that the Soviets leave Afghanistan in 89.

14:05And by this point, bin Laden has founded this organization called out kind of the base. And it's this kind of, you know, it's a military geodist organization that all of the sudden with the Soviets leave is kind of lacking in enemy, right? It's lacking purpose. And bin Laden who, you know, this he's a Saudi citizen in good standing at this point. He goes back to the kingdom in the early 90s, a little bit of drift. And where's what ends up happening is that Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait. And bin Laden goes and the Saudi royal family at this point is terrified that Saddamay actually invaded the kingdom or you know stir up trouble in the country. And he's a trouble in the Eastern province that is that's you know, majority she had been. Bin Laden shows up and basically proposes that he marshal a defense of the kingdom with this new group al Qaeda.

15:09And he has essentially laughed out of the palace. The Saudis invite the Americans in. We ended with hundreds of thousands of American troops in Saudi to prepare for the invasion of Kuwait and then afterward. And bin Laden sees this as I think he sees this as a simple act. And the end and idea that somehow that this sort of the Saudi government has not had faith in his brain of Islam to repell the you know the in you know Saddam's invasion and to keep all of these infidel Americans off of Saudi soil. So bin Laden is absolutely furious. And this is a period where you start to see this. It is very interesting. Kind of twist on the goods about theology because bin Laden says okay, he's embarrassed obviously by this rejection. And he says look.

16:10Maybe the way that we actually. Compel political change across the Islamic world and and reinstate legitimate Islamic governance is by toppling these governments and maybe the way we do that is by striking at the head what you call the head of the snake the thing that was backing all of these governments up which he sees as the United States of America. And so you start to see in the 90s. Out kind of attacks against us kind of way stations in in Yemen because at that time we're involved in in Somalia. And I have the famous battle of Mokadishu where the Somali small intelligence and a downing a number of black hole helicopters and they're actually there's there's some evidence that I'll kind of affiliated trainers who were involved in that.

17:17And we leave as most of your listeners, we believe Somalia after that and bin Laden starts to think you know it is this kind of weird paradox because he sees the United States as powerful enough to. Prop up and support all of these regimes in the region and he also sees us as a paper tiger so he starts his ideology starts to gel the ground. Al Qaeda is a force to. The United States to depart the Islamic world and you know it's it's an interesting way to come back to it's an interesting ledger to look at because of course after 9-11 the exact opposite happens. Exactly exactly and of course he had a bit of 1983 to look at as well. Totally. And then we have a big game afterward and then leave kind of as quietly as you can in early 1984 but so you mentioned the hotel bombings in Yemen in 93 and then there's there's this is what's you know some I guess big city detectors might call clues but there's proclamation to kill Americans that they've come from bin Laden.

18:24There are the embassy bombings in East Africa in 1998 the USS Cole bombing in 2000 clearly X of war and yet. If there's any response there's there's no under the USS Cole there's there's a charlie response really to the East embassy the East Africa embassy bombings so we have these things this is a lead up. There are when people talk about intelligence failure on asking about this little later on but I mean you don't have to all you have to do is watch the news to connect some of these dots you don't need it's op secret briefing from the head of the CIA to kind of start start looking at this and thinking this guy is saying he's declared war on us look he's killed Americans he's killed people that stage apartment. And maybe we should take a little more a little more serious look at this I mean that that's just it's kind of wild that we have those those escalating attacks and really don't change policy posture even though some people at the at the agency and elsewhere are making a lot of noise about it.

19:25A lot of noise I think that's an important point because there's a whole below the water line effort to like throughout the 1990s that does build up to understand what al Qaeda is to try to map its kind of organization and it's order of battle and to penetrate it and and and attempt you know they're probably four at least four attempts throughout the late 1990s. To either kill bin Laden with a cruise missile strike or in some cases using agency assets among travel networks in Afghanistan to try to.

20:36Really focused on bin Laden kind of the agency develops by the eve of night 11 well over 100 sources in Afghanistan you know a bunch of travel networks as I said to kind of do things right to conduct covert action but your point on the on the policy side I think is really a fair one because the agency didn't have the covert action authorities to kill him until after September 11. And it also speaks and I think just important point to make on how intelligence actually works which I know you'll be you know intimately aware of is that there's a big difference between having sources inside its terrorist organization and having sources inside a lot because these organizations are super suspicious highly compartmentalized and what al Qaeda called the planes operation which became September 11 was not like everyone inside the organization was getting a brief on it. Is a very small group of people and the agency to unfortunately the point was was was not inside.

21:38Right and and there was when we talk about those few possible opportunities to kill bin Laden cashier bin Laden pre pre 9 11 once again it's also interesting to think about well what if it just hadn't been ground up people asking to do those things and it had been a direct of down. That means that there's not just Alex station and a few other other people trying to push something up from the tactical level know it's more like okay this what other plans could have possibly been developed between let's say let's just say 93 or let's just let's just say 98 even yeah yeah. 2001 like what other possible operations would have been thought of of or about or pushed up the chain of command for approval or disapproval during that time frame. If that was a focus rather than just people at that tax I'll call the tactical level looking at this intelligence connecting these dots and saying hey there's something something is coming and it's amazing going back through I didn't know all of the different people who really said things like I think it was was the FBI agent who said what is it going to take is going to take someone flying a plane into the Pentagon.

22:52Yeah for you to notice of this and of course there's there's other executives senior level executives that are trying to meet with with when there's a change over between the Clinton Bush administrations that are trying to meet with see other senior level people to put this on their radar of course there's the with August 6 2001 president president David brief that's that's been declassified and it's entirely I think it might be the only one but I mean there are all these even even Peter Bergen he writes a letter in August of 2001 to the New York Times and he says something along the lines that there's attack is imminent essentially. Yeah so it's not like it's was a complete surprise and it's just incredible to think about what could have been done with the with the people at the agency if they had been given that directive in the 90s to go track this guy down arrest him kill him whatever it whatever it might be instead of just people trying to put this on some senior executives radar so that they could take action the missed opportunities that aren't there because the focus wasn't there that's the part that really stands out to me.

23:56Yeah I agree you know in one case there was positive identification of been lot in and other than we should remind people of is that at this point in time prior to 9 11 there were no armed drones the threat that arms predator was in development but it was not actually on the battlefield prior to night 11 and at some point in I want to say it's 99 the agency finds been a lot in. But he's having a meeting with members of the emorati like like not like see your but like you know prince emorati prince links were out on this falconing trip in in Afghanistan and you know it's a great example of like you know at the time the idea that you were going to schwack some members of a friendly states royal family and get the not in the clinton administration is not going to pull the trigger so you have the.

24:56You have dismissed opportunity the other angle to this and we probably don't want to get to for now this round at all but it's important to just put yourself in the you know the search shoes of policy. Time is that what we're doing visa we've been lauded in Afghanistan which by the way is happening. Those travel necklace we're talking about are like a bit shabby soot's Tajik right malicious and things like that there's a whole balance in a relationship with Pakistan at that point in time for the back hate. So and. The concern on the part of the clinton administration is a bit at the time which I think is a reason why what do we do with loose nukes in Pakistan. And and trying to prop up the Pakistani government to avoid this kind of nightmare scenario where some militia warla reverts access to the Pakistani new arsenal and so there was this complicated sort of chessboard of policy decisions going on in the clinton administration that also made a harder. To take very specific and direct action against been lauded but I think that you know that you're right that it was this kind of policy makers.

26:04I think you almost know the that 11 commission called that 11 affiliate imagination and we can talk about why I think that's a crap you know it's a crap line even though it's been made famous I think there was though I think this broad sense not inside the countertare some center of the agency and certainly not. You know among members of the clinton and see who are working on terrorism but I think there was almost a sense at the time of like. You're telling me that this organization of cave dwellers is good it has declared war against us that are coming for us like what does that even look like or mean and that I think maybe was some of the failure of national sort of consciousness or imagination to think that a group like this could pull was an actual threat to the United States. America's good remember right on 11 all this stuff is happening over there right we're getting hit in in Yemen we're getting hit in the stasrica been logged in this declared war in us in 96 from these sort of mud hot complexes in Afghanistan so it's the sense of like that's the kind of terrorism is something that happens outside of our borders it's not something that happens within our borders.

27:15Yeah yeah I think some of these guys needed to read some more thrillers yeah I don't know what that. Yeah well dead of honor watching this come on come on dead of honor I mean you know playing flies into you know joint session of Congress I think dead of honor comes out at 94 I believe you know so yeah you know again really looked at thriller writers for the for the you know the horrors that are coming because the human imagination does no bounds or right. There it is tell me a little bit about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed we have some news on him I think it was this morning or yesterday maybe about his upcoming was confession being thrown out and then is trying to move into it is moving to 2028 now but regardless tell me a little bit about him and how he plays into this and a little bit on his background that that leads us to night 11. Yeah it's funny because we you know you can't talk about 9.11 without bin Laden and his organization but the guy who actually is the project manager is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who is as you say still in Gimba right I mean still there.

28:26Um college at Mohammed is is an engineer by training he grows up and quit as family has some Pakistani heritage and he is you know bin Laden is this kind of like aesthetic. Bin Laden isn't a lot of fun just you know mass murdering a silent bin Laden is going to like this sort of personal life in the details of how he interaction is family like this dude was was just awful. Um college at Mohammed is a bit more kind of gregarious he's kind of a show been he's he's radicalized pretty early on and actually he's his nephew is Ramzi you said who attempts to blow up the world trade center in 1993. And bizarrely college at Mohammed as he's doing his you know civil engineering actually studies at a small Baptist college in South Carolina called Murphries Barrow college I believe then he does another he does something else at a some text school small text school in North Carolina so you actually spend time in the States and it radicalizes him even further he comes out of these experiences with I think a pretty deep and unabiding.

29:42hatred of of Americans personally a lot of it connects to our for him to our you know support for for Israel and he becomes this kind of terrorist entrepreneur like he's coming up with these big ideas for for terrorist plots and he's got this kind of network of you know logistical and financial facilitators to try to make these things happen and he is not a member of Elkide. But he and been law and kind of float some of the same circles and college shake Mohammed who's sort of forever known as KSM ends up getting a meeting with been law and probably on the back of his you know sort of bonus feed days being Ramzi you said uncle and the initial idea for 9-11 is very much KSM said he's obsessed with planes and he has this crazy idea. Where he's gonna he is his team will will hijack like 10 planes at once they'll kill all of the adult male passengers on board some of the plans of the flooded buildings and then KSM is going to land up one plane get off the plane and give this big rousing speech condemning the US for its support for Israel and all of these apostate regimes and the region and been a lot of this kind of like.

31:07Yeah like you know maybe come up with a plan where you're not the main character and also been law and at this point in time isn't totally comfortable yet in his afghan sanctuary and so they kind of circle each other for a few more years and then post post the embassy bombings in East Africa been lot and is feeling good he's he's secure in Afghanistan his relationship with the Taliban is pretty pretty strong and he has. And he's kind of been warming his way into bin Laden's inner circle building trust in particular with bin Laden's military commander and he comes back to bin Laden bin Laden says basically edits the plan down to smaller number of planes made for. So let's do those KSM let's do it's okay SM starts to run this thing out of a safe house in Karachi Pakistan and he becomes the kind of central clearinghouse for the money and and finding people which is going to be a really really important part of this plot is how do you find the people to do.

32:14If I were to mentioning also operation or what do they call it. Bajinka yeah yeah. You said and Philippines and that that plan getting thwarted but it's still the idea is still the idea survives. Yeah exactly and this is you know we should say like you know clancy and other thriller writers we're seeing ahead to airplanes being weaponized I think there's even a. I'm sorry to think about this it old Charles McCary spy novel from the late 70s where he talks about airliners being used as weapons and float into buildings so this this idea is out there but but KSM's you know sort of. Sick genius in a way you mentioned the Bajinka plot is like how do we weaponize these things let's not I mean up to this point most of most plane hijack is. Are like you know a leftist group takes a plane there might be a little bit of violence on board as they take it but the point is to take all of the you know the crew and the passengers hostages land the plane somewhere make political demands and negotiate.

33:18The release and what KSM is realized is that if you have a fully fueled 767 that's flying the transcontinental or trans pacific or Chinese blanket flight that things got almost 12000 pounds of fuel on so that thing is a fuel bomb and and you can use it to tremendous effect if you can find if you can find the people who will actually pilot it and the muscle that will take the plane out. And that leads us to a recoup first would have been out in hope to achieve we touched on it before but he he thinks somehow without studying history without maybe looking at Pearl Harbor and thinks that attack on the homeland will somehow. Reduce or eliminate our support for governments in the in the Middle East. Yeah this calculation and then of course there are there's the revisionist history on his own part later on. So when you get to say oh this was my plan. This is my plan a long way to bring the West bring the United States into these quagmires here in Iraq and Afghanistan and bleed them to death type of a thing.

34:28That revisionist on his part a few years in when he gets the he gets to take a breath look around it and kind of modify his stance but where do you think that came from I mean obviously we have we talked about we talked about no good issue we talked about the response to the embassy bombings are lack there of the no response to the coal so you can kind of see it there but. The homeland versus and overseas attack there's a big difference. Yeah there is and you're I think you're spot on that it's this kind of 9 11 I think for him at the time I think it's important to think about it how he would have thought about it at the time because you're exactly right that he kind of used this revisionist history in later years that that absolutely didn't reflect his thinking of the late 90s and early 2000s as he's approving this thing. You know it's this kind of tactical success that ends up creating a massive strategic failure for a kind as an organization and I think I think been lot in was was he he massively underestimated the extent to which we would we would treat as two very different things bombing our embassies in East Africa and an attack on.

35:49New York City and Washington on 9 11 I think I don't think he understood that those two things would be perceived and felt very differently by the American government in the population and so you get a very different response and it was a massive strategic misconduct relation because I think you know one one very interesting. I think you know way to think about it is that on the eve of 9 11 been lot in his city of the middle of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is how the Taliban prefer to the country so in some ways he's he's living in the middle of an experiment of the kind of governance that he wants to spread throughout the Islamic world and his attack 9 11 set back that experiment. By 20 years because the Taliban does not come back to rule come together until we departed 2021 so right in that little petry dish you can say this guy actually this was a massive own goal for the big vision that been lot had about how he would help to shape and transform the Islamic.

37:02He did exactly the opposite and he destroyed the only existing experiment with that that existed on the face of the planet 2000. Yeah he certainly did let's talk about the recruited the hijackers how do you recruit someone to fly a plane into a building specifically Muhammad at the Hamburg cell let's talk about talk about that whole process what do that look like and also for the that you got you own so much more detail with with Gordon in the rest of his history series on this. The rest is classified history on this it's so good a way needs to listen to that because it's just absolutely in around 9 11 and parents listen to this and encourage their kids to do the same thing they're junior high high school certainly the college and post college people to listen to this especially those ages that didn't live through us. And even for those of us who did like like me I learned so much from for listening to your six part series on this it's it's amazing thank you how did they recruit these guys how does this come to come to fruition because the key to it is recruitment yeah yeah yeah it's it's a very it's an interesting process I I found myself really going down the rabbit hole on.

38:17The process of radicalization and the psychology of how you can fit someone who in most of these cases these guys they're not they're not mentally ill I wouldn't call them brainwashed either we could talk about that distinction but they think they they all go through this very. The very typical process of of radicalization now it should say you know mahabata ends up being the kind of day to day operational plan or he's an Egyptian he's living in Hamburg Germany he in this group that become known as the Hamburg cell in this in this very sort of strict to vow kind of is you know a little Islamic community in Hamburg are are looking around. In in 2000 for how they can how they can take I think how they would see it is how can they take their faith to the next level and we talked about these ideas around sort of offensive jihad and side could to his his philosophy around going out and fighting you know fighting in Fidel fighting in Fidel regimes at this point in time of 2000 the big fights in sheshening.

39:35This is where you have you have air of fighters in sheshening of fighting against what this is a Russian occupation and ought to in this group and this will be true of the we should say 15 of the Niger High Jackers of Saudis poor Saudis who are coming from these really fringe marginal parts of remote parts of the kingdom. And the way a lot of these guys get into the planes operation is because they say I want to go fight in sheshening at this point in time the air commander in fetchia is like I don't want any more fighters to come there getting absolutely wrecked by the Russians and anyone who's going is basically being turned into the cat in five so he's like don't come here so a lot of these guys end up in these camps in Afghanistan and the process of radicals. So the way that you know what I'm saying is that you're totally cut off you were totally cut off from family loved ones people who might say like.

40:38Way to pass I might question some of these beliefs or these ideas that you have about what you're doing there's no sort of social contact that's I it's very similar to the way that you know cults. You just connect from their families because you lose these outside social you know relationships that sort of feed you and help you think about the world in different ways and many ways soft and you end up with you know hundreds and thousands of young men who end up in these camps in Afghanistan and the the hamburger guys are interesting to guide because they have lived in the West right they have clean pass boards they understand how to travel. They're all you know they're all students they're all they're smart right and been a lot of instantly identifies ought to because big one would kind of make tours of the camps and you know make ridiculous speeches and things like that. He sees ought to and instantly realizes that he's got someone here who can be really valuable in the plans operation as a pilot is opt on these guys are smart they could go learn.

41:38Take flight training and become the pilots the other Saudis who show up. You know are there are end up being recruited as the muscle and they've all again the depending these situations where the for for months and months of months they're totally removed from their you know sort of social networks and Saudi and they're all filled with this idea that and I know again I don't think I think it's important to say it. The idea that if you were involved in a more or two operation you are instantly forgiven of your sins you are instantly brought into paradise you receive significant sexual rewards from this act you know for for young guys who are. You know living and breathing this stuff and you know and particularly guys would grown up in Saudi where religion is like air you know it's just all the ground you can't you don't leave that religion.

42:38This is really attractive and so a lot of these guys end up when they get into the camps they essentially end up taking boxes on a kind of HR forms to say that they're interested in more of operations and so they end up getting funneled into this highly compartmentalized. Piece of your organization is trying to plan again what they call the planes operation and tell me a little bit of some of the red flags during this time some of the CIA FBI. I was supposed to be cooperative type team investigation memos that that weren't said that some thought were said some that didn't get said. Yeah potential CIA recruitment operation never came to fruition with maybe one of the one of the high jackers something a little bit about what's going on during this time frame let's say from maybe late 2000 really 2001 up until up until 911. Yeah this is the this is the part that I mean even when he five years on it's still really hard to know exactly what happened but a lot of it focuses on two of the Saudis who end up involved in this operation one guy didn't call it a meddhar and another name to waffle husband and we're not going into the sort of you know to talk of all the crazy detail essentially what ends up happening is both of these guys.

44:02Get into the states. The agency knows that one of them is in the states and knows that other one has a us visa they don't actually know that meddhar was gotten into the states but they know that these two guys were who participated in a and alkyda connected essentially terrorist planning meeting in fallal and for Malaysia in early 2000 these two guys had gone to that meeting and then had gotten into the state. And there is this very murky set of interactions inside the CIA's counterterrorism center around who and when you know who is informed about this when they're informed and you know basically what ends up happening is that there's an FBI special agent who's detailed to the counterterrorism center who right in the state of the state. The counterterrorism center who writes up a memo to send over to the bureau to say that you know one of these guys is in the state one of them has as a visa and it seems that even though the many of the agency officers will swear that that memo was sent that it doesn't seem like it was sent and that's where you know we get that I think we speculated the pod about.

45:28Was there an agent was there a thought that the agency might actually be able to pitch recruit one of these guys and then turn them back in and run it inside of kaita that doesn't seem to have happened and it is a bit of speculation on our part but the net result of this is that the FBI throughout the entirety of 2000 and then up until I think it's August of 2001. Doesn't know any of this none of this has been sent over to the bureau and you know it's one of the hard parts about the stories that talk about because you have to start thinking and counterfactuals what would it what would it have you know if that information had been sent over earlier what. Would it really have really changed you know the bureau's behavior would would anything have actually happened differently would be a rolled up part of the plot but not all of it I mean you could spin out in a dozen different counterfactuals but. The result is that because of this you know this functional relationship between the agents in the FBI and a whole bunch of other kind of details around the way the FBI manages information at that point in time and things like that and you just you don't end up with with that information in the hands of special agents.

46:44Until August of 2001 and by then it's it's probably too late. Yeah and tell me a little bit more about the the flight schools that these guys want to and some of their instructors and the questions that that they had because I think that part really stands out to people how do these guys who didn't speak very very good English English happens to be a prerequisite for being a pilot as international language obviously and how did all of these guys. Go to these different flight schools and raise red flags within structures and once again not it didn't really go beyond that even though some I think some people call the F a to ask if a certain license was real at some point but such like schools and some of the flags that that were raised through this training. Yeah there's there were a lot you know I mean one of the pilots who's a who's a Saudi I believe in honey Hanjo or he's a legitimately terrible pilot and spoke terrible English and I think that's you know that's that is instructor went to the F a to your point was like to this guy.

47:54Forge his license because he's a horrendous pilot you also had you know that the two Saudis we talked about call it on me Darin no off all has me. They they attempt to be did end up being pilots ended up being the bus because they got demoted because they were such terrible pilots that they had to drop out of flight school and I believe it was a billion both of them essentially showed up for date one of their instruction. At a forget if they were at a flight school in California they come over to. The hope of by then but they show up and they're like we want to start on Boeing 737s and the flight instructor is like that's not how this works you start on small prop planes and we kind of work our way up and they do terribly and are only you know famously only interested in how do I fly the plane once it's up like I don't really care about the take off at landing and again the instructors are like And then his. That's weird because those two parts are the most important part and the part part right the other things are relatively easy.

49:02So you do end up with these you know flight instructors in in so to Florida he can and or men Oklahoma end up raising these issues and again it it speaks I think the fact that none of this stuff is is sort of brought together, centralized, kicked up a chain, then acted upon. You know, is in part, I mean, is it important, normal? Because we can look back on this with perfect time, silence, and it makes sense, and should have been rolled up. You know, the other piece of this is that at the time, I mean, truly, this is, it's sort of in our can detail, but it's important. When the CIA sends cable traffic out from headquarters or stations, that stuff goes in and out centrally and has worked all the way up the chain. At the time, the Bureau didn't do that. At the time, the Bureau operated with very decentralized, fragmented offices all over the US. And so there wasn't, there wasn't actually a computer that sort of data infrastructure inside the Bureau prior to that 11 to look at all that

50:07stuff coherently and just, you know, I guess you could say connect the dots. And so the stuff ends up being there, but just all these little bits and pieces that are out there in the SA staff. Yeah, I wonder what, and I feel like I've read an account of one or two of these, but it's been years. One of those, what those flight instructors thought on the morning of September 11th, when that happened. I wonder if those flight instructors went with they feel like, you know, to today. Yeah, just a side, an aside there. Yeah, we're about the potential Saudi connection. We talked about the 19 being Saudis. You hear this? That's what we get in the comments section for sure, along with the CIA funding bin Laden in Afghanistan against the Soviets. This one will be in there too about the Saudi connection, but specifically, I think they're still ongoing litigation about a facilitator. There is. There is. You can talk about him. And that's, I think that's probably one of the more direct connections, but it's once again, it's anyway, I'll let you take it from you. It is interesting. It is. It is. And of course, you know, the 9-11 commission looks at this

51:10extensively in the early 2000s, because bin Laden's a Saudi, 15 of the 19 hijackers are Saudis. And so you have these, a lot of the funding comes from donors, very wealthy private or sort of, semi-private donors in the Gulf and in Saudi. Interestingly enough, I tried to figure out, but digging into some of the Nile and Bush and how much 9-11 cost it. And it turns out that it was about 400 to 500 thousand dollars, which was less than 1% of the Okia's operating budget in 2001. So not a lot of money, but that money was coming from, you know, coming from the Gulf and coming from Saudi. So of course, it's this natural question to say, what role, if any, did the Saudi government, or did people inside the Saudi government play? And the Nile and the Commission, again, looking at this over 20 years ago, basically says that we couldn't find any evidence to suggest that there was any kind of official Saudi role or that anyone in a senior position inside the

52:13Royal Fial with the Palace, the Saudi government infrastructure, funded del Qaeda or aid in the block, right? And obviously, it's important to say bin Laden, you know, at the time of 9-11, is a sworn enemy of the House of Saudi, right? He has had his passport taken away. He has visited the banish from the kingdom. He is an enemy of the Saudi state, but, but. You have this very weird character, very shady character in Omar Al-Bayyumin, who is living in southern California in 2000, when those two Saudis, Khaled Al-Midhar, the Wafal Hamsi, show up in San Diego. And Bayyumin meets them at a restaurant shortly after they arrive. And the official narrative, you know, that I live in the Commission report, is that Bayyumin, this was a happenstance meeting. Bayyumin is Saudi. He's at this restaurant. He sees these two guys. They're Saudi,

53:18you know, they're living in southern California. He's like, how can I help you guys get connected here and get settled? Bayyumin ends up guaranteeing their lease, right? So he's actually, his signature is on their lease in their apartment in southern California. And supporting them with somebody helps them get connected into the community. Now, what's come out in this lawsuit is that Bayyumin, Bayyumin is living, by the time that 11 happens, Bayyumin is living in the UK. And his connection to the hijack actors is sort of unearthed. And eventually, British authorities end up having some conversations. And actually end up getting warrants to go in and, you know, take his notebooks and computers and things like that. And what did they find in some interesting data points here? In one of the notebooks, they find the set of equations and weird mathematical calculations. The calculations are essentially to help someone calculate the descent of an aircraft without

54:25the use of GPS. Kind of weird. Bayyumin has asked about this. He says, I just like to do equations. You know, he doesn't. As one does. He has taken a lot of videos during his time in the states. He has a video of the US Capitol where he's going around looking at the entrance as the exits, the security architecture, the layout. The Capitol was one of the targets for night 11. I mean, did a lot of one of the Capitol to be struck and it's very possible to play that went down in Shanksville was headed there. We don't know. You also have weird things like if you look at Bayyumin's bank accounts, he gets an influx of wire transfers. Sure. Paul Adalbi-Dar and Noafal has me arrive. And I think over the course of his time in the states, he ends up making over 100 calls to a few Saudi officials inside the Islamic Affairs Department of the Saudi Embassy in Bicin.

55:27So, you know, you could, when I look at a guy like Omar Al-Bayyumin, with those kind of official connections, he's also, he works for a civil aviation contractor, but he actually doesn't do any work for them and when his supervisors try to get him fired, someone higher up said, nope, don't touch him, he looks a lot like an intelligence cutout. Personal. And the very hard thing about answering this question on Saudi involvement is that I'm sure as Zubal, the lines between public and private in Saudi Arabia are not clear. They're just not clear. So, it's very possible that this guy was a Saudi until it was a cutout for some Saudi intelligence agency, but he was doing this all the side and he was doing it with support from people inside the embassy in Washington who were sympathetic to Al-Khina, right? Bayyumin may not have known about the plane's operation, it could, it's very un, you know, maybe,

56:31but it's all weird and it is exactly why there's litigation ongoing now about the Saudi government role in 9-11, I mean 25 years on pretty well. Yeah, it's an interrelation to see the end result of that, but even so, knowing what little I do about the legal system, some things are admissible and some things are not. And so, we can intelligence talk to our grip package certainly, but just like, just sort of like an intelligence breakdown on somebody's back, whatever it is. You know, you're not building it for a court, I mean, in some cases, you are, a lot of cases, you're not. So, the interesting part would be to see what was not admissible in whatever and happening with this lawsuit. That's probably the interesting part, to me anyway. How did Muhammad Atsa schedule these attacks? First off, choose the flights, and then I'll ask some more specific questions about the date and the targets. But how did he come up with who was going to go on which

57:32flights at what time and why? Yeah, so the primary logistical problem that he had to solve, Atsa, was he needed the hit at each target, the type of impact, to be as simultaneous as possible. Because if you think about a counterfactual where, you know, he's got guys on for these flights, but the time when one of them is going to hit, you know, the North Tower, the South Tower, the Pentagon, then the White House, the Capitol, those are all really stretched out. You increase the odds that the FAA is going to just do a full ground stop across the entire country and you won't get your weapons in the air, right? Or you'll end up with as actually probably happened, almost certainly happened in the, you know, in Flight 93 that crashed in the

58:36field in Chancsville by the time that flight, which was delayed, which was delayed. By the time that flight was in the air and by the time it was hijacked, the, as the passengers got hurt into the bag and flight attendants and passengers are getting on a phone call, they're realizing, because they're, you know, everyone's watching, and they realize that they're realizing what's going on and that they can act because they realize this isn't a typical hijack. So, so Ata is choosing the flights so that they're all going to strike the targets essentially at the same time. That's his, that's his goal. They're also choosing transcontinental flights because they will be loaded up with the most fuel. And again, we talked earlier about the idea that the weapon here is a fuel bomb. Ata knows that he's going to increase the destructive impact of these attacks if those planes have more fuel on them and they're loaded up for long range. He's also got to work out,

59:36you know, there's a hope, I mean, Ata, the weeks before the attack is in the sort of logistical frenzy because the other piece he's got to manage is, I mean, he's got, you know, him and 18 other guys who are hearing the states, what if one of them decides, I don't want to be part of this, I'm going to go and I'm going to go and sell this thing out to the American government. And the whole thing gets unraveled. So, he's got to manage all these people at once. So, he's got this massive logistical challenge. And I think, you know, it's interesting, he ends up going to Madrid. There's a cutout uses which is another one of his friends from Hamburg. It rhymes in Benel Sheeib, who's a Yemeni and who doesn't, as a result, doesn't get a US visa. So, he ends up being the, he sits in Europe and essentially is the sort of logistical coordinator and courier to get messages back and forth between Ata and the states and KSM in Pakistan. And Ata goes and meets with Ramsey Benel Sheeib in July of 2001. And they have this back and forth

1:00:43over the target list and the date. And it's clearly been laden is really trying to get this thing going. He wants it to happen to say, he realizes that we've got this ticking time bomb of these largely untrained, you know, Saudi guys who are camped out in these, you know, dingy apartment buildings in Florida and New Jersey. We got to go. And Ata is like, no, we're not ready yet. We're not ready yet. We need to make sure that this thing is logistically completely tied off so that we can maximize the impact. And it seems like some, at some point around, these are the third week of August 2001, Ata has become convinced that ready because that's when they start to buy the plane tickets. And for the designated flight. So, he's worked out all the time to cables and he feels confident in his guys by the third week of August. And when did they finalize that target list? And how did they switch around?

1:01:45Because I know some senior leadership wanted certain targets. And there was, there was some talk about that. How did they finalize these targets? Yeah, so the World Trade Center had always been on the list. So that, you know, you had two planes there. The Pentagon had always been on the list. But there was this kind of back and forth between, I mean, really between Ata and Kf7 then eventually did not end over what that final target would be. And it really seems to have come down to either the capital of the White House. We should say it's not actually fully resolved, which one it was. But I actually think my sense after looking at it was that Ata was also, Ata was concerned that, you know, these pilots, these guys are, these guys are on flight simulators, they're trading out there on small planes. But, you know, these are not like these guys have, they don't have, you know, thousands of

1:02:48hours of experience flying planes. And I think there was a concert on Ata's part that, that, his friend, Jarrah, who's this kind of earthy Lebanese guy who's flying the plane that ends up crashing in Shanksville might not hit the White House. And that the capital was an easier target to hit. And I think there was tension between Ata and Bin Laden, you know, in directly, if you get careers over that target has been, lot of it seems to have gone back and forth on the prioritization of the capital versus the White House. And I think Ata, making my guess is that Ata ends up picking a capital as an easier target, although we don't know. Yeah, I mean, what if text messages existed and you had a text back and forth, that'd be something? How did they finalize the date? How did it become September 11th? I think Ata, I think it was the culmination again by that third week of August.

1:03:52Ata sang, we've got the guys locked down, I got the timetables worked out, and we have the requisite amount of flight training for me to feel confident in this. And he ends up having this, you know, very cagey email interaction with his friend, Ramsey Binalsheeb, where he communicates the date. And he says, two sticks, a slash, and a lollipop. And that is the two sticks, 11 slash nine, which is how they would have rendered 9-11 with the date first. And that is the message that gets communicated via this, you know, these sort of rat lines, to KSM and to a some of it. You guys touch on this in the book, and I, in my fourth book, The Devil's Hand, it was on another anniversary, 20th anniversary of 9-11 when that one. But it comes from a conversation I had

1:04:57with somebody, actually an originality in Argentina. But Gordon touches on it, and I forget what episode it is of your series. I think it might be the first episode, I can't quite remember. But he mentions it once, and I thought you guys might circle back to it, but you don't. And so I ask you about it here. And he mentions about it being odd that security didn't, he doesn't say it in this much detail, but this is what I drew from the one sentence that Gordon says in that that episode. It's odd that one security person somewhere didn't go through a bag and pull out one box cutter and at least ask about it, even though they were the size and all that stuff. It wouldn't have been uncommon for someone to go, oh yes, they're right, it's okay, boom. But for all of those people to make it on those planes at that time, even, it does strike me as odd that not one person even looked at a box cutter and then said, yeah, it's okay, and let them go. We should probably event what happened because yeah, guys, but I think it's I think Gordon mentions it,

1:05:59but do you have any thoughts on that at all? And you know, I think it's almost impossible to put ourselves back in this mindset today, because anytime any of us go through an airport, we're in this heavily-securitized TSA environment where you know, you're getting breast milk tested and you know, you're getting your bag searched and you have to dump out water. The I think the problem was that on 9-11 and prior to it, the idea that any of these sort of, the idea of like sort of airport security and customs, whatever, it was all travel facilitation. It was far less about security. It was about like moving people through. And so they're that coupled with I think the idea that hijackings of planes are not about weaponizing the plane

1:07:01or killing everyone or they're all about some radical likely leftist group, common-deer-igment thing. It meant that like the mentality at that time would have been, if someone brings a weapon on board, it is only going to be used to hold everybody hostage. And the pilots are going to comply with whatever the hijacking group does. I think all of that together to my mind explains why you think, I mean, why we had the rule in the first place that you can bring, I mean, a three-in-four-inch belief, you can do some real damage for that, right? It's very obviously could be a weapon. But it was like at the time, all of you, these different things swirled together and meant that it was just kind of normal. And people weren't trained to think about it in this way or to ask questions. But it is. I mean, looking back, it's as you point out, right? It's kind of crazy, because you think like if you had a guy who doesn't speak any English, who shows up

1:08:07in the States, one of the guys got pulled in a secondary in Orlando on his way into the country. And he got pulled in a secondary because the customs official was like, okay, you don't exactly know where you're staying, you don't have a buddy, you don't speak English, and you're here on this tourist visa like, what are you doing? And then the guy goes into secondary and in secondary, they're like, he's a tourist, let him throw, he's probably going to Disney. So all these different instances where I mean, these guys went back and some of these guys went back and forth in out of the country. And there was just never a moment where there was a real hard confrontation with them at a port of injury. It just didn't happen. Yeah, I wonder what those two guys thought about after no. Yeah, I know. That's tough. But yeah, I have a little thing, the devil's hand, the talks about those box cutters, gives a little another kind of perspective on those. And then

1:09:09there's another thing that I write about in the devil's hand that you touched on in the series as well. And it's something that is remains unsolved. And so I fictionalize it for my novel. But two of the hijackers go to Portland, Maine. They go up there. Man, you know what? But there were a lot of questions I had about this whole plot that I was eventually able to answer as I dug deep into it. I don't, I have no idea. I really have no idea. Because we talked earlier about, so it's Ata that won't have the other hijackers do this weird thing where they fly. They're going to be on a flight going up. One of the flights going down to Logan in Boston. And they do this weird thing where they go up as you say, fly to Portland, Maine, spend the night in Portland and then fly back down on this very early commuter flights. And if Ata, if that flight's

1:10:09delayed by 45 minutes for sub-bacanical failure, he has to reset the whole thing. So they spend the night to go to a convenience store that eats up there. It's a very weird thing. I'm curious for what you speculate happen because this is one of those weird things. There were other weird stuff on the final night, some of the hijackers were. A few of them I think in, they could the flight go into work. They called around looking for prostitutes and then decided it was too expensive so they didn't do it. So you do have these weird last night things where, I mean, all these guys know they're going to die the next day. So you just, I don't know. I mean, does he going up there to do something, some kind of a listed behavior that he doesn't want the other guys to know about? I don't know. Meet somebody. He doesn't want the other guys to see. What do you, I'm curious. What do you think? Because it is this very weird unanswered question.

1:11:12It is. We'll probably never know which is why I got to speculate on that in the pages of the Dental's Hand. But in the book anyway, I have them going up there to meet somebody. That final in person go ahead that can't be tracked on any signals or anything like that. Is that finally, yeah, this is happening? Is what that's what I do in the book? Yeah. I mean, I think it's reasonable to presume he would have, maybe there's some final business with somebody, you know, that needs to say, are you sure? You know, on the last night, because I can pull the plug now and I can't tomorrow. That's true. Yeah. It means, of course, of history or not. That's what I have in the Dental's Hand. But who it is, you have to read the book for anybody listening. But in the last couple, couple questions here, I don't want to talk about what is an episode five, where you guys go into what happened on that day. It's such a powerful episode of the podcast and really encourage everybody to listen to that. Yeah. Make it down. But when you go back, it's only natural to do having done all this research,

1:12:18just spend all the time in the pages of all the books that you did, talk to the people you did, and then do have actually been at the agency. Could this have been prevented? Of course, in the 90s, have we killed him? You know, probably, fight something else happens instead. Terrorism comes here eventually. But could 9-11 have been prevented? And what are your thoughts on that as you reflect on having done this six-part series for the rest of the day? Yeah. I mean, it's a faceted equation that, you know, of course, is a counterfactual and so truly impossible to answer. But I think where I come down on this is, yes, it obviously is an intelligence failure. I mean, can talk about the type of failure it is. But it's an intelligence failure. I kind of separate that question from, could it have been prevent? And I tried really hard for that episode in this series. So put myself as much as I could

1:13:20at the shoes of people who were working at the agency and at the FBI in 2000 and 2000. With the existing, because obviously in theory, it could have been prevent. But if you to lay around all of the organizational hurdles and the political hurdles and the mentality that was infusing those places at the time and the whole tech, you know, sort of the technological architecture underneath the intelligence community, I don't think it could have been. And the reason for that is that the best case that's of what to make to say it could have been prevented is saying, look, if the CIA had seamlessly communicated to the FBI in early 2000 that you had these two well kind of affiliated guys who had US pieces and were in the States. And if the FBI had then washed them extensively, mapped their networks, eventually gotten to ATA and the kind of

1:14:22seed your command in the States. And then the whole, seeing the whole architecture map the network, we could have ruled them. And I think that I think that some backs about the way information was received was sent to the bureau and received by the bureau in August. And early September of 2001, suggest that that would not have happened. Because even once the bureau got that information, that, okay, we've got these two guys who have been in the States and had US pieces and they're linked to this alpide of, you know, connection in fall and fall. The bureau sends that to a ridiculously junior special agent and doesn't treat it with any urgency. There's a, so to be it's like, if that happens in August, why wouldn't that happen? Why wouldn't that have happened six months earlier or year earlier? You'd have the same kind of low level fragmented, disconnected treatment of this that we got that we got in August. The other

1:15:27interesting data point on this is we got him Zacharias Musawi who's doing flight trading in Minneapolis. He's this, you know, French, French extremist who was probably, although it's never quite been confirmed, is probably a, a potential substitute pilot because one of the guys was kind of going wobbly throughout the year and hot dot was concerned he might, he might defect from the plot. So they got Musawi doing flight trading and Musawi ends up getting rolled up by the FBI prior to night. And if the FBI had gotten access to his computer, if they hadn't gotten the flights of war and to actually go in and search this thing, they would have been able to see his connections inside the plot connection stuff, kind of, and potentially unravel it maybe. But the FBI doesn't get the phisoid. They decide it's not, it's not worthy of it and he is languishing in a prison in the US and the jail cell on the on the boarding of September 11.

1:16:31So in the Musawi case, you have another example of like, are we sure that if the bureau had actually been able to focus on these two Saudis in California that they would have done this extremely clever long-term game to watch them and devote a whole bunch of surveillance resources to them and eventually unspool the whole thing. I think it's much more likely that these guys would have been hauled in, not arrested in the, not that held in the States or sort of tried, but just deported. And you would have had a couple of the hijackers that don't participate and maybe I'll kind of swap it more. So my sense is that knowing what we know about how this information got to the FBI and the way it interacted with these kind of people and if they were pulled in, it would not have been prevented even if we kind of go into some of the other counterfactuals. So I kind of say intel failure, yes, we can talk about that, but could it have been prevented, not with the, not in the real world of 2000 and 2001, because no, the broader point also just to make it.

1:17:33And I'll show up, it's like there was no system at that point in time for us to really play defense. You know, there was, there wasn't a no-fly list. There was no integrated set of databases between law enforcement and intelligence to help make all of these connections and to run cases that might start at a forward country and then come into the US. There was this very, they called the wall, you know, between intelligence collection and law enforcement that was a real thing at the time. And so I just, I think the reality of it unfortunately is that it was not ultimately prevailed. Yeah, I think I read somewhere there was a no-fly list or some sort of a list or something before 9-11, I think it was something like 16 people were on it. Yeah. Because that might, people can correct me, correct in the comments please. I think it was fine-stied or somebody slipped up and like gave a number of how many people were actually on a fly list in the years after 9-11, it was something like 81,000 or something like large number. But some of those ones are just crazy to think about about, but the one-hide

1:18:34record is pulled over in Maryland. Is it made for or just closed it before he's speeding? It's pulled over. Yeah. And he's pulled over. Imagine him thinking about what he's going to do the next day and this trooper gets out of the vehicle, walks up, you know, asks for licensed registration however that goes down, but just imagine that that interaction. That's right out of a movie. That's right out of a book right there. But I mean, just imagine if something he'd said something or acted in a certain way where that police officer's like step out of the car for a second and he does or something like that or or he sees something in the back because there's something something something that makes you know that that just doesn't look right thing that all law enforcement and usually all humans out of it because that's why we're here because we have that sixth sense that kept us alive in the past and now we're here today because our ancestors had that. But it's still there a lot of enforcement. Hey, some just doesn't look right. I'm going to ask another question. Yeah. It's something like that or the immigration officials who are like what?

1:19:37You go to secondary, everybody and then the other secondary guy's like, you know, I'm about to go on my break. Whatever it is. I don't know if that's the case. But just a few more questions. Hey, let me get my supervisor or I think I think we need to bring in the FBI and this just seems weird. Whatever it is. And imagine today, I mean imagine if I'm in the agency, I'm sure has some sort of closed loop AI thing going now. But let's say there's something feeding that system and it connects the dots that the person would have to have connected if they knew all these moving parts in 2000, 2001. But now there's some sort of an entity that does that and says, oh, there was a call to the FAA. Oh, it's linked to this guy who's was in a now kind of training if his camp or whatever it is. And it does that in about 30 seconds. And then that makes us go, oh, hold on a second. Let's go ask these guys some questions and then put the screws to them and see what happens here. So, yeah, I mean, it's just it's so crazy. Those little things getting pulled over by a police officer going to the secondary with the customs official like all those little

1:20:40things having somebody say this FAA license thing doesn't seem legit. All of those like those little things not to mention the agency side that people who are saying this isn't imminent threat. How do we get this across to senior level administration officials? And there's and all of those things it's just so wild. How I mean any any sort of a plan and any sort of an operation can I mean it usually doesn't go exactly the way you plan it. Something happens. There's a contingency I mean here we have flight 93 but to have this get go away at once. I mean it's heartbreaking and it's I mean there's obviously lessons there and that's what we need to do is take the lessons of that day and in the 20 now plus years that they come after and apply that going forward as wisdom. But it's just it's just wild to think about. But when you think of intelligence failure versus that failure of imagination which I also think is the you know it's an interesting interesting line from the night 11 commission but there were warnings there we talked about those there was

1:21:43the August 6 PDB there were other briefs out there that made it to senior level officials or so many like if you go and read you know see I see I direct your George Tenants memoir. He has a whole chapter where he lists all of these different memos and PDBs that went that went downtown over the course of you know the sort of spring and summer of 2001 and it is like a I mean it's a litany of you know it's it's strategic warning right and the the famous August 6 PDB we talk with on the the rest of classified in one of our bonus episodes we talk with Michael word all about this because he was Bush's PDB brief and that famous PDB which by the way you read that PDB and you're like you can't stop 9-11 on the back of that big big but the reason morale actually commissioned it because there have been so many memos you know written over the course of the up to that point eight months of the Bush administration that the principles were like I'm kind of losing track of the plot here so can you just put it all in one place for me so I understand

1:22:48the strategic threat rewarding me about and that that PDB was the was the result of it but again it is you know it's this a macular strategic warning and yet you don't have the plot you know you don't have a date you don't have the people and if you don't if you don't have that you know it's you can't stop yeah amazing all right I know we got to wrap things things up here but uh quickly the dates I guess from from doing this series what surprised you the most you didn't know before what what did you learn that really stands out to you that you wouldn't have known had you not done this six-part series you know one at one one thing that I I was not fully aware of even from the a lot of the open source stuff on this is the extent to which the agency had poured resources into the alkyda and bin Laden target in particular after 1999 and the degree to winch there were

1:23:52you know because you kind of if you come at this even you know understanding the basic contours of that element in the front up you kind of tend to think the agency didn't have much going on and the reality is that there you know there were over a hundred sources in Afghanistan at that point in time you get some real covert action capabilities a lot of resources at headquarters devoted to it and and this really maniacal sense I think alone with counterterrorism centers leadership and the seventh floor of the executive leadership that see I like we were going to get hit badly and it was coming and so that was a I think came out of a lot of the conversations I had so much wrong with the record the very senior former agency officials in prep in prepare in the series was just the sense of that they were in the it wasn't just like they were twilling their thumbs and run up uh but that there was a tremendous amount of effort to penetrate alkyda and to stop these attacks and you know a real sense among so many of these people think they're still

1:24:55living with today which is which is that we did it stop and and it's you know for so many of us who were really you know gone 9-11 or weren't born maybe less to do this um you know I just I'd hope that as people listen to the the rest of this classified series we did on this that there's a sense that for so many of these people this was like this is like a deeply deeply personal thing because almost 3,000 people died you know horrifically that day because of this and and these officials are you know they're still they're still living with that and living with we can kind of talk about some of these counterfactuals conceptually theoretically but I think you know for so many of them these are these are things that they're still still grappling with today every day so um that was probably the biggest thanks for me because it just I think being brought into the emotion of of that period at the agency because I didn't start until 2006

1:25:56being brought into the emotion of the upper levels of the agency in that in that time period and what the day-to-day felt like was really eye-opened yeah and it's uh oh thank you for running through that I want people to listen to the whole rest of this classified series on this the bonus episode subscribe be a member that he classified, published in the mic morale bonus episode and also listen that final episode which is the aftermath and that's the thing too it's just what that what path we were set on after 9-11 what happens uh and it's really like I was just talking to Peter Bergen about about this about what happens in Torbora what decisions are made around number 2001 uh once again another kind of a hinge point another time when decisions were were made that really set the course for what was going to be the next 20 years and span multiple administrations and both parties so it's uh it's that party's fascinating as well

1:26:56so encourage everybody listen to the rest is classified and also bam this is the book right here so long in stations of tember 29th pre-order it now um and give me a little rundown on uh on London station right here yeah this book uh five or six well this is book five this is book five and it is uh I I like all the time starting a book with a good what if statements and trying to figure out oh look at that guy hey look at that guy nice I like I think starting a book with a what if statements a powerful way to do it sometimes and uh for me this one was what if the agency and our british counterparts had a massive faulting out and sorry thank you so many informant I didn't see that till uh oh yeah you bet that because it just arrived so I appreciate you back the collections sincerely appreciated yeah what's up again you're gonna be the what if now the

1:27:56what if here was was basically could I wreck the special relationship and how would I go about doing that and how would I foster this atmosphere of massive distrust and and chaos between the brits and us and uh and uh and as you don't want for those who don't watch the diplomat what is the special relationship so the special relationship term coined by Winston Churchill the can 46 uh to to signify the uh the fraternal bonds between the US and the UK and it has evolved into a exceptionally intimate uh very close relationship between the two countries intelligent services militaries obviously political officials um that you know for many years meant that we we with some pickups uh largely acted in concert with our british friends because we had this passive set of overlapping geopolitical interests and cultural values and shared language and all that

1:28:57so it's kind of a catch all term for our relationship with uh with the UK and uh I think we're you know I think we're living in a period where that's changing a bit and so the novel uh starts to explore what that looks like when you kind of dip below the waterline into the world of the intelligent services fantastic fantastic now we need to dive in once again here we have these two right here Moscow Ikez Damascus station there's also the seventh floor in the Persian that are around here somewhere amongst all this chaos but uh lemon station out September 29th highly recommend all your books obviously I highly recommend uh the rest is classified you guys do such a great job with that thank you and thank you so much for coming on thank you for spending this extra time with me it's okay yeah man this is fun man we can we're we're rolling on this this is always this is a good time glad we could love we could do it always fun to be with you well thanks so much and hopefully we'll link up in uh in person soon likewise man likewise thanks for having me all right brother take care cheers