Original subtitles

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

any link or anything with al-Qaeda.

- You've got a guy that was trained

by al-Qaeda, a bombmaker,

who's going to New York.

This is a real deal.

- We don't have that he's actually made a bomb,

so we don't have enough to arrest him.

- Are we just gonna let him drive into Manhattan?

- We got everyone together,

and we're ramping up

like we've never ramped up before.

We have bomb-making material. These are household chemicals.

- It blows shit up really effectively.

That's when all of our suspicions

were just... boom.

All of a sudden, we have just been compromised

- It was an "oh shit" moment.

- It's growing exponentially.

Every time this guy makes a stop,

the case gets bigger.

You get a backpack. You get a backpack.

Everybody get on the subway and blow something up.

The last thing you want on your watch

is another smoking crater in New York.

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

[suspenseful music]

Drug busts, mob stings, terrorist takedowns...

- Get down! Get down!

- We understand why people want

to tell stories about us.

- Mark it. - Freeze.

- FBI. - FBI!

- Action! - But they don't know

the half of it.

What really goes down?

We save that for each other

when we're talking agent to agent.

This is "FBI True."

[uneasy music]

♪

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

She worked gangs, crimes against children,

as well as human and drug trafficking.

Kottis was the supervisor

of the FBI's threat response squad,

overseeing the bureau's response

to terrorism threats in New York City.

- September 9th, 2009. - Yeah.

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

in New York and in the FBI.

Rich, what are you doing?

- We're coming up on 9/11,

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

Not only are we dealing

with just the mental knowledge of 9/11,

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

and we have to be prepared for it,

so we're running out on every threat we have

and doing all that.

- Richard Frankel got his start in the FBI

investigating the infamous Gambino crime family.

After the attacks on 9/11,

he moved into national security.

By 2009, Frankel was responsible

for domestic terrorist threats

at the FBI's New York field office.

He rose to become associate director

of national intelligence.

- Richie and I were both ASACs at the time,

and I think--you'll agree--

the ASAC desk is the confluence of everything shitty

in the FBI, right?

Every threat, everything that can go wrong.

- Every administrative problem,

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

comes through the ASAC desk,

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

- Don Borelli worked cases

ranging from drug trafficking to white-collar crime.

He supervised FBI operations

in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.

By 2009, Borelli oversaw

international terrorism investigations

in Canada, Africa, and western Europe.

He investigated domestic bombers,

Somali pirates,

and al-Qaeda operatives.

♪

- The phone rings... [phone ringing]

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

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

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

Like, no.

I put the phone down.

It run into the SCIF

so I could read the highly sensitive stuff,

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

The original information came from the Brits.

[electronic music]

They're keying on this email address

that they know is an al-Qaeda operative,

and they've been monitoring it.

So, all of a sudden, it pings,

and it's this guy, Najibullah Zazi.

They trace him to the U.S..

Al-Qaeda-trained guy

with some explosive training.

So the Brits crunch the information.

They send it over to FBI headquarters.

♪

The assumption is, the guy's a bombmaker

until proven otherwise.

The FBI start doing all their analysis,

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

Denver starts doing surveillance,

and at some point,

he actually makes a phone call,

calling back to one of his handlers

to get clarification on the bombmaking recipe

that you can make from these chemicals

you could get in a beauty supply store.

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

the "wedding cake."

It was like one of those old-time code words

you don't think anybody uses anymore

for--in explosives. - Mm-hmm.

All these specifics.

I mean, we don't get these specifics.

You never get those specifics in a case.

- We got the notification that Najibullah

was in the car

driving to New York.

All of the information we had

was in classified channels.

Once you make an arrest, due process applies,

and all that stuff goes public,

and we're not ready to do that

'cause we need to know more details.

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

and what is his intent?

That was, like, the key question.

What is his intent?

- How are you feeling, Don?

It's getting towards 9/11.

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

is another smoking crater in New York.

[somber music]

♪

- Two commercial jet liners

crashed into the World Trade Center

here in New York City

and sent the giant twin towers,

filled with workers,

crumbling to the ground.

- Not even just 9/11.

We've had several instances in New York

of real attempts or real successes

where terrorists have been able

to light off a bomb in New York.

- At 12:18 p.m.,

World Trade Center tower number one

became a tower of smoke.

- I was a prosecutor before I joined the FBI.

I was having a great life.

Suffolk County district attorney's office.

In 1993,

the first bomb went off at the World Trade Center,

and I watched it on TV,

and I said on that day,

"I'm going to join the FBI."

- You're both in charge of operational response,

tactically and investigatively.

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

tomfuckery that's gonna happen.

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

- Didn't we have some surveillance film

of him in Walmart, buying some products?

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

in Denver

a few weeks earlier,

before he drove to New York.

And then he got picked up by the Denver office

at that point.

They interview him with a lawyer,

but they don't have enough to hold him.

We don't have that he's actually made a bomb,

but we've got real good information

that he wants to. - Yeah.

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

that he's committed.

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

if he had other people at this point.

- Right. - You know,

did it go further out?

- So how are we monitoring this cat?

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

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

so you're handing him off

as he's driving from Denver.

- We have field offices all across the United States

coming into New York.

So as Najibullah Zazi's driving,

we're just handing it off from one surveillance team

to another surveillance team.

We're able to go from field office

to field office,

as opposed from department to department.

And also, we had helicopters in the air.

We had planes in the air.

This was a full surveillance blowout.

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

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

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

Are we just gonna let him

drive into Manhattan?

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

there are only about five,

but we put it at every crossing,

so all the bridges and tunnels

that you would come across from New Jersey

into New York, we had a team there.

- Eventually, he comes to New York.

He bypasses the tunnels.

He goes over to the George Washington Bridge.

[suspenseful music]

- And the Port Authority is there,

and they are stopping cars on a random basis.

- "Random."

- We want it to look routine.

If the FBI stops him,

it could tip him off

and cause him and other operatives to react.

So finally, he comes to the bridge,

and he's stopped.

And they have a dog walk around the car.

And they're just looking for anything suspicious.

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

Nothing jumps out.

And...

- The problem is that the dog is not trained

for these chemicals

because it's not put together as a bomb.

- And the K-9 officer

didn't know all the details

because he wasn't cleared

because there was so much classified information.

- Any mention of chemicals or a bomb--

that's all classified.

- The decision is made.

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

continue his journey

and... - And they let him go.

- The show goes on. - Yeah.

[tense electronic music]

♪

- We're ramping up like, you know,

we've never ramped up before.

We're following Naji,

and we're trying to piece together his network.

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

you know, just like the timing of everything.

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

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

as much as they can about Najibullah Zazi.

He grew up in New York.

He had a job in New York.

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

He's a bad actor,

but does he have a supporting cast?

- The analysts identified two friends:

Adis Medunjanin and Zarein Ahmedzay.

- Adis is a doorman,

and Zarein is a taxicab driver.

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

They're looking at financial statements.

They're looking at phone records.

And the analysts were able to identify

that Zazi and his two coconspirators

had traveled to Pakistan to do training.

♪

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

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

but we could surmise that it was bombmaking.

We're watching Najibullah.

We're also doing surveillance on Adis and Zarein.

And Najibullah-- anybody he talks to,

they're radioactive at this point.

We think he wants to blow something up,

but we don't know what.

We don't know how many people

he's got with him that are gonna help.

So ultimately, he winds up at what I call

a flophouse.

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

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

- 10, 12 guys that--I think

they were mostly all taxi drivers.

But you don't know if these guys

are all part of the master plot.

He's staying there,

so, you know, you've got to assume

maybe they're culpable

and, you know, coconspirators along with him.

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

Every time this guy makes a stop,

the case gets bigger.

[suspenseful music]

- It's September 11th.

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

They see him-- I think his suitcase.

He puts some stuff in the trunk of his car,

and he leaves,

not in his car.

He leaves, going into the subway system.

- Right. He's a New Yorker.

No New Yorker actually drives in the city.

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

at the same time.

Where is he going? You have to follow him.

And now we've got his car...

- By itself. - By itself...

- Just sitting there. - Just sitting there.

But we gotta see what's in that car.

We know that there's something in there.

- But you don't want to tip him off

that you're on to him.

- Finally, it became pretty evident

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

Let's grab the car.

There are very few opportunities

that you get in the FBI, I think,

where you can really save lives by decisions you make,

and that turned out to be one of the most critical

correct decisions

made in the case.

- We tow the car.

And we bring it to a Port Authority hangar

out of LaGuardia.

We bring in our evidence response team.

In a span of approximately six hours,

they toss the entire car,

but then they put it together

exactly how they found it.

Then they bring it to an impound yard

because we wanna create the impression

that the car has been towed

from an illegal parking spot.

One of the items we take out is the computer,

and they mirror the computer.

They copied everything on the hard drive.

- This was into the evening now.

Go home, maybe get a little sleep.

There's no smoking craters in Manhattan.

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

I'm driving back to my apartment

in the city, and I get a call,

and he says, "You gotta come back."

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

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

"You gotta come back."

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

And he goes, "We have bombmaking material

on the computer."

Handwritten notes that had been scanned

into the computer,

and they look real.

- These were lab notes. These were chemistry notes.

So I remember, on the phone, describing

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

They said, "This is TATP."

At that point, that is when all of our suspicions

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

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

- It blows shit up really effectively.

You can make it out of hydrogen peroxide.

You distill it down. It becomes very volatile.

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

in suicide vests,

things like that,

because you can then put shrapnel,

nails, whatever, and it becomes

a very effective bomb used like that.

- Has this ever been used in other terrorist events?

- Yes. TATP was used to bomb

the subways in Madrid.

- 191 people were killed

and more than 1,800 others were injured.

- Then al-Qaeda used the same sort of bomb

a year later in London.

- 52 innocent lives were taken,

many more injured.

- These are household chemicals.

You can buy them at Home Depot.

You can buy them at a beauty salon.

You can buy them at a pool store.

So what happens?

We are asking now to go out

and actually do interviews

of every place that sells this

in the tristate area.

All along, we've been balancing our case work

with the risk to the public.

Now we have no choice but to tip our hand.

But nothing substantial turns up,

and no one has seen anything suspicious.

- Is it gonna be a suicide mission?

Is it gonna be, you know, a mission

where he's gonna escape

and do multiple missions?

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

a guy making TATP.

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

You get a backpack. Everybody get on the subway

and blow something up.

We have no idea.

We did know that before he moved to Denver,

Najibullah used to have a coffee cart

down by Wall Street. - Yeah.

- So we were thinking, could you put

an explosive device in a coffee cart

by Wall Street?

- Why didn't you arrest him?

Why isn't he arrested at this point?

- The best, juiciest stuff is all classified,

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

♪

- We got through September 11 with no smoking craters,

thank goodness,

but it's still not over.

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

The computer's been scanned.

But then we got a little bit of bad luck.

- A law enforcement officer told his source,

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

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

- And the source knew Najibullah's family.

- Okay. - And then they wound up

talking to Najibullah himself,

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

and all of a sudden, it's like,

we have just been compromised.

- It was an "oh shit" moment. There's no doubt.

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

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

making plans to go back to Denver.

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

- We're still tracking him, of course,

and we learned that when he got home--

- He tried to destroy his computer.

Remember that? - Yeah, mm-hmm.

- So he's thinking, "Ooh, I dodged a bullet.

They didn't find my computer."

- We're also hoping he might make a call

to Adis or Zarein

that we would pick up on surveillance,

and that would help bolster our case.

The Denver office brings him in to talk,

they release him,

and then the media picks up on it

that they've got a suspected terrorist.

- A reporter seeks him out, finds him.

- Sir...

- When "9 Wants To Know" found Najibullah Zazi

at his apartment in Aurora,

he and his attorney insisted

he was not a terrorist.

- Of course not. I have nothing to do

with al-Qaeda and--any link

or anything with al-Qaeda.

- Then the Denver office searches Zazi's apartment.

- Today's raid was at an apartment building

in the Denver suburb of Aurora,

home to a man authorities say

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

- And that triggers another interview

where he's dodging questions about bombmaking

on his computer.

- When they confronted him about the computer,

he did not know that we had taken the computer

and got all of his bombmaking notes.

- That was a great interview. - Yeah.

- I mean, he was denying things,

but you can tell, as things go along,

he sees the writing on the wall.

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

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

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

he's arrested.

- Najibullah Zazi's under arrest,

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

- Mm-hmm. - And...

- Terror suspect Najibullah Zazi

is in a New York City jail

after pleading not guilty

to charges of planning a bomb attempt.

- But over the next three weeks,

he gives up the entire plot.

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

he cooperated.

- Zazi has admitted

that he brought explosives

to New York City on September 10th, 2009,

and that he and others intended

to detonate them on board

the New York City subway system.

This was one of the most serious

terrorist threats to our nation

since September the 11th, 2001.

- What happens then? - We had Adis and Zarein

under surveillance because they're still dangerous

and unpredictable,

and we still have to build a case against them.

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

how are we gonna take

everything that we've learned so far

and put it into a package

that we can prosecute a case with?

- And that takes months.

At one point, we send some agents

over to Adis' house in Queens

with a warrant.

- The FBI returned to his home yesterday

for a second search, looking for his passport.

- We wanna get his passport so that we can look

at where he's traveled officially.

While agents are inside, searching the apartment,

Adis waits outside and looks at the warrant,

realizes that he's being investigated for terrorism,

and kind of loses his mind.

And he starts running and jumping in the car.

Well, we have surveillance on that car,

and if you know the Whitestone Expressway,

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

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

- And he goes, "My name is Adis.

My name is Adis."

- 911 operator responds.

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

And he goes, "My name is Adis.

I love death more than you love life."

And then it goes silent.

- We now know what he had wanted to do

was commit an act of jihad.

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

- [laughs] - He wanted to take his car

and make a fiery bomb out of it

by crashing it into another car.

Luckily for us, he doesn't understand physics.

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

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

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

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

- [laughs] - So now it's a traffic jam.

Adis gets out of the car,

and he starts to run,

and he's gonna jump over the median.

Behind him is an off-duty Suffolk County police officer

who sees this, yells at him, and goes,

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

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

The cop goes, "Why are you running away?

It's a fender bender."

Adis basically answers,

"The FBI wants me for terrorism,"

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

are the surveillance guys.

'Cause of all the traffic that got stuck,

they can't drive.

And when the cop sees this,

he pulls his gun

and puts Adis on the ground and prones him out.

And Adis is now under arrest...

but what for?

Leaving the scene of a vehicular incident.

- That's awesome.

- About an hour after Medunjanin's apartment

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

who reportedly has been under surveillance by the FBI,

was involved in a traffic accident

near the Whitestone Bridge.

One law enforcement official says Medunjanin

may have been either flustered by

or trying to avoid police surveillance.

He was treated for minor injuries

and then taken into custody

by the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

- They bring Adis back to our location.

He waives everything. He waives the right to counsel.

He waives the right to be presented.

He waives everything.

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

He says who they met with over in Pakistan.

- Oh. - And he said

when they came back,

the goal was to blow up

a New York City subway

and that they wanted to live

and do another one.

But at the same time, we realize

that we still have Zarein out on the road,

who's the taxicab driver. - Yep.

- Surveillance has him driving around Times Square.

And we just had a guy try to kill people

on a highway.

If Zarein hears about this,

what's he gonna do?

So we immediately have a felony car stop done of him

by our surveillance teams. They arrest him.

Najibullah--he cooperated.

And later on, Zarein basically gives up

the entire case too.

So it looks like the case is all sewn up,

but then Adis recants

and decides that he's gonna remain loyal

to al-Qaeda.

His own testimony used against him,

because he was given his rights.

Zarein testified against him,

and Najibullah has testified against him.

- Bad breakup.

- A lot of what we do is reactive.

When you can be proactive on a person

that you believe to be a true terrorist

that wants to kill

your friends and neighbors in New York,

it's real. - Absolutely.

- It doesn't get more real than that.

- Thank goodness you don't have to make

those decisions every day,

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