I run on the streets of Memphis every morning
and wonder, "What's the judgment going to be?"
Not in this life,
but how will people like me be judged?
I wish sometimes I had been a teacher or a doctor, you know,
something where the good is so palpable.
There's one image every morning.
We're taking a predator shot,
and we had the target, and he was outside a car.
And as the predator was homing in,
he started running left.
So the screen blackened. It does with a predator shot.
A second later it comes back.
Goes left to see if he's still there,
and of course he's not; He's obliterated.
I have drawn the inescapable conclusion
that you can't participate in something like that
without being corrupted,
without thinking about "Was that the right thing?
Was it a good thing to be involved in?
And why didn't you end up being a teacher?"
That's what I think.
Good evening.
Today our very freedom came under attack
in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts.
And we stand together to win the war against terrorism.
...orange terrorist alert issued on Friday.
...American Airlines flight apparently had
- an explosive device... - Jihad against America...
...more about the man who slashed two police officers with a hatchet.
...the suspect was motivated by radical Islam.
- A new ISIS hostage video released... - ...traveled to join ISIS...
...suspected terror cell right in our own backyard.
As an American, he can easily blend in here...
...an alleged plot to attack New York City.
In an under 10-minute shooting spree,
the lone gunman left dozens killed or wounded and the nation in mourning.
- With a radical Islamic... - ...killing of Anwar al-Awlaki.
- ...two trillion dollars... - ...now stands accused of treason.
...tracking a Charlotte man connected to a pro Al Qaeda...
...two young men face federal charges in the war against terror,
both of whom happen to be American citizens.
Because of 9/11,
we tend to think of terrorists as foreigners,
those 19 Arabs who came in and did the 9/11 attacks.
But this group is overwhelmingly American.
Eight out of 10 are US citizens or legal residents.
Half of them were born in the States.
The bigger question is why.
I mean, why is it that 10 years...
A decade... more than a decade after 9/11,
American citizens are signing up for an Al Qaeda group
or Al Qaeda ideology?
That is a big puzzle.
...a race against time
to find these domestic radicals.
...homegrown terrorists living among us.
- These people want to kill us. - Every single state.
It can happen in a shopping mall,
it can happen at a train station, at a bus depot,
on any crowded street.
We are looking for you guys today to teach us.
Like, we are here to learn from you guys.
How do you survive?
So one thing that I would love
to get to know you guys...
If we can quickly just go around...
There's not that many people in the room,
so, like, tell me your name, where you're from.
I was born in California, raised in Texas.
I was born and raised in Dallas, Texas.
I'm a Southern girl.
American citizen, New Jersey native.
I came to America on the plane.
My husband was telling me,
"We're heading towards the land of freedom."
We are so blessed to be here,
because for once there's a Muslim-centered narrative
about who is imprisoned, right?
My little brother Shifa Sadequee has been taken away from us.
Wife of Eshen Lassi.
My husband is Sharif Mobley.
Just two normal American boys.
I'm here for behalf of my father.
I am the daughter of Shukri Abu Baker.
They charged him with conspiracy and material support.
Sending material support
for a designated terrorist organization.
Conspiracy to providing material support to terrorism.
Our families together, like, collectively, we're targeted.
It's not just that they didn't do anything wrong.
We are blamed for a problem we didn't create.
It's just helpful to see
how the different families are responding
and keeping themselves, you know, healthy and sane
given the painful situation that we're experiencing
because of how the government has taken our loved ones away.
As you exhale, gather negativity,
any frustration, bring it to the center.
And as your palms touch, inhale.
And then as you exhale, gently bring your hands...
down to the light...
of your heart.
This is your inner light.
My parents, you know, they taught all of us
to be conscious citizens,
engaging with others and community
and to be accepting of the differences
that we are, you know?
Two, four, six, eight, same schools, no hate!
We're from Bangladesh.
We all grew up in the capital, Dhaka.
My siblings and I, my parents
first came to the United States in 1986
when my mom was pregnant with my youngest brother Shifa.
And he was born here.
All I remember
is all of a sudden we are actually moving,
making a move from Bangladesh
to actually come and settle in Atlanta,
and I loved it, you know.
Yeah. Get in here. Get in here.
- Yeah. - Put it on... put it on this.
Even though I went to a predominantly white school,
I never really received any discrimination
from my classmates.
I don't think there was this dichotomy
like you're Muslim and now you're in America.
I think, growing up, we were just being kids.
It was a very comfortable house.
Safe neighborhood.
My mom and my dad, they did gardening.
Oh, look. The roses are still there.
Because Shifa was the youngest one,
my mom gave me the responsibility
to teach him his alphabets, teach him his numbers.
I loved taking care of Shifa when he was a baby.
He was like my little toy.
My real-life toy.
I knew my brother was connecting with others on the Internet,
and since 9/11, I had heard stories
about how Muslim people were being watched on the Internet,
and so, you know, I told my little brother.
I was like, "Hey, you know, I know you're not doing anything,
but just be careful, you know."
And he'd be like, "Well, whatever.
I'm not doing anything that's illegal."
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11,
the country was a very different place.
I can't overexaggerate
the sense of foreboding
that something else was coming.
I started in counterterrorism in the early '90s,
so I spent almost a decade before 9/11 doing counterterrorism.
I remember sitting at the table saying,
maybe we're losing, and maybe we will lose.
Maybe we can't contain this virus.
- The National. - Counterterrorism Center
formed after 9/11
to help knit the community together a little bit better.
This is a meeting of the president's national security staff.
We called it terrorism Tuesdays.
I'm at the end of the table
with sort of a smirk on my face.
Tremendous amount of bureaucratic power in this room.
If you had any responsibility for terrorism,
you were generally in that room.
What the bureau did was to put about half of their assets...
The bureau, you're talking about 30,000-plus people...
On what's called national security...
Things like counterintelligence,
things like weapons of mass destruction.
But also the big piece, obviously post-9/11,
was chasing terrorists in 50 states.
So my job was to take over second in charge of that
and sort of to say if we want to build
a more intelligence-driven enterprise,
here are some things to think about.
We don't know. We don't know where they are in American cities.
We don't know if they'll attack tomorrow.
And we're responsible for not violating
people's civil liberties
if we're going to engage in spying in America.
I was born in Washington, DC,
and my mom having to raise five kids
and working two jobs,
this country embraced her and gave her the opportunity.
She worked as a teller in a bank.
She worked in the mail room first in a bank.
Then she became a teller,
worked her way up to assistant manager,
manager, and then finally retired
as vice president of Wachovia Bank.
And outdid just about any other Arab man
that emigrated back at the same time she did.
This is my office.
Becoming a lawyer in the same area that I grew up in,
word of mouth started,
and now I'm in my 15th year of my own practice.
I have two lawyers and a paralegal working for me.
Her opinion was allowed.
It came across as if it were an expert's opinion.
When I think of the Arab-American
or the Muslim-American community,
who are, you know, a good portion of my clients,
a lot of them come because they know I understand the culture.
And you can say, "Clearly our assignment of error
is the admissibility of the detectives' testimony."
Muslims are easy targets right now.
All you have to do is say something
and more than likely you're going to be visited
by at least an agent to come talk to you,
if not first be under surveillance or something.
This is the house where... My parents weren't really here.
My mom and my dad were pretty much back in Bangladesh,
but I was here going to college.
Then Shifa came at some point,
and I was taking care of him.
Yeah, and he was kind of like this typical teenager
who's, you know, kind of totally dependent,
and I had to drive him everywhere
'cause he didn't know how to drive.
And what I saw him doing was study for his GEDs
and online chatting,
and then eventually he met Haris.
- Hello? - Salaam alaikum, - Haris.
Alaikum salaam.
- You're Sonali, right? - Yeah.
- Okay, I'm sorry... - I'm sorry for that.
Okay, okay, so I really wanted to check in with you
about what's been happening with the family.
The FBI is visiting us.
Yeah, so, I really...
Well, they're basically asking questions about Shifa.
What is he doing? Where is he?
Where did he study? Where... where has he been?
They're telling us they were investigating
a travel agency.
So my brother was one of the people
or one of their customer,
and we were all trying to figure out
what is it that they're wanting and looking for.
Are we under surveillance?
This is definitely making all of us anxious.
Our understanding is that, you know,
this is just probably because we're Muslims, you know.
When I would speak with Shifa, he and I, we would joke about it,
like, "What the hell are they looking for?"
'Cause we haven't done anything, we know,
and so we didn't know exactly what they were looking for,
and that's why we're really, you know... we're confused,
but at the same time, like, we haven't done anything.
What the fuck are they looking for, you know?
So... yeah.
A little bit later, Shifa gets married
and he moved to Bangladesh.
He's very excited that he's getting married.
He's excited that the parents, his fathers have agreed.
He's excited that he's going to start his new life with her.
I was in Michigan, East Lansing, Michigan,
when my mother called and told me
that Shifa went missing.
And here's... Here's our dad crying
and Shifa's wife crying.
He was kidnapped right in front of his wife.
Their car was stopped in the middle of the road in Bangladesh
by several Bengali men in civilian clothing.
They opened the door.
They basically extracted my brother out of the car.
And then they put a black hood on his face
and then very quickly put him in the truck and take him away.
I was absolutely terrified.
All they knew is that he just disappeared.
We didn't know who took him.
We didn't know where he was being taken.
We were completely frantic.
We thought we would never see him again.
- First case I saw at the bureau, - I'll never forget it.
I was the deputy director of the national security branch at the FBI,
which is the branch responsible
for all analysis and investigations
to chase terror cases around the United States...
Georgia, New York, New Jersey,
California, Washington State,
Oregon, Chicago,
Miami, Texas.
And this was one of the biggest that we had.
After 9/11, people in the United States
are saying, "Make sure we never have innocents die again,"
and then you find an American kid
who's on a university computer
trying to figure out how to blow up innocents,
and he's talking to bad guys overseas
who are known made men affiliated with the Al Qaeda movement.
Cases like this have an interesting,
what we call in Washington, tick tock.
If there is a broader conspiracy
when you identify the initial subject
and you take down that subject too soon,
you risk leaving on the street
people who might resuscitate the plot.
So you want to watch this case and say,
"Until I have to take it down, I don't want to,
because I do not want to leave a piece of the threat
on the cutting room floor."
That'll kill you.
But thinking at the same time, you're sitting on risk.
Every day, you're tick tock.
Is he going to go bad tonight?
Does he have access to weapons or explosives we don't know about?
Is he going to see something on a video tonight that says,
"Darn it, enough is enough. I'm going out there."
Well, you better be all over him,
because if you miss that one, it's on you.
I thought they were headed for the kinds of things
that we were witnessing at the same time... public spaces.
Public spaces where people concentrate in tight areas.
Devices that are not that complicated to put together.
And if you think this is sort of aspirational and not real,
look at Madrid and look at London.
We're talking about a cluster of people
who take down the Madrid metro.
We're talking about a cluster of people
who take down the subway in London.
You look at these, and it brings you back
to the months when we were watching this case evolve.
Man, seriously, be careful...
We had two Americans
going up to film what I thought and what we all thought
were potential target sites in Washington.
When you look at this kind of material,
you cannot let this proceed.
But at the same time,
this is someone who's 18 years old
who could have potentially participated in the American dream,
and you sit there as it's rolling out,
and you almost want to pick up the phone
and say, "Son, don't do this."
When the towers got hit and the Pentagon got hit,
you knew right then that the world changed,
time changed.
And I thought that now there would be
a reassessment of foreign policy,
and, you know, that's why
I was supporting George Bush from the beginning,
was when he talked about creating a Palestinian state.
That's when I got that time to volunteer
and work next to the president.
I felt proud. I felt...
I'm showing Arabs and Muslims that, you know,
this is a great country and our president stands by us,
and I've never felt discrimination my whole life.
Ever.
I'm not saying it doesn't happen to people.
I mean, I think if you're wearing a hijab
or you have a beard or something,
you might find some ignorant people
who are going to just automatically judge you
and think that you're a terrorist.
I didn't have that issue.
I didn't get that issue until Fort Hood.
All right.
This is a great story, and I think it's very true.
So, this grandson goes to his grandfather
and says, "How do you stay a good person?
How do you live and become a great man?
How do you do that?"
And this is the story his grandfather tells.
It is a terrible fight, and it is between two wolves.
One is evil, the other is good.
The same fight is going on inside you
and inside every other person, too.
And the grandson thought about it for a minute...
I was teaching at a student film class,
and then I came out for a break from filming
and saw my mother had called three times.
Fox 5 is staying on top of this still-developing...
- And then I called. - Mom back, and she said,
"There's been a shooting at Fort Hood,
and we think it's near your dad,"
and then she probably said some other stuff,
but the truth is I actually started to cry right then.
- That's my dad. - He looked like Santa Claus.
Yes, he did. It's totally fine. That's real. He did.
He was murdered on November 5th, 2009,
by a man named Nidal Malik Hasan,
who trained for about three months
with a gun with 30-round magazines
to go into the Soldier Readiness Center at Fort Hood army base
and kill as many soldiers as he could.
Now, my dad was a civilian contractor,
so he actually wasn't aiming at him
until my dad charged him and tried to stop him,
so he killed him.
I mean, me and my sister were like, "I'm not surprised,
because that was Dad."
Dad told me that when I was 15.
It was right after the Columbine shooting,
and he said, "You know what?
If a guy ever walks in with a gun like that"...
I've never understood this.
He said, "If five to 10 people just charge him right away,
yes, some of you will get shot and some of you will die,
but you take him down right away,
and then... And then they're done."
So how do you think I felt after my dad was killed?
'Cause I know you guys know a lot of people who've gone through that, too.
Sad. What else?
Really angry. I was really angry.
Our job in counterterrorism
wasn't to minimize the likelihood of an attack,
it was to eliminate the likelihood of attack.
That pressure was intense.
It was the media, it was the White House,
it was the Congress, and it was the American public.
And when they say, "Make sure this doesn't happen in this country,"
I got it.
The difference between where we are today
than where we were on 9/11 are the following.
On 9/11, there were 16 people on the no-fly list.
Now there are 40,000.
On 9/11, the FBI was primarily a law enforcement agency,
not an intelligence gathering agency.
That's changed very dramatically.
On 9/11, there was no... there were 32 joint terrorism task forces.
Now there are 106.
We bought lots of technology and we hired lots of people.
We created lots of bureaucracy
all to fight terrorism.
41-count indictment against 11 individuals.
Seven people arrested Monday on terrorism charges.
Spend a lot of money on this.
Put more agents on it. Put more analysts on it.
I think that leads to a lot of aggressive operations
in a vastly expanded congressional mandate
for people like me to use broad laws to collect data.
A lot of what we do, we did because we could,
not because it necessarily helped that much.
We've, I think, made a lot of adjustments,
a lot of sacrifices.
Hard to tell whether it's worth it.
- When you think about. - NSA surveillance,
you know, it turned out that by harvesting
every American's phone data for five years,
it found one case, which was a really trivial case.
And yet I'm sure if you ask most Americans,
they're perfectly comfortable with what...
I mean, they don't want a terrorist attack.
By reacting the way they did,
the White House, I think, reinforced
this zero failure, zero attack threshold
that... you know, that we ought to be good enough
to stop every single attack.
Today's scare comes as the man known
as the "Underwear Bomber" is accused of trying
to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day...
Someone drove an SUV into Times Square
and set off a big bomb scare...
The man suspected of an attempted bombing
in New York has been arrested...
...two explosions in succession
near the finish line of today's Boston Marathon.
For the first time, a picture has emerged of the attackers together.
US officials believe Tashfeen Malik had been radicalized
before stepping foot in the US...
The FBI knew about this man...
Nice shot.
There has been a tragic shooting incident today
at Fort Hood...
...killing 12 people and injuring 31 others.
Worst mass killing at a US military base in history...
The worst terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11.
This is what it looked like at the front gate
to Fort Hood as hundreds of wives, husbands,
and parents waited for news about their loved one.
I was playing golf.
Got a call from my mother
telling me that my cousin was shot,
and at that point,
I told my friends, I was like,
"I think my cousin's been shot
by somebody with mental health issues."
Hour by hour, we've been piecing together
a picture of the alleged gunman.
Authorities say the shooter
is 39-year-old Major Nidal Malik Hasan.
Born and raised in Virginia
and was a psychiatrist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center
for six years before being transferred
to Fort Hood this summer.
An army psychiatrist and practicing Muslim...
...who shouted, "Allah is great"
and gunned down 44 unarmed innocent soldiers and civilians.
Before you're even able to process it,
the media world automatically is in your face.
Well, answers are hard to come by tonight in this neighborhood
where Hasan's relatives live.
We have seen Hasan's first cousin come out a few times
to talk with police and talk with neighbors.
Friends have been stopping by the house late this evening,
but everyone here is wondering
what made Hasan possibly snap.
Investigators connecting the dots now
as they delve deeper into possible motives
behind the attack on Fort Hood.
Web postings about suicide bombings are being investigated.
And his possible links to Al Qaeda.
We don't know all the answers yet,
and I would caution against jumping to conclusions
until we have all the facts.
What facts are we waiting for?
This was an Islamist terrorist act,
and I'm sorry if it's inconvenient.
They started saying all these things about my cousin
that weren't true, about him going to Syria and training.
And Fox had called the home and gotten through to my sister,
and my sister said I should talk to them and tell them the truth.
We are joined on the phone now
by the cousin of the accused shooter.
When did he convert to Islam
and what was his name prior to his conversion?
He's always been Muslim.
And did... he's always been Muslim, you said.
- Yeah. - Did he ever - express to you
or indicate to you any violent tendencies of this kind?
He wasn't somebody who even enjoyed
going to the firing range, you know?
This wasn't somebody who had that kind of mind-set.
We're shocked.
We are trying to make sense of this and...
And he's been in the military since before 9/11, correct?
Absolutely. Right out of high school.
Against... you know, both of his parents are American.
I want to make sure everybody understands.
The guy was born and raised here.
My cousin, a good American.
And the Fox media right away started coming up with,
"Cousin calls him a good American.
Cousin calls him a good American."
Hasan's cousin described him on Fox News Channel
as a good American.
Both of his parents are American.
I want to make sure everybody understands.
He is a good American.
It was like I was calling him a good American
for what had happened.
So then came the phone call
from somebody who I worked with.
He was working the antiterrorism task force.
He called me and said, "Nader, I've heard your interview,
and, you know, obviously we gotta come and interview you."
I mean, it was "Twilight Zone" for me.
That sense of...
automatically being guilty by association
hit home.
Being a criminal defense lawyer,
I mean, it's one of the first things.
You're, like...
It's the scariest thing.
Scariest thing when you're defending somebody.
They're around bad people.
Those people are clearly involved, so you must be.
They met here at a mosque in Atlanta.
Two young Muslim men joining in prayer
and possibly something else.
Sadequee, who was living in this house in suburban Atlanta,
was arrested earlier this week in Bangladesh.
He had gone there to get married.
My phone was off the hook for the days that followed.
I started calling people,
everybody and anybody that I knew...
Our relatives to potential lawyers.
The first time I met him was in Brooklyn.
I flew to New York when he was, for lack of a better term,
kidnapped and brought back to the United States.
I was outraged.
I found it very hard to believe
that we can just come on a sidewalk
and pick you up, put a hood over your head, bring you to the airport
and transport you, you know, halfway around the world.
I was part of the discussion
that, yes, it's time to try to get him back here,
because he was in Bangladesh,
and so there was a concern
that we might not ever find him again,
and so that's when the efforts began
to coordinate with authorities in Bangladesh
to see if there was a way to get Shifa
back to the United States.
I don't want to make it sound like this happens every day.
This was a rendition from Bangladesh straight to the closest landfall,
which is Alaska, and then to the eastern district of New York
where he had an appearance in front of a magistrate
like any other US citizen would have
if arrested on federal charges.
The very first time when we saw Shifa
was inside the court in Brooklyn.
I think, for me, there was this sense of relief.
Like, "Okay, he's alive in front of my eyes."
We were actually standing outside,
and they brought him from his cell
into the visitation room.
Immediately when I saw him,
I hugged him, my sister hugged him.
He starts to cry. We start to cry.
So within... Like, instantly,
we were happy, and then we were not.
Instantly that joy was taken away.
- Roswell native. - Ehsanul Sadequee
will not be getting out of jail anytime soon.
Sadequee's family would not talk on camera...
I'm sorry. We have no comments at this time.
Family members from Georgia
left a Brooklyn federal courthouse unhappy,
but, for the first time, aware of what their loved one is accused of doing.
Atlanta area teen allegedly involved
in an international terror plot.
And I think I was asking, "Well, how would they do that?
What terrorism?
What is it that he has done around that?"
But for the longest time,
the lawyers actually didn't have access to the evidence,
because they're all classified.
Yeah, it was... It was frustrating.
That whole process to me felt really...
unconstitutional.
Oh, this is when he was in grade school.
He said he... he went to Washington, DC,
and, "I went to a place where there were lots of planes and jets.
I saw a rocket. I saw a book about rockets.
I saw some rocks from Mars and the moon."
- Oh, my gosh. - "About the author.
Shifa is seven years old and a second grader.
His birthday is on July 30th."
He said, "I went to the White House
where our presidents live.
I liked Washington, DC, very much.
The end."
This is his card from when he was still in solitary confinement.
To his wife.
He writes, "I'm doing fine by the grace of Allah.
Please do not worry for me.
I apologize for the delay in writing to you.
You know how it pains me to be distant from you.
But I've been going through some distress lately
and to Allah alone return to seek help.
And to him alone we complain."
I can't read the rest.
But, you know, you can imagine somebody's husband
in solitary confinement for so long.
His pretrial confinement conditions were horrific.
Just zero contact.
23 hours a day in lockdown.
He was in solitary confinement for three and a half years.
Those years were the most scary, the most stressful.
There was a point where he was definitely losing his mind.
Like, he was saying that he was hearing voices in his mind
and could hear things rattling in his brain.
We were put in this whirlwind of not knowing,
nightmarish kind of existence,
made to be afraid, live in fear.
That's when I think I became angry at... at the system,
at our government.
This is the way the government's treating him before trial.
Not ever having been found guilty of anything.
Not ever having a day in court to say, "I'm not guilty."
When this was happening to my little brother
and to my family, it was...
heartbreaking, and it was...
It felt like a betrayal, actually, more than anything.
I mean... yeah.
I mean, we felt betrayed by our government.
It's not how a family should be treated.
Yay, Shifa.
Residents tell me they are shaken to think
that a terror group known for beheading Westerners
might well have been recruiting
right here in their quiet neighborhood.
We're learning more about a 19-year-old man
charged with trying to join the terrorist group ISIS.
Al-hamdu lillah.
We praise, we thank,
we lovingly appreciate Allah,
and thus we say, "Al-hamdu lillah."
"We seek his help."
"We seek his forgiveness."
I see myself as a common Muslim
who has some knowledge to counteract
some of the propaganda that's taking place by ISIS.
Before looking at what's happening overseas,
before looking at what's happening in our society or even our campus,
the first thing to take control of is our hearts.
If you yourself are facing unease,
then come talk to me.
When I talk to the young people
who are being attracted to a call for violence,
I start out with a few aspects of my own narrative.
One, that I was very interested in the Taliban myself.
That was one side of it.
Another side of my narrative
is that I was a teacher or mentor
or older brother, so to speak, for Samir Khan.
Tonight national reports
say Samir Khan is the new author
of an intense online Al Qaeda magazine called "Inspire."
Its publisher... Anwar Awlaki,
Al Qaeda's master propagandist.
The government is aware of this publication.
Eyebrows are raised, and when you see it,
you might understand why.
There was no jihadi material available in English
until Samir Khan started assembling it in North Carolina.
Are you helping recruit for Al Qaeda?
- No. - Not at all?
- Helping recruit for terrorism? - Not at all.
- He started the first. - English jihadi website,
and at a certain point he moved to Yemen
and he started the first English language
jihadi magazine.
We ask ourselves, you know,
how many English language readers
are susceptible to this kind of propaganda?
Every time we were taking down a cell in the West,
this magazine was on those hard drives.
So this article's called "I am Proud to be a Traitor to America,"
and he tells the story about how he came to Yemen,
it was an incredibly moving experience,
and how exciting it was to be with the mujahedeen and, you know...
And I think there's a certain romance to this,
I mean, which you can't discount if you're a...
You know, you're late teens, early 20s,
and you're going to Yemen,
and suddenly you're part of a jihadi military movement,
you're blowing things up, and... it's exciting.
It's a lot more exciting than being some schlub with a dead-end job.
You know, suddenly you're someone.
His parents called me up asking if I can help,
because I understand the fuel of frustration.
When I was growing up, I was very interested in the Taliban.
I even seriously started thinking about joining the Taliban.
There's something exciting about going overseas with a weapon
and fighting the forces of evil.
But rationally, Islamically,
there were some very big, big holes
that I couldn't reconcile.
I could not rationalize killing innocent people.
One thing that's important to know
about Hasan and his topic today
is he is a practicing Muslim,
and he wanted to enlighten us about Muslim...
The Islamic culture and the Islamic tradition,
and how that relates to being a military member,
in particular a military psychiatrist,
and give us a little background
on some of the issues that we face in the world every day.
So, Nidal?
Okay, just...
Okay.
Thank you, Dr. Moran.
Can you guys hear me? Great.
Just make sure this works. Okay.
Now, disclaimer, this is purely for me.
This doesn't represent the psychiatric department
or the military or any of the armed forces
and it doesn't represent any Islamic groups
or God for that matter.
It represents my research,
and, again, the Koranic worldview
as it relates to Muslims in US military.
...as the investigation
into the Fort Hood shootings intensified.
Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee Joe Lieberman
says he will move forward on a congressional investigation
to work out whether there were warning signs
that Hasan was becoming a radicalized Muslim
and the signs were missed or ignored.
The hearings could begin as early as next week.
What makes me really mad about it
is it's these tiny, little mistakes,
and they all added up
to one massive, horrible tragedy.
We're really honored to have with us
people who lost loved ones at Fort Hood.
I wanted to introduce... and ask you to stand if you would...
First Kerry Cahill and Keely Vanacker,
who are two daughters of the late Michael Cahill.
They traveled here today from Texas and Louisiana.
We found out about the hearing about two to three days before,
and they were like, "Oh, yes, you can come,"
and we went.
Our report entitled "A Ticking Time Bomb:
Counterterrorism Lessons
from the US Government's Failure to Prevent
the Fort Hood Attack" concluded, painfully,
that the attack at Fort Hood was preventable.
I was trying to figure out what happened that day.
I wanted to know and I wanted to understand.
That was it. It was that simple for me.
And we listened to some experts.
It's an honor to be here. I know families are behind me.
13 people are dead and 32 are injured.
I'm not going to focus on what I heard
in terms of bitching and moaning from my friends.
I want to talk about what we should do.
Washington wants heads on platters.
You're following thousands of cases.
Here's another single case.
I don't care what you did on the other 2,999.
20 years in and you'll say, "You're an idiot."
They failed to act effectively on the many red flags
signaling that he had become a potential threat.
I remember sitting there, going into that room,
thinking to myself, "I owe it to the families
to offer the best testimony I can,
but I also owe it to reality to say that this ain't perfect."
We need to go from an ocean to a drop of water,
because the number of people who are involved
in this Islamist violent revolution
is in the tens or hundreds of thousands.
So to find people like Hasan,
you're going to go from 10 or 20,000 people to one.
Hasan, a member of the US Armed Forces, after all,
was communicating with a suspected terrorist,
already the subject of a major FBI
counter-terrorism investigation.
Anwar al-Awlaki.
He's an American-born Al Qaeda leader...
I, for one, was born in the US
and lived in the US for 21 years.
America was my home.
However, with the American invasion of Iraq
and continued US aggression against Muslims,
I came to the conclusion that jihad against America
is binding upon myself
just as it is binding on every other able Muslim.
America refuses to admit that its foreign policies
are the reason behind the men like Nidal Hasan,
born and raised in the US,
turning his guns against American soldiers.
In order to cushion the reaction of the American public,
the administration is refusing to release the emails
exchanged between myself and Nidal.
Another attempt of covering up the truth.
It starts relatively benignly
asking Awlaki on his views
on American Muslims who serve in the US Army.
And toward the end, he's asking questions
that in hindsight are pretty revealing.
He apparently hailed suicide bombers
and likened suicide bombers
to a soldier who throws him or herself
upon a grenade to save fellow soldiers.
The only thing he didn't do was wear a T-shirt saying,
"I'm going to attack Fort Hood tomorrow."
I mean, let's get this straight.
In the post-9/11 era,
an individual is on the Internet
talking in broad terms to a bad guy.
Are you kidding me? That's a dime a dozen.
They had field agents out of San Diego
telling them, "We should look at this guy."
And they thought he was emailing Anwar al-Awlaki for something else?
I don't know.
A lot of what he was doing, a lot of what he was studying
was perfectly consistent with his line of work.
Again, the Koranic worldview
as it relates to Muslims in US military.
Now, some of the adverse events
that have occurred in the military.
Hasan Akbar, he was a convert to Islam
who decided to throw a couple grenades
into his fellow soldiers' tents.
So what are some hints
that I might give mental health providers
that might better identify a person
that might be more predisposed of having conflicts?
In hindsight, it was obvious
that he was having this intense internal conflict
between being an army officer and being a Muslim.
You're absolutely right.
The US attorney here
calls this a very big case.
19-year-old Ehsanul Sadequee
is part of Georgia's first international terrorism case.
We both were crying, 'cause that's when we knew
how serious the charges were.
He was very perplexed by the seriousness of the charges.
I think he was astounded that they were accusing him
of seriously being a member of a conspiracy.
A conspiracy is simply an agreement
to engage in some kind of criminal activity.
It's the agreement that is the crime under federal law.
That's how I interpreted terrorism.
Physical violence.
So they're trying to bring these terrorism-related charges.
I'm like, "What, he was going to attack the United States?"
I mean, how is he going to do that?
This is what Shifa always looked like.
And this is... This is how he looked.
He didn't shave. He wore traditional dress.
And that's who he was.
I started going up and spending literally, like,
weeks and weeks at a time,
living in Atlanta, working with him
and going through his thoughts and his ideas
and what he believes,
because we know that that's what the government
was going to focus on.
Prosecutors show
that Sadequee communicated with this man in the video.
The video showed a terrorist, now convicted
and in prison in Bosnia, showing how to make bombs.
Maybe in that association, in that network,
somebody may have done something,
but that doesn't mean Shifa is engaged in that behavior.
Sadequee didn't have plastic explosives.
It may be that Sadequee never wanted to have to pull a trigger.
That doesn't make him a nondangerous person.
Online, you are as potent as your words.
He had taken on this role in the Internet community
of being a scholar.
A lot of the conversations that happen online
are with folks who don't have the level of knowledge he has,
and therefore he's looked up to.
And that sense of status is positive reinforcement,
and it also gives one a sense of confidence,
and that confidence makes you keep going down the same road.
There was a young man seeking guidance
about how best to support the struggle,
and Sadequee counseled this young man.
One thing that law enforcement looks for
is that if there's a devout-appearing Muslim
who all of a sudden shaves his hair,
in the past that has meant
someone's prepared to ascend to heaven
and become a martyr,
and Sadequee, aware of this,
says, "Don't shave your beard all at once.
Shave it in stages, and then keep it trimmed.
Don't talk about controversial issues.
Don't draw attention to yourself
so you fly below the radar."
But how real is that?
I find it really hard to believe.
I find it hard to believe...
First of all, so my brother wrote that.
Where is that going to go?
In other words, like, who is my brother, first of all to...
Why does my brother's...
What he wrote back, why does that even matter?
This kind of advice, the advice that Sadequee was freely doling out,
is the kind of advice
that allows folks to fly below the radar
until they decide to pop up in a way that is real dangerous.
Almost everything that he was accused of doing
would fall within what we believe to be his First Amendment rights.
It can be illegal for two people who were 17 years old
to say, "You know what we got to do?
We got to go rob a bank someday.
That's what we got to do."
But nobody would prosecute two people
for having that kind of conversation.
I mean, the question is at what point do you believe it?
What point is it a realistic threat?
Yeah, on the bridge, man.
Those chats became evidence of his intent,
that he was indeed somebody who wanted to support
a terrorist organization.
And then there was two actions
that they said were acts in furtherance.
One was going to Toronto and connecting with a group up there
that eventually became arrested and known as the Toronto 18,
and the other was going to Washington, DC,
making a video.
It is a crime under the laws of the United States
to take steps that materially support
either terrorists or known terrorist groups.
And in this case, we have the material support
in the form of these casing videos
that were particularly problematic
for Haris and for Sadequee where they filmed the Capitol
and the Pentagon and then some places
that tourists just wouldn't film,
like the security kiosks around the Capitol,
or the Department of Energy building.
As an intelligence officer,
you don't have to make judgments in the Sadequee case
about what these boys were up to.
It's the prosecutor's problem
to figure out whether a jury of peers
will convict that person.
Shifa used the computers at Raksha,
which is a wonderful organization
designed to get help for victims of domestic violence,
and he volunteered there.
Gentle Shifa volunteered there
and helped these women in need.
And when folks weren't looking,
he was sending the videos
to a known terrorist
right underneath Sonali's nose.
It was definitely disturbing,
but at the same time, it was like...
there's more, you know?
There's more to this story
than what the government wants me to believe.
You don't suddenly convince family members,
"Hey, by the way, he's a potential terrorist."
They'll say, "You're crazy.
You don't know what you're talking about."
I know my brother is not violent.
He has never engaged in violence.
He... I remember when he was growing up,
he would walk, you know, in the park or on the street...
He would tell me, "Don't step on the ants and the bugs on the floor."
We don't wait until someone has lit the fuse
to decide it's time to act.
Would Sadequee have taken up arms?
Don't know, we never found out.
But he did enough other things as detailed in the indictment,
as shared with the jury that got him into trouble.
- A jury found. - Ehsanul Sadequee
guilty on four counts today.
These guys made a horrible mistake, and we got them.
The hope is that should other people
find themselves in a similar situation,
uncertain about what their faith is telling them,
they'll decide that maybe that's not the path to follow.
Judge William Duffey gave Sadequee 17 years.
This is federal prison time.
They'll serve almost all of it.
After they get out, then they'll be placed on parole for 30 years.
In that time, they can't own a computer
or a cell phone or even a television
that connects to the Internet.
We're doing these kids a huge favor.
They'll never say this. They probably hate people like me.
I don't care. Good. You should.
But we're saving these people
from an act that is so heinous,
they ought to in some ways thank us,
because when they're 40 or 50, sitting in a rocking chair,
I hope they're looking back saying, "Wow,
I'm glad I didn't succeed in that."
And the family should thank us, too.
We intervened before they did something
like those bombers did in London or in Madrid.
If the families think this is bad, think about that.
I think I'm done for now.
Okay, so remember what we're covering.
We're covering Surah Yusuf, Surah number 12.
So let me ask you this question.
What are some things in our environment today would you say
are hurting our community, the Muslim community?
I had this one teacher, and he would, like,
go on about 9/11 and how Muslims were behind it.
My mainstream heroes growing up
were Muhammad Ali, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,
and the enemy growing up was the Soviet Union
or the Communists,
but for students who are 15 years old,
students who are even 20 years old,
socially, they're the enemy.
How about when you think about what's taking place in the news
and when you hear about something like ISIS?
Any of you ever have any thoughts
about something like joining ISIS?
My name is Abu Muslim.
I'm your brother in Islam here in Syria.
I'm feeling like I'm still dreaming.
I'm thinking like I'm in a dream world.
You have to be here to understand what I'm saying.
So this is ISIS'
English language in-flight magazine, "Dabiq."
It's all about how great it is,
you know, when you come and join the jihad,
and "Look at the great job we're doing.
We've liberated all this territory."
And they're really trying to present themselves as a state.
This is the fifth edition of the "Dabiq" magazine.
You know, they've got my name labeled up there
as "the crusader Andrew Liepman."
It was a little disconcerting to see my face
in a ISIL magazine.
More disconcerting, probably, for my wife than for me, but...
Before, if you wanted to get these ideas,
you might have gone to a prayer study group.
You don't need to do that because it's all available on the Internet.
So you can self-radicalize in the comfort of your own bedroom
and you can radicalize very quickly.
There's this need to help all these Muslims
that they're hearing about who are dying from drone strikes,
who are getting killed by whatever forces,
and here Islam would be the answer,
and they might be the people who are doing it.
The messaging is very, very romantic.
They have the same type of very simplistic, romantic stories.
It's 100% utopian.
The idea was that if you establish an Islamic society,
all the problems in the world will go away.
Well, I have to keep in mind
not just what's happening in the school building,
but how outside factors, external factors
are impacting our school,
especially with ISIS in particular.
It hit home like the Bolingbrook case with Hamzah Khan.
- 19-year-old. - Mohammed Hamzah Khan
was arrested at O'Hare on Saturday night.
He planned to take two siblings
and go overseas to fight with ISIS.
Khan seemed like any other teenager
living in the Chicago suburbs...
Goofing around with his friends,
working part-time, and going to college.
I taught him in ninth grade, in biology class. Yeah.
Very sweet kid. Very respectful.
And, you know, he was pretty quiet in class,
but, you know, very polite.
I've not talked to Hamzah.
I've talked to everybody else in the family,
including the two who were planning on going.
The Khan siblings wanted to live
in what they thought would be paradise on Earth.
They thought they'd be in a place
where everyone was hugging each other
and reciting passages of the Quran.
It's a possibility that, you know, our young students
could take that path or make those type of choices.
A pair of young Minnesota men are charged now
with trying to help the terror group ISIS.
A 17-year-old boy in the suburbs of Washington...
- A 19-year-old woman... - He grew up in Minnesota...
- All the way from Minneapolis. - Two New York men...
The children were frequently seen
going back and forth to the Islamic school across the street.
What about the parents? Did they know any of this was going on?
They did not know.
They're afraid to say anything to their children.
They're afraid to engage in these conversations
because the political context that we're living in.
There's also a heightened sense of fear
of having these conversations, too.
We still have parents who think that,
"Oh, you know, if you type the word 'jihad' in on Google, that's"...
- You're gonna be monitored. - Yeah, you're going to be monitored.
For a lot of parents, there's a very deep sense of paranoia.
We had this event in my Sunday school.
Parents became very upset
that we had, you know, junior high schoolers
speaking on camera about ISIS.
Some staff, they're apprehensive, right,
that, you know, what will be the implications
if we talk about these topics?
- The rhetoric from ISIS. - Is pretty specific
in terms of they will give verses to justify their acts.
There is an aspect of our religion that deals with taking up arms,
but we show how they're misreading the verse, too,
and what are they... What are they leaving out
and what are they not including.
And now the purpose is to show them,
"Well, what is the proper understanding of this?"
I think that demonstrates
that there's still a lot of work to do,
and if a student asks a question,
unless you engage them and you provide their answers,
they're going to still look,
and either it's you or it's someone else,
and that's where the real danger stands,
is who is that someone else.
I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America
and to the republic for which it stands,
one nation under God, indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all.
Jason Brooker.
Adam Garcia.
Shifa Sadequee.
After 9/11,
young folks who are growing up in the US but are Muslim
and see how Muslims are being portrayed in the media
and then what they're having to go through in school...
Peer pressure, being bullied,
being called names, I mean, I imagine
that they would want to connect with other Muslims.
And I know that where we lived,
there weren't a lot of Muslims his age.
Sometimes when you go to middle school,
it's a little hard to find your place.
Sometimes you may feel a little bit left out.
- I was in college. - Sonali was in high school.
And my dad had businesses in Bangladesh,
so he wanted to return and take care of those,
and they wanted to make sure that Shifa was getting
the proper kind of care.
And so I think they decided
that a boarding school would be better
where he can get this Islamic environment.
It's a regular school with a regular education,
plus they have Islamic education
like you'd have in a Catholic school.
Growing up, we were not actually religious, like, I would say.
Just doing the basics...
The Ramadan, fasting, Friday prayers.
That's kind of about it.
I guess any change that I noticed was changes that I expected
from somebody who's going to an Islamic boarding school.
His clothing had changed.
So the government thinks that he got radicalized in that school in Canada.
I don't think that school changed him.
He was there for only two years...
- 13, 14, 15. - I know.
My theory is through online.
He was online all the time, so...
he got all these different versions of Islam
through online interactions with people.
The conversations online
are very often the blind leading the blind,
posting of articles and scholarly works
and trying to interpret them themselves.
One of the interesting things, actually, for me,
was that he translated so much stuff.
To say he was...
prolific at his research and translation
is an understatement, if you ask me.
This is just one box, to give you an idea.
A lot of the headings of these documents
have the word "jihad" in them.
You know, maybe two-thirds of them.
We all need to create safe spaces
for folks to have conversations
and to express unpopular views out in the light of day
so that we potentially redirect these young men
into a much more positive use of their intellect.
His father and I were involved in Islamic activities,
and through that I met Samir.
I met Samir when he was an early teenager.
I watched him go through his whole transformation
from this nerdy kid to this very, very aggressive,
angry young man who felt that the only thing.
Muslims are allowed to do is to fight America.
When I saw that video,
it was something, you know,
that brought great happiness to me,
because I know that this is something
that America would never want to admit.
They would never want to admit that they're being crushed.
Part of the story that people don't know about Samir
is that everything began
with a failed relationship with a girl.
He met a girl in a chat room
who told him, "My father beats me.
You have to save me."
And so his impulse to be a hero kicked in,
and he conducted his own marriage to her.
Her father found out about this,
and their interaction with each other was cut off.
It wasn't theology that motivated him.
Not even politics.
The fuel of the transformation was anger.
In the struggle of trying to get this relationship to work,
he was also exposed to Anwar al-Awlaki's lectures.
They're plotting to kill this religion.
All what is needed was to tell them
that the Muslims are evil people.
That's all what was needed.
And they pounced on the Muslims
like wild beasts.
He was first telling me that he was listening to them
just to compare and contrast what others say about jihad, what he says.
And then I saw him start to go through this transformation.
The American occupiers, they're disbelievers,
and every disbeliever will go to hellfire,
according to the book of Allah.
He would point to passages
calling on Muslims to fight,
which he was not doing properly or he was misquoting them.
And I would ask him why he's picking and choosing those passages,
but I knew that that wouldn't change anything.
He was... He was set in his ways.
Samir Khan was in North Carolina,
and then he went over and made a little mistake.
He went over to Yemen to talk to Anwar Awlaki,
and he was killed in a drone strike.
That was a mistake.
There's a longing I have, actually...
to see Samir again.
And ultimately, he was the one who got away.
I guess this box kind of has all the memorable things
that happened growing up.
My cousin and...
I'm right here in the cap and gown.
This is my... This is 1991.
- So which one is Nidal? - Right here.
How close were you growing up?
When we were younger,
we were together all the time.
That's me, my little brother, and that's Nidal right there.
And then when his father passed away, that...
I think our... we started seeing ourselves
go down different perspectives
in the way that we were dealing with life.
Just going to take you through.
My cousin's father died in '98,
and his mother died in 2001.
And that's when our family really saw him start to go to mosque and pray.
Regularly.
And he'd come over and start asking me about...
You know, "Don't you want to start praying?
Don't you want to start doing this?"
I'm like, "Listen, man, I see you're dealing with your parents' death,
and God be with you while you're, you know, going through that,
and if religion is going to be the path for you to find...
Okay, that's cool."
If you look at his own personal life, he's, I mean, socially inept.
I mean, I don't think he's... didn't know how to talk to girls,
if he even wanted to, and whether or not he had a sexual identity crisis
or not.
I don't know.
I mean, but that's on the table, I think.
And his fear of going to war.
The reporting is that your cousin
had made requests not to be deployed overseas to the war.
Is that right?
Yeah, we've known for the last five years.
That was probably his worst nightmare.
He deals with stories.
He would tell us how he would hear things,
horrific things.
Him going to medical school,
I mean, he picked psychiatry, I think,
because he thought that would be the least amount of blood
that he'd have to deal with.
He was afraid of war.
I don't think he ever enlisted,
thinking he was going to go to combat.
Hasan was apparently about to deploy to Iraq.
Getting deployed may have simply been too much.
I looked at this, and I know this makes a lot of people angry,
but said, "I'm not sure, as a professional with decades of experience
in the counterterrorism business, I would characterize this as terrorism,"
because if you're looking at the psychological state of the person,
do you want to jump to the conclusion
that he clearly had a political intent?
I thought he was mentally imbalanced.
You know, in a word, he was suicidal
and decided to use an excuse with religion,
and to use that and bring everybody down
who identifies with being Muslim.
Selfish.
And how dare him?
His cousin, the man who murdered my father,
his cousin decided to start a foundation
to speak out against Islamic extremism,
and I found out about it and I wanted to meet him.
We met him at the train station,
and he gave us a ride
and actually gave us a little tour of his neighborhood
and then we went to his house.
I was curious. I needed to know who this guy was,
what the foundation was for.
I didn't know what he was doing.
And we talked about his cousin
and we talked about what his experience was.
We talked about what our experience was.
It's a lot harder on Nader and his family
than it is on mine.
And I say that because we both lost our relatives,
but I get to miss my dad.
I get to celebrate my dad's life.
I get to talk about my dad without worry
that you're going to judge me for who my dad was.
Nader lost friends and clients.
And coming out in the open to say, "That was my cousin,
and I want to fight that"
is a lot harder, because people are a lot meaner
to the family of the person who killed
than the family of the person who got killed.
The relationship that Kerry and I had is the real American spirit,
'cause that's what I think America wants.
America just wants to know everything's okay
and that they don't have to be afraid.
You'll be able to see with your own eyes and your own ears
if you come talk to us that...
You'll see my family.
Kind of pull back the veil or pull back the hijab
and let them see what the family's really like
so that they can perhaps calm down.
Awesome!
I didn't go to meet Nader
to go fix some massive, iconic problem.
I went to go meet Nader 'cause I wanted to meet his family
and tell them I hope they're okay.
That's it. That's how that started, right?
I just wanted to go fix my life, too.
I wanted to understand a little more, right?
That's it. That's the basic start.
You just have to admit that things aren't perfect
and you want to make them better.
And me and his cousin used to go and speak to students like you guys.
That felt like a victory.
And a victory over all of the extremist crap
that we have all over the world right now.
In the meantime, ISIS continues its bloody campaign.
Widespread concern about the threat posed by a group
that has been beheading Americans...
ISIS has demonstrated time and time again
its lack of respect for human life.
91% said that they see ISIS
as posing a vital threat.
Look, I understand why Americans
get concerned about terrorism.
It can happen at the Boston Marathon.
It can happen in a military base in Texas.
The randomness of this affects Americans.
The fact that they can't explain the ideology.
But if I have to balance this
against other things that affect American life,
I would step back and say,
I'm somebody who practiced this for decades.
I don't worry about it very much.
Homegrown terrorists living among us...
Fear of ISIS cells emerging here...
Every single state...
These sympathizers are literally everywhere in America.
We live in a 24-7 news cycle.
ISIS is a big news story.
You know, seven out of 10 Americans
believe ISIS is a very serious threat to the United States,
which is pretty astonishing, because if you think about it,
the fact is neo-Nazis, far-right antigovernment terrorists
are killing quite a number of people.
Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing
killed 168 people.
So the point is there are homegrown terrorists
who are motivated by ideologies other than jihad.
If you do the thought experiment
where the guy in the Kansas Jewish center shooting in 2014
shouted "Allahu Akbar" instead of "Heil Hitler,"
it would have got a lot more attention.
...claims that there's an ISIS plot targeting American subways...
The majority say that the president has been too cautious
in responding to this threat.
I've had people challenge me.
People who don't know the counterterrorist business.
Moms in suburban America say, you know,
"You say you shouldn't worry much.
You're wrong. I worry a lot.
There's this Muslim wave of terrorism that's coming at us,
and it's changing our culture."
My answer to them is, to be blunt,
"You have got to be kidding me."
You're welcome to worry. That's your responsibility.
But I'm an analyst, and I deal with fact.
The fact is if you judge threat
by the impact on an American family,
terrorism has a miniscule to near zero impact.
Nearly a decade and a half after 9/11,
we have managed the problem to a large degree.
It's politically very hard to say that,
but we've done a pretty good job.
We're not going to abolish terrorism as a tactic.
It's been around since the dawn of history.
The question is, you know, how worried should we be?
It certainly doesn't make sense
for us to communicate to the American public
that this is an existential problem.
And yet we put up this huge national security apparatus
and spent literally hundreds of billions of dollars on it.
I think you could argue that there are lots of things
that are way more dangerous to Americans than terrorism.
We ought to be focused more on cancer research
or obesity or drugs or gun violence,
but that doesn't capture the American imagination
as much as the threat from ISIS.
How many people know here somebody who's been murdered?
A lot of us.
It's not an isolated case.
I'm not abnormal.
My dad happened to get a lot of news coverage
because of the way it happened,
but it's the same way a lot of other people die, too.
It's interesting looking at mass shootings in this country.
If you look at school shootings, for example,
you might start to say, "Why aren't you looking at Facebook postings
to figure out when a 16-year-old is going to go south?
Why aren't you comparing those Facebook postings
to information that indicates a kid's family has a weapons license?
Have you looked at his travel data?"
Most of those, you'd say,
"I'd be deeply offended if we did that in America."
As a national security professional,
it's not a bad reward to say,
"Maybe we prevented an innocent from dying."
But I think there's a cost to all of us who did that.
And that is you spend your life saying,
"Was every person we sent away the right person?"
- ...by the post-9/11 - counterterrorism policies.
I stand here as a sister of Shifa, my brother,
who was kidnapped by the government
and tortured in solitary confinement
for more than three years
in Atlanta, Georgia, before his trial.
But I also work with...
I was in denial,
but I have come to accept it,
and I have been talking to community members,
and I know how their lives have broken down.
It just feels very unjust, what's been happening.
I want to be able to contribute to that process
of trying to do something to change the situation.
We're here.
Welcome.
- Welcome. Please come on in. - Hello.
My name's Philip.
Philip, good to meet you.
Nice to see you. Hi, I'm Philip.
- This is our mom Sharin. - I am Shirin.
- I'm sorry? - I'm Shirin.
Shirin. Philip.
- Sharmin. - Sharmin, please, come on in.
Please sit down. Enjoy yourselves.
Can I get you something? Would you like some tea, water?
Coffee? Qahuww?
I only have espresso,
but I'm happy to make coffee if you'd like.
- No, Philip, - I'm good. - Okay.
Well, welcome to Memphis.
I've had very few guests here.
I moved here from Washington
partly because I wanted a chance to slow down in life.
So thanks for visiting and welcome.
So, Mr. Mudd, right?
- Yes, ma'am. Philip. - Philip? Okay.
So I think we're all very curious.
What moved you or what interests you
to have us over and speak with us?
Um, that's a good question.
The answer's not simple.
I remember when I first heard about this case.
I remember seeing the ages of the people.
And, you know, when you see a case like that develop,
you pretty much know what's going to happen,
because young people make mistakes.
Believe it or not, you sit there and say,
you know, "I know what's going to happen to this youth,
and I know what's going to happen to the family."
And, um, it was a serious case,
and I can't deny that, but I'm sorry,
because I know...
it must be really hard for your family.
So welcome.
And if I can get you something, please let me.
That's about it. Why'd you come here?
Why'd you want to visit?
Well, I'm curious as to... What was your involvement
in the case?
So I sat in the executive suite of the FBI,
and I'm trained as an analyst.
I look at problems and break them down.
How are they communicating?
How are they traveling?
Are they looking at potential targets?
So how...
So the field office...
By "field office," I mean the major city office,
they're going to consult with headquarters,
asking headquarters, "Hey, how does this fit in our priorities?
Do you think we have something serious in here?
Will you support us continuing this investigation?"
So this one had a lot of characteristics,
I think, that made it reach a level
that most cases don't reach.
You guys see what you guys see from your side, you know,
but what's actually happening on the ground
is what's happening in real life.
He is saving money to go buy jewelry
so that he could get married,
so... and then he goes to Bangladesh,
actually gets married,
and then goes shopping and gets kidnapped.
It doesn't make sense.
We had very little option in this case.
When someone travels to Washington, DC,
and communicates to people under investigation
in the United Kingdom
who identify themselves as terrorists,
you're challenging me, and I'm reluctant to do this,
but I'm going to tell you the reality is that's a serious problem.
You guys are doing your job.
I get that.
And you guys are trained
to only think about certain things.
There's a complete void of what's actually happening.
A lot of these men have not committed...
Like, my little brother hasn't committed anything violent,
and yet there's so much...
The rapidity with which a youth can transition
from saying, "I'm concerned about what I see around the world,"
to saying, "I want to strap on a bomb and kill people,"
I saw that in some cases happen in a matter of weeks.
So I don't want to underplay what I witnessed here.
If the question is whether I believe your brother
was considering an act of violence, the answer is yes.
My...
Yes, I know.
It's pretty...
- Difficult? - Heartbreaking.
I mean, I know what federal sentencing guidelines are,
and I watched a bunch of cases.
But do you know what it's like to sit there
and watch innocent people die in London,
in Madrid, in New York, in Washington
and see youth in this country say,
"Maybe I want to do the same thing"?
People like me are in a difficult position.
We cannot afford to let dozens of innocent people die
because a youth makes a mistake.
We can't afford to do that.
That pain's incalculable. So what do you do?
If we switched roles, what would you do?
What would you do? Would you let him go?