Program transcript:
Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. This September, we'll see the 25th anniversary of 9/11. What serious threats have we faced since then and how safe are we now? My guest today is Michael Lebowitz, an attorney and a former counterterrorism prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay. He's also a combat veteran and a former senior legal advisor to the US Army Cyber Command. And he's the author of a new book, it's titled "Second Wave: Inside Al Qaeda's Post-9/11 Attack Plan and America's Secret Effort to Stop It". Mr. Lebowitz, welcome to the program. And I have to say, I'm not sure whether your book scares me or reassures me, so I guess we'll figure that out in the next half hour.
Michael Lebowitz: Well, thank you for having me.
GR: We're really excited to have you. So, let's start with your book and then we'll broaden the conversation more to current day security risks, get your reflections on those, but the book is really fascinating. First of all, what was the stimulating event in 2003 that gives rise to this book?
ML: So, in 2003, many of the al-Qaeda operatives that were tasked with carrying out the 9/11 attacks started getting captured, and they started going to these black sites overseas, which are like, CIA run. And that's where the waterboarding, the enhanced interrogation techniques, also known as torture, occurred. And what happened was these operatives, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who's the mastermind of 9/11, started naming names in very like torture conditions, so is it ambiguous? And this one name came out and then another operative said the same name. It was a guy who was a lawful permanent resident of New York who had an import export business. And then it also tied into nuclear weapons. So the concern was, was that this father and son duo with US ties and legitimate business were plotting with al-Qaeda to smuggle nuclear weapons or radiological material into the US through unsecured ports.
GR: Wow. And so, what was the US government's initial response to getting that information?
ML: So, it was almost hysterical in many ways in how the US reacted because they knew the ports weren't secure as well as they should have been. They knew that this plot for nuclear weapons came straight from the top, from Osama bin Laden, the head of al-Qaeda along down to the 9/11 plotters. And they knew that the individual that was identified as potentially helping al-Qaeda, was connected to Pakistan's nuclear program and the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, as well as weapons proliferators in Pakistan, because remember, in 1998 Pakistan became a nuclear power. And so, the US, it became one of the most secretive and important manhunts in modern US history, trying to stop this plot before it occurred because they really thought that this individual, because al-Qaeda didn't have its own, you know, shipping company, right? They didn't know how to navigate maritime shipping and international trade. But this individual that the book describes that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and bin Laden knew about to help them, he actually had a shipping company, and he knew how to smuggle explosives into the US ports.
GR: And so, the idea, and this is where I have to apologize for my lack of sophisticated knowledge about different ways that nuclear material, nuclear weapons can be used, but the idea was to smuggle this material in and somehow set it off or put, it wasn't like an atomic bomb that was going to go off, but it was what, making this nuclear material sort of spread in a way that would contaminate large areas of the United States? What was the actual plan?
ML: So the plan that al-Qaeda had and the operatives that were involved, they had some sleeper agents. A lot of them had US ties to al-Qaeda and specifically tied to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, again, the mastermind of 9/11, because he didn't stop at 9/11. He was actually grooming this guy named Saifullah Paracha, who was the shipment guy prior to 9/11 in the spring of 2001. So, what the plan was, he was grooming individuals, including a refugee who went to high school in Baltimore named Majid Khan, and there were other individuals that they were going to case targets in the United States. They eventually were going to go to the ports and retrieve smuggled materials and whether it's radiological material that was smuggled to the ports or nuclear material, I think it was still up in the air how they were going to assemble that, in 2003 it was still not known. And one of the plots was, Majid Khan, for example, the Baltimore native, his family owned several gas stations up and down the East Coast in the Baltimore area and he had ties in Northern Virginia, the D.C. area. And his plan was to set off these bombs up and down the East Coast at gas stations, targeting the underground tanks, and also looking at things like shopping malls and make it a very coordinated attack using whatever explosive material, including weapons of mass destruction that they could obtain through the shipping company.
GR: And so, this was also a direct follow on in a way, to 9/11. I mean, it wasn't like a different effort, this is the same effort continued. Is that correct?
ML: That's correct. So, Osama bin Laden had this idea, and the book describes, he called it the ‘United States Hiroshima’. And he wanted to cause at least 20,000 to 100,000 casualties in an instant, in the most horrific way possible. So, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, he came up with what they called the planes operation, which is what became 9/11. But once that kind of got into motion, KSM, as his acronym is known, he kind of had his operatives really, kind of facilitating the hijackers and keeping things going. And KSM moved on, whether it's managing the money, the logistics for the second wave. And there were many al-Qaeda plots out there, some came to fruition and others got foiled that were designed for post 9/11. But the second wave plot, and the one that I really focus on in the book is the one from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, because unlike many of the other al-Qaeda operatives, KSM was the most vicious of all of them, the most calculated and kind of the one that could actually prove that he could actually get something so horrific done and navigate the red tape of al-Qaeda itself.
GR: I'm Grant Reeher, and I'm speaking with former counterterrorism prosecutor Michael Lebowitz, and we're discussing his new book titled, "Second Wave: Inside Al Qaida's Post 9/11 Attack Plan and America's Secret Effort to Stop It." So, one of the most intriguing figures in your book is a particular FBI interrogator, who was especially adept at extracting information from suspects. Tell us about that person and the secret to that person's success.
ML: So, if there's a hero in this book, it's FBI special Agent Janelle Miller. At the time, she was a younger-ish FBI agent, and she was doggedly determined to stop this plot. She also had a moral compass that was impeccable and she was probably one of the best FBI agents as far as interrogations that I've ever spoken to and seen the fruits of her labor. Because when this plot came out, the entire U.S. government, I'm talking the CIA, the FBI, the military, the White House, even Congress, they were all trying to catch the Saifullah Paracha guy, the businessman who was the center of this nuclear plot. And they could not catch him because he was a really rich, wealthy man that lived in Pakistan. But his son became the CEO of his New York based company, and he was in New York. So, Janelle Miller was like, I'm going to go straight from Pakistan, where she was based, flew to New York, and she had a little conversation with Uzair Paracha, who is Saifullah Paracha, the father’s son. And she was so good at her job that she got him to admit things, she got everything she could out of this son, and she did it all on the up and up. There was no coercion, there was no need to do what the CIA was doing with torture. Because at the time, and the book describes this, when it became time to try to catch the father, the CIA openly advocated to torture the father, knowing that he was a lawful permanent resident. You know, he was, for all intents and purposes, he was an American, but the CIA wanted to torture him. And the book shows quotes from the CIA, saying that they wanted to do that. But the FBI, led by Agent Miller, said, you are not going to torture an American. One, we don't think that's actually going to get the job done, we're not going to solve the plot, so how about we come up with a plan? The CIA objected, they wanted to fight it, they really wanted control of the father. But finally, the FBI, CIA, the military, the White House all came up with this really elaborate ruse. It's one of the most fascinating ruses or trickery that the FBI has, and this is really, hasn't really been reported, where essentially, the FBI, again, led by Agent Miller, came up with this plan that in order to get the father out of Pakistan where he was being protected, they had to lure him out with business. So, they created this fake business opportunity, you know, an offer that he could not refuse. They had a guy who was close to him kind of, you know, convey that. And then the book describes the rendition process where, which is the first time, I think, really you get into, you know, getting someone throwing a black bag over his head, tossing him into a, you know, a truck. And then that was the CIA part of it, they transferred him over to the military, and then enter again, Janelle Miller, who interrogated the father in Bagram Air Base, in one of the most fascinating interrogations, because the father spun the most amazing story. You know, I mean, some crazy stuff he was trying to say that was based in truth, but also sounded so crazy like, that he was trying to convince Osama bin Laden to do a video where we can all try to coexist and get along with the Jews and the Christians. And Agent Miller came prepared, she brought receipts, she had financial records. She didn't need to do any torture like the CIA wanted to do. She was just like, okay, I have a receipt telling that you gave al-Qaeda $500,000, what were you doing with that? And he's like, no, I'm just a businessman. But she broke him down, and this guy, and he was a tough nut to crack, and she finally broke him down where I think tortured never would have been able to do that. And if it wasn't for other conditions, because at the time, the US government was trying to reestablish its counterterrorism strategy on the fly, and it was trying to do more of the military toolbox instead of the law enforcement toolbox. So we had military investigators in the room at the FBI and they were a little green, you know, they didn't really have the experience that Janelle Miller did. And that really comes to a head because the military investigator, I would say completely botched all of the work that Janelle Miller did. And I talked to her in late 2005 and Agent Miller still says that 20 some years after this interrogation in 2003, what the military investigator did was one of the most shocking moments of her entire career.
GR: Well, say more about that then. I mean, what exactly happened in that regard? And I also want to, well, I'll save the other question, but let's start with that one. What was so shocking?
ML: So, and this is something that it's never been reported, you know, publicly this is the first time it's out there. But in FBI circles and in CIA circles, this story is definitely up there with one of the most shocking and notorious events in interrogation history. I mean, this was a big deal, because what happened is, it botched the entire quest to find out where the nuclear weapons were, how far the plot went, were there explosives shipping to the United States at the time? It's messed up. And here's what happened, so, there was a military investigator that I described through the book, she was very ambitious, she had worked on low level cases. And, so because what happened was the military created this brand new investigation unit to handle 9/11 or post 9/11 war crimes cases like al-Qaeda guys. The acronym was CITF, and it was a task force for like counterintelligence, counterterrorism task force for al-Qaeda and Agent Ruby was one of those people. She was at Bagram, and she, so at Bagram, they got word that a high value detainee was going to come to the military zone, which never happened because the high value detainees were the CIA people, the ones that were like the big wigs of al-Qaeda. Usually at Bagram the military got the lower level people, the smaller people. Maybe they were ratted out by, you know, like a rival tribe in Afghanistan or something like that. But Agent Ruby got wind that a high value person was coming to military zone. She didn't know why, but she wanted to be part of it. And the government said, hey, FBI, you're going to need to have CITF, this military investigation team, you know, on your interrogation team. You could do whatever you want, but they need to be involved because this is the new way we're doing it, we just started it. And so, Agent Miller was like, whatever, fine, but Agent Ruby, you're going to be a note taker. Agent Ruby did not want to be a note taker, she wanted to take the lead. She thought that she could break Saifullah Paracha this bigwig al-Qaeda guy, you know, and she thought that she was going to be the hero. Then the interrogation goes on for weeks, and it was very calculated. Agent Miller was an expert, and she slowly started turning the screws on Saifullah Paracha and finally she broke him. She caught him in enough lies, the room clearly, and there were three people in the room, there was a CIA agent, there was Janelle Miller and Agent Ruby, that's the name I've been calling her. And they all said that the room changed. He was about to break. He started, you know, closing his eyes, sweating, and he said, okay, here's what happened, and as he opened his mouth to say what happened, all of a sudden, Agent Ruby says, we need to take a break, I gotta pee. And the room just, stunned. And Saifullah Paracha, when the spell was broken and he blinked a few times and he just kicked back in his chair, all relaxed. And Janelle Miller told me that that was one bell that could not be unrung, she was never going to be able to get back to that place. And that was to her and the CIA agent, I talked to him, too, that was the most shocking thing that they have ever seen in their careers.
GR: Wow. You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. I'm Grant Reeher, and I'm talking with Michael Lebowitz, the attorney and former Guantanamo Bay prosecutor has written a new book titled, "Second Wave: Inside Al Qaeda's Post-9/11 Attack Plan and America's Secret Effort to Stop It." So, Michael, one of the things that I want to get into is obviously the question of the relationship between this book and sort of where we are today. Let me ask, though, one more question, it's more rooted in this particular case. What are the most important things that we as citizens should know about that investigation and that effort to interdict that plan to bring in those kinds of materials to the United States?
ML: Right. So the second wave investigation came at a time of great, kind of upheaval and change in the intelligence community and law enforcement and the military, and how it was handling these counterterrorism exigent cases where kind of like, because this case was a ticking time bomb case, that they thought these explosives might be on the way. They didn't know what type of explosives, they were catching operatives left and right that were involved in that. So, what people really need to understand is that the ports then and even today are still not 100% secure. That some of these materials can still sneak their way through, and if you have someone on the other side, a terrorist operative or a maligned force that is knowledgeable, and that's what al-Qaeda was doing, and that's what was so unique about this plot, was they were actually cultivating an import export shipping. You know, they weren't trying to reinvent the wheel because Saifullah Paracha, the import exporter, his business card, his emails, his advice was being found in safe houses throughout Pakistan, from top al-Qaeda operatives, including people that were involved in the 9/11 attack plot. And the book also talks about an undercover investigation that was conducted by agents of Congress, to investigators from Congress to see if the ports were secure and that the borders were secure and it proved that they weren't. These people created fictitious companies, and they were actually able to talk their way into the borders, the northern and southern border with radioactive material.
GR: Wow.
ML: And even though we have sensors and things like that now, you know, and we had it back then too, but there's still ways to, kind of whether it's under the cover of legitimate business or completely bypassing the sensors, there are ways to smuggle, you know, weapons of mass destruction through the borders or through the ports. And that is an issue that was prevalent back then, it was a national emergency in 2003, but it's still a real concern right now.
GR: Is that particular method our biggest threat right now? Is that our biggest weakness, the borders and the ports, in terms of importing those kinds of things that could really do some serious damage?
ML: So, for the importing part, if you're talking about weapons of mass destruction, then yes, the borders and the ports are definitely the biggest part. But if you're talking about more conventional attacks, whether it's a coordinated attack, almost like, like a 9/11 type attack, but maybe not with planes, but you know, something else that's equally vicious, then that's something that's really need a focus on other places. The book talks about in 2026 that some of the biggest terrorism threats come from Africa right now. There's a group called JNIM, for example, that is literally on the march throughout several nations in Africa like Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, things like that. They're kind of taking, they're an al-Qaeda offshoot that's following somewhat the ISIS playbook of consolidating territory. But the concern is, is that JNIM, they're having the space that's still under the radar and that they are getting training because they're fighting Russian mercenaries right now. So, they're getting the combat training and if they really get this kind of, hey, we want to make a big statement, we want to attack the United States, then that's an issue where we really need to worry about. And just to really hammer that home, just recently, the Washington Post did an article, an exclusive article that President Trump was considering military action in Africa to combat JNIM because this is really a bipartisan issue. This goes from like project 2025, which is conservative, you know, document to military documents to liberal documents. You know, whatever political persuasion it is, they're saying that the biggest terrorism threat right now comes from Africa. And I think that's where we really need to focus and worry about as far as these al-Qaeda offshoots doing the next big thing.
GR: If you've just joined us, you're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media. And my guest is Michael Lebowitz, a national security expert and the author of, "Second Wave: Inside Al Qaeda's Post 9/11 Attack Plan and America's Secret Effort to Stop It." So, I want to go back to the Middle East, I guess, for a moment and think about Iran. And Iran's leadership has been making threats against the United States in response to actions taken by the Trump administration against it. And in fact, you mentioned the Washington Post, I read a piece in the Washington Post that Trump to took a secret flight back from Turkey because he was worried about an attack on Air Force One from Iran. So, he actually flew on a different plane and that was a ruse to fool the Iranians. So how seriously should we be taking these threats from Iran right now?
ML: Oh, we have to take the Iranian threats very seriously. Because they have proxies, you know, throughout Iraq, you know, Lebanon, you know, Yemen, everywhere around there that a lot of them have an international component. In fact, a few months ago, an Iranian proxy group from Iraq was actually arrested and extradited and brought to New York for plotting to attack Jewish targets. And the day of the Ayatollah’s his funeral, his son, who became the supreme leader of Iran, and this went really under the radar, he actually said that, essentially gave a tacit permission for, you know, proxies to activate, you know, worldwide was the word he used. So, you know, Iran, we know has this proxy terrorism, you know, bent, and if they choose to, you know, escalate and take the fight to the US or to other Western targets, then they'd have a huge target list to do it, they have the means to do it, and they have the operatives to do it. And this could be targeting Jewish targets, it could be targeting government or military targets or even soft targets, Iran has been known to target all of the above on that. And so that is something that we have to take seriously. And that has to be, you know, our top counterterrorism threat that we need to focus on besides, of course, Africa and the al-Qaeda offshoots and things like that, they're always percolating and growing. So, we're kind of at a point in some ways more dangerous than we were prior to 9/11, but we're at a pre-9/11 sense of vulnerability in many ways, and that's the scariest part. Because if you look at what's going on in the intelligence community, and in law enforcement, the FBI, after 9/11, they created the 9/11 Commission. The FBI had a lot of recommendations, and those recommendations were designed to stop exactly what you're talking about, state sponsored terrorism or terrorist groups like al-Qaeda or ISIS or something like that. And for a long time that was successful. But around 2016, at the end of the Obama administration, you started seeing a bit of complacency where maybe certain funding mechanisms might not be funded to counterterrorism or protect or to provide grants to localities that are prone to terrorist attacks. And then you go to 2025, 2026 and all the recommendations are being reversed. Now instead of, you know, retaining and maintaining and training, you know, analysts, you know, law enforcement and intelligence analysts and translators and agents, they're being fired or they're being coaxed to quit or resign, or they're opting to quit for whatever reason. At the office of Director of National Intelligence, they got rid of a huge chunk of their workforce, and it sounds like they're going to continue doing that. The whole point of ODNI as it's called, was to kind of be a clearinghouse so that all of the intelligence information goes to one place to be analyzed so we can identify threats, that's not stuck in a silo like at the FBI or the CIA.
GR: Yeah, that was one of the big conclusions from 9/11, that was the problem, that silo. Yeah, so, interesting.
ML: And one thing I could do if you want, if I could give you a, I tell a story in the book and I think it's relevant to today in many ways is, five weeks before 9/11, in August of 2001, there was a man who flew into the Orlando airport, his name is Mohammed al-Qahtani. And, he was kind of a jerk, you know, he was kind of rude to the customs agent at the at the thing. He had a one-way ticket and $3,000 in cash. So the customs agent said, okay, you're going to go talk to this guy in a little room. And Qahtani didn't have a good answer to anything. He's like, he was asked, what are you here for? Business. What kind of business do you do? Business. You know, like just kind of ridiculous answers. So like, he's like, somebody is waiting for me here. Who's waiting for you? I don't know. So, they treated him like a migrant. They were on the immigration bent. So, they sent Qahtani home. They gave him a choice, you can stay and talk to us some more, you can take your $3,000 and buy another one-way ticket back to Dubai where you came from, so he left. And what the agents had in their possession when they were talking to Qahtani was a travel itinerary. Again, this is five weeks before 9/11, it had the contact information, including the phone number of the main al-Qaeda operative, a guy named Mustafa al-Hawsawi, who was literally financing clothing and feeding the hijackers inside the United States. And then he had a prepaid calling card. That calling card was directly connected to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, and the individual, there was an individual who was at the Orlando airport waiting for Qahtani, that was Mohamed Atta, the commander of the hijackers. He actually got a parking ticket and he, Atta, when Qahtani was a no show, actually used his calling card and called al-Qaeda 9/11 operatives to say, hey, he was a no show. So, you can see why the story is important, because today there's a big focus on immigration enforcement and sometimes, and what's happening is investigators are being dual tasked so that their focus might be on immigration enforcement, even though their day job is counterterrorism. And the issue is, things might fall through the cracks. In 9/11, Mohammad al-Qahtani, he was the 20th hijacker. He was meant to be the fifth hijacker on flight 93, that's why that flight only had four. So the concern is we don't want another Qahtani moment where something falls through the cracks because the law enforcement is focused and DHS now are focused on counterterrorism and at the same time doing counter immigration.
GR: Wow. Well, we'll have to leave it there, unfortunately. However, you have answered the question I started with, I'm more scared now, so thank you very much. (laughter)
ML: Sorry about that, I am a Debbie-downer.
GR: No, very important information and a fascinating book. That was Michael Lebowitz and again, his new book is titled, "Second Wave: Inside al-Qaeda's Post 9/11 Attack Plan and America's Secret Effort to Stop It." It reads like the thriller that it is. Mr. Lebowitz, thanks so much for talking with me. And I also want to thank you for your service to the country in many different areas that you have done, both in the military and out of the military.
ML: Thank you so much.
GR: You've been listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, conversations in the public interest.
