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

by Matt Apuzzo

  “Under Commissioner Ray Kelly’s leadership, at least fourteen attacks by Islamic terrorists have been prevented by the NYPD,” Representative Peter King of Long Island said.

  The numbers were false.3 Every government agency promotes itself, but the NYPD’s combination of publicity and secrecy prevented people from assessing whether its intelligence programs worked and are worth the cost in money and trust.

  New Yorkers had no idea they were paying for something that, at the most important moment, had proven useless. When the US intelligence community errs, there is congressional oversight. The police department faced no questions about what went wrong in the Zazi case. Nobody was called to testify about why the Demographics Unit hadn’t provided early warning, why investigators infiltrating student groups didn’t spot the trio of terrorists, or why the many informants and undercover officers hadn’t triggered alarms. Nobody asked whether such programs were worth continuing.

  The same would be true in May 2010 when Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized US citizen from Pakistan who believed the nation was at war with Islam, tried to detonate a car bomb in Times Square. The NYPD’s $150 million electronic surveillance system, with more than two thousand cameras, failed to spot the smoking Nissan Pathfinder. Only a design flaw kept the bomb from detonating. A Muslim street vendor noticed it and alerted police.

  Since 9/11, more secrets than ever have been kept from Americans in the name of keeping them safe; a government of the people has inched toward becoming a government kept from the people. In Washington, the administration uses its classification stamp to withhold information. In New York, the police department, with no authority to keep documents classified, routinely denies the release of basic information: crime reports, organizational charts, mug shots, and more.

  Were it not for a few whistle-blowing NYPD officials with access to Intelligence Division files, it’s not clear when or if any of these programs would have been disclosed. We still don’t know what other domestic intelligence programs were created, what information they collected, whether they worked, or whether they’re still in use.

  And there’s no system in place for anyone outside the NYPD to find out.

  • • •

  As this book goes to print, Raymond Kelly still runs the New York Police Department. Following our stories, he said he had changed nothing about the department’s intelligence-gathering practices.4 It’s not clear whether he’ll have a job after the 2013 mayoral election to replace Bloomberg, who faces term limits. David Cohen is still deputy commissioner for intelligence. Deputy Chief Jim Shea is no longer on the Joint Terrorism Task Force but remains with the NYPD. Paul Ciorra, the department’s good soldier, never publicly complained about his transfer following the blowup over Afzali’s phone call. In 2012 he was promoted to the rank of inspector. Hector Berdecia retired from the department and took a job with the federal government, allowing him to spend more time with his family.

  The Demographics Unit was renamed the Zone Assessment Unit in 2010 over fears about how the title would be perceived if it leaked out. But rakers still troll Muslim neighborhoods, filing an average of four new reports every day.5 Today Cohen’s Intelligence Division has a budget of $60 million and commands nearly six hundred officers even as al-Qaida’s power diminishes.

  The Muslim community is marbled by fear and isolation. The NYPD is in their mosques, businesses, and student groups. Worshippers are afraid to congregate. Young men worry that growing beards will attract police attention. People fear that talking politics, marching in protests, or attending academic lectures will land them in police files.6

  They believe this because it happens.

  “Your job is to protect us,” said Tahanie Aboushi, a Manhattan lawyer. “If we are now afraid of you, the community will pull together and cut themselves off from law enforcement.”

  The FBI has already seen that happening. The top agent in New Jersey made headlines in 2012 when he said the NYPD’s tactics were isolating Muslims and making the region less safe.

  “These are people that are our friends” Michael Ward said. “These are people that have embraced law enforcement, embraced the mission that we have in counterterrorism, and you can see that the relationships are strained.”

  • • •

  Larry Sanchez left the NYPD in December 2010 after a falling-out with Cohen, taking a lucrative job in the Persian Gulf region as a consultant. The CIA’s inspector general found that Sanchez’s assignment in New York had been marked by inconsistent oversight and a lack of clear rules but said no laws had been broken. He was replaced by a clandestine officer, Lance Hamilton, whose assignments in Pakistan and Jordan had made him one of the most senior operatives in the CIA.7 Nobody ever provided a direct answer about what Hamilton was doing inside a municipal police department. After his assignment was revealed, the CIA recalled him to Langley. As far as we know, the CIA no longer has an officer embedded inside the NYPD.

  The New York City Council was trying to create an inspector general to oversee the police department, someone who would subject the nation’s largest police department to the kind of internal review and program oversight seen at the CIA, FBI, and other executive agencies. Bloomberg and Kelly are adamantly opposed. They say any outside oversight would make New York a more dangerous place to live.

  Many FBI agents named in this book have since left the bureau.

  Jim Davis became executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Safety. He finally got to chase criminals. Steve Olson is close to retirement age and thinking about his second career, one that will help put his children through college.

  Art Cummings, Mike Heimbach, Jim McJunkin, and Brenda Heck joined the corporate world, leaving behind a legacy of helping to reshape the bureau to fight terrorism after 9/11. Greg Fowler, the head of the New York task force, became special agent in charge of the FBI’s Portland, Oregon, office. His boss, Joe Demarest, runs the cybercrime division at FBI headquarters in Washington. Ari Papadacos and Bill Sweeney are still fighting terrorism.

  Robert Mueller faced mandatory retirement in 2011, but President Obama asked him to stay two more years. Congress extended Mueller’s term, making him the second-longest-serving FBI director behind J. Edgar Hoover. Mueller’s term expires September 4, 2013.

  • • •

  Don Borelli went on to retire from the FBI, accepting a position as vice president with a Manhattan consulting firm. When the Zazi investigation finally slowed down, Borelli took a week off for his forty-ninth birthday. He flew to New Mexico with a bottle of whisky and went fly-fishing.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book grew out of a series for the Associated Press, where we have been given the two great luxuries in American journalism: time to piece together stories and the space to tell them. Supporting investigative journalists is rarely easy and often expensive but we are fortunate to have the backing of many wonderful bosses. AP president Gary Pruitt, Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll, and Senior Managing Editor Mike Oreskes have been unwavering. Ted Bridis is our editor, defender, and friend. Sally Buzbee, AP’s Washington bureau chief, is one of the industry’s great champions of investigative reporting.

  As journalists and, later, as authors, we relied on the support and contributions of talented colleagues, including Christopher Hawley, Tom Hays, Peter Banda, Maria Sanminiatelli, Nahal Toosi, David Stringer, Justin Vogt, Justin Pritchard, James Risen, David Caruso, Mark Mazzetti, Julie Tate, Michael Powell, Charles Dharapak, John Doherty, Len Levitt (who has been tilting at windmills longer than any of us), and the incomparably talented Eileen Sullivan.

  This book would not have been possible without the trust and help of many current and former officials from the NYPD, FBI, CIA, the Justice Department, Colorado State Patrol, and elsewhere. We received help along the way from Mike Kortan, Richard Kolko, and Beth Lefebvre from the FBI; Lance Clem at the Colorado Department of Public Safety; Preston Golston at CIA; Robert Nardoza at the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern Distr
ict of New York.

  Defense lawyers Robert Gottlieb, Justin Heinrich, Steve Zissou, Robert Boyle, Ron Kuby, Michael Dowling, and Deborah Colson were generous with their time. The Handschu lawyers—Martin Stolar, Jethro Eisenstein, Paul Chevigny, and Franklin Siegel—summoned boxes from warehouses to help us understand a fight that has spanned decades.

  We are grateful to Melanie Pearlman and Christina Gradillas at the CELL; Adrienne Schwisow; Landon Nordeman; Umair Khan; Fahd Amed; Daniel Baker at FlightAware; and chefs Robert Berry, Justin Smillie, and Richard King, who kept our sources and us well fed with some of New York’s best food.

  Several people named in this book helped us greatly. Many more could not be named, either here or elsewhere, but provided invaluable documents and insight into the NYPD’s inner workings and the race to stop Najibullah Zazi. For that, we thank you.

  We are indebted to our agents, Gail Ross and Howard Yoon, and to Matthew Benjamin and his team at Touchstone, who visualized the story we wanted to tell and supported this book at its earliest stages.

  Stephen Merelman and Amy Fiscus provided deft edits. They lived inside our sentences and our brains, leaving both sharper and wiser. Their insights and suggestions made this book immeasurably better. We are lucky to have such friends, mentors, and colleagues.

  We owe much of our success to our loving parents.

  And, of course, we are forever thankful for the support of our wives, Becky and Allison, who put up with so much during two years of reporting. We love you.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  © LANDON NORDEMAN

  MATT APUZZO and ADAM GOLDMAN are investigative reporters for the Associated Press in Washington, D.C. They shared in the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for a series on the New York Police Department’s clandestine spying program targeting American Muslims. Together Apuzzo and Goldman have uncovered the location of an overseas CIA prison, revealed widespread cheating on FBI exams, and showed how the CIA’s haphazard disciplinary system resulted in promotions for officers who kidnapped and killed the wrong people. They have shared the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, a George Polk Award, the Paul Tobenkin Memorial Award, and the Edgar A. Poe Award from the White House Correspondents’ Association. Apuzzo has covered organized crime, corruption, and law enforcement in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Washington. Goldman has covered crime and government for newspapers in Virginia and Alabama. He reported from Las Vegas and New York for the AP.

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  NOTES

  Two: A Spy in New York

  1. Leonard Levitt, NYPD Confidential: Power and Corruption in the Country’s Greatest Police Force (New York: Thomas Dunne Books), pp. 41–42.

  2. Kelly’s Vietnam service record includes participation in Operations Harvest Moon, Blue Marlin, Dagger Thrust, and others.

  3. Jim Rutenberg, “Torture Seeps into Discussion by News Media,” New York Times, November 5, 2001, www.nytimes.com/2001/11/05/business/media/05TORT.html?pagewanted=all.

  4. The September 11 Detainees: A Review of the Treatment of Aliens Held on Immigration Charges in Connection with the Investigation of the September 11 Attacks (Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, April 2003), www.justice.gov/oig/special/0306/full.pdf.

  5. The phone call is described in Christopher Dickey, Securing the City: Inside America’s Best Counterterrorism Force—The NYPD (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), p. 36.

  6. Interview with a former colleague who witnessed the event.

  7. Interview with a former colleague.

  8. Interviews with former CIA officials who know and worked with Cohen.

  9. Interview with Melvin Goodman.

  10. Interview with John Deutch.

  11. The “Jordans” anecdote and the sentiment in the Near East Division were described in an interview with longtime officer Robert Baer and confirmed by other former Directorate of Operations officers.

  12. Gordon Lederman, Memorandum for the Record (MFR) of the Interview of David Cohen of the Central Intelligence Agency conducted by Team 2 (Washington, DC: National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, June 21, 2004), http://media.nara.gov/9-11/MFR/t-0148-911MFR-00164.pdf.

  13. Ibid.

  14. The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004), pp. 111–12.

  15. Email to the authors from Boston University spokesman Colin Riley: “[Cohen] received a Master’s Degree in Government on 5/29/1966.”

  16. The best insider’s account of the NYPD Intelligence Division of that era is Anthony J. Bouza, Police Intelligence, The Operations of an Investigative Unit (New York: AMS Press, 1976). The mission creep is described on pages 163–64.

  17. Defendants’ Answers to Plaintiffs’ Interrogatories, Handschu v. Special Services Division, United States District Court, Southern District of New York, 71-CV-2203, document filed on December 22, 1977.

  18. Affidavit of Rosemary Carroll, Handschu v. Special Services Division, United States District Court, Southern District of New York, 71-CV-2203, March 18, 1981.

  19. Details of the FBI and CIA spying operations are taken from six books that make up the Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, particularly book 3, Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976), available at www.intelligence.senate.gov/pdfs94th/94755_III.pdf.

  20. Final Report, bk. 3, p. 695.

  Three: Heading East

  1. Lord Carlisle of Berriew, QC, Operation Pathway: Report Following Review (London: Institute of Race Relations, October 2009), www.irr.org.uk/pdf2/Carliles_report_Pathway.pdf. This document links email to “Al Qaeda’s operations outside Pakistan.” Al-Somali was al-Qaeda’s external operations chief at the time. The Justice Department has publicly linked the email address to al-Somali through a courier.

  2. McHale testimony from Hearing on 9/11 Health Effects: The Screening and Monitoring of First Responders, Before the Subcommittee on Government Management, Organization, and Procurement of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, House of Representatives, One Hundred Tenth Congress, First Session, September 10, 2007 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2009), available at www.napo.org/washington-report/McHaleTestimony.pdf.

  Four: Demographics

  1. Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo, “Authority for NYPD-CIA Collaboration Questioned,” Associated Press, January 20, 2012, http://online.wsj.com/article/AP99d50ace043148fbbe3d296b37c3c5aa.html.

  2. The content of these discussions and the immediate post-9/11 concerns were described in interviews with former senior NYPD officials directly involved in transforming the department at that time.

  3. Terry McDermott, “A Perfect Soldier,” Los Angeles Times, January 27, 2002, http://articles.latimes.com/2002/jan/27/news/mn-25005.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Stevenson Swanson, “9/11 Haunts Hijacker’s Sponsors,” Chicago Tribune, March 7, 2003, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2003-03-07/news/0303070298_1_mohamed-atta-hijacker-world-trade-center.

  6. John Cloud, “Atta’s Odyssey,” Time, September 30, 2001, www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,176917,00.html.

  7. Tim Golden, Michael Moss, and Jim Yardley, �
�Unpolished Secret Agents Were Able to Hide in Plain Sight,” New York Times, September 23, 2001, www.nytimes.com/2001/09/23/national/23PLOT.html.

  8. John Hooper, “The Shy, Caring, Deadly Fanatic,” Observer (UK), September 23, 2001, www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/sep/23/september11.education.

  9. United States v. Zacarias Moussaoui, criminal no. 01-455-A, prosecution trial exhibits, government exhibit ST00001, stipulation (regarding flights hijacked on September 11, 2001; September 11, 2001, deaths; al-Qaeda; chronology of hijacker’s activities; Zacarias Moussaoui; and the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System [CAPPS]), filed March 1, 2006. Available at www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/prosecution/ST00001A.pdf.

  10. Cohen’s interest in Reid’s time in Paris was described in an interview with a former senior federal intelligence official who discussed Reid’s case with Cohen.

  11. Cohen’s description of raking coals was described in interviews with former NYPD officials involved in the genesis of the program.

  12. Sam Roberts, “Police Demographics Unit Casts Shadows from Past,” City Room (blog), New York Times, January 3, 2012, http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/police-demographics-unit-casts-shadows-from-past.

  13. The Israeli inspiration was described in two interviews: one with a former NYPD official and a second with a former senior US intelligence official who spoke to Sanchez about the program.

  14. International Religious Freedom Report 2004: Israel and the Occupied Territories (Washington, DC: US State Department. September 15, 2004), http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/2004/35499.htm#. Quoted: “Tensions continued to remain high due to the institutional, legal, and societal discrimination against the country’s Arab citizens.”

  15. Chris McGreal, “Facility 1391: Israel’s Secret Prison,” Guardian, November 13, 2003, www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/nov/14/israel2.