by Matt Apuzzo
Vinas quickly became something of a celebrity. He took meetings with al-Qaeda’s top leaders, who came to Waziristan to speak with the scrappy American kid from New York. Vinas met several times with al-Libi, a close associate of Osama bin Laden’s. He mingled with Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, who the following year would launch a devastating attack on a US base in Afghanistan, killing five CIA officers and two contractors.25 Vinas even appeared wearing a mask in a propaganda video with al-Libi.
One evening he dined with Saleh al-Somali, the head of worldwide operations, who unbeknownst to Vinas was also overseeing the training of another American, Najibullah Zazi, and his two friends who had slipped out of New York and into al-Qaeda’s shadow world. As far as Vinas was concerned, all that mattered was that, for once, he was valued, and he was a success. His new friends gave him a nickname: Bashir al-Ameriki, “the American who brings good news.”
By November, with winter approaching, the fighting season in Afghanistan was coming to a close. Al-Qaeda, along with the Taliban, would regroup in the spring after the snow melted and recommence operations against the Americans. Tired from the months of training, Vinas was looking forward to leaving Waziristan and returning to Peshawar. He had a friend there who said he could stay with him and even offered to help Vinas find a wife. On November 13 he bought a ticket for a bus—known locally as a “flying coach”—in Miram Shah and settled in for the long journey back to Peshawar. At a checkpoint, one of many that ringed the city, Pakistani police stopped the bus. Vinas stood out. Who was the white guy coming from the lawless tribal areas in a bus filled with dark faces? Vinas panicked and tried to stab a Pakistani police officer, hoping to create confusion and make a quick escape. It didn’t work. The police beat him up and took him into custody, notifying the US Consulate in Peshawar that they had arrested an American. The FBI legal attaché at the US Embassy soon received word about Vinas and alerted Borelli’s team in New York.
When Borelli, now the assistant special agent in charge of counterterrorism, heard the news, his first thought wasn’t about what possible threats might be looming. All he could think was, “Holy shit, he’s not dead.”
The day after the FBI arrested Vinas, he was secretly indicted in Brooklyn federal court. In the cramped offices of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division in Washington, Jim McJunkin and Michael Heimbach devised a strategy for getting Vinas home without al-Qaeda’s leaders realizing that their prize was in American custody. If the terrorist group figured it out, it would change or abort whatever plans it might have told Vinas about. The FBI was going to be responsible for asking Vinas questions, but its CIA partners had specific information they wanted: Where was the last place you trained? Where did you stay? Which al-Qaeda leaders did you see? Where did you meet them? Ideally, the CIA could use the informant to launch immediate drone strikes against their top targets.
Vinas remained in Pakistani custody for several days. He was then moved to a military base in Rawalpindi, the home of Pakistan’s intelligence services, where they questioned him before handing him over to US custody. From Rawalpindi, Vinas was flown to the US-run prison at Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul in Afghanistan. When he arrived, he was met by Jeffrey Knox, an ambitious federal prosecutor from Brooklyn, who was there in case Vinas wanted to cut a deal. Almost immediately, Vinas was read his Miranda rights.
Within less than a week of his arrest in the western mountains of Pakistan, Vinas was aboard the FBI’s Gulfstream 5 at John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens. On the tarmac, Borelli and several heavily armed FBI agents stood in the cold and watched as Vinas came off the plane. It had been almost a year since US intelligence had learned about the American jihadist, and now they had him.
Once he was on US soil, Vinas was treated like any other high-risk criminal suspect. He was taken to the Brooklyn detention center and given a lawyer. The next day, the lawyer told Knox, who was handling the case, that Vinas might be willing to offer something prosecutors wanted in exchange for lenience: information about the threat to the Long Island Rail Road. On November 22, a Saturday—when federal courts are typically closed—Vinas appeared before a judge for a special hearing. That Tuesday, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security put out an alert about a possible threat to New York’s transit system. In late November and December, American drones pummeled North Waziristan, where Vinas had trained and lived. One of those killed was the Saudi trainer, a top al-Qaeda bomb maker, who taught the explosives course that Vinas had taken. Vinas’s information was precise.26
In January 2009 Vinas pleaded guilty to terrorism charges in secret proceedings. FBI agents continued to interview him, and he talked freely. As he had found in his last months with al-Qaeda, his knowledge made him important. He had the respect of the FBI.
For Jim McJunkin, Vinas’s cooperation was a victory in a war in which some argued the FBI had little value. McJunkin held out hope that Osama bin Laden, who was under indictment for the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa, would someday be captured and prosecuted in New York, just like Vinas. Even during war, McJunkin once told his agents, the FBI was in the business of building cases that lead to trials. “Never forget that,” he reminded them.
Vinas also proved that the worst fears of the US intelligence community were real. For years, the assumption had been that an al-Qaeda sympathizer had to know someone to get into al-Qaeda. There was, intelligence analysts believed, an organized method for screening recruits and funneling them to Waziristan. When FBI agents looked at “radicalizers” in American mosques, they looked for that pipeline. It was reassuring to imagine that a would-be terrorist couldn’t wind up in an al-Qaeda camp simply by showing up in Peshawar one afternoon.
Vinas disproved that theory. Anybody with enough resolve and luck, it turned out, could make his way into al-Qaeda’s embrace. Vinas’s capture turned out to be one of the greatest successes in the war on terror. But his case served as a reminder to Borelli and his colleagues that other Americans could easily go down the same path without anyone in the intelligence apparatus noticing. Vinas told investigators that nobody in New York helped him with plans to wage jihad.27 His old friend Zarinni didn’t have any ties to al-Qaeda. All those guys in New York, he said, they were all talk.28 All it took, Vinas told them with a hint of pride, was the guts to get on a plane and go.
The fear that had been nagging Borelli for a year now was, What if somebody managed to make it to Pakistan for training and then returned to the US unnoticed? Everything he’d seen suggested that’s exactly what he faced with Zazi and his friends. He closed his eyes on the couch for a bit, but he did not sleep well.
10
IN THE WIND
NEW YORK
Friday, September 11, 2009
The morning of September 11, 2009, dawned gray and rainy, the opposite of the clear blue sky the hijacked jets had torn through in 2001. Just as every year since, workers had spent days preparing ground zero, still a construction site, to welcome hundreds of mourners for the reading of the names of the almost three thousand people killed in the attacks. The list of dignitaries due to appear at the service included Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, and Vice President Joe Biden, who would lay flowers and read a short poem, “Wild Geese,” by the American writer Mary Oliver.
Security was tight, but only a select few, if any, of the NYPD officers responsible for securing Lower Manhattan were aware of Zazi, or that some of their counterparts had spent the night in Chelsea trying to figure out whether his sudden appearance in New York had anything to do with the memorial service. The task force office was alive with investigators trying to puzzle out Zazi’s plans, combing records for clues and taking in reports from surveillance teams tailing fifteen identified associates of the young Afghan.
Shortly after 6:00 a.m., the FBI intercepted a phone call from Zazi, who was still in his friend Khan’s apartment, to the man renting his coffee cart. Zazi said he was heading downtown to check on the business. The two men t
alked about the security and agreed that taking the subway would be easier than driving.
Borelli huddled with Ari Papadacos, the supervisor helping run the command center. They still needed Zazi to disclose more of his plan, but they couldn’t let him carry a bomb onto the subway. They decided that if he was seen leaving the apartment with a backpack or bag, they would stop him. If not, they would continue to follow.
At about 6:50 a.m., a little more than an hour before the memorial ceremonies were to begin, Zazi walked out of Khan’s building with his computer bag and suitcase. He put them in the rented Impala, and headed toward the subway station empty-handed. He was in jeans and a long-sleeve blue shirt, no backpack—nothing that looked as if he were carrying a bomb. In Chelsea, Borelli and Papadacos told the surveillance team to keep up its guard. They still didn’t know whom Zazi was going to meet or who else might be involved with his plan. Don’t stop him, they ordered. Let’s see where he goes.
About 7:15, Zazi stepped on the 7 train heading into midtown Manhattan. Within a half hour, he was at Grand Central Terminal, where he climbed the stairs to transfer to the express 4 train, along with hundreds of commuters heading downtown. Fifteen minutes later, he popped out of the Bowling Green stop in the heart of New York’s Financial District, not far from the famous bronze statue of Wall Street’s charging bull. Zazi walked to the intersection of Stone Street and Broadway, a fifteen-minute walk from where the Twin Towers crumbled. Nervous FBI agents watched for almost an hour as Zazi hung around talking to the man running his coffee cart and joking with former customers.
Blocks away, about 8:45 a.m., Mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke after a moment of silence, paying tribute to the thousands who had died, including rescue workers:
Just as our hearts return to those we lost, we also remember all those who spontaneously rushed forward to help, however and whomever they could. Their compassion and selfless acts are etched in our city’s history.
Zazi left about 9:15 a.m., heading back the way he came. For the twenty-four-year-old, the expedition was nothing more than a ruse. If anyone questioned what he was doing in New York, Zazi wanted to be able to say that he came to check on his coffee cart. Now he could.
He descended into the Bowling Green subway station, this time hopping the 5 train to Grand Central. Once he arrived, Zazi hustled up the stairs, cutting his way through the crowds. He stepped behind a pillar and, in the bustle, the surveillance team didn’t notice him darting down the stairs and onto a 7 train to Queens.
Panicked, the surveillance team canvassed the dim, low-ceilinged station for Zazi. Had he gone back to Queens? Had he jumped on a train the other direction? The entrance to the Times Square shuttle was down a long corridor. Had they missed seeing him go in that direction? Or was he out of the subway altogether and heading upstairs into Grand Central’s vaulted central hall?
There are certainties in the surveillance business: You will either lose your target, or you will get made. Get too close, and you’ll be blown. Stay too far back to avoid detection, and the target will get away.
Zazi, as the professionals say, was in the wind. Gone.
• • •
In Denver, Mohammed Zazi’s phone rang. Ahmad Wais Afzali, the imam from Abu Bakr, was calling. The two men didn’t know each other well, and it was still early in the morning in Colorado. The imam spoke quickly: He needed to get in touch with Mohammed’s son right away. The young man was in trouble. The police had come around asking questions. They had showed him photographs of Najibullah Zazi and his cousin Amanullah, as well as Ahmedzay, and Medunjanin.
Mohammed Zazi was stunned. He hung up and called his son.
Najibullah Zazi was already back in Flushing at the popular Cyber Land internet café on Northern Boulevard near Flushing High School, killing time before his 2:50 p.m. flight from LaGuardia to Denver. “Peace be upon you,” he answered in Pashto after he saw his father’s number come up on his phone. It was about 11:40 a.m.
“How are you, my son?” Mohammed asked.
“I am well,” his son replied.
His father told him about the phone call with Imam Afzali.
“He said they brought pictures of these four people, asking, ‘What kind of people are they? What do they do?’ ” Mohammed explained.
“Okay,” Najibullah replied.
“What’s going on anyway? What did you all do?” Mohammad asked.
“We haven’t done anything,” Najibullah insisted.
Mohammed advised his son to speak with a lawyer or to seek Afzali’s advice.
Najibullah’s phone beeped. Imam Afzali was calling on the other line.
“Peace be upon you,” he told his father by way of good-bye and then picked up Afzali’s call. The two exchanged formal greetings in English, and the imam asked how things were going in Colorado.
“Colorado is a beautiful state,” Zazi responded, a much better place than New York to raise a family.
“Full of headache,” Afzali agreed. “Big-city problems.”
Afzali got to the point. He needed cell phone numbers for Medunjanin and Ahmedzay.
In Denver, agents were listening to the call, courtesy of the secret warrant they had obtained days before.
“You’re in New York now?” Afzali asked.
“Yeah, I’m in New York.”
“I would like to have a meeting with you,” Afzali said. “I was exposed to something yesterday from the authorities. And they came to ask me about your characters. They asked me about you guys.”
Afzali asked when Zazi and the others had last traveled to Pakistan, and why. They talked about Zazi’s marriage and Ahmedzay’s two daughters. The imam asked whether Zazi was going to Friday prayers. Perhaps they could meet there.
“I have a flight to catch. I am going back to Colorado. I have business.”
Afzali said be careful.
“Go home, be with your father and mother, praise be to God, do your job, keep your head down, mind your own business,” he said.
“You know,” Afzali continued, “don’t get involved in Afghanistan garbage and Iraq garbage. That’s my advice for you. You’re an American.”
Zazi understood. “I always supported the Ameri—I mean, the thing is, I always tell people I’m, you know, the US is the best,” he said.
Afzali ignored Zazi’s nattering: “Listen, our phone call is being monitored.
“Even if you feel that US is not the best,” he continued, “we have no business Islamically; we have no business with those people.” He told Zazi not to be like the Salafists. “This is not the right path or attitude.”
Afzali said he would try to convince the authorities that Zazi and his friends were good people. “I pray for you,” he said.
“May God grant you goodness,” Zazi replied and then hung up.
Now he knew that the ghosts following him since the stop on the George Washington Bridge the day before were real.
While that call was going on, Borelli and Papadacos were at the FBI command center across town in Chelsea. They were on a videoconference with colleagues and Justice Department lawyers. Jim Shea, a deputy chief in charge of the NYPD detectives on the task force, was seated at the table. And in a moment of comity, the FBI invited Paul Ciorra, one of David Cohen’s top deputies, to join the call.
The computer screen was divided into small boxes, each containing the video feed from another office. With headquarters leading the session, each group took turns reviewing the day’s events. Downtown, the 9/11 memorial ceremony was in hour three, though the key public figures had made their appearances and left. Zazi was at large, and the task force still didn’t know his intentions.
Jim Davis, the special agent in charge in Denver, abruptly interrupted the overview. He had news: Someone had called Zazi and tipped him off about the investigation. The tipster was in New York, and his name was Ahmad Afzali. No one at the command center conference table recognized the name. FBI headquarters demanded to hear from each office whether anyon
e there knew Afzali, the man who had just blown their case.
As one office after another reported knowing nothing, Paul Ciorra, sitting next to Shea, typed feverishly on his BlackBerry. Then his face turned ashen.
“That’s my source,” he announced to those at the command center. The room fell silent.
The meeting finished quickly, and most of the participants scattered. The phone in Chelsea had been muted, so it didn’t broadcast Ciorra’s confession. For now, only those in the room knew what had happened. Shea, an ex-Marine, stood up and faced Ciorra.
Shea was furious. Cohen should have talked to the task force so they could decide together whether Afzali was trustworthy.
“This is rookie 101 shit!” Shea shouted. “This was totally fucking irresponsible! How could you do that? Any entry-level detective knows you can’t do that kind of shit. You’ve jeopardized this whole thing!”1
Ciorra didn’t say anything about Cohen’s signing off on Intel’s decision to approach Afzali. Instead, he absorbed Shea’s outrage without rebuttal. The FBI officials in the room stayed out of the fight; they were mad, too, but they didn’t want to get between two cops. Borelli felt bad for Ciorra, who he thought was a stand-up guy. It took courage to admit that Afzali was working for the Intelligence Division. A lesser man would have walked out of that room without saying a word.
Jim McJunkin, the head of FBI terrorism operations, thought FBI leadership should confront Cohen. A year earlier, after Cohen tried to let a would-be jihadist into Pakistan for training, McJunkin had given the order to turn him around, avoiding a potential international incident. Cohen was steamed; but in a meeting with FBI colleagues in New York, the hot-tempered McJunkin let it be known that if Cohen had a problem with the decision, they could settle it in an alley.
McJunkin told friends that the NYPD treated the FBI like “the fat kid at the end of the lunch table.” Cohen easily bullied the FBI because it never fought back.