by Matt Apuzzo
In the FBI’s command center, Olson explained his idea to Captain Steve Garcia from the Colorado State Patrol. The FBI had a secret warrant to tape Zazi’s conversations, but someone still had to get inside his father’s car to plant a recorder.2
“We need somebody to make a stop,” Olson said.
This was a more complicated assignment than asking a trooper to pull over Zazi for speeding and find out where he was headed, as they’d done before. Somebody needed to slip under the dashboard of Mohammed’s car. And it had to be discreet.
Garcia said he’d do it. He’d been deeply involved in the case for days. It didn’t make sense to find another trooper with security clearances, bring him in on a Saturday, and get him up to speed. Garcia unpinned his gold captain’s bars from his uniform and, for this assignment, became a trooper again.
The Colorado State Patrol had the authority to inspect commercial vehicles, and Mohammed’s shuttle van qualified. To look natural, Garcia told Olson, they needed a second person. Typically, one trooper inspected the vehicle while a second stayed with the driver and handled the paperwork. Garcia grabbed Scott Casey, one of the troopers who’d conducted the blast analysis on the Denver Art Museum. Casey had clearance and, as a former police dog handler, he had conducted many car searches alongside the highway. Casey would stay with Mohammed while Garcia planted the bug.
The recorder was about half the length of a cell phone and about as thick, with an adhesive back and a transmitter built in. It was battery operated, so Garcia didn’t need to mess with wires. Just peel off the backing and stick it underneath the dash.
Neither trooper had planted a bug before. As they practiced in the FBI parking garage, the bureau’s technical experts peppered them with rules: Don’t put it near the vents. It was sound activated, so the whooshing of the air would keep the recorder running even when nobody was talking, running down the battery. Plus, the heater could melt the adhesive, and the bug would fall to the floor. Don’t put it too close to the radio. The signal could interfere with the transmitter, and the music could drown out the conversation.
The two men set out in Garcia’s unmarked Ford Crown Victoria and headed east toward the airport. From the Zazi family’s apartment, the airport was a straight shot north on the E-470 toll road, which surrounds Denver on three sides like a backward C. Garcia drove in lazy circles near the airport, exiting and reentering the highway while on the phone with Olson back at the FBI office. An FBI surveillance team was following Mohammed Zazi. Olson had Garcia on one line and the surveillance team on another. The troopers would have plenty of warning before their target got close.
Right on schedule, as Zazi’s plane touched down in Denver, his father left the apartment and climbed into his van. Olson told Garcia to be ready. When the van left the apartment complex, however, Mohammed did not head toward the highway on-ramp. He headed west on local roads toward Denver. Nobody understood. Was he going to take Interstate 225? It was a roundabout route, but maybe he had an errand to run before the airport. Whatever the reason, Garcia and Casey were on the wrong highway.
Garcia gunned the engine and motored south on the toll road, back toward the Zazi apartment. He’d get off onto local roads in Aurora and try to intercept the van. He didn’t bother with sirens or blue lights. He gave it gas, sending the Crown Victoria past 100 miles per hour, flirting with 110 and 120.
Zazi’s flight landed, and the FBI agents on the plane followed him into the terminal. They relayed his whereabouts to the bureau’s command center, where Olson passed them to Garcia. The captain tossed the phone to Casey so that he could focus on the road.
The Crown Victoria was closing in on Mohammed Zazi when Casey got word from the FBI: Najibullah Zazi was hailing a taxi. The FBI wasn’t prepared to follow the cab, and Olson needed the troopers to pick up the tail. That meant they needed to head back toward the airport.
Casey barked the new orders to Garcia, who was soon speeding back the way they’d come.
“We’re looking for a cab now?” Garcia grumbled.
The assignment was unclear. Were they supposed to pull over and bug the cabbie? What good would that do? Zazi wasn’t going to confess to a cabdriver. At the FBI office, Olson tried to keep everything straight. Over the phone, the troopers could hear him shouting orders at his exhausted agents—“Matt . . . Matt! . . . Matt!”—and jumping from one call to the next.
The troopers had barely turned around when they were called off the chase. An FBI surveillance team had eyes on the taxi. Get back on the father’s van, Olson said.
“C’mon, man, just tell us what car to stop,” Garcia said, turning the car around yet again. “Pick one.”
Garcia caught up with the father at a convenience store. Mohammed Zazi was inside. The troopers were stopped at a red light across the street. Garcia was ready to go.
As Mohammed got back into the van, though, Olson called off the operation. The warrant authorized the FBI to bug only Najibullah Zazi, who wasn’t in the van. Pack it up, Olson said. Come back.
The FBI already had another plan. There was a crawl space between the Zazis’ apartment and the building’s roof, an ideal spot from which to sneak tiny microphones into the home.
NEW YORK
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Back in New York, Don Borelli spent much of Sunday the thirteenth holed up in a conference room off the command center with FBI lawyers and members of the task force from other agencies. The FBI had a list of places it wanted to search. Borelli’s job was to make sure that all legal steps had been taken. At some locations, like the flophouse where Naiz Khan and his cabbie friends lived, the FBI wanted to hide a microphone. Search warrants made that easy. When agents arrived to search a home, they routinely ushered everyone outside. With privacy and time, the agents could hide microphones behind walls, inside light fixtures, or other spots that made them virtually undetectable.
After many hours behind closed doors, Borelli emerged to find the operations center packed. Borelli’s boss’s boss, Joe Demarest, the FBI agent in charge of all New York operations, was in full command. Demarest was a former SWAT team leader and served as a shift supervisor for the FBI’s investigation into 9/11. Even subordinates who didn’t care for his aggressive management regarded him as a strong battlefield general. Demarest had been out of town for the first few days of the Zazi case, but with the bureau preparing predawn raids, he was now in his element.
Hundreds of people, many in raid jackets or SWAT gear, hurried through the room. Borelli surveyed the scene and thought, “This just became an E-ticket ride”—an old Southern California term for the Disneyland passes that got you into the biggest, most thrilling attractions. When people talk about the close collaboration between the NYPD and the FBI, they are referring to moments like this.
On a whiteboard, Demarest outlined the plan for the crowd. They’d hit the flophouse, Afzali’s house, and the apartments of Ahmedzay and Medunjanin. Agents were even assigned to search Zazi’s coffee cart, sitting with scores of others in an overnight storage facility in Brooklyn, to make sure it wasn’t going to be used to sneak a bomb into Lower Manhattan. The raids had to be simultaneous. They’d strike between midnight and dawn. People were usually asleep then and less likely to put up a fight. Fewer journalists worked at that hour, which meant more time to work before the raids were on television.
Borelli would remain in Chelsea during the raids. Demarest would lead the operation from the streets of Queens.
As FBI agents in Chelsea finished their preparations, an NYPD car picked up Ahmad Afzali in Queens and brought him to 26 Federal Plaza, the Lower Manhattan headquarters of the FBI’s New York field office. Afzali didn’t know what the meeting was about, but he assumed he was there to help. Given the urgency and the late hour, he was increasingly sure that Zazi and his friends were mixed up in terrorism.3
Afzali’s NYPD handler, Daniel Sirakovsky, was there, but the imam didn’t recognize the other men in suits. In a room on the twenty-e
ighth floor, Afzali told the agents about his life, his work history, and his role in the community. It was old news to Sirakovsky but the imam assumed his friend from the NYPD wanted him to run through the story for the FBI’s benefit. Though it was late, the agents seemed in no rush.
The FBI agents, George Ennis and William Rassier, were joined by NYPD Sergeant Ray Johnson. Under questioning from the task force, Afzali became suspicious and soon realized he was under investigation. The imam didn’t think to call a lawyer or stop the interview. He had assumed that the NYPD Intelligence Division had been working with the FBI when Sirakovsky showed up Thursday at his house. He had no idea about the blowup that meeting caused.
Again, Afzali was shown four pictures: of Najibullah Zazi, Adis Medunjanin, Zarein Ahmedzay, and Amanullah Zazi, the man he believed to be Zazi’s brother. Afzali’s information on the four men was dated. He’d taught them the Koran in Arabic when they were younger. Growing up, they’d played volleyball at the mosque. He told the agents that Amanullah had been a troublemaker as a young man, but that a few years earlier, he’d seen him working at a grocery store in the neighborhood.
Afzali told the FBI agents that during his visit with the NYPD three nights earlier, he’d promised to try to find out what Zazi was up to. He had called Zazi the next morning to set up a meeting. The get-together never materialized because Zazi had a flight to catch that afternoon.
The agents listened, waiting to see whether Afzali would admit to tipping off Zazi. He did not.
The interview lasted hours. After 11:00 p.m., the agents brought Afzali coffee. He told them about his meeting with Medunjanin on Friday. He explained that everything he’d done had been to help the police.
The agents let Afzali talk himself into a corner. It was among the FBI’s favorite traps. Lying to the government is a federal crime punishable by up to five years in prison. People often think they can talk their way out of trouble by concocting a story.
Afzali said he realized that he’d messed up. He shouldn’t have called Zazi and Medunjanin. That’s probably why he noticed cars following him lately. But he wasn’t in the intelligence business. He was a funeral director and an imam. What was he supposed to do, show up at Abu Bakr and start asking people what Zazi was up to? That didn’t seem right. He figured he’d call Zazi and his friends directly, sit down, and talk sense into them.
Finally, the FBI asked him directly: Had he told Zazi that investigators were asking questions about him?
By now it was apparent that Afzali’s NYPD contact was not in charge. The FBI agents at the table were not interested in his help. They were angry.
No, Afzali lied. He hadn’t tipped off Zazi.
Afzali and the FBI agents soon were standing in his Queens home. They handed him a document entitled “Consent to Search.” Afzali and his wife signed it, and the agents went to work. Wearing rubber gloves and carrying disposable forceps, they swabbed Afzali’s belongings with cotton balls, which they stuffed into plastic bottles. They sealed the bottles with tape, labeled them, and placed them in evidence bags. FBI scientists would determine whether Afzali had kept explosives in his house.
The FBI handed Afzali another document, this one saying that none of his belongings had been seized. It was 3:19 a.m. About three miles away, Joe Demarest’s operation was in full swing.
• • •
Adis Medunjanin and his family had broken the Ramadan fast together that night. Hours later, they awoke to FBI agents storming the apartment, guns drawn. Medunjanin, his older sister, and his parents were ordered to the floor and handcuffed. Medunjanin’s sister cried. His mother, still in her nightgown, thought the armed men in body armor were soldiers.
Once the tactical team pronounced the scene safe, they ordered Medunjanin to his feet. An FBI agent named Farbod Azad had arrived to see him. Azad was a young agent, a former middle school teacher of Persian descent who’d come to counterterrorism fresh from the FBI Academy less than two years earlier. He ordered Medunjanin’s handcuffs removed and asked the bearded twenty-five-year-old to take a walk.
Medunjanin followed Azad and his partner, Angel Maysonet, an NYPD detective from the task force, down to Maysonet’s car. Best to get away from the commotion, they figured. Maysonet drove a few blocks north and parked near the Whitestone Expressway, where nobody was around.
Outside the car, standing in the dark alongside the highway, Medunjanin told the agents about his family’s life in Bosnia. He described his two-day, $220-a-week job as a security guard in Manhattan and recounted his religious pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. He admitted being friends with Zazi and Ahmedzay and said the three traveled to Pakistan together a year earlier. Medunjanin stuck to the script they’d agreed to at the time: He went to Pakistan to find a wife but returned home still a bachelor because the dowry was too high. He identified photos of Zazi, Ahmedzay, and the imam, Afzali.4
Medunjanin gave the FBI his email addresses, and they talked religion. Azad found him to be knowledgeable about Islam. For instance, Medunjanin explained that, in his view, Muslims could have checking accounts without violating the Koran’s prohibition on banking interest. The conversation lasted more than two hours. As the three men leaned against the car or stood on the sidewalk, agents a few blocks away were hauling off Medunjanin’s Dell computer, containing photos of al-Qaeda terrorists and a book about the eternal pleasures that awaited martyrs in paradise.
Medunjanin became confrontational when agents asked if he knew anything about a planned attack on the United States.
No, he replied, adding, “We don’t want this war.”
Medunjanin said that as a US citizen, he opposed the 9/11 attacks and killing civilians. It was up to Allah, however, to lead his heart the way it needed to go. And he said Americans hated Muslims. The hostility Muslims felt toward the US was because of its support for Israel, he said.
Medunjanin crossed his arms in front of him.
Why did you do that? the agents asked.
He was emulating the Prophet Muhammad, he said, crossing his arms to show strength in front of his enemies.
Medunjanin said he’d done nothing wrong and was willing to take a lie detector test to prove it. The agents said they could arrange one immediately. Medunjanin quickly changed his mind.
The scene was similar at Zarein Ahmedzay’s apartment. While agents searched his things, he sat in a parked car for hours, telling his life story and repeating the rehearsed lies about the trip to Pakistan.5 Ahmedzay and Zazi had returned home to see their wives, he said. Medunjanin went there hoping to marry.
Ahmedzay and Medunjanin had suspected the authorities might come for them. But Naiz Khan, Zazi’s old friend from the neighborhood who’d offered him a place to sleep Thursday night, had no warning before the SWAT team arrived.
The agents questioned all five people living there and a sixth who’d been visiting for two weeks, sleeping on the couch. Khan was honest with the agents. He told them that Zazi had approached him in the mosque, needing somewhere to stay. He recognized photos of Medunjanin and Ahmedzay but did not know their names. Khan, like Zazi, was an immigrant from Afghanistan by way of Pakistan. The agents asked about his trips to Pakistan. Khan explained that he’d left his wife and two children behind as he tried to make a life for himself, first as a coffee cart vendor and perhaps one day as a cabdriver.
“Please, help me bring my wife here,” Khan said. “And then I won’t need to go to Pakistan anymore.”6
When FBI agents searching the apartment found an electric scale and calculator in the closet, Khan was adamant: He’d never seen them. Then the agents opened a green suitcase. Inside were nine backpacks. There were enough for Zazi, Medunjanin, Ahmedzay, the five roommates, and the visitor on the couch.
Khan tried to explain. The backpacks belonged to his uncle, who also lived in the apartment. Khan’s mother got them from a friend in the Bronx, whose husband got them from a wholesaler that went out of business. What were they doing in the closet? Why do a coffee cart
operator and his uncle need nine backpacks? Khan said they planned to send them to relatives in Pakistan.
The story was true. But it sounded unbelievable, like the lies that Ahmedzay and Medunjanin were spinning to FBI agents a few blocks away.
Monday, September 14, 2009
It would take time for the experts to analyze the computers and for the scientists to test for explosives, but as the sun came up on Monday the fourteenth, the FBI was no closer to proving that Zazi had come to New York to launch an attack. The agents still didn’t know what he and his friends had been plotting or how they fit into al-Qaeda’s plans.
Now the FBI faced a new wrinkle: The driver of the white van from the rest stop in Ohio five days earlier was speeding toward New York.
While Zazi and his friends had kept FBI agents in New York and Denver occupied, the white van had been the singular focus of the FBI’s Cleveland field office and its boss, Frank Figliuzzi.
Figliuzzi hadn’t paid attention the night of September 9, when his surveillance team was dispatched to follow Zazi across Ohio. Cleveland was Ohio’s largest FBI office, and his team was often out of town helping on someone else’s case. Nobody had told Figliuzzi about the apparent predawn encounter between Zazi and the driver of the white van at the highway rest stop. So he was caught off guard when Mike Heimbach, the FBI’s counterterrorism chief, called from headquarters a few hours afterward.
“Frank, what the fuck is going on?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Figliuzzi said. “Calm down.”