Terrorism Close Calls (2018) s01e02 Episode Script
The Student Bomb Maker
Aldawsari was obsessed with killing Americans.
Oh, he wanted to have the biggest impact that he could.
Khalid Aldawsari is planning a series of attacks in the United States.
This included nuclear power plants, hydroelectric dams, the several of the guards who were at the Abu Ghraib prison.
He targets former U.
S.
presidents and schemes to plant bombs all over New York City.
Anybody near one of these cars that had one of these backpacks in it would have been wiped out.
An innovative intelligence program designed by the FBI links an explosive chemical purchase to a Saudi chemical engineering student studying in Lubbock, Texas.
From the moment we first identified Aldawsari, this immediately turned into a 24/7 sprint.
He was one chemical away from making a weapon of mass destruction.
He has the skills, the knowledge, and the motivation to launch the attacks.
If we miss someone like Khalid Aldawsari, just the impact, the terror that it causes, are simply unspeakable.
The stakes are just that high.
True stories of the world's deadliest terror plots, with exclusive access to leading counterterrorism experts, and the elite agents who stopped the attacks.
Homegrown terrorists.
Jihadi propaganda.
Neo Nazis.
This is cuts across ideological lines and 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.
People's lives depend on their success.
On this episode of Terrorism Close Calls, a Saudi chemical engineering student plans an attack on America using weapons of mass destruction.
The FBI's Dallas Division, along with their partners in Lubbock, Texas, must stop him before he unleashes his deadly plot.
Weapons of mass destruction are often defined as having chemical, biological, or nuclear capabilities.
But they also include weapons that cause mass casualties like the IED, or improvised explosive device.
IEDs are responsible for half of all Americans killed or wounded in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But they're also the weapon of choice in terror attacks off the battlefield.
Thomas Petrowski is Supervisory Special Agent for the FBI in Dallas, Texas.
Timothy McVeigh, in 1995, when he attacked the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, used a large improvised explosive device.
The Boston bombers, using the device they got off of a Al-Qaeda online publication titled How to Build a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom, using pressure cookers.
The Manchester attacks recently.
An IED used effectively in a terrorist attack can have just a devastating impact.
Shit! Whoa! Many homemade IED's require just five basic parts: A container power supply trigger switch detonator and a chemical explosive charge.
The container holds the device, a power supply sends electricity to a trigger switch which activates a detonator, initiating a main chemical to create an explosion and high-pressure blast wave, which can travel outward at about 1,600 feet per second.
The intense pressure from a blast wave can rupture eardrums, slam your brain against the inside of your skull, snap necks, blow apart blood vessels, over-pressurize body cavities, and cause fatal ruptures.
Additional elements packed into the device such as ball bearings, stones, nails, and toxic chemicals are also used for even more devastation and death.
These devices can be manufactured from fertilizer and oil as we saw with Timothy McVeigh.
It's a more sophisticated IEDs made for example, acids nitric, sulfuric, and phenyl, and make a trinitrophenyl device, to hydrogen peroxide-based devices.
Post 9/11, Director Mueller of the Federal Bureau of Investigation created various initiatives to help preempt serious plots and monitor the sale of toxic chemicals.
One of these initiatives is called a TRIPwire program, which invites vendors of known explosive chemicals to report unusual purchases to law enforcement.
calling Carolina Biological.
This is Miriam.
How could I help you? Hey, Miriam, I got a delivery here.
Mm-hmm.
I don't have I don't know what the heck it is.
This order was placed online and he shouldn't have been able to Something liquid.
A liquid chemical.
Hold on a minute.
Let me see if I have a phone number for him.
Hmm That is weird.
That's a real strange deal.
Carolina Biological Supply, along with Con-Way Freight shipping company, notify the FBI that an individual in Lubbock, Texas is trying to make a suspicious purchase.
Supervisory Special Agent Thompson in Lubbock, Texas is one of the first to hear of the unusual order.
On the surface, it's not illegal to purchase chemicals.
But what was concerning about this was the amount of chemicals that he was purchasing.
Someone had attempted to order ten bottles of liquid phenol, a known chemical used in the making of improvised explosive devices.
As the Green Bay Packers play the Pittsburgh Steelers at the 45th Super Bowl, all major assets for the Dallas FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force are concentrated on the Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
The office was working very hard to include accommodating the Super Bowl.
We got the call from Carolina Biologic of a suspicious purchase.
The Joint Terrorism Task Force being in Dallas was significant in terms of the management.
Initially, just deciding who's going to do what uh, was a very difficult issue.
With key JTTF resources covering a high threat event like the Super Bowl, the decision is made for agents on the ground in Lubbock to initiate the physical investigation and gather information on the potential suspect.
So, the decision was made that the team on the ground in Lubbock would have the eye, would have the point on this, but that there was going to be a significant amount of work.
The lion's share of this investigation was going to be current electronic surveillance.
As a small resident agency out of the Dallas Division, we handle the investigative requirements on the street and the tactical investigation, like a forward operating base, using military terms, while Dallas Division, as our headquarters element handled all the intelligence analysis and collection in coordination with headquarters.
FBI's first point of contact is Carolina Biological.
The information that we originally got from the chemical company in Charlotte was fairly detailed.
One of those details is the name and address of the suspect, a 20 year old student from Saudi Arabia named Khalid Aldawsari.
Special Agent Michael Orndorff, a 22-year veteran of the FBI in Lubbock, is assigned to the case.
We were trying to find out who this individual was, why he was ordering the phenol, and what he wanted the phenol for.
Phenol can be used for many legitimate purposes, but among those, also, is to make picric acid, which is an explosive.
The Japanese used it back in World War II to make a number of explosives at that time.
So we were trying to figure out why somebody in Lubbock would be ordering it.
I need to fill in this form.
Now, which university are you affiliated with? Texas Tech, as I told you, um University, um This is for personal research.
Agent Orndorff decides to make contact directly with the suspect.
and called up Aldawsari, and pretended to be a salesman with Carolina Biological.
Aldawsari said that he was a student who was trying to get to a bigger university than Texas Tech, and that his main purpose for ordering this material was so that he could do research.
The Phenol is used in a lot of cleaning agents.
He was trying to get that smell out of the cleaning agents, and that's what his story was.
That was his excuse, that he was trying to remove the odors.
Um I'm doing this research just to develop some, um some certain kind of cleaners.
In order to find out more about Aldawsari and his suspicious activities, the JTTF launch a more extensive surveillance operation.
To do this, they are required to gain authority, under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA.
FISA is simply the body of law that defines how we collect information in national security cases.
It is much more difficult to get those orders than it is to get simple search warrants, um but it was clearly appropriate in this case.
FBI Special Agent Loretta Smitherman specializes in intelligence, and surveillance gathering.
We got court orders and served those to Google, Facebook Uh, I think he had a Yahoo email account, the telephone company.
We left no stone unturned.
Intelligence reveals that Aldawsari came to the United States from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on a scholarship with the University of Nashville.
We learned that Khalid Aldawsari had been a very good student back in Saudi Arabia.
He had been chosen to receive a scholarship from a Saudi Arabian chemical company to come and study in the United States.
He had all of his tuition paid for by that Saudi Arabian company.
He had his living expenses paid.
He had been in the U.
S.
legitimately on F1 visa for several years, and he had recently transferred to Texas Tech University.
We also learned that he recently changed schools to another local college, South Plains College in Lubbock area, and was now in business school.
Agent Smitherman discovers a blog where Aldawsari writes his first impressions of the United States.
He wrote about going to football games.
He wrote about attractive young women that he would encounter and that he hoped that he might date.
Blog posts express a warm sentiment for America.
He also talks about a crush on his teacher.
Aldawsari returns to Saudi Arabia for the summer, and later moves to Lubbock in the fall to begin his studies in chemical engineering at Texas Tech.
In one blog post, he predicts he will enjoy the city and life here.
Just one year later, Aldawsari's blog posts are taking on an angrier and more radicalized tone.
Our investigation revealed that Aldawsari was much of a loner.
But we didn't see him socializing much with others.
Among his fellow students from Saudi Arabia, Aldawsari is considered to be extremely antisocial.
He doesn't attend mosque or go to school events.
Instead, he spends most of his time behind a locked door in an apartment he shares with three other students.
By the end of the year, Aldawsari has failed out of Texas Tech.
He then transfers to South Plains College, where his blog posts get even more intense.
When we got into his communications, things he was putting online in blogs uh, posting We saw direct correlation between the time his grades started failing, when his life started spiraling, with his extremist views.
Portions of it were in English, but the interesting part was written in Arabic.
So, we had one of our Arabic speaking FBI agents look at that blog and translate it for us, and what he told us was that this was Aldawsari's statement of intent, that he wanted to do jihad against America, and that he was seeking martyrdom.
The Arabic word "jihad" is often translated as "holy war," but it's a word with multiple meanings.
Mitch Silber was the Director of Intelligence Analysis with the New York City Police Department, and author of the book The Al-Qaeda Factor.
Jihad, at its base, it means struggle, and then there are a variety of different ways that that struggle presents itself.
Certainly, when terrorists are using the word, they're using it in the context of fighting, and fighting overseas on behalf of the Islamic community is probably the most romantic way it's looked at, but then it can be twisted and turned into a justification for terrorist acts.
When we're talking about martyrdom, that's really the idea of self-sacrifice.
And also I'm doing this because the rewards, the big rewards Allah promised us, we'll step in his power, and inshallah, become martyrs.
And as part of your jihad, you might need to be a martyr or you might not.
It depends what the mission is, if you will, and a suicide bombing attack would require martyrdom.
By all accounts, Aldawsari has kept a low profile, and has not raised suspicions.
But behind closed doors, Aldawsari is meticulously and systematically planning an attack using his own homemade IEDs.
It seemed clear that there was no good reason for Aldawsari to be purchasing these chemicals, and we believed at that point that he definitely had bad intent.
By the time Aldawsari's name is triggered by the TRIPwire program, he is fully intent on carrying out violent jihad in the U.
S.
, and is trying to acquire the materials to do so.
But agents still don't know if he's part of a larger terror cell.
We had other emails associated with Aldawsari, but in others' names.
So, we didn't know if somebody else was out there assisting him, directing him, providing direct assistance to his particular plot.
There are at least three other email accounts linked to Aldawsari.
As FBI intel try to pinpoint these accounts, they also begin to uncover others.
When we began looking at Aldawsari's emails, um We noticed immediately that he was ordering chemicals, he was ordering materials.
So, the issue of how far along was he, how much more did he need, was a critical gap in our intelligence.
While Agent Smitherman and the JTTF agents review Aldawsari's communications in Dallas, Agent Thompson and his team of task force agents keep their eyes on the Saudi engineering student in Lubbock.
Every move, every communication he made, we were aware of.
Even with continuous physical and technical surveillance on Aldawsari, there are still many unanswered questions.
We knew Aldawsari had attempted to purchase phenol, but at this point, we didn't know if he was able to procure other items that he needed to make the explosives.
Aldawsari's apartment manager reveals that he's received several large packages.
The FBI need to find a way into his apartment to see what those packages are.
The opportunity presented itself for Special Agent Orndorff to pose as a maintenance worker in the apartment complex.
We knocked on the door, Aldawsari answered the door, and we told him we were there to change his filters.
We entered.
We changed his air conditioner filter and I looked around for what I could see.
His visibility of the whole apartment was limited.
The filters that they were changing out were located near the front door, so it didn't really lend him much opportunity to roam around the apartment at all.
Agent Orndorff doesn't have time to look for the contents of the packages, but he does witness significant damage to the apartment itself.
The holes in the walls and the cabinet looked like somebody had some fits, and were punching the walls or slamming the cabinets shut and breaking them.
In order to find out exactly what Aldawsari is up to, the JTTF decide they need to set up more direct surveillance inside Aldawsari's apartment.
The FISA orders that we received from the FISA court included electronic surveillance of all of his means of communications, but also gave us the authority to surreptitiously enter his apartment, which we did.
We went into his apartment without him knowing this.
It's commonly referred to as a black bag operation.
During these type of operations, we will set up different types of surveillance equipment, like microphones or video surveillance, to keep an eye on the individual or individuals that we're looking at.
We did a search of his apartment for the items that we knew he had received downstairs and were trying to find out if he had any other items that we needed to be aware of.
With one task force inside Aldawsari's apartment, another track him to a fast food restaurant down the street.
Without warning, Aldawsari suddenly doubles back.
He was only gone about 15 minutes, so the team had to get out quickly before his return.
Although the team is forced to make a hasty retreat to a staging apartment down the hall, the surveillance cameras are up and running.
The audio and video surveillance from his apartment really revealed that he was somewhat erratic in his behavior.
He would pace the apartment, he would talk to himself, almost like he was practicing things that he wanted to say, phone calls he wanted to make to order equipment and the chemicals.
He wasn't going to class.
He would leave and go to fast food.
Um He was seeing prostitutes.
He spent a lot of time online.
We thought we heard him punching the wall.
But he would sleep on the floor.
He spent most of his time He was doing research on the computer.
He was figuring out how to get more phenol, so he looked up instructions on how to make phenol.
The question remains Is Aldawsari working alone, and what exactly is his plan? If there was going to be an attack, how did he fit into it? Was he the attacker? When we approach these cases, we have to assume that it is not an individual.
He is part of a team, a cell, being controlled by some hostile entity overseas.
It was very likely that Khalid Aldawsari could have been simply a facilitator.
Having a what we call a tier-one bomb thrower with boots on the ground in the United States, obviously, is very significant, and went to the highest levels of the FBI and the U.
S.
Government pretty quickly.
Director Mueller always had a very strong personal interest in these things, and was a very hands-on, outstanding leader in these issues.
So the briefings went directly through the counterterrorism division to him.
The decision is made for the JTTF to continue the search inside Aldawsari's apartment, in hopes of closing the gap in intelligence.
We were waiting for a time he was not there.
That team, led by Michael Orndorff, went in and inspected the apartment.
It's not long before they uncover what appears to be a bomb-making lab.
We also saw that he had a hazmat suit, which is a very heavy duty hazmat suit, professional chemistry equipment, and a number of other things: clocks in various stages of disarray, Christmas tree lights, which have been used overseas a lot in making IEDs.
So, he had a number of things that he had ordered online, but he was working on putting his detonator part together.
More importantly they find the chemicals.
We did the search.
We discovered that he had nitric acid and sulfuric acid.
Although Carolina Biological Supply had rejected Aldawsari's phenol order, FBI agents confirm Aldawsari has successfully purchased three gallons of concentrated sulfuric acid and ten boxes of nitric acid.
Neither chemical vendor reported the buys.
We knew at this point that Aldawsari had two of the three chemicals that he needed to make his planned weapon of mass destruction.
He was also researching how he could make it on his own.
There are ways you can make phenol yourself.
Um It's not easy, but it absolutely could be done.
And, while he failed out of Texas Tech in chemical engineering, he certainly had a very good skill set, and was certainly capable of making this device.
With these chemicals, agents also find Aldawsari's journal.
He kept hand-written journals explaining why he did it, um what his motivations were, you know, speaking of religious devotion, which was absolutely absent in his life, um but attempting to justify what he was doing to position himself as a hero of jihad.
Along with the incriminating journal, they discover a number of flash drives, which are sent to analysts in Dallas.
Intel from the flash drives reveal step-by-step instructions for building explosives.
On those flash drives were a number of lessons from what we call the hooded chemist.
It was a somebody in a white lab coat and outfit who had a ski mask on.
They were writing on a white board the chemical formulas for different explosives and how to make them.
There was about 23 episodes of that.
The evidence that we got from Aldawsari was he kept a notebook.
He went through every one of those episodes, writing down notes, much like he should have been doing in school.
He was not in a position where he could join Al-Qaeda, and go and physically be with like-minded people.
So, he got all of his inspiration online.
He was feeding his need for jihad constantly by watching propaganda from groups like Al-Qaeda.
A problem we have today is we have ISIS radicalizers online, via various social media platforms, connecting to people in America, uh in a very timely manner.
So, when something happens on the ground in ISIS, people in America are very quickly hearing about it, feeling like they're part of it.
They don't have to affirmatively go find it in the bowels of the web.
Um And that connection has been just a horrible catalyst um for radicalization.
We come to New York and And the one thing that ISIS has that Anwar al-Awlaki and Al-Qaeda during that period really do not have is social media.
Between the recordings, the handwritten materials that he left in his apartment, and what we found online, painted a very, very detailed picture of who he was, and why he was doing what he was doing.
After we determined that everything was in his apartment, that presented another operational issue.
And the day to day issue was, when can we be sure enough he is acting alone that we should arrest him? Even with mounting evidence against Aldawsari, FBI decide to wait.
Moving too soon might tip their hand and risk the loss of valuable intelligence or links to other terror networks.
Instead, they hone in on possible co-conspirators, and keep their eyes focused on the email accounts.
The analysis of the records and his email accounts was a very large operation because of the fact that he had hundreds and hundreds of emails which were written in Arabic.
Amongst the hundreds of emails found are ones with the subject line listed as "targets," which contain the names and home addresses of U.
S.
military previously stationed at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Another email with the subject "nice targets" lists 12 reservoir dams, hydroelectric dams, and nuclear power plants.
New York City has a number of different cameras set up so that you can watch, almost live time, what the traffic is in the city.
He had researched that because one of his plans was to set up different cars along the routes, and then to blow those cars up.
His target research seemed to progress from harder targets to softer targets as he went along.
For instance, he researched the current residence of President of George W.
Bush in Dallas, but as it got close to his actually making the improvised explosive device, he was researching softer targets.
He Googled the term "Can you take a backpack into a nightclub?" He was also looking at life-like baby dolls and strollers, where you could push a doll like that.
So, he was clearly considering using that as a vehicle to deliver his device.
Um, but our assessment was likely that he was going to try and get a 15 pound backpack of TNP with shrapnel into a crowded night club in the Dallas area.
A bomb like this could be just as devastating as the 2002 nightclub bombings in Bali, Indonesia, perpetrated by the Southeast Asian militant group, Jemaah Islamiyah and Al-Qaeda.
We were very alarmed when we got his emails and we saw that he was receiving emails with targeting information, with bomb-building instructions, and we were worried that there might be a co-conspirator that we had not detected.
Investigators finally solve the mystery of the different email accounts.
Aldawsari is using all of them to send notes to himself.
He made a big mistake in that he forwarded emails from those alias email accounts to his actual real name email address at Texas Tech University.
And then, through investigation, we were able to determine that those other identities were also him.
This isn't idle banter.
Aldawsari has written about his strategy for jihad, and taken the necessary steps to cause mass casualties and destruction.
Aldawsari had researched targets, he had downloaded the instructions he needed, he had purchased the lab equipment and the electronic equipment, as well as two of the chemicals.
All he needed was that one additional chemical to be able to make his picric acid bomb.
He soon makes another attempt at buying the last chemical.
When he placed the second order for phenol he was prepared.
He came up with a company name.
He called it Disinfectants Limited, and his story was that he needed to buy the phenol so that he could do research on making a disinfectant product.
So, when he's ordering that phenol, um that's the last chemical he needs to make his picric acid, and at that point, he can go active and actually start making the bomb that he wants to make.
Aldawsari is hoping to make 15 pounds of phenol for an explosive with the destructive power of TNT, and about the same amount used in the London subway attacks that killed 52 people on July 7, 2005.
Um We believe that he had the intention of making a single improvised explosive device, but that he did not intend to die as a suicide martyr.
We believe that he intended to survive and then to go on and do additional attacks.
We took a backpack, and we loaded it with a certain amount of picric acid that we felt he could have yielded, based on the chemicals that he had ordered.
And then we took it out to a test site and blew it up, and see how much damage it could do.
It was throwing large pieces of material about 165 feet away from where the bomb went off.
So we knew we had to act quickly.
The evidence shows Aldawsari has both the technical knowledge and political motivation to carry out his plan.
With no links to any other accomplices or terror networks, the JTTF close in.
After what agents at JTTF describe as a fast and furious three-week investigation, they swoop in to make the arrest.
We had a team staged in his parking garage.
So, as he was exiting his apartment to go to his car, when he opened the door, we jumped on him at that point and arrested him.
Go! Go! Go! Freeze! Hit the ground! Come on! Hands up! Hit the ground! Come on, hit the ground! Give me your hand.
Initially, Aldawsari was dumbfounded, and and he slumped his shoulders when we arrested him.
We told him who we were, um and as we were placing the cuffs on Aldawsari, he started to bow up and put his shoulders back, but at that point, he didn't say anything anymore.
When the arresting team brought Aldawsari in to the Lubbock FBI office, I was there with other agents to interview him.
He acted as if he had no idea why he was being arrested.
Aldawsari always maintained his innocence.
Right through trial, right through the appeals.
I think even to this day, he maintains that he was simply doing research and had no intention of harming Americans.
One of the most critical pieces of evidence we had at trial was a statement he made very close to one of our microphones, fortuitously, um that appeared to be a press release of some kind, and he even did it in English for us where he announced that the terrorist Khalid Aldawsari, he called himself a terrorist, had committed this attack and was a hero of the jihad movement.
He talks about how he was so successful to have been able to accomplish this huge terrorist attack all on his own, and he talks about the impact that it will have on Americans.
That single piece of evidence, to me, was one of the most significant indicators of both what he intended to do, but also his mindset, his motivation, who he was.
Um Absolutely compelling.
Aldawsari is sentenced to a life in prison for the attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.
He let his country down, and he let his family down by veering from the course that he was on, and deciding to go on a path toward jihad.
Aldawsari is a rarity.
Most of these students have no intention of harming Americans.
They're grateful to be here.
He's different, and I wouldn't want all of the others to be judged by the actions that he took.
By all accounts, Aldawsari is a self-radicalized individual who followed a lone-wolf line of attack.
The Aldawsari case also illustrates just the evolution of the lone offender threat.
In the years immediately following 9/11, we had very few of these.
Osama Bin Laden, in his strategy, specifically discouraged this.
His game plan was to go big or don't go.
It was much better to have a much larger attack, but blow up embassies in Africa.
Blow up a ship docked in Yemen.
Fly planes into a building.
Drop an airliner um, very infrequently.
It was with Al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula, AQAP, where this inspiration of homegrown violent extremists really began to take off.
This is important that we present the proper role models for ourselves to follow.
For our children.
Like Aldawsari, more extremists are being guided by terrorist propaganda, published online to strike at targets, alone, using whatever weapons are at their disposal.
We're seeing terrorists having to use much less sophisticated planning, using vehicles, using knives to carry out attacks, and also, in general, smaller plots Individual.
On average, the FBI gets over 100,000 terrorism leads a year.
Analysts and agents designate them as immediate, priority, or routine.
Every JTTF across the country has this challenge of trying to find the threats that are actually going to manifest.
Um How do you distinguish Khalid Aldawsari from Timothy McVeigh? Um Dylan Roof? Um Others that have committed mass attacks, just based on hate? Um You simply cannot.
It is only when we get access to private information, information they're trying to keep secret, largely online, that we can identify them.
The critical lesson we learned on the morning of 9/12 was that the counterterrorism mission has to be one team, one fight.
Uh Every agency in this country, every American in this country needs to be aware of this and work with us.
Without the TRIPwire program that the FBI has, and the cooperation between private industry and private citizens, I believe that Aldawsari would've been successful in setting off weapons of mass destruction.
This investigation has meant a lot to me, personally, trying to prevent something from happening, a terrorist event from happening.
And we, I believe, fully prevented Aldawsari from committing a terrorist event that would have killed or injured many people.
We wanted to protect the people of Lubbock, and, of course, all Americans.
That's what the FBI does.
Oh, he wanted to have the biggest impact that he could.
Khalid Aldawsari is planning a series of attacks in the United States.
This included nuclear power plants, hydroelectric dams, the several of the guards who were at the Abu Ghraib prison.
He targets former U.
S.
presidents and schemes to plant bombs all over New York City.
Anybody near one of these cars that had one of these backpacks in it would have been wiped out.
An innovative intelligence program designed by the FBI links an explosive chemical purchase to a Saudi chemical engineering student studying in Lubbock, Texas.
From the moment we first identified Aldawsari, this immediately turned into a 24/7 sprint.
He was one chemical away from making a weapon of mass destruction.
He has the skills, the knowledge, and the motivation to launch the attacks.
If we miss someone like Khalid Aldawsari, just the impact, the terror that it causes, are simply unspeakable.
The stakes are just that high.
True stories of the world's deadliest terror plots, with exclusive access to leading counterterrorism experts, and the elite agents who stopped the attacks.
Homegrown terrorists.
Jihadi propaganda.
Neo Nazis.
This is cuts across ideological lines and 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.
People's lives depend on their success.
On this episode of Terrorism Close Calls, a Saudi chemical engineering student plans an attack on America using weapons of mass destruction.
The FBI's Dallas Division, along with their partners in Lubbock, Texas, must stop him before he unleashes his deadly plot.
Weapons of mass destruction are often defined as having chemical, biological, or nuclear capabilities.
But they also include weapons that cause mass casualties like the IED, or improvised explosive device.
IEDs are responsible for half of all Americans killed or wounded in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But they're also the weapon of choice in terror attacks off the battlefield.
Thomas Petrowski is Supervisory Special Agent for the FBI in Dallas, Texas.
Timothy McVeigh, in 1995, when he attacked the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, used a large improvised explosive device.
The Boston bombers, using the device they got off of a Al-Qaeda online publication titled How to Build a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom, using pressure cookers.
The Manchester attacks recently.
An IED used effectively in a terrorist attack can have just a devastating impact.
Shit! Whoa! Many homemade IED's require just five basic parts: A container power supply trigger switch detonator and a chemical explosive charge.
The container holds the device, a power supply sends electricity to a trigger switch which activates a detonator, initiating a main chemical to create an explosion and high-pressure blast wave, which can travel outward at about 1,600 feet per second.
The intense pressure from a blast wave can rupture eardrums, slam your brain against the inside of your skull, snap necks, blow apart blood vessels, over-pressurize body cavities, and cause fatal ruptures.
Additional elements packed into the device such as ball bearings, stones, nails, and toxic chemicals are also used for even more devastation and death.
These devices can be manufactured from fertilizer and oil as we saw with Timothy McVeigh.
It's a more sophisticated IEDs made for example, acids nitric, sulfuric, and phenyl, and make a trinitrophenyl device, to hydrogen peroxide-based devices.
Post 9/11, Director Mueller of the Federal Bureau of Investigation created various initiatives to help preempt serious plots and monitor the sale of toxic chemicals.
One of these initiatives is called a TRIPwire program, which invites vendors of known explosive chemicals to report unusual purchases to law enforcement.
calling Carolina Biological.
This is Miriam.
How could I help you? Hey, Miriam, I got a delivery here.
Mm-hmm.
I don't have I don't know what the heck it is.
This order was placed online and he shouldn't have been able to Something liquid.
A liquid chemical.
Hold on a minute.
Let me see if I have a phone number for him.
Hmm That is weird.
That's a real strange deal.
Carolina Biological Supply, along with Con-Way Freight shipping company, notify the FBI that an individual in Lubbock, Texas is trying to make a suspicious purchase.
Supervisory Special Agent Thompson in Lubbock, Texas is one of the first to hear of the unusual order.
On the surface, it's not illegal to purchase chemicals.
But what was concerning about this was the amount of chemicals that he was purchasing.
Someone had attempted to order ten bottles of liquid phenol, a known chemical used in the making of improvised explosive devices.
As the Green Bay Packers play the Pittsburgh Steelers at the 45th Super Bowl, all major assets for the Dallas FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force are concentrated on the Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
The office was working very hard to include accommodating the Super Bowl.
We got the call from Carolina Biologic of a suspicious purchase.
The Joint Terrorism Task Force being in Dallas was significant in terms of the management.
Initially, just deciding who's going to do what uh, was a very difficult issue.
With key JTTF resources covering a high threat event like the Super Bowl, the decision is made for agents on the ground in Lubbock to initiate the physical investigation and gather information on the potential suspect.
So, the decision was made that the team on the ground in Lubbock would have the eye, would have the point on this, but that there was going to be a significant amount of work.
The lion's share of this investigation was going to be current electronic surveillance.
As a small resident agency out of the Dallas Division, we handle the investigative requirements on the street and the tactical investigation, like a forward operating base, using military terms, while Dallas Division, as our headquarters element handled all the intelligence analysis and collection in coordination with headquarters.
FBI's first point of contact is Carolina Biological.
The information that we originally got from the chemical company in Charlotte was fairly detailed.
One of those details is the name and address of the suspect, a 20 year old student from Saudi Arabia named Khalid Aldawsari.
Special Agent Michael Orndorff, a 22-year veteran of the FBI in Lubbock, is assigned to the case.
We were trying to find out who this individual was, why he was ordering the phenol, and what he wanted the phenol for.
Phenol can be used for many legitimate purposes, but among those, also, is to make picric acid, which is an explosive.
The Japanese used it back in World War II to make a number of explosives at that time.
So we were trying to figure out why somebody in Lubbock would be ordering it.
I need to fill in this form.
Now, which university are you affiliated with? Texas Tech, as I told you, um University, um This is for personal research.
Agent Orndorff decides to make contact directly with the suspect.
and called up Aldawsari, and pretended to be a salesman with Carolina Biological.
Aldawsari said that he was a student who was trying to get to a bigger university than Texas Tech, and that his main purpose for ordering this material was so that he could do research.
The Phenol is used in a lot of cleaning agents.
He was trying to get that smell out of the cleaning agents, and that's what his story was.
That was his excuse, that he was trying to remove the odors.
Um I'm doing this research just to develop some, um some certain kind of cleaners.
In order to find out more about Aldawsari and his suspicious activities, the JTTF launch a more extensive surveillance operation.
To do this, they are required to gain authority, under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA.
FISA is simply the body of law that defines how we collect information in national security cases.
It is much more difficult to get those orders than it is to get simple search warrants, um but it was clearly appropriate in this case.
FBI Special Agent Loretta Smitherman specializes in intelligence, and surveillance gathering.
We got court orders and served those to Google, Facebook Uh, I think he had a Yahoo email account, the telephone company.
We left no stone unturned.
Intelligence reveals that Aldawsari came to the United States from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on a scholarship with the University of Nashville.
We learned that Khalid Aldawsari had been a very good student back in Saudi Arabia.
He had been chosen to receive a scholarship from a Saudi Arabian chemical company to come and study in the United States.
He had all of his tuition paid for by that Saudi Arabian company.
He had his living expenses paid.
He had been in the U.
S.
legitimately on F1 visa for several years, and he had recently transferred to Texas Tech University.
We also learned that he recently changed schools to another local college, South Plains College in Lubbock area, and was now in business school.
Agent Smitherman discovers a blog where Aldawsari writes his first impressions of the United States.
He wrote about going to football games.
He wrote about attractive young women that he would encounter and that he hoped that he might date.
Blog posts express a warm sentiment for America.
He also talks about a crush on his teacher.
Aldawsari returns to Saudi Arabia for the summer, and later moves to Lubbock in the fall to begin his studies in chemical engineering at Texas Tech.
In one blog post, he predicts he will enjoy the city and life here.
Just one year later, Aldawsari's blog posts are taking on an angrier and more radicalized tone.
Our investigation revealed that Aldawsari was much of a loner.
But we didn't see him socializing much with others.
Among his fellow students from Saudi Arabia, Aldawsari is considered to be extremely antisocial.
He doesn't attend mosque or go to school events.
Instead, he spends most of his time behind a locked door in an apartment he shares with three other students.
By the end of the year, Aldawsari has failed out of Texas Tech.
He then transfers to South Plains College, where his blog posts get even more intense.
When we got into his communications, things he was putting online in blogs uh, posting We saw direct correlation between the time his grades started failing, when his life started spiraling, with his extremist views.
Portions of it were in English, but the interesting part was written in Arabic.
So, we had one of our Arabic speaking FBI agents look at that blog and translate it for us, and what he told us was that this was Aldawsari's statement of intent, that he wanted to do jihad against America, and that he was seeking martyrdom.
The Arabic word "jihad" is often translated as "holy war," but it's a word with multiple meanings.
Mitch Silber was the Director of Intelligence Analysis with the New York City Police Department, and author of the book The Al-Qaeda Factor.
Jihad, at its base, it means struggle, and then there are a variety of different ways that that struggle presents itself.
Certainly, when terrorists are using the word, they're using it in the context of fighting, and fighting overseas on behalf of the Islamic community is probably the most romantic way it's looked at, but then it can be twisted and turned into a justification for terrorist acts.
When we're talking about martyrdom, that's really the idea of self-sacrifice.
And also I'm doing this because the rewards, the big rewards Allah promised us, we'll step in his power, and inshallah, become martyrs.
And as part of your jihad, you might need to be a martyr or you might not.
It depends what the mission is, if you will, and a suicide bombing attack would require martyrdom.
By all accounts, Aldawsari has kept a low profile, and has not raised suspicions.
But behind closed doors, Aldawsari is meticulously and systematically planning an attack using his own homemade IEDs.
It seemed clear that there was no good reason for Aldawsari to be purchasing these chemicals, and we believed at that point that he definitely had bad intent.
By the time Aldawsari's name is triggered by the TRIPwire program, he is fully intent on carrying out violent jihad in the U.
S.
, and is trying to acquire the materials to do so.
But agents still don't know if he's part of a larger terror cell.
We had other emails associated with Aldawsari, but in others' names.
So, we didn't know if somebody else was out there assisting him, directing him, providing direct assistance to his particular plot.
There are at least three other email accounts linked to Aldawsari.
As FBI intel try to pinpoint these accounts, they also begin to uncover others.
When we began looking at Aldawsari's emails, um We noticed immediately that he was ordering chemicals, he was ordering materials.
So, the issue of how far along was he, how much more did he need, was a critical gap in our intelligence.
While Agent Smitherman and the JTTF agents review Aldawsari's communications in Dallas, Agent Thompson and his team of task force agents keep their eyes on the Saudi engineering student in Lubbock.
Every move, every communication he made, we were aware of.
Even with continuous physical and technical surveillance on Aldawsari, there are still many unanswered questions.
We knew Aldawsari had attempted to purchase phenol, but at this point, we didn't know if he was able to procure other items that he needed to make the explosives.
Aldawsari's apartment manager reveals that he's received several large packages.
The FBI need to find a way into his apartment to see what those packages are.
The opportunity presented itself for Special Agent Orndorff to pose as a maintenance worker in the apartment complex.
We knocked on the door, Aldawsari answered the door, and we told him we were there to change his filters.
We entered.
We changed his air conditioner filter and I looked around for what I could see.
His visibility of the whole apartment was limited.
The filters that they were changing out were located near the front door, so it didn't really lend him much opportunity to roam around the apartment at all.
Agent Orndorff doesn't have time to look for the contents of the packages, but he does witness significant damage to the apartment itself.
The holes in the walls and the cabinet looked like somebody had some fits, and were punching the walls or slamming the cabinets shut and breaking them.
In order to find out exactly what Aldawsari is up to, the JTTF decide they need to set up more direct surveillance inside Aldawsari's apartment.
The FISA orders that we received from the FISA court included electronic surveillance of all of his means of communications, but also gave us the authority to surreptitiously enter his apartment, which we did.
We went into his apartment without him knowing this.
It's commonly referred to as a black bag operation.
During these type of operations, we will set up different types of surveillance equipment, like microphones or video surveillance, to keep an eye on the individual or individuals that we're looking at.
We did a search of his apartment for the items that we knew he had received downstairs and were trying to find out if he had any other items that we needed to be aware of.
With one task force inside Aldawsari's apartment, another track him to a fast food restaurant down the street.
Without warning, Aldawsari suddenly doubles back.
He was only gone about 15 minutes, so the team had to get out quickly before his return.
Although the team is forced to make a hasty retreat to a staging apartment down the hall, the surveillance cameras are up and running.
The audio and video surveillance from his apartment really revealed that he was somewhat erratic in his behavior.
He would pace the apartment, he would talk to himself, almost like he was practicing things that he wanted to say, phone calls he wanted to make to order equipment and the chemicals.
He wasn't going to class.
He would leave and go to fast food.
Um He was seeing prostitutes.
He spent a lot of time online.
We thought we heard him punching the wall.
But he would sleep on the floor.
He spent most of his time He was doing research on the computer.
He was figuring out how to get more phenol, so he looked up instructions on how to make phenol.
The question remains Is Aldawsari working alone, and what exactly is his plan? If there was going to be an attack, how did he fit into it? Was he the attacker? When we approach these cases, we have to assume that it is not an individual.
He is part of a team, a cell, being controlled by some hostile entity overseas.
It was very likely that Khalid Aldawsari could have been simply a facilitator.
Having a what we call a tier-one bomb thrower with boots on the ground in the United States, obviously, is very significant, and went to the highest levels of the FBI and the U.
S.
Government pretty quickly.
Director Mueller always had a very strong personal interest in these things, and was a very hands-on, outstanding leader in these issues.
So the briefings went directly through the counterterrorism division to him.
The decision is made for the JTTF to continue the search inside Aldawsari's apartment, in hopes of closing the gap in intelligence.
We were waiting for a time he was not there.
That team, led by Michael Orndorff, went in and inspected the apartment.
It's not long before they uncover what appears to be a bomb-making lab.
We also saw that he had a hazmat suit, which is a very heavy duty hazmat suit, professional chemistry equipment, and a number of other things: clocks in various stages of disarray, Christmas tree lights, which have been used overseas a lot in making IEDs.
So, he had a number of things that he had ordered online, but he was working on putting his detonator part together.
More importantly they find the chemicals.
We did the search.
We discovered that he had nitric acid and sulfuric acid.
Although Carolina Biological Supply had rejected Aldawsari's phenol order, FBI agents confirm Aldawsari has successfully purchased three gallons of concentrated sulfuric acid and ten boxes of nitric acid.
Neither chemical vendor reported the buys.
We knew at this point that Aldawsari had two of the three chemicals that he needed to make his planned weapon of mass destruction.
He was also researching how he could make it on his own.
There are ways you can make phenol yourself.
Um It's not easy, but it absolutely could be done.
And, while he failed out of Texas Tech in chemical engineering, he certainly had a very good skill set, and was certainly capable of making this device.
With these chemicals, agents also find Aldawsari's journal.
He kept hand-written journals explaining why he did it, um what his motivations were, you know, speaking of religious devotion, which was absolutely absent in his life, um but attempting to justify what he was doing to position himself as a hero of jihad.
Along with the incriminating journal, they discover a number of flash drives, which are sent to analysts in Dallas.
Intel from the flash drives reveal step-by-step instructions for building explosives.
On those flash drives were a number of lessons from what we call the hooded chemist.
It was a somebody in a white lab coat and outfit who had a ski mask on.
They were writing on a white board the chemical formulas for different explosives and how to make them.
There was about 23 episodes of that.
The evidence that we got from Aldawsari was he kept a notebook.
He went through every one of those episodes, writing down notes, much like he should have been doing in school.
He was not in a position where he could join Al-Qaeda, and go and physically be with like-minded people.
So, he got all of his inspiration online.
He was feeding his need for jihad constantly by watching propaganda from groups like Al-Qaeda.
A problem we have today is we have ISIS radicalizers online, via various social media platforms, connecting to people in America, uh in a very timely manner.
So, when something happens on the ground in ISIS, people in America are very quickly hearing about it, feeling like they're part of it.
They don't have to affirmatively go find it in the bowels of the web.
Um And that connection has been just a horrible catalyst um for radicalization.
We come to New York and And the one thing that ISIS has that Anwar al-Awlaki and Al-Qaeda during that period really do not have is social media.
Between the recordings, the handwritten materials that he left in his apartment, and what we found online, painted a very, very detailed picture of who he was, and why he was doing what he was doing.
After we determined that everything was in his apartment, that presented another operational issue.
And the day to day issue was, when can we be sure enough he is acting alone that we should arrest him? Even with mounting evidence against Aldawsari, FBI decide to wait.
Moving too soon might tip their hand and risk the loss of valuable intelligence or links to other terror networks.
Instead, they hone in on possible co-conspirators, and keep their eyes focused on the email accounts.
The analysis of the records and his email accounts was a very large operation because of the fact that he had hundreds and hundreds of emails which were written in Arabic.
Amongst the hundreds of emails found are ones with the subject line listed as "targets," which contain the names and home addresses of U.
S.
military previously stationed at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Another email with the subject "nice targets" lists 12 reservoir dams, hydroelectric dams, and nuclear power plants.
New York City has a number of different cameras set up so that you can watch, almost live time, what the traffic is in the city.
He had researched that because one of his plans was to set up different cars along the routes, and then to blow those cars up.
His target research seemed to progress from harder targets to softer targets as he went along.
For instance, he researched the current residence of President of George W.
Bush in Dallas, but as it got close to his actually making the improvised explosive device, he was researching softer targets.
He Googled the term "Can you take a backpack into a nightclub?" He was also looking at life-like baby dolls and strollers, where you could push a doll like that.
So, he was clearly considering using that as a vehicle to deliver his device.
Um, but our assessment was likely that he was going to try and get a 15 pound backpack of TNP with shrapnel into a crowded night club in the Dallas area.
A bomb like this could be just as devastating as the 2002 nightclub bombings in Bali, Indonesia, perpetrated by the Southeast Asian militant group, Jemaah Islamiyah and Al-Qaeda.
We were very alarmed when we got his emails and we saw that he was receiving emails with targeting information, with bomb-building instructions, and we were worried that there might be a co-conspirator that we had not detected.
Investigators finally solve the mystery of the different email accounts.
Aldawsari is using all of them to send notes to himself.
He made a big mistake in that he forwarded emails from those alias email accounts to his actual real name email address at Texas Tech University.
And then, through investigation, we were able to determine that those other identities were also him.
This isn't idle banter.
Aldawsari has written about his strategy for jihad, and taken the necessary steps to cause mass casualties and destruction.
Aldawsari had researched targets, he had downloaded the instructions he needed, he had purchased the lab equipment and the electronic equipment, as well as two of the chemicals.
All he needed was that one additional chemical to be able to make his picric acid bomb.
He soon makes another attempt at buying the last chemical.
When he placed the second order for phenol he was prepared.
He came up with a company name.
He called it Disinfectants Limited, and his story was that he needed to buy the phenol so that he could do research on making a disinfectant product.
So, when he's ordering that phenol, um that's the last chemical he needs to make his picric acid, and at that point, he can go active and actually start making the bomb that he wants to make.
Aldawsari is hoping to make 15 pounds of phenol for an explosive with the destructive power of TNT, and about the same amount used in the London subway attacks that killed 52 people on July 7, 2005.
Um We believe that he had the intention of making a single improvised explosive device, but that he did not intend to die as a suicide martyr.
We believe that he intended to survive and then to go on and do additional attacks.
We took a backpack, and we loaded it with a certain amount of picric acid that we felt he could have yielded, based on the chemicals that he had ordered.
And then we took it out to a test site and blew it up, and see how much damage it could do.
It was throwing large pieces of material about 165 feet away from where the bomb went off.
So we knew we had to act quickly.
The evidence shows Aldawsari has both the technical knowledge and political motivation to carry out his plan.
With no links to any other accomplices or terror networks, the JTTF close in.
After what agents at JTTF describe as a fast and furious three-week investigation, they swoop in to make the arrest.
We had a team staged in his parking garage.
So, as he was exiting his apartment to go to his car, when he opened the door, we jumped on him at that point and arrested him.
Go! Go! Go! Freeze! Hit the ground! Come on! Hands up! Hit the ground! Come on, hit the ground! Give me your hand.
Initially, Aldawsari was dumbfounded, and and he slumped his shoulders when we arrested him.
We told him who we were, um and as we were placing the cuffs on Aldawsari, he started to bow up and put his shoulders back, but at that point, he didn't say anything anymore.
When the arresting team brought Aldawsari in to the Lubbock FBI office, I was there with other agents to interview him.
He acted as if he had no idea why he was being arrested.
Aldawsari always maintained his innocence.
Right through trial, right through the appeals.
I think even to this day, he maintains that he was simply doing research and had no intention of harming Americans.
One of the most critical pieces of evidence we had at trial was a statement he made very close to one of our microphones, fortuitously, um that appeared to be a press release of some kind, and he even did it in English for us where he announced that the terrorist Khalid Aldawsari, he called himself a terrorist, had committed this attack and was a hero of the jihad movement.
He talks about how he was so successful to have been able to accomplish this huge terrorist attack all on his own, and he talks about the impact that it will have on Americans.
That single piece of evidence, to me, was one of the most significant indicators of both what he intended to do, but also his mindset, his motivation, who he was.
Um Absolutely compelling.
Aldawsari is sentenced to a life in prison for the attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.
He let his country down, and he let his family down by veering from the course that he was on, and deciding to go on a path toward jihad.
Aldawsari is a rarity.
Most of these students have no intention of harming Americans.
They're grateful to be here.
He's different, and I wouldn't want all of the others to be judged by the actions that he took.
By all accounts, Aldawsari is a self-radicalized individual who followed a lone-wolf line of attack.
The Aldawsari case also illustrates just the evolution of the lone offender threat.
In the years immediately following 9/11, we had very few of these.
Osama Bin Laden, in his strategy, specifically discouraged this.
His game plan was to go big or don't go.
It was much better to have a much larger attack, but blow up embassies in Africa.
Blow up a ship docked in Yemen.
Fly planes into a building.
Drop an airliner um, very infrequently.
It was with Al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula, AQAP, where this inspiration of homegrown violent extremists really began to take off.
This is important that we present the proper role models for ourselves to follow.
For our children.
Like Aldawsari, more extremists are being guided by terrorist propaganda, published online to strike at targets, alone, using whatever weapons are at their disposal.
We're seeing terrorists having to use much less sophisticated planning, using vehicles, using knives to carry out attacks, and also, in general, smaller plots Individual.
On average, the FBI gets over 100,000 terrorism leads a year.
Analysts and agents designate them as immediate, priority, or routine.
Every JTTF across the country has this challenge of trying to find the threats that are actually going to manifest.
Um How do you distinguish Khalid Aldawsari from Timothy McVeigh? Um Dylan Roof? Um Others that have committed mass attacks, just based on hate? Um You simply cannot.
It is only when we get access to private information, information they're trying to keep secret, largely online, that we can identify them.
The critical lesson we learned on the morning of 9/12 was that the counterterrorism mission has to be one team, one fight.
Uh Every agency in this country, every American in this country needs to be aware of this and work with us.
Without the TRIPwire program that the FBI has, and the cooperation between private industry and private citizens, I believe that Aldawsari would've been successful in setting off weapons of mass destruction.
This investigation has meant a lot to me, personally, trying to prevent something from happening, a terrorist event from happening.
And we, I believe, fully prevented Aldawsari from committing a terrorist event that would have killed or injured many people.
We wanted to protect the people of Lubbock, and, of course, all Americans.
That's what the FBI does.