Enemies Within: Inside the NYPD's Secret Spying Unit and bin Laden's Final Plot Against America

by Matt Apuzzo

When Art Cummings, the head of all FBI national security, learned about the Afzali phone call, he too was livid. Cummings reviewed the wreckage in a phone call with Joe Demarest, the head of the FBI’s office in New York. The case was compromised, and Shea and Ciorra were on the verge of brawling.

  “We are having fistfights in the squad area over this,” Demarest said.

  In Robert Mueller’s office on the seventh floor of FBI headquarters in Washington, Cummings told the director what happened. They were burned, he said. The investigation was compromised. Mueller was furious, but only for a moment.

  “What’s done is done,” he responded. “Get the operation back on track.”

  Cummings dialed David Cohen in New York. Cohen didn’t try to obfuscate. “We fucked that up,” he said. “I’m going to deal with it.” FBI officials didn’t have to wonder long who would take the fall. Within days, Ciorra, a major in the Army National Guard who had earned a Bronze Star during a deployment in Iraq, was transferred to the department’s Highway Patrol.

  The blowup was the culmination of years of friction between the New York Joint Terrorism Task Force and Cohen’s Intelligence Division. There had been plenty of instances of what the FBI perceived as recklessness: the approach of the Hezbollah operative in 2006; the fiasco with the hard drive in the Passaic River; Cohen’s trying to let Abdel Shehadeh fly to Pakistan for jihadist training. Once, Intel had recruited a source inside the building that housed the Iranian Mission to the United Nations. Counterintelligence is the responsibility of the FBI, and the stunt could have imperiled a sensitive operation. The bureau was so enraged that the Justice Department considered charging Cohen or someone from his unit with obstruction of justice.2

  Some episodes had been comic, such as the NYPD’s amateurish safe house near Rutgers University. This time, the task force believed that the department might have blown the biggest terrorism case in the United States since 9/11. For the FBI agents and the police officers on the task force, it was irrefutable evidence that Cohen was more liability than partner. His army of informants had failed to spot the threat posed by three terrorists from Queens. Now one of those same informants had proven more loyal to his friends than to law enforcement.

  But Borelli and the rest of the task force had more pressing things to think about than who was at fault: They had to find Zazi.

  • • •

  By 1:00 p.m., the surveillance teams still hadn’t tracked him down. They knew he was in Queens, thanks to data from his cell phone, but they couldn’t pinpoint his location. The investigators were fairly confident that Zazi’s plan, whatever it had been, was disrupted, but they wanted to gather enough evidence to bring charges before he could regroup or, worse, flee.

  One thing they knew for sure was that Zazi’s red Impala was still outside the apartment where he’d spent the night, and his computer bag was in the car. The laptop represented the FBI’s best chance for unraveling his plan and figuring out who else was involved. They knew Zazi had a flight to Denver booked from LaGuardia Airport at 2:50 p.m. Borelli was desperate to get the computer before Zazi returned for the car and headed for the airport. They needed to tow that car.

  When FBI officials gathered on another videoconference to discuss it, however, there was reluctance to tow the Impala. With Zazi in the wind, it was a risk. What if he walked around the corner toward the car as police were hooking it to the wrecker? The car was parked legally. How would they explain that? They had no idea what Zazi had been up to in the hours since the surveillance team had last seen him at Grand Central. FBI agents don’t like unknowns, and this case was producing new ones at a rapid clip.

  Davis and Steve Olson in Denver pushed for towing the car. Countless vehicles were towed every day in New York, they argued. What was the big deal?

  Borelli agreed.

  “We’re doing it,” Borelli said. “We’re doing it. We’re getting the car.”

  Nobody objected.

  Borelli turned to Ray Johnson, an NYPD sergeant on the task force.

  “Tow the car,” he said. “Get one of your wreckers, tow the car, get it out of there.”

  Just before 2:00 p.m., a police tow truck pulled up, hooked the car, and drove it to an FBI hangar at LaGuardia. When the agents were finished searching, the police would return it to Zazi, saying that it had been stolen and recovered. A judge’s secret warrant authorized the search.

  Zazi missed the tow truck by minutes. He left the internet café and walked back toward where he had parked at Thirty-eighth Street and Parsons Boulevard. When he found the Impala missing, he called Hertz. A customer service agent named Rhonda called him back. “Have you reported it to the police yet?” she asked Zazi.

  “No, I haven’t,” he replied.

  Rhonda told him to file a police report and call back with a case number.

  “Okay, no problem,” Zazi said. “Thanks, I appreciate it.”

  In a panic, Zazi immediately called Afzali, who was still busy trying to help the NYPD. When his phone rang, Afzali was with Zazi’s brother in arms, Adis Medunjanin, pushing him for answers to the questions his police handler had asked.

  Zazi was certain that the police had his car. He didn’t know what to do.

  “Hertz told me to call the 911, but if I call the 911 and I know the car is in their hands—” Zazi began.

  “How do you know that?” Afzali asked.

  “Because they’ve been watching it for the last two hours,” Zazi said, stumbling over his words. “I mean, it looks like they’ve been watching me.”

  “That’s fine. That’s fine. Let them watch you as much as they want,” Afzali said, reassuringly. “That’s their job. But you still call 911.”

  “Should I call 911?” Zazi repeated.

  “Yes,” the imam advised. “Say your car is missing. You’re only speculating, right? You don’t know that. Do you have evidence they took your car?”

  “No, I don’t have evidence,” Zazi conceded.

  “Exactly. So how do you know they took your car away from you?”

  Zazi fretted about whether to go back to where the car had been parked, so close to Khan’s apartment. Afzali told him to go to the exact spot, call the police, and file a report.

  “Salaam alaikum,” they told each other, and hung up. Zazi called the police and gave his location. In Chelsea, the task force finally got confirmation: Zazi was back in pocket. Papadacos let Borelli know.

  “Let’s not lose this fucking guy again,” Borelli said.

  • • •

  At LaGuardia, evidence-response specialists assigned to the task force searched the Impala. They found Zazi’s rental agreement, a suitcase, a water bottle, and, on the floor of the front passenger side, the laptop. The one thing they didn’t find was the mysterious jug that the Port Authority officer had failed to identify on the George Washington Bridge. FBI headquarters was finally satisfied that the jug was unimportant.

  In most cases, the bureau would take the computer to a lab for analysis. But the agents had been instructed to proceed as though the investigation hadn’t been blown. Everything they touched would have to be replaced exactly as they’d found it, in hopes Zazi wouldn’t suspect the FBI had been there.

  The agents photographed the laptop and handed it to Trenton Schmatz, an FBI computer forensic expert. Schmatz removed the hard drive and attached it to a device called a Logicube Talon. In a few hours, the gadget would create an exact copy of Zazi’s computer.

  Zazi was growing increasingly frustrated and worried. He had gone to the 109th Precinct, but the officers told him they didn’t have any information about his car. He’d missed his flight and didn’t have his luggage, his laptop, or a place to stay. With few alternatives, he went to Abu Bakr for the fourth of the five daily prayers, known as Maghrib. He knew he could spend the night there. As soon as he walked in, he saw his friend Ahmedzay. He told Zazi he had flushed the TATP down the toilet. Zazi shrugged. He was tired and hungry. And ready to get out of New York.

&
nbsp; Using the hard-drive copy, FBI agent Craig McLaughlin surfed the contents of Zazi’s laptop. Zazi had bookmarked a website, Hydrochloric Acid Lab Safety Supply. His search history showed that he’d been looking for places in New York to buy hydrochloric acid, also known by its industrial name, muriatic acid. He’d searched the website of the big-box hardware chain Lowe’s, looking for a store in Queens.

  It was late. Borelli was exhausted. McLaughlin’s analysis would take a while and Zazi appeared to be down for the night. The car was still out at LaGuardia. Borelli decided to catch a few hours of sleep. Papadacos promised to call if anything came up.

  Borelli left but wasn’t halfway to his apartment on Fifty-first Street in Manhattan when his phone rang.

  “Hey, you need to come back here,” Papadacos said.

  Within a few minutes, Borelli was in his Chelsea office, talking to Papadacos. McLaughlin had discovered nine images on the computer. They looked like photos of handwritten notes illustrating chemical formulas. The notes mentioned acetone and hydrogen peroxide, chemicals that any counterterrorism agent knew could be used to make a bomb.

  Papadacos handed Borelli a sheaf of printouts. He looked them over, picked up the phone, and called the FBI’s operations center in Washington. He needed a chemist right away—an explosives specialist. It was about 1:00 a.m. He told them to wake someone up.

  David McCollam, one of the FBI’s top bomb experts, got the call. Check your email, an agent told him. McCollam opened an attachment and read a one-page, handwritten note that he recognized as information on bomb making. He called Borelli, who wanted to know what those sketches meant. McCollam explained that they were recipes. With those notes, he said, you could make TATP.

  Borelli thanked the chemist and hung up. For the first time since hearing that Zazi was speeding toward New York, he had something solid: Zazi had been trying to manufacture explosives. He must have gone to Pakistan and learned how to make a bomb in an al-Qaeda training camp. That still left Borelli, Papadacos, and the task force wondering what Zazi had intended to do with his weapons. What was his target?

  It was now Saturday, September 12. Borelli had gotten only a few hours of sleep the whole week. He left the office, drove back uptown, and walked into his apartment building. He nodded to the doorman, took the elevator upstairs, stripped off his suit, brushed his teeth, set his alarm to buzz in a couple hours, and got in bed. Within minutes, he was asleep.

  11

  FLIGHT

  NEW YORK

  Saturday, September 12, 2009

  Zazi woke before sunrise, as worshippers gathered at Abu Bakr for Fajr, the first of the daily prayers. The day began with a call from his father and, finally, some good news: The police had found his rental car. Because his father was the primary renter, he’d been the one to get the call. All Najibullah had to do was head to the 109th Precinct and pick it up.

  He caught a ride from the mosque to the precinct, saving him a five-block walk in the light rain. A gentle breeze swept over Queens. As Zazi climbed the five steps toward the precinct doors, he feared he’d be arrested right there—the terrorist who showed up at the police station. But no alarms sounded when he entered, and the police didn’t swarm when he checked in. If the officers of the 109th suspected anything out of the ordinary about Zazi’s car, they didn’t show it. Ten minutes later, Zazi had the keys to the Impala. He was free to go.

  At the FBI office in Chelsea, Don Borelli’s excitement at seeing Zazi’s bomb diagrams the night before had given way to a dull reality. Everyone was sure that Zazi was a terrorist, and that he’d attended a terrorist training camp in Pakistan and taken a bomb-making course there. They were convinced that Zazi had come to New York to launch an attack, but because of either the bungled bridge stop or the Afzali tip-off, he’d abandoned his plans.

  Yet they couldn’t prove any of this. It wasn’t illegal to have bomb-making instructions. The recipes for TATP and other explosives were easily found online. Sending an email to an al-Qaeda address wasn’t illegal, either. Maybe the FBI could charge him with providing support to a terrorist group, but everyone knew that was a stretch. The government had a flimsy case against Zazi and nothing on Medunjanin and Ahmedzay. So while Zazi might have felt lucky to leave the police precinct free of handcuffs, the truth was that arresting Zazi that morning was never considered.

  Agents figured that if they gave Zazi breathing room, he’d try to cover his tracks and perhaps make a mistake. Maybe he’d call somebody and say something incriminating. Perhaps he’d lead the surveillance team to the bomb. The obvious risk, however, was that Zazi would cover his tracks and wriggle his way out of the bureau’s grip completely.

  At that moment, though, the most immediate concern was what to do about the afternoon. Zazi had new reservations to fly back to Denver, which meant the task force needed to decide whether to let him board the flight. Borelli didn’t worry that Zazi would try to blow up the plane in midair. He didn’t have any weapons on him, and, after the lengthy car search, Borelli was confident Zazi hadn’t hidden anything dangerous in the Impala. He would be required to remove his shoes and belt and walk through a metal detector at the airport. Still, Zazi had proven himself unpredictable. He knew the police were after him, and, whatever he’d planned to pull off in New York, he was leaving the city a failure. Even without a bomb, Zazi could try something desperate or foolish. Letting him fly was a risk.

  At FBI headquarters in Washington, Art Cummings, the head of national security, figured it was a risk worth taking. Even if agents had enough evidence to arrest Zazi, which they didn’t, Cummings was so committed to his wait-and-see policy that colleagues said he even disliked using government watch lists to keep suspected terrorists from boarding planes or crossing into the United States. Turn them away from the border or reject their plane ticket, and the FBI would never know what they were planning. Better to monitor closely and let them continue on their way. Cummings didn’t like arresting people in national security cases until the FBI had collected all the evidence and knew everything it needed about the plot. The only exception was someone posing an imminent threat that the bureau couldn’t control.

  When Zazi showed up at the airport that afternoon, he would be cleared to fly.

  The responsibility for controlling him fell to Ari Papadacos, the FBI supervisor beneath Borelli who had spent three days running the command center in Chelsea. Papadacos put two of his agents on standby, with orders to be on Zazi’s flight. When Zazi boarded the plane that afternoon, the armed agents would be sitting nearby.

  • • •

  Looking over the red Impala, Zazi found everything in order. He was certain that the FBI or the police had been rummaging through his things. Who steals a car, takes it for a joyride, and touches nothing? Even the laptop on the floor of the front seat?

  Zazi was done with New York. He steered the car toward the Grand Central Parkway, a tree-lined east-west highway. In a few minutes, he reached his exit: LaGuardia Airport.

  Back in Chelsea, the radios chirped. Zazi was leaving early. The FBI wasn’t ready.

  Papadacos hurried his agents, Kevin Larkin and John Scott, out the door with one order: Get on that plane. The two agents had worked through the night and, like nearly everyone on the task force, were practically asleep on their feet.

  I don’t care what you have to do, Papadacos said. There is no other option.

  Greg Fowler, Borelli’s boss and the FBI agent in charge of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, was in the command center and saw the commotion. Not twenty-four hours after losing Zazi in the subways, it looked as though the FBI had dropped the ball again.

  I thought he wasn’t flying until this afternoon? Fowler asked.

  Boss, we got it covered, Papadacos said. We’ll be on the flight.

  Zazi pulled into the Hertz parking lot shortly before 7:30 a.m. and returned the Impala, with 1,843 new miles on it. With a surveillance team in pursuit, he took a shuttle to the main terminal. He was soon at the United
Airlines ticket counter, paying cash for a seat on Flight 216, direct to Denver, leaving at 9:07 a.m.

  The flight started boarding in a half hour.

  With sirens wailing and blue lights flashing, the FBI car sped east across Manhattan toward Queens. The drive from Manhattan to LaGuardia is a half hour on the best day, with no traffic. Once the FBI knew what flight Zazi was taking, an intelligence analyst in Chelsea booked tickets for Larkin and Scott. They pulled up to the airport and tossed the keys to a waiting surveillance agent. If necessary, the FBI was prepared to hold the plane at the gate, but that would be yet another tip-off to Zazi.

  A Port Authority official met the agents inside the airport and accompanied them through security in LaGuardia’s main terminal. Zazi’s flight was leaving from gate C7, near the end of a more than two-hundred-yard concourse. Larkin and Scott set off running down the gangway.

  The agents reached the gate just as flight attendants prepared to lock the door. They were the last two passengers on the plane.

  Larkin and Scott found their seats, one row behind Zazi, across the aisle. They settled in for the three-and-a-half-hour flight to Denver. Zazi put in his earphones and closed his eyes to go to sleep.

  While Zazi was airborne, the FBI almost got the break it was looking for.

  Agents and analysts in Denver tracked an incoming call to Zazi’s phone. The call came from an unidentified number in Pakistan, one not associated with anyone in Zazi’s family.1 They recognized the significance immediately. A week earlier, Zazi had emailed for help with his bomb. He’d included his phone number. Now it seemed that al-Qaeda was returning the call. Maybe it was a high-ranking bomb maker. What if it was al-Qaeda’s chief of external operations, Saleh al-Somali himself? That call could seal Zazi’s fate. Plus, with the signal from a cell phone, the CIA’s drones could find a target for their missiles.

  Zazi couldn’t answer. His phone was off. It went to voice mail. The caller did not leave a message.

  DENVER

  It was clear from Zazi’s father’s phone conversations that he was worried about what kind of trouble his son had gotten into in New York. Steve Olson, the head of the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Colorado, figured that Mohammed Zazi would want to know right away what had happened. Since Najibullah Zazi no longer had a car, it stood to reason that his father, the shuttle driver, would pick him up at Denver International Airport. If the FBI could listen, a conversation between father and son could offer the evidence needed to make its case.