Terrorism Close Calls (2018) s01e01 Episode Script
The NY City Subway Plot
1 [Richard Frankel.]
They'd gone to Pakistan.
They had met with Al-Qaeda.
They were taught how to make bombs.
[narrator.]
September, 2009: Three naturalized U.
S.
citizens plan a devastating terror attack on American soil.
The idea of the plot was for multiple suicide bombers to be on the New York City subway in and around the eighth anniversary of 9/11 and explode themselves in the subway.
It would be ball bearings or other metal objects exploded out into a contained space.
[screaming.]
[Rep.
Peter King.]
This would have been absolutely devastating to New York City, and the entire metropolitan area.
[indistinct radio chatter.]
[narrator.]
A coordinated effort led by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force is charged to stop the attack.
They want to kill New Yorkers, U.
S.
citizens.
This was not some fairy tale.
[siren blaring.]
[Don Borelli.]
The clock is ticking.
This is like, you know, a real-life episode of 24, and you're starring in it.
[narrator.]
True stories of the world's deadliest terror plots with exclusive access to leading counter-terrorism experts and the elite agents who stopped the attacks.
- Homegrown terrorists.
- Jihadi propaganda.
Neo Nazis.
[King.]
This cuts across ideological lines, and it cuts across nationalism lines.
The depravity of the enemy we face knows no bounds, and so does our determination to keep them from hurting people.
PeopleâÂÂs lives depend on their success.
[narrator.]
On this episode of Terrorism Close Calls, homegrown terrorists link with Al-Qaeda foreign extremists to attack the New York City subway system.
The elite agents of the FBIâÂÂs Joint Terrorism Task Force take you inside the investigation as they fight the clock to stop what could be the worst attack against the United States since 9/11.
With close to nine million residents, New York is one of the most populated cities in America.
[indistinct chatter.]
The New York City subway system helps support the movement of 1.
7 billion riders a year, and is the largest rapid transit system in the world, with 472 stations in operation located throughout the boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx.
The New York City subway system is also a prime target for terror attacks.
[indistinct distant chatter.]
Congressman Pete King is a key member of the Homeland Security Committee.
Any subway system is extremely vulnerable, but in New York where you have over a thousand exits and entrances to the subways no way you could be inspecting, examining, questioning people going through a thousand entrances and exits.
[narrator.]
Terrorists have attacked this soft target before.
London, July 7, 2005: [screaming.]
[booming.]
[booming.]
[siren blaring.]
[narrator.]
Three suicide bombers successfully detonate their explosives on a British underground, killing 52 people and injuring over 700.
Four years after the London attacks, terrorists hope to inflict even more damage in New York City.
September, 2009: After a year of meticulous planning, the final pieces are falling into place.
With Al-Qaeda support, three U.
S.
operatives plan to wreak maximum carnage by detonating homemade bombs on various trains in the New York City subway system and in Grand Central Terminal around the anniversary of 9/11.
[clicking and whirring.]
Just days before the intended attack, a counter-terrorist agent at the U.
S.
National Security Agency receives an alert to a potential threat.
David Bitkower is the former federal prosecutor on the case.
They saw an email from someone in the United States to an Al-Qaeda courier using coded phrases like, "The marriage is ready," and asking for what appeared to be the ingredients for how to make a bomb.
And you can imagine that nothing sets off an intelligence officer such as hearing that someone in the United States is asking for the recipe for a bomb from an Al-Qaeda courier located overseas.
[narrator.]
The email exchange kicks off a nationwide investigation and unprecedented cooperation between federal and state law enforcement agencies, including intelligence analysts working with the New York Police Department.
Mitchell Silber is the Director of Intelligence Analysis working for the New York City Police Department.
The U.
S.
Intelligence Community was monitoring these email communications and was able to detect that the emails coming from the U.
S.
to this Al-Qaeda email address were originating in Colorado.
[narrator.]
The email address of Rashid Rauf, a senior Al-Qaeda leader in Pakistan, is linked to an IP address in Aurora, Colorado, belonging to a man named Najibullah Zazi.
So, his first email to the courier expresses that he is trying to make the bomb, and in coded language says, "He needs the recipe, flour and oil.
" [keyboard clicking.]
When the Al-Qaeda courier didn't respond right away, he wrote another email a couple of hours later saying, "I need the recipe, flour and oil.
" and then he did it a third time and each time using larger font and more strident language, saying what an emergency it was that he needed the recipe.
Everything in the Zazi plot happened very quickly.
He, you know, didn't wait much longer once he got replies from that email address before he started driving east.
[narrator.]
The investigation ramps up as Zazi hits the road.
In the wake of ZaziâÂÂs departure from Colorado, investigators were able to determine that he was experimenting and had made some TATP in Colorado [wind blowing.]
And that really raised the concern that he might be bringing this TATP to New York City.
[narrator.]
TATP, or triacetone triperoxide, is a highly volatile explosive thatâÂÂs been used in several terror attacks.
With this new evidence, law enforcement begins outreach to sellers of potential bomb component materials in Denver.
Surveillance video surfaces from a beauty supply store showing Zazi buying several bottles of hydrogen peroxide, one of the core ingredients in TATP.
[horns honking.]
[indistinct distant chatter.]
One of the first agencies to receive the details of the threat is the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, also known as the JTTF, a counter-terrorism partnership of over 50 federal and state agencies.
[indistinct chatter.]
Don Borelli is the assistant special agent in charge of the JTTF in New York City.
Literally, Najibullah Zazi was driving in a car from Denver to New York at like 90 miles an hour.
And that was the first I had heard of Zazi.
I log on so I can read exactly who this guy is, and what he's about.
And it's one of those, "Oh, crap," moments.
"This is going to get bad fast.
" One of the most dangerous aspects of TATP is if somebody has the proper training, they can make this explosive from ingredients you can buy in the local market.
You don't need to ship a bomb in, you know, from, you know, another country and pass through customs and all that.
[indistinct chatter.]
[narrator.]
Special agent Richard Frankel works alongside Don Borelli.
And we were told that there was information that had been gleaned from the intelligence agencies, that a person by the name Najibullah Zazi, was going to be coming from Denver to New York with bomb or bomb-making materials.
[narrator.]
While surveillance keeps eyes focused on ZaziâÂÂs movements, intelligence digs up info on their suspect.
The investigation reveals 22-year-old Najibullah Zazi, a legal U.
S.
resident, was born in the Paktia Province of Afghanistan and immigrated to Flushing, Queens at age 14 with his father, who worked as a cab driver.
Zazi attends Flushing High School before moving to Denver, Colorado with his family.
By 2009, Zazi is communicating with an Al-Qaeda courier about how to make bombs.
With a potential Al-Qaeda-orchestrated attack speeding towards New York City, all of law enforcement are anticipating a worst-case scenario.
Everybody was acutely aware of the fact that this was September 11th weekend, so we could only imagine that this was some sort of attack aimed for the anniversary.
[Borelli.]
YouâÂÂre in the New York JTTF 9/11 is your constant reminder.
You donâÂÂt want that to happen again on your watch.
[siren blaring.]
[narrator.]
If Zazi is not stopped and manages to detonate a bomb, hundreds could be killed.
All surveillance resources, including the New York City Police Department, are employed to track ZaziâÂÂs approach into New York City.
William Flanagan is the deputy commissioner of police for Nassau County.
To track someone during an investigation of terrorism range from the utilization of electronic monitoring cell phone eavesdropping, cell phone monitoring, location-based surveillance, GPS, aircraft tracking, and direct physical surveillance.
[computer beeping.]
We're trying to figure out, okay, how much time do we have to come up with a plan, whether to let him go, stop him, figure out what's in the car.
[narrator.]
In order to get a closer look at what agents believe may be a car carrying a highly explosive bomb, the JTTF come up with a ruse to stop Zazi at the George Washington Bridge, a double decked suspension bridge spanning the Hudson River between Fort Lee, New Jersey, and the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan.
Essentially, they shut down the bridge.
They stop him.
It's done under the guise of, you know, kind of a routine traffic stop, but this was anything but routine.
Any time you stop a vehicle, you know you're looking for something that's potentially dangerous, it's dangerous to the officers, too.
You don't know if he's got something made that he could just detonate on the bridge right there, so it's extremely tense.
It was hopefully going to make it look like it might even be a drug stop.
And they had a dog walk around the car.
Of course, the dog was not a drug-sniffing dog, it was an explosive-sniffing dog.
[narrator.]
The dog doesnâÂÂt alert to any threat.
This is because Zazi isnâÂÂt carrying a fully assembled bomb.
But he has all the materials to make the explosives.
So it hadn't actually been put together yet, and part of the reason was, it was probably highly combustible and you didn't want to drive, you know, from Denver to New York that way.
[narrator.]
Without any positive alerts, the Port Authority has no choice but to let Zazi proceed into Manhattan.
The last thing you want is somebody that has the ability to make a bomb somewhere in the city.
I mean, that's just That's like the worst possible scenario, and yet, we had That's what we were dealing with.
[Frankel.]
And if we take him down at this point and he doesn't cooperate, we have nothing.
We don't know if there are other actors.
This may just be one cell of a bigger plot to blow something up.
[narrator.]
With multiple surveillance teams on Zazi, he works his way through Manhattan.
[Borelli.]
He drives around the city, goes out into Queens.
He went to a mosque and drives around the back, out of sight.
So, essentially, now he's out of sight from the surveillance people.
[narrator.]
After a few anxious hours, Zazi finally emerges from the mosque and heads back to Queens.
[King.]
They thought they had a good read on him, but the concern was, they didn't know who else he was dealing with in New York, and that was the worry that even if they got Zazi, these multiple subway attacks would be carried out.
[narrator.]
A critical priority for law enforcement is to find and track affiliates of Zazi.
[Frankel.]
We were checking social media, who his friends were.
We were checking everything.
The analysts were going through his life bit by bit to find out anything we could.
[narrator.]
Intelligence analysts uncover phone, travel and communication records, and, as suspected, Zazi is not working alone.
They were able to identify Najibullah's two primary co-conspirators in New York, Zarein Ahmedzay and Adis Medunjanin.
[Bitkower.]
Although all three were immigrants to this country, they were, in a way, the American success story.
They had come as young teenagers, or even younger than that, and had begun to assimilate, learned English.
They went to high school in Queens.
They would be friends.
They'd be friends at the mosque.
They'd be friends at school.
They would play basketball together.
They would listen to their iPod together like normal American teenagers.
[narrator.]
The three former high school classmates from Flushing High School seem like regular kids growing up amongst a diverse immigrant community in Queens.
But, by 2006, things have changed.
Motivated by the U.
S.
war in Afghanistan and what they deem a crusade against Islam by the West, the trio become more devout in their religious practices and begin to follow the teachings of Sheikh Anwar al-Awlaki, one of Al-QaedaâÂÂs most notorious online recruiters.
Jihad against America is binding upon myself.
Anwar al-Awlaki, an American guy that spoke perfect English that could resonate with some of these people.
[chanting.]
[Borelli.]
They're showing, you know, how glamorous a life it is.
The guy's shooting, and they make it look like an Outward Bound adventure, you know? And so, they can make it appealing to some of these kids that have nothing, really, more to grab onto.
[narrator.]
The group is also inspired by Zakir Naik, a physician in India and prominent speaker on Islam who publicly declares that Jews control America and that apostates can be killed.
By 2008, the friends are convinced it's their duty to wage Jihad in Afghanistan.
The original motivation for Zazi, Ahmedzay, and Medunjanin to go into Pakistan and Afghanistan was to fight there.
And they had this very romantic view that they were going to recreate what it was like in the 7th century to be a famous Islamic warrior.
They were radicalized together, essentially, which is not an uncommon path to radicalization.
There's a comfort factor there.
[narrator.]
While in Pakistan, the friends are contacted by Al-Qaeda and travel to Waziristan, where they train in high-powered weapons at an Al-Qaeda camp.
Zazi receives further training in explosives.
Al-Qaeda leaders encourage the friends to return to the United States.
For Adis and Zarein and Najibullah, what made them special was they had American passports and they could return to New York City without attracting suspicion.
And that was their value to Al-Qaeda.
[narrator.]
The three friends from Queens agree to return to New York and wage terror attacks on the very city they grew up in.
Armed with the identities of Zazi's co-conspirators, the investigation quickly expands into a full-blown manhunt.
There were search warrants across the five boroughs and surrounding areas of New York and in other states.
[Borelli.]
Because now, the case goes from one person to three people, and that means that now you have three targets.
[narrator.]
Agents finally have eyes on all three suspects.
Following the recommendations of prosecutor David Bitkower, they set up wire taps and surveillance.
Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or FISA, they don't have to show that the defendant is a criminal, just probable cause that the suspect is an agent of a foreign power, including, potentially, a terrorist.
[computer beeping.]
[narrator.]
Agents believe Zazi is trying to meet members of his cell to connect the TATP detonator he already made to a main charge, which could be assembled into a suicide vest or backpack.
They follow Zazi to a house in Queens, where they also hope to find the other two members of his cell.
[Borelli.]
I called it the flophouse.
Essentially, there was a lot of people staying in this house.
Now, the investigation goes, you know, from three people to, like, 15 people.
We don't know if they're now part of this big conspiracy, they're all going to be suicide bombers, or they just happened to be there by coincidence.
[narrator.]
As the investigation expands, so does the manpower needed to follow these other potential suspects.
At that point, you know, it becomes a 24/7 operation with a command post burning around the clock.
[narrator.]
The flophouse turns out to be exactly that: a cheap place shared by a number of people, all innocent to the plot.
On the eighth anniversary of 9/11, the agents reach a critical point in the investigation.
Zazi has parked his car on the street and leaves the scene.
The agents see it as an opportunity.
While one team follows Zazi, the other goes for the car.
We had a warrant and we went and we took the car on a flatbed and we brought it to a location, and our forensics team in the FBI, they call it ERT, the Evidence Response Team, Evidence Recovery Team, started searching the car.
And to be honest, I was there and I was pretty impressed by it.
It was like CSI.
It was like the movies.
And we actually found a computer in the car.
[ratcheting.]
[music continues.]
[camera shutter clicks.]
And there's his laptop.
Gold mine gold mine.
This is like, you know, when you pull the lottery and you get, you know, like, all the cherries and everything.
So this is fantastic.
So We bring in the people that the computer analysis folks that can, essentially, do a search of the computer.
It takes a while.
They've got to mirror the hard drive.
Computer was mirrored, which means it was copied.
They put the car back together You know, they put everything back where it's supposed to be and they go.
[narrator.]
The car is quietly returned to the same location and the copied hard drive is taken back to the FBI computer forensic lab and scanned.
That agent called me a couple of hours later when we were just about to call it the night, and said, "We have a problem.
We just found the cookbook.
" You know, the bomb-making cookbook.
[narrator.]
Richard Frankel, Don Borelli, David Bitkower, and other members of the JTTF immediately assemble at the FBI command post and conference in a Washington bomb expert to discuss the "cookbook" which contains ZaziâÂÂs handwritten notes.
He looks at this and he knows immediately this is not scrawlings of a mad man, this is not scribblings of someone who doesn't know what they're doing.
These are legitimate bomb notes, which would teach anyone how to make a very powerful explosive, both a detonator and a main charge.
At this point, we know.
This guy is the real deal.
But they immediately knew they had very powerful evidence of what Zazi was about to do and very powerful evidence of what the entire plot was about.
Zazi was a lawful resident, and Ahmedzay and Medunjanin were American citizens, and we wanted to make sure that before we moved, we had enough to act on.
So we didn't arrest any of them right away.
[narrator.]
In a surprise move, just after the bomb-making notes are discovered, Zazi books a plane ticket from JFK Airport back to Denver.
Agents believe Zazi has been tipped off.
[Borelli.]
He's essentially made the decision, "I'm getting out of New York as fast as I can go.
" You know, in our minds, he's a full-blown terrorist at this point.
We can't just let him get on an airplane without, you know, following him.
So, that was one of the scariest parts of the whole case, right there.
We had He was going to JFK and we had to get agents on that plane with him.
[narrator.]
While Denver FBI keep a close watch on Zazi, the New York team discovers the source of the tip.
The biggest player other than the FBI is NYPD.
So, NYPD has their sources throughout the city.
NYPD gives information to one of their sources that's in the mosque.
[narrator.]
In an effort to find out more about Zazi, Zarein and Adis, New York Police Department question their sources in the community.
One is an Imam at ZaziâÂÂs mosque by the name of Afzali.
NYPD tells the Imam that they're interested in Najibullah Zazi and they show a picture of him.
[Bitkower.]
Unfortunately, what he then did was not just tell his knowledge to the police department, but, in fact, calls Zazi's father and then later spoke to Zazi himself and inform Zazi that the FBI and the police were asking questions about him.
As you can imagine, this caused a hiccup in the investigation, to say the least, because it definitively tipped off Zazi and his co-conspirators that they were being watched by the police.
I can't really point fingers.
I mean, you know, everybody wanted the same thing.
We wanted to save lives, and the decision to go after and use that source, you know, it was done with the right intentions.
I'll say that.
[narrator.]
Right after Zazi receives the call from the Imam, he picks up co-conspirator Zarein and heads to a mosque.
It's the same mosque the surveillance team had followed him to earlier.
They went to a local mosque, the closest one they could find, and destroyed some of the materials that Zazi had brought with him from Denver to help make the bombs.
Later that day, Zarein went back to his house, where Zazi had given him a jar full of detonator explosive, triacetone triperoxide or TATP, and he flushed it down the toilet to destroy the evidence.
And at the same time, Zazi saw Adis at the mosque and he wanted to communicate to him that the plot was up.
So he took out his cellphone and he wrote out a text message saying, essentially, that the police were on to them.
He showed the phone to Adis so that Adis could see it, but that it wouldn't create a record.
And Adis saw it and he nodded.
And they both understood that the plot was over.
We learned later he was disposing of the chemicals because he had, I guess in his mind, abandoned the plot.
But we didn't know that.
For us, this thing was still as alive as it was, you know, a day ago.
[narrator.]
With Zazi back in Denver, the investigation in New York continues in full force.
[Frankel.]
Um We've still got the two co-conspirators, Adis and Zarein.
We don't have enough on them yet, so we're still following, we're listening, we're watching, we're doing everything we need to do.
So, then it's, "What do we do? When do we have enough to arrest him?" And that's where Dave Bitkower comes in.
You know, start Let's start putting a case together.
[narrator.]
As evidence mounts, David Bitkower decides it's time to approach Zazi.
The agents in Denver were able to confront Zazi and bring him in for an interview, which he agreed to, and ask him about his travel to Pakistan.
Ask him about what he was doing in New York on the weekend of September 11th.
And Zazi didn't have a good story to tell.
[man.]
Please tell us - Please tell me - Um hm.
why you had the scale with you.
I surprisedly saw the scale.
I think because my luggage was half packed, I told my brother, "The small kit, let's close it up.
" So, I don't know how the scale came in it.
I was gonna call my back home, that what is this scale about.
[Bitkower.]
And this time, the agents were able to put in front of him the bomb notes, and say, "Whatever your story is, we found these notes on your computer.
Can you explain how they got there?" Confronted with the evidence that he had learned how to make a bomb, he continued to lie, but he changed his story.
He realized that he was caught, and his primary goal was to protect his friends, Zarein and Adis.
[narrator.]
Zazi takes full credit for the deadly plot to explode bombs on the New York City subway system, but claims he changed his mind at the last minute.
His admission is enough for the FBI to make an arrest.
[Frankel.]
When Zazi was finally arrested, to me, it was relief.
You know, that's what we go for.
We're FBI agents.
We don't want this to be, you know, the never-ending case that goes on and on.
When we finally determined that we had enough to arrest him, then we did arrest him.
And so now he's off the street.
[Bitkower.]
Zazi was arrested in mid-September, and he, as he had during his interviews, was trying to protect his best friends and not admit they had any role in this plot.
He said it was just him.
And the investigation went on for several months.
[Silber.]
At this point, here's what the FBI and the NYPD know We know that there is a plot that seems to have been stopped, but we don't know who was in on the plot.
There are as many as 18 plus people who heâÂÂs associated with in one way or another or are considered linked to him in New York.
[narrator.]
As the investigation continues, suspects are eliminated except for Ahmedzay and Adis Medunjanin.
We still didn't know exactly what the other two guys, what their role was.
So, the decision, you know, was made to The investigation has to continue.
We need to still get more, um more evidence to be able to indict and convict these guys.
[narrator.]
Both suspects have been laying low since ZaziâÂÂs arrest, but, with mounting evidence, FBI agents in New York decide to increase the pressure.
[computer beeping.]
Law enforcement agents execute a search warrant at Adis Medunjanin's residence.
David Bitkower gives us an order to go pick up Adis Medunjanin's passport.
We send a team over to the house, they go up to Adis and he hands over the passport.
Whenever you have any kind of an overt action like a search warrant, and even when you're doing it under the guise of something else, they know that you're on to them.
Is that going to trigger an action? Are they going to go out then and just say, "Listen, I'm going to go out in a blaze of glory"? Ultimately, that's what Adis did.
[Frankel.]
We later find this out that when he looked at the order, it actually said that he's being investigated for terrorism.
[narrator.]
Realizing that his arrest is imminent, he makes a last-ditch, Jihadi effort.
[distant siren wailing.]
So Adis runs out of the house, jumps in his car and starts racing down like a bat out of hell down Northern Boulevard in Queens.
He's speeding, I mean, he's going I don't know if he hit 100, but he was going very fast down what is a crowded street in Queens.
[narrator.]
The surveillance team follows close behind, watching as Adis weaves in and out of traffic.
[Frankel.]
At this point, we don't have him for committing a crime.
We don't We can't convict him of being part of the Zazi plot, the subway plot.
All he's really doing is speeding reckless driving.
So the surveillance team is following him, and he gets on the Whitestone Expressway.
[Bitkower.]
He had two goals One was to commit a suicide attack in the United States, and the other one is to make a martyrdom video.
So he jams on the gas pedal, but that only solves one of his problems which was the suicide attack.
It didn't solve the problem that he'd never made a martyrdom tape.
So what he did to solve that problem was, he picked up his cellphone and he called 911.
[Frankel.]
The 911 operator goes, "911 operator.
" "My name is Adis.
I love death more than you love life.
I love death more than you love life.
Allah Akbar.
" And then you don't hear anything.
"We love death more than you love life" was a slogan that Adis was familiar with, not just from his knowledge of history, but also from watching other Al-Qaeda martyrdom tapes.
And he had told his friends that he planned to say that when time came to make his own martyrdom tape.
So, he did that right before he crashed into the car in front of him.
It was recorded.
On the tape of the call to 911, you can actually hear him accelerating and then crashing into the car in front of him.
[woman.]
Police operator 1673.
[engine revving.]
[indistinct shouting over phone.]
He had determined that he wanted to do Jihad.
He wanted to kill people, he wanted to kill as many people as he could.
He knew it wasn't going to be through the bomb plot, so he decided that he would have a car crash, a massive explosion and kill people on the highway.
Fortunately, for the people of Queens, unfortunately for Medunjanin, the car did not explode.
There was no gigantic explosion.
To the contrary, the air bag deployed on his Nissan Altima.
Luckily he didn't understand the physics of the cars, because when you have one car going in a direction at about 65 miles an hour and you have another car in front of him going probably about 55 miles an hour, and the car in the back hits the car in the front, you don't have a massive explosion, you have a fender bender.
[narrator.]
Meanwhile, an off-duty police officer witnesses the scene.
Suffolk County Police Officer gets out of the car, yells at Adis, "Buddy, come back here.
Why are you leaving a fender bender?" Adis stops, he actually comes back and he goes, "The reason I'm running is because the FBI's after me.
They think I'm a terrorist.
" [indistinct radio chatter.]
The cop turns around and sees the surveillance team now running up with their badges.
[siren blaring.]
The cop pulls out his gun and holds Adis there for the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
And at this point, he's arrested, but he's not arrested for terrorism.
[narrator.]
At this time, JTTF is still unaware of the call Adis made to 911, but before they can say anything, Adis starts to talk.
When we brought Adis back, he waived his rights to an attorney and he gave us the entire story.
He basically told us the entire plot of Zazi, of himself and of Zarein.
So he, in a sense, precipitates his own arrest by virtue of, in a sense, losing patience.
[narrator.]
The JTTF now have two of the three conspirators in their grasp, but Zarein is still on the loose.
Now, the problem we have is, Zarein is still out on the street.
He's a cab driver and he's in Times Square.
[indistinct radio chatter.]
[narrator.]
Times Square is one of New York's most popular tourist destinations, and a known target for potential terrorist attacks.
[indistinct radio chatter.]
It's not a good combination, so we actually had him pulled over and we had him brought back to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, where he was also interviewed.
He was arrested based upon all the information that we had from his co-conspirator, Adis.
[narrator.]
Through multiple interviews with Zarein, Adis and Zazi, the true horror of the plot begins to unfold.
They planned to arm themselves with suicide vests, jump on multiple trains on the New York City subway at rush hour, and blow themselves up.
After we were able to analyze all of the information, the target was going to be the subways of New York.
It would have been a huge impact for New York, similar to what we saw happen in the London bombings, with lots of people killed, economic damage, essentially putting this city into gridlock.
[siren blaring.]
[crowd shouting.]
Uh Both the human cost and the economic cost would've been extreme.
It would've been certainly second only to the 9/11 attacks, as far as the extent of it.
[crowd screaming.]
[narrator.]
The plot also highlights another growing phenomenon.
So, really, you saw the combination of linkage between the homegrown threat and a foreign terrorist organization play out in its most dangerous way.
[computer beeping.]
[narrator.]
Almost three years after the attempted attack, seven defendants including ZaziâÂÂs own father, Imam Afzali, Adis Medunjanin, Zarein Ahmedzay and Najibullah Zazi, are convicted in connection with the New York City subway bomb plot.
[Bitkower.]
There are people who say you cannot try people successfully without exposing sources and methods.
And there are people on the other side who say you cannot give terrorists the rights that they have under our constitution and still convict them in a way that protects Americans.
And I think the record has shown the opposite to be true.
In fact, some of the most dangerous terrorists, Najibullah Zazi, Adis Medunjanin, Zarein Ahmedzay, just to name three can be successfully prosecuted to the full extent of the law in a way that preserves the sources and methods necessary to protect us from future plots, but also preserves their rights under the American constitution.
[narrator.]
For the JTTF and other counter-terrorism task force units, the Zazi case is a success.
Last I knew, he was in the supermax facility in Florence, Colorado, and I hope he's still there.
That's where he belongs.
The planned attacks on mass transit really struck close to home here because we are so, in the New York area, we're so dependent on mass transit to move in and out of New York City.
And from a personal standpoint, I know almost 40 people who died in the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001.
There's my motivation.
[narrator.]
The U.
S.
National Security Agency's intelligence program to collect emails is a tactic that has stirred immense controversy, but was instrumental in connecting the dots and foiling a terrorist plot to bomb the New York City subway system.
[King.]
This is an interest that cuts across ideological lines, and it cuts across nationalism lines.
Bottom line is, you can't win this war unless you have total cooperation between federal law enforcement and local law enforcement.
And we know now that this is a case where we came extremely close to having an actual suicide bombing attack in New York City, on American soil with a potential for mass casualties.
And we know now that that was stopped due to the joint efforts of the Intelligence Community as well as law enforcement, federal, state and local law enforcement in many states.
When I started working in international terrorism, the prototype of a terrorist is somebody that comes from another country.
They sneak into your country somehow.
Your target was somebody that was over there.
Now, it's somebody that's walking and living amongst us.
It's people like Najibullah Zazi and others that get radicalized on the internet or through a close circle of friends.
The large-scale, mass attack has not happened.
There's probably There are multiple factors to that.
The Intelligence Community has sharpened their focus on problematic areas in the world.
Our electronic intelligence gathering capabilities are second to none.
Our human intelligence capabilities have gotten better.
Are we 100% safe? No, because we live in a free society.
We don't want to be in a police state where we're constantly, 24/7, under surveillance and government listening to every phone call.
I would never want that.
Myself, even as an FBI agent, I would never want that.
Ultimately we can build walls, we can come up with technology.
We can do all of these, you know, physical things But we also need to stop the flow of potential new recruits, and that is by trying to win their hearts and minds, to give them an alternate message, a message of hope that you can be prosperous, that you can do good things with your life, that you donâÂÂt necessarily need to follow the path of ISIS or Al-Qaeda, that thereâÂÂs a better way to go about your life.
And hopefully at some point we'll get there to win their hearts and minds.
[Frankel.]
The JTTF is still going after the threat.
Nothing's changed.
They went after it after 9/11, they went after it after the Zazi case, and they're going after the threat stream now.
They'll go after Al-Qaeda, they'll go after ISIS, they'll go after white supremacists, they'll go after Neo-Nazis.
If it's a terrorism threat If there are people out there who want to commit an act of terrorism here in the United States, the JTTF will investigate it.
They're not going to let one threat go by because if that threat gets away from them, bad things happen.
And so they do it every day, and that has not changed since 9/11.
They'd gone to Pakistan.
They had met with Al-Qaeda.
They were taught how to make bombs.
[narrator.]
September, 2009: Three naturalized U.
S.
citizens plan a devastating terror attack on American soil.
The idea of the plot was for multiple suicide bombers to be on the New York City subway in and around the eighth anniversary of 9/11 and explode themselves in the subway.
It would be ball bearings or other metal objects exploded out into a contained space.
[screaming.]
[Rep.
Peter King.]
This would have been absolutely devastating to New York City, and the entire metropolitan area.
[indistinct radio chatter.]
[narrator.]
A coordinated effort led by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force is charged to stop the attack.
They want to kill New Yorkers, U.
S.
citizens.
This was not some fairy tale.
[siren blaring.]
[Don Borelli.]
The clock is ticking.
This is like, you know, a real-life episode of 24, and you're starring in it.
[narrator.]
True stories of the world's deadliest terror plots with exclusive access to leading counter-terrorism experts and the elite agents who stopped the attacks.
- Homegrown terrorists.
- Jihadi propaganda.
Neo Nazis.
[King.]
This cuts across ideological lines, and it cuts across nationalism lines.
The depravity of the enemy we face knows no bounds, and so does our determination to keep them from hurting people.
PeopleâÂÂs lives depend on their success.
[narrator.]
On this episode of Terrorism Close Calls, homegrown terrorists link with Al-Qaeda foreign extremists to attack the New York City subway system.
The elite agents of the FBIâÂÂs Joint Terrorism Task Force take you inside the investigation as they fight the clock to stop what could be the worst attack against the United States since 9/11.
With close to nine million residents, New York is one of the most populated cities in America.
[indistinct chatter.]
The New York City subway system helps support the movement of 1.
7 billion riders a year, and is the largest rapid transit system in the world, with 472 stations in operation located throughout the boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx.
The New York City subway system is also a prime target for terror attacks.
[indistinct distant chatter.]
Congressman Pete King is a key member of the Homeland Security Committee.
Any subway system is extremely vulnerable, but in New York where you have over a thousand exits and entrances to the subways no way you could be inspecting, examining, questioning people going through a thousand entrances and exits.
[narrator.]
Terrorists have attacked this soft target before.
London, July 7, 2005: [screaming.]
[booming.]
[booming.]
[siren blaring.]
[narrator.]
Three suicide bombers successfully detonate their explosives on a British underground, killing 52 people and injuring over 700.
Four years after the London attacks, terrorists hope to inflict even more damage in New York City.
September, 2009: After a year of meticulous planning, the final pieces are falling into place.
With Al-Qaeda support, three U.
S.
operatives plan to wreak maximum carnage by detonating homemade bombs on various trains in the New York City subway system and in Grand Central Terminal around the anniversary of 9/11.
[clicking and whirring.]
Just days before the intended attack, a counter-terrorist agent at the U.
S.
National Security Agency receives an alert to a potential threat.
David Bitkower is the former federal prosecutor on the case.
They saw an email from someone in the United States to an Al-Qaeda courier using coded phrases like, "The marriage is ready," and asking for what appeared to be the ingredients for how to make a bomb.
And you can imagine that nothing sets off an intelligence officer such as hearing that someone in the United States is asking for the recipe for a bomb from an Al-Qaeda courier located overseas.
[narrator.]
The email exchange kicks off a nationwide investigation and unprecedented cooperation between federal and state law enforcement agencies, including intelligence analysts working with the New York Police Department.
Mitchell Silber is the Director of Intelligence Analysis working for the New York City Police Department.
The U.
S.
Intelligence Community was monitoring these email communications and was able to detect that the emails coming from the U.
S.
to this Al-Qaeda email address were originating in Colorado.
[narrator.]
The email address of Rashid Rauf, a senior Al-Qaeda leader in Pakistan, is linked to an IP address in Aurora, Colorado, belonging to a man named Najibullah Zazi.
So, his first email to the courier expresses that he is trying to make the bomb, and in coded language says, "He needs the recipe, flour and oil.
" [keyboard clicking.]
When the Al-Qaeda courier didn't respond right away, he wrote another email a couple of hours later saying, "I need the recipe, flour and oil.
" and then he did it a third time and each time using larger font and more strident language, saying what an emergency it was that he needed the recipe.
Everything in the Zazi plot happened very quickly.
He, you know, didn't wait much longer once he got replies from that email address before he started driving east.
[narrator.]
The investigation ramps up as Zazi hits the road.
In the wake of ZaziâÂÂs departure from Colorado, investigators were able to determine that he was experimenting and had made some TATP in Colorado [wind blowing.]
And that really raised the concern that he might be bringing this TATP to New York City.
[narrator.]
TATP, or triacetone triperoxide, is a highly volatile explosive thatâÂÂs been used in several terror attacks.
With this new evidence, law enforcement begins outreach to sellers of potential bomb component materials in Denver.
Surveillance video surfaces from a beauty supply store showing Zazi buying several bottles of hydrogen peroxide, one of the core ingredients in TATP.
[horns honking.]
[indistinct distant chatter.]
One of the first agencies to receive the details of the threat is the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, also known as the JTTF, a counter-terrorism partnership of over 50 federal and state agencies.
[indistinct chatter.]
Don Borelli is the assistant special agent in charge of the JTTF in New York City.
Literally, Najibullah Zazi was driving in a car from Denver to New York at like 90 miles an hour.
And that was the first I had heard of Zazi.
I log on so I can read exactly who this guy is, and what he's about.
And it's one of those, "Oh, crap," moments.
"This is going to get bad fast.
" One of the most dangerous aspects of TATP is if somebody has the proper training, they can make this explosive from ingredients you can buy in the local market.
You don't need to ship a bomb in, you know, from, you know, another country and pass through customs and all that.
[indistinct chatter.]
[narrator.]
Special agent Richard Frankel works alongside Don Borelli.
And we were told that there was information that had been gleaned from the intelligence agencies, that a person by the name Najibullah Zazi, was going to be coming from Denver to New York with bomb or bomb-making materials.
[narrator.]
While surveillance keeps eyes focused on ZaziâÂÂs movements, intelligence digs up info on their suspect.
The investigation reveals 22-year-old Najibullah Zazi, a legal U.
S.
resident, was born in the Paktia Province of Afghanistan and immigrated to Flushing, Queens at age 14 with his father, who worked as a cab driver.
Zazi attends Flushing High School before moving to Denver, Colorado with his family.
By 2009, Zazi is communicating with an Al-Qaeda courier about how to make bombs.
With a potential Al-Qaeda-orchestrated attack speeding towards New York City, all of law enforcement are anticipating a worst-case scenario.
Everybody was acutely aware of the fact that this was September 11th weekend, so we could only imagine that this was some sort of attack aimed for the anniversary.
[Borelli.]
YouâÂÂre in the New York JTTF 9/11 is your constant reminder.
You donâÂÂt want that to happen again on your watch.
[siren blaring.]
[narrator.]
If Zazi is not stopped and manages to detonate a bomb, hundreds could be killed.
All surveillance resources, including the New York City Police Department, are employed to track ZaziâÂÂs approach into New York City.
William Flanagan is the deputy commissioner of police for Nassau County.
To track someone during an investigation of terrorism range from the utilization of electronic monitoring cell phone eavesdropping, cell phone monitoring, location-based surveillance, GPS, aircraft tracking, and direct physical surveillance.
[computer beeping.]
We're trying to figure out, okay, how much time do we have to come up with a plan, whether to let him go, stop him, figure out what's in the car.
[narrator.]
In order to get a closer look at what agents believe may be a car carrying a highly explosive bomb, the JTTF come up with a ruse to stop Zazi at the George Washington Bridge, a double decked suspension bridge spanning the Hudson River between Fort Lee, New Jersey, and the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan.
Essentially, they shut down the bridge.
They stop him.
It's done under the guise of, you know, kind of a routine traffic stop, but this was anything but routine.
Any time you stop a vehicle, you know you're looking for something that's potentially dangerous, it's dangerous to the officers, too.
You don't know if he's got something made that he could just detonate on the bridge right there, so it's extremely tense.
It was hopefully going to make it look like it might even be a drug stop.
And they had a dog walk around the car.
Of course, the dog was not a drug-sniffing dog, it was an explosive-sniffing dog.
[narrator.]
The dog doesnâÂÂt alert to any threat.
This is because Zazi isnâÂÂt carrying a fully assembled bomb.
But he has all the materials to make the explosives.
So it hadn't actually been put together yet, and part of the reason was, it was probably highly combustible and you didn't want to drive, you know, from Denver to New York that way.
[narrator.]
Without any positive alerts, the Port Authority has no choice but to let Zazi proceed into Manhattan.
The last thing you want is somebody that has the ability to make a bomb somewhere in the city.
I mean, that's just That's like the worst possible scenario, and yet, we had That's what we were dealing with.
[Frankel.]
And if we take him down at this point and he doesn't cooperate, we have nothing.
We don't know if there are other actors.
This may just be one cell of a bigger plot to blow something up.
[narrator.]
With multiple surveillance teams on Zazi, he works his way through Manhattan.
[Borelli.]
He drives around the city, goes out into Queens.
He went to a mosque and drives around the back, out of sight.
So, essentially, now he's out of sight from the surveillance people.
[narrator.]
After a few anxious hours, Zazi finally emerges from the mosque and heads back to Queens.
[King.]
They thought they had a good read on him, but the concern was, they didn't know who else he was dealing with in New York, and that was the worry that even if they got Zazi, these multiple subway attacks would be carried out.
[narrator.]
A critical priority for law enforcement is to find and track affiliates of Zazi.
[Frankel.]
We were checking social media, who his friends were.
We were checking everything.
The analysts were going through his life bit by bit to find out anything we could.
[narrator.]
Intelligence analysts uncover phone, travel and communication records, and, as suspected, Zazi is not working alone.
They were able to identify Najibullah's two primary co-conspirators in New York, Zarein Ahmedzay and Adis Medunjanin.
[Bitkower.]
Although all three were immigrants to this country, they were, in a way, the American success story.
They had come as young teenagers, or even younger than that, and had begun to assimilate, learned English.
They went to high school in Queens.
They would be friends.
They'd be friends at the mosque.
They'd be friends at school.
They would play basketball together.
They would listen to their iPod together like normal American teenagers.
[narrator.]
The three former high school classmates from Flushing High School seem like regular kids growing up amongst a diverse immigrant community in Queens.
But, by 2006, things have changed.
Motivated by the U.
S.
war in Afghanistan and what they deem a crusade against Islam by the West, the trio become more devout in their religious practices and begin to follow the teachings of Sheikh Anwar al-Awlaki, one of Al-QaedaâÂÂs most notorious online recruiters.
Jihad against America is binding upon myself.
Anwar al-Awlaki, an American guy that spoke perfect English that could resonate with some of these people.
[chanting.]
[Borelli.]
They're showing, you know, how glamorous a life it is.
The guy's shooting, and they make it look like an Outward Bound adventure, you know? And so, they can make it appealing to some of these kids that have nothing, really, more to grab onto.
[narrator.]
The group is also inspired by Zakir Naik, a physician in India and prominent speaker on Islam who publicly declares that Jews control America and that apostates can be killed.
By 2008, the friends are convinced it's their duty to wage Jihad in Afghanistan.
The original motivation for Zazi, Ahmedzay, and Medunjanin to go into Pakistan and Afghanistan was to fight there.
And they had this very romantic view that they were going to recreate what it was like in the 7th century to be a famous Islamic warrior.
They were radicalized together, essentially, which is not an uncommon path to radicalization.
There's a comfort factor there.
[narrator.]
While in Pakistan, the friends are contacted by Al-Qaeda and travel to Waziristan, where they train in high-powered weapons at an Al-Qaeda camp.
Zazi receives further training in explosives.
Al-Qaeda leaders encourage the friends to return to the United States.
For Adis and Zarein and Najibullah, what made them special was they had American passports and they could return to New York City without attracting suspicion.
And that was their value to Al-Qaeda.
[narrator.]
The three friends from Queens agree to return to New York and wage terror attacks on the very city they grew up in.
Armed with the identities of Zazi's co-conspirators, the investigation quickly expands into a full-blown manhunt.
There were search warrants across the five boroughs and surrounding areas of New York and in other states.
[Borelli.]
Because now, the case goes from one person to three people, and that means that now you have three targets.
[narrator.]
Agents finally have eyes on all three suspects.
Following the recommendations of prosecutor David Bitkower, they set up wire taps and surveillance.
Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or FISA, they don't have to show that the defendant is a criminal, just probable cause that the suspect is an agent of a foreign power, including, potentially, a terrorist.
[computer beeping.]
[narrator.]
Agents believe Zazi is trying to meet members of his cell to connect the TATP detonator he already made to a main charge, which could be assembled into a suicide vest or backpack.
They follow Zazi to a house in Queens, where they also hope to find the other two members of his cell.
[Borelli.]
I called it the flophouse.
Essentially, there was a lot of people staying in this house.
Now, the investigation goes, you know, from three people to, like, 15 people.
We don't know if they're now part of this big conspiracy, they're all going to be suicide bombers, or they just happened to be there by coincidence.
[narrator.]
As the investigation expands, so does the manpower needed to follow these other potential suspects.
At that point, you know, it becomes a 24/7 operation with a command post burning around the clock.
[narrator.]
The flophouse turns out to be exactly that: a cheap place shared by a number of people, all innocent to the plot.
On the eighth anniversary of 9/11, the agents reach a critical point in the investigation.
Zazi has parked his car on the street and leaves the scene.
The agents see it as an opportunity.
While one team follows Zazi, the other goes for the car.
We had a warrant and we went and we took the car on a flatbed and we brought it to a location, and our forensics team in the FBI, they call it ERT, the Evidence Response Team, Evidence Recovery Team, started searching the car.
And to be honest, I was there and I was pretty impressed by it.
It was like CSI.
It was like the movies.
And we actually found a computer in the car.
[ratcheting.]
[music continues.]
[camera shutter clicks.]
And there's his laptop.
Gold mine gold mine.
This is like, you know, when you pull the lottery and you get, you know, like, all the cherries and everything.
So this is fantastic.
So We bring in the people that the computer analysis folks that can, essentially, do a search of the computer.
It takes a while.
They've got to mirror the hard drive.
Computer was mirrored, which means it was copied.
They put the car back together You know, they put everything back where it's supposed to be and they go.
[narrator.]
The car is quietly returned to the same location and the copied hard drive is taken back to the FBI computer forensic lab and scanned.
That agent called me a couple of hours later when we were just about to call it the night, and said, "We have a problem.
We just found the cookbook.
" You know, the bomb-making cookbook.
[narrator.]
Richard Frankel, Don Borelli, David Bitkower, and other members of the JTTF immediately assemble at the FBI command post and conference in a Washington bomb expert to discuss the "cookbook" which contains ZaziâÂÂs handwritten notes.
He looks at this and he knows immediately this is not scrawlings of a mad man, this is not scribblings of someone who doesn't know what they're doing.
These are legitimate bomb notes, which would teach anyone how to make a very powerful explosive, both a detonator and a main charge.
At this point, we know.
This guy is the real deal.
But they immediately knew they had very powerful evidence of what Zazi was about to do and very powerful evidence of what the entire plot was about.
Zazi was a lawful resident, and Ahmedzay and Medunjanin were American citizens, and we wanted to make sure that before we moved, we had enough to act on.
So we didn't arrest any of them right away.
[narrator.]
In a surprise move, just after the bomb-making notes are discovered, Zazi books a plane ticket from JFK Airport back to Denver.
Agents believe Zazi has been tipped off.
[Borelli.]
He's essentially made the decision, "I'm getting out of New York as fast as I can go.
" You know, in our minds, he's a full-blown terrorist at this point.
We can't just let him get on an airplane without, you know, following him.
So, that was one of the scariest parts of the whole case, right there.
We had He was going to JFK and we had to get agents on that plane with him.
[narrator.]
While Denver FBI keep a close watch on Zazi, the New York team discovers the source of the tip.
The biggest player other than the FBI is NYPD.
So, NYPD has their sources throughout the city.
NYPD gives information to one of their sources that's in the mosque.
[narrator.]
In an effort to find out more about Zazi, Zarein and Adis, New York Police Department question their sources in the community.
One is an Imam at ZaziâÂÂs mosque by the name of Afzali.
NYPD tells the Imam that they're interested in Najibullah Zazi and they show a picture of him.
[Bitkower.]
Unfortunately, what he then did was not just tell his knowledge to the police department, but, in fact, calls Zazi's father and then later spoke to Zazi himself and inform Zazi that the FBI and the police were asking questions about him.
As you can imagine, this caused a hiccup in the investigation, to say the least, because it definitively tipped off Zazi and his co-conspirators that they were being watched by the police.
I can't really point fingers.
I mean, you know, everybody wanted the same thing.
We wanted to save lives, and the decision to go after and use that source, you know, it was done with the right intentions.
I'll say that.
[narrator.]
Right after Zazi receives the call from the Imam, he picks up co-conspirator Zarein and heads to a mosque.
It's the same mosque the surveillance team had followed him to earlier.
They went to a local mosque, the closest one they could find, and destroyed some of the materials that Zazi had brought with him from Denver to help make the bombs.
Later that day, Zarein went back to his house, where Zazi had given him a jar full of detonator explosive, triacetone triperoxide or TATP, and he flushed it down the toilet to destroy the evidence.
And at the same time, Zazi saw Adis at the mosque and he wanted to communicate to him that the plot was up.
So he took out his cellphone and he wrote out a text message saying, essentially, that the police were on to them.
He showed the phone to Adis so that Adis could see it, but that it wouldn't create a record.
And Adis saw it and he nodded.
And they both understood that the plot was over.
We learned later he was disposing of the chemicals because he had, I guess in his mind, abandoned the plot.
But we didn't know that.
For us, this thing was still as alive as it was, you know, a day ago.
[narrator.]
With Zazi back in Denver, the investigation in New York continues in full force.
[Frankel.]
Um We've still got the two co-conspirators, Adis and Zarein.
We don't have enough on them yet, so we're still following, we're listening, we're watching, we're doing everything we need to do.
So, then it's, "What do we do? When do we have enough to arrest him?" And that's where Dave Bitkower comes in.
You know, start Let's start putting a case together.
[narrator.]
As evidence mounts, David Bitkower decides it's time to approach Zazi.
The agents in Denver were able to confront Zazi and bring him in for an interview, which he agreed to, and ask him about his travel to Pakistan.
Ask him about what he was doing in New York on the weekend of September 11th.
And Zazi didn't have a good story to tell.
[man.]
Please tell us - Please tell me - Um hm.
why you had the scale with you.
I surprisedly saw the scale.
I think because my luggage was half packed, I told my brother, "The small kit, let's close it up.
" So, I don't know how the scale came in it.
I was gonna call my back home, that what is this scale about.
[Bitkower.]
And this time, the agents were able to put in front of him the bomb notes, and say, "Whatever your story is, we found these notes on your computer.
Can you explain how they got there?" Confronted with the evidence that he had learned how to make a bomb, he continued to lie, but he changed his story.
He realized that he was caught, and his primary goal was to protect his friends, Zarein and Adis.
[narrator.]
Zazi takes full credit for the deadly plot to explode bombs on the New York City subway system, but claims he changed his mind at the last minute.
His admission is enough for the FBI to make an arrest.
[Frankel.]
When Zazi was finally arrested, to me, it was relief.
You know, that's what we go for.
We're FBI agents.
We don't want this to be, you know, the never-ending case that goes on and on.
When we finally determined that we had enough to arrest him, then we did arrest him.
And so now he's off the street.
[Bitkower.]
Zazi was arrested in mid-September, and he, as he had during his interviews, was trying to protect his best friends and not admit they had any role in this plot.
He said it was just him.
And the investigation went on for several months.
[Silber.]
At this point, here's what the FBI and the NYPD know We know that there is a plot that seems to have been stopped, but we don't know who was in on the plot.
There are as many as 18 plus people who heâÂÂs associated with in one way or another or are considered linked to him in New York.
[narrator.]
As the investigation continues, suspects are eliminated except for Ahmedzay and Adis Medunjanin.
We still didn't know exactly what the other two guys, what their role was.
So, the decision, you know, was made to The investigation has to continue.
We need to still get more, um more evidence to be able to indict and convict these guys.
[narrator.]
Both suspects have been laying low since ZaziâÂÂs arrest, but, with mounting evidence, FBI agents in New York decide to increase the pressure.
[computer beeping.]
Law enforcement agents execute a search warrant at Adis Medunjanin's residence.
David Bitkower gives us an order to go pick up Adis Medunjanin's passport.
We send a team over to the house, they go up to Adis and he hands over the passport.
Whenever you have any kind of an overt action like a search warrant, and even when you're doing it under the guise of something else, they know that you're on to them.
Is that going to trigger an action? Are they going to go out then and just say, "Listen, I'm going to go out in a blaze of glory"? Ultimately, that's what Adis did.
[Frankel.]
We later find this out that when he looked at the order, it actually said that he's being investigated for terrorism.
[narrator.]
Realizing that his arrest is imminent, he makes a last-ditch, Jihadi effort.
[distant siren wailing.]
So Adis runs out of the house, jumps in his car and starts racing down like a bat out of hell down Northern Boulevard in Queens.
He's speeding, I mean, he's going I don't know if he hit 100, but he was going very fast down what is a crowded street in Queens.
[narrator.]
The surveillance team follows close behind, watching as Adis weaves in and out of traffic.
[Frankel.]
At this point, we don't have him for committing a crime.
We don't We can't convict him of being part of the Zazi plot, the subway plot.
All he's really doing is speeding reckless driving.
So the surveillance team is following him, and he gets on the Whitestone Expressway.
[Bitkower.]
He had two goals One was to commit a suicide attack in the United States, and the other one is to make a martyrdom video.
So he jams on the gas pedal, but that only solves one of his problems which was the suicide attack.
It didn't solve the problem that he'd never made a martyrdom tape.
So what he did to solve that problem was, he picked up his cellphone and he called 911.
[Frankel.]
The 911 operator goes, "911 operator.
" "My name is Adis.
I love death more than you love life.
I love death more than you love life.
Allah Akbar.
" And then you don't hear anything.
"We love death more than you love life" was a slogan that Adis was familiar with, not just from his knowledge of history, but also from watching other Al-Qaeda martyrdom tapes.
And he had told his friends that he planned to say that when time came to make his own martyrdom tape.
So, he did that right before he crashed into the car in front of him.
It was recorded.
On the tape of the call to 911, you can actually hear him accelerating and then crashing into the car in front of him.
[woman.]
Police operator 1673.
[engine revving.]
[indistinct shouting over phone.]
He had determined that he wanted to do Jihad.
He wanted to kill people, he wanted to kill as many people as he could.
He knew it wasn't going to be through the bomb plot, so he decided that he would have a car crash, a massive explosion and kill people on the highway.
Fortunately, for the people of Queens, unfortunately for Medunjanin, the car did not explode.
There was no gigantic explosion.
To the contrary, the air bag deployed on his Nissan Altima.
Luckily he didn't understand the physics of the cars, because when you have one car going in a direction at about 65 miles an hour and you have another car in front of him going probably about 55 miles an hour, and the car in the back hits the car in the front, you don't have a massive explosion, you have a fender bender.
[narrator.]
Meanwhile, an off-duty police officer witnesses the scene.
Suffolk County Police Officer gets out of the car, yells at Adis, "Buddy, come back here.
Why are you leaving a fender bender?" Adis stops, he actually comes back and he goes, "The reason I'm running is because the FBI's after me.
They think I'm a terrorist.
" [indistinct radio chatter.]
The cop turns around and sees the surveillance team now running up with their badges.
[siren blaring.]
The cop pulls out his gun and holds Adis there for the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
And at this point, he's arrested, but he's not arrested for terrorism.
[narrator.]
At this time, JTTF is still unaware of the call Adis made to 911, but before they can say anything, Adis starts to talk.
When we brought Adis back, he waived his rights to an attorney and he gave us the entire story.
He basically told us the entire plot of Zazi, of himself and of Zarein.
So he, in a sense, precipitates his own arrest by virtue of, in a sense, losing patience.
[narrator.]
The JTTF now have two of the three conspirators in their grasp, but Zarein is still on the loose.
Now, the problem we have is, Zarein is still out on the street.
He's a cab driver and he's in Times Square.
[indistinct radio chatter.]
[narrator.]
Times Square is one of New York's most popular tourist destinations, and a known target for potential terrorist attacks.
[indistinct radio chatter.]
It's not a good combination, so we actually had him pulled over and we had him brought back to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, where he was also interviewed.
He was arrested based upon all the information that we had from his co-conspirator, Adis.
[narrator.]
Through multiple interviews with Zarein, Adis and Zazi, the true horror of the plot begins to unfold.
They planned to arm themselves with suicide vests, jump on multiple trains on the New York City subway at rush hour, and blow themselves up.
After we were able to analyze all of the information, the target was going to be the subways of New York.
It would have been a huge impact for New York, similar to what we saw happen in the London bombings, with lots of people killed, economic damage, essentially putting this city into gridlock.
[siren blaring.]
[crowd shouting.]
Uh Both the human cost and the economic cost would've been extreme.
It would've been certainly second only to the 9/11 attacks, as far as the extent of it.
[crowd screaming.]
[narrator.]
The plot also highlights another growing phenomenon.
So, really, you saw the combination of linkage between the homegrown threat and a foreign terrorist organization play out in its most dangerous way.
[computer beeping.]
[narrator.]
Almost three years after the attempted attack, seven defendants including ZaziâÂÂs own father, Imam Afzali, Adis Medunjanin, Zarein Ahmedzay and Najibullah Zazi, are convicted in connection with the New York City subway bomb plot.
[Bitkower.]
There are people who say you cannot try people successfully without exposing sources and methods.
And there are people on the other side who say you cannot give terrorists the rights that they have under our constitution and still convict them in a way that protects Americans.
And I think the record has shown the opposite to be true.
In fact, some of the most dangerous terrorists, Najibullah Zazi, Adis Medunjanin, Zarein Ahmedzay, just to name three can be successfully prosecuted to the full extent of the law in a way that preserves the sources and methods necessary to protect us from future plots, but also preserves their rights under the American constitution.
[narrator.]
For the JTTF and other counter-terrorism task force units, the Zazi case is a success.
Last I knew, he was in the supermax facility in Florence, Colorado, and I hope he's still there.
That's where he belongs.
The planned attacks on mass transit really struck close to home here because we are so, in the New York area, we're so dependent on mass transit to move in and out of New York City.
And from a personal standpoint, I know almost 40 people who died in the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001.
There's my motivation.
[narrator.]
The U.
S.
National Security Agency's intelligence program to collect emails is a tactic that has stirred immense controversy, but was instrumental in connecting the dots and foiling a terrorist plot to bomb the New York City subway system.
[King.]
This is an interest that cuts across ideological lines, and it cuts across nationalism lines.
Bottom line is, you can't win this war unless you have total cooperation between federal law enforcement and local law enforcement.
And we know now that this is a case where we came extremely close to having an actual suicide bombing attack in New York City, on American soil with a potential for mass casualties.
And we know now that that was stopped due to the joint efforts of the Intelligence Community as well as law enforcement, federal, state and local law enforcement in many states.
When I started working in international terrorism, the prototype of a terrorist is somebody that comes from another country.
They sneak into your country somehow.
Your target was somebody that was over there.
Now, it's somebody that's walking and living amongst us.
It's people like Najibullah Zazi and others that get radicalized on the internet or through a close circle of friends.
The large-scale, mass attack has not happened.
There's probably There are multiple factors to that.
The Intelligence Community has sharpened their focus on problematic areas in the world.
Our electronic intelligence gathering capabilities are second to none.
Our human intelligence capabilities have gotten better.
Are we 100% safe? No, because we live in a free society.
We don't want to be in a police state where we're constantly, 24/7, under surveillance and government listening to every phone call.
I would never want that.
Myself, even as an FBI agent, I would never want that.
Ultimately we can build walls, we can come up with technology.
We can do all of these, you know, physical things But we also need to stop the flow of potential new recruits, and that is by trying to win their hearts and minds, to give them an alternate message, a message of hope that you can be prosperous, that you can do good things with your life, that you donâÂÂt necessarily need to follow the path of ISIS or Al-Qaeda, that thereâÂÂs a better way to go about your life.
And hopefully at some point we'll get there to win their hearts and minds.
[Frankel.]
The JTTF is still going after the threat.
Nothing's changed.
They went after it after 9/11, they went after it after the Zazi case, and they're going after the threat stream now.
They'll go after Al-Qaeda, they'll go after ISIS, they'll go after white supremacists, they'll go after Neo-Nazis.
If it's a terrorism threat If there are people out there who want to commit an act of terrorism here in the United States, the JTTF will investigate it.
They're not going to let one threat go by because if that threat gets away from them, bad things happen.
And so they do it every day, and that has not changed since 9/11.