During this investigation, she had revealed to me that there was another Al Qaeda operative sent to the United States. Right before Chiheb was sent to Canada, there was an American sleeper cell. He is the first undercover Muslim FBI agent to go public. He spent his life infiltrating ISIS and Al Qaeda, his identity entirely altered for matters of national security. Welcome to heroes behind headlines. I'm your host, Ralph Pezzullo.
Please subscribe and check out some of our past episodes, such as the epic battle of Mirbat and World War II's most infamous survival story, as well as new episodes that are released every week. Our guest today is FBI undercover agent Tamer Elnoury, which, due to the dangerous nature of the work he's done, is a pseudonym. He's the author, with Kevin Mauer, of the explosive memoir american radical inside the world of an undercover Muslim FBI agent.
Born in Egypt, Tamer immigrated to New Jersey with his family when he was five and worked undercover in law enforcement, using the persona of a street thug named Rico Jordan to break up cocaine and heroin rings. After the tragic events of September 11, 2001, he joined the FBI's joint terrorism task force, a local, state and federal law enforcement partnership spearheading the fight against terrorism.
Today, he's going to talk about going undercover in 2012 to penetrate an Al Qaeda cell that was T in Canada and planning attacks against civilian targets in Canada and the United States. We're honored to welcome the courageous Tamer Elnoury as today's hero behind the headlines. I was born in Egypt, came to the United States with my family as a four and a half year old and raised in the States in New Jersey, and I got into law enforcement back in 1995. So, yeah, I'm a bit of a dinosaur.
So what kind of law enforcement were you in? Well, I started essentially almost immediately working undercover narcotics, and that's essentially how my career started off. So, Tamer Elnoury, is that your real name? No, actually, it's not my given name. It is one of several aliases I have used throughout my career to infiltrate terror cells across the globe. I'm not a Navy Seal or a green beret or anything like that.
I'm just the Jersey cop, Ralph, that was at the right place at the wrong time with the right skill set. And for the better part of the last two decades, I've actually been a royal pain in the ass to Al Qaeda and ISIS because my job was to decimate them from the inside out without them ever seeing me coming.
My job, Ralph, in a nutshell, was to put my arm around some of the worst people on the planet, convince them that I was their best friend, their brother in arms, and then ruin all their plans of death and destruction. So how do you go from a street cop in New Jersey to an FBI undercover? Well, I did spend the first half of my career working undercover narcotics. And the truth is, when I first started, I was pretty awful.
It's only by the grace of God and the amazing team I had behind me that I didn't die in those early years. You see, when we're bad at something, it's easy to blame nerves or inexperienced, right? But there's always more to it. Prior to my first ever hand in hand undercover crack cocaine by, I was filled with so many preconceived notions what the dealer was going to look and sound like, what I was supposed to look and sound like. I had all these biases before I even got on the set.
That first undercover by, at that moment, I couldn't tell you if the dude was white or black. Shit, I probably couldn't even have told you if it was a dude. I was so preoccupied with myself and spewing every bit of my legend or my cover story in our short time together that I never took any time to actively listen to him during the buy or pick up on any clues that could help with the investigation. I had tunnel vision.
All that mattered to me at that moment in time was getting the drugs in my hand and making sure he never suspected I was a cop. I did everything wrong, and I missed everything. That's when I quickly realized I had a lot to learn after that first buy. Because you want the opposite, right? You want to be perfectly natural in your undercover role and just be picking up everything from the people that you're with, right? Absolutely.
Everything. Absolutely. And, Ralph, the truth of the matter is, as an undercover cop, the end game isn't just buying the drugs. The end game, it's an investigation. You're an investigative tool when you basically can't get to the truth through any other means. This is a very invasive tool, but at the end of the day, if you're not picking up on subtle cues and you're not observant and you're not looking at the big picture, then you're not much of a tool anyway.
So 911 happens, and it turns all of our lives around. But I would imagine with someone of your background and your skills, you suddenly became a very valuable commodity to the FBI. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, 911 was personal to all of us, Ralph. Every single American. Yes, absolutely. And for me, it actually became a calling. I was in a unique position to actually do something about it. I speak Arabic like I speak English, without the Jersey accent, of course.
I know the true meaning of the religion. I know the culture. I was already in law enforcement with a significant amount of undercover experience. I knew I could help in some way, even if that meant just translating. I really wanted to help because I needed to help. Because some asshole in a cave made me and my family the enemy that day. And kind of cast the whole religion in a very negative light. Absolutely.
And Americans never really heard, or most Americans didn't really understand the true tenets of the religion. And that was essentially the main reason why, after the case got declassified by the Department of justice, that I wanted to write American Radical so I could share this message with the American people that's so near and dear to my heart. It's a very important message, and it's an excellent book, by the way.
And I think we should point out that you grew up Muslim, you follow the religion, you're very proud of it. It's part of who you are, and you're not in any way rejecting that. Instead, you're trying to explain to people that the religion is not the way it's usually portrayed, it's not the way that it's used by radicals to justify their violent acts. Absolutely correct. Couldn't agree more with that statement.
So let's talk about the case itself like that you got involved in, because that's the main subject of the book, and it came about in a very unusual way. Yes, it did. If I may give you a little bit of background as to how I made that transition from narcotics to counterterrorism. It will help so you understand what unit I actually worked for within the government. So several years after the attack, after the Bureau wrapped their head around the war, we were in this new war.
I was recruited and trained by the FBI's National Security Covert Operations Unit. Encos, as it's more affectionately known in my world, the National Security Covert Operations Unit is a very small, elite, covert counterterrorism task force dedicated to combating terrorism domestically and abroad. All of the agents and operatives, as you mentioned, were plucked and pulled and recruited from law enforcement agencies across the country, each bringing with them a unique skill set to the team.
And then, of course, we were trained by the entire alphabet of the US government. And we became essentially these brand new hybrid agents. What that means is when we operate on US soil, we put our law enforcement hats on. We recorded meetings and phone calls and collect evidence and build a prosecutable case for the US attorney. And if that case ever went to trial, our identities were protected under the CIPA Act.
So we can continue to do our job, but when we're tasked with working overseas or abroad, we simply put our spy hats on and we collect intelligence to further the mission. And this is unique, correct? Very unique because it didn't exist prior to 911. Isn't that right? Perfectly put, Ralph.
And that's exactly what I was going to tell you, is after 911, after the Commission and all the things that happened, when we looked in the mirror and saw our mistakes, the wall between law enforcement and intelligence came down finally after decades, and because, truth be told, the world became too small of a place for us to limit our counterterrorism efforts to just within our borders. And our new unit became this new mission personifed.
For most Americans, the 9/11 attacks changed the world forever. The Bush administration responded by declaring a war on terrorism to bring Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to justice and prevent further attacks. It called for increased global surveillance and increased domestic intelligence gathering and cooperation between law enforcement agencies. For the first time in history, the wall came down between the FBI and CIA, and the two agencies fully cooperated and shared information.
This led to the creation of the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force. A priority for the task force was recruiting Muslims and native Arabic speakers. Tamer, who speaks fluent Arabic and had already done years of undercover work, was a perfect candidate. But he still had to graduate from the elite FBI undercover school, which had a failure rate of 50%. He passed with flying colors for the next phase of his training, the FBI sent him to the Howard Fine Acting School in Los Angeles.
Howard Fine, who had coached some of the biggest stars in Hollywood, taught Tamer how to tap into emotions. He already had to create a believable character, one who could convince violent terrorists that he shared their same radical Islamic beliefs. And it's funny, Ralph, because when we first got that assignment, saying, all right, you're going to La for ten days, two weeks, whatever it was, to meet with an acting coach, we all balked at it. We're like, what?
Are you fucking kidding me? We're not laughs. Yeah, we're not actors. We don't need this shit. It wasn't until And I met Howard, fell in love with him immediately. He's a brilliant acting coach, but what he did, and he, out of the goodness of his own heart, shut down his school for us. And what he did was help us tap into emotions while we were acting in a covert capacity that were extremely important and opened up a whole new world for all of us.
It's very important when you're on target with people who have an extreme ideology that they sense and feel your actual pain that they have because they have it. And when it gets personal, it adds a whole new layer to realism, to who you are, to your legend. And that helps me do my job. Absolutely. Fascinating. Okay, so please tell us how this particular case you got involved in. I mean, it was sort of unusual. Yeah, no doubt.
So basically, after over a decade of working drugs, I started the counterterrorism chapter of my career. You'd think at this point, considering my background and experience, that I would have hit the ground running, but I didn't. The enormity and globality of each and every case that I worked were truly overwhelming. There was no room for error. The difference in the drug world, the propensity for violence, was always there.
We trained for it, and we worked at anticipating every scenario because criminals were motivated by money, greed, power, addiction. I understood all that. It made sense to me. But in this world, we were fighting an ideology. How do you defeat an enemy that's willing to die for a cause? A mistake meant innocent people died. So I had to relearn my upbringing and understand the major differences and the nuances between mainstream Islam and a radical mindset.
As you mentioned earlier, Ralph, I knew my religion growing up, but I was far from an expert. I had to know it better so I could understand how these people twisted a religion of peace for their own agendas. So I was a street cop, but now I had to learn our trade craft when I operated overseas. I had to learn all the different trade crafts of the different terror groups. How they moved, how they operated, how they communicated.
I had to learn the fundamental differences of meeting the elements of a crime stateside and simply gathering intelligence. When I was abroad, it was genuinely like drinking from a fire hose. But I loved every second of it because I got to serve my country in a very unique way. Absolutely. So getting to this case a few years later, after I finally got my feet under me, it was the spring of 2012. I got a phone call from FBI headquarters about a possible threat in Montreal, Canada.
This individual was scheduled to go to some scientific conference in California in a couple of months, and the Bureau wanted me to take his temperature. Now, I was juggling quite the caseload at the time, and they knew that, but I was assured that this would be a three or four day babysitting assignment at most. So basically, the FBI wanted me to get in front of this guy in an undercover capacity and determine whether or not he was a threat.
That individual, Ralph, turned out to be, as you know from reading the book, Chiheb Esseghaier a Tunisian born, brilliant PhD student, world renowned for his work in biological nanotechnology. Now, if you're wondering what that is, I wish I could tell you shit. Ralph. His work was more like science fiction to me. And not the good kind, the kind that you just didn't understand, right? But people in the science community raved about him.
They said he was on the precipice of curing some forms of cancer and other infectious diseases. His mind was truly a gift to humanity. But he also happened to be an Al Qaeda operative sent here to conduct terrorist attacks in North America. Now, we didn't know that after the first week that I spent with him. I'm good, but I'm not that good. But we did know that he was extremely dangerous and that he was connected to some pretty awful people.
And that three or four day babysitting assignment turned into three and a half years of my life. And he had actually traveled overseas and met with higher ups in Al Qaeda. Absolutely right. Yes. As a matter of fact, not only was this guy's IQ off the charts, he had access to the west, but he was, as you mentioned, directly connected to Al Qaeda senior leadership.
We learned later, Ralph, that Chiheb Esseghaier was one step removed from Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of Al Qaeda, the most wanted man in the world today. He carried a handwritten note from him in his wallet everywhere he went. Incredible. I've heard other stories where people talk about Al Qaeda and their cells that are sort of like, disconnected. They claim loyalty to Al Qaeda, but they're not really in touch with the leadership.
But this gentleman, he was closely embedded to the top leadership, without a doubt. And what was his mission? Well, part of his training, Ralph, was teaching him how to create terror and mayhem and different opportunities. They essentially opened up their playbook to him. But his essential first mission was to blow up a train from New York City to Toronto on the Via rail. And that was his direct task from Al Qaeda senior leadership. Wow. So tell us about that first meeting,
because it's very interesting how it happened. Yes. So I first met the team. This case was being run out of New York City, so I got to work with the best in the business CT One, the Al Qaeda squad. Our core group became a family during this case, and we're all still very close today. The case agent Nelson, who I call Nelly, and the contact agent, Joey, are both like brothers to me today. And those two men are truly American heroes.
Most Americans will never know the sacrifices that they have done in their career and the lies that they're responsible for saving, not just including my own. And when I first met the team, we met in a skiff in New York City, a secret compartment information facility. And that's where you go to look at and discuss classified information. But at that moment, nothing that was said in that meeting and nothing in those documents was going to help me do my job. So we needed a pattern of life.
After I got the pattern of life, after we did a deep dive into him, I was able to craft my legend so that Tamer Elnoury was the jihadi lottery ticket for him. If he was who we thought he was, he would bite. So I met him on Father's Day 2012 and spent a week with him in California while he attended his conference. We met on a flight from Houston to San Jose, California. The bump that we call an initial interaction with a subject went great. I passed all his tests, I jumped through all his hoops.
And we became fast friends that week. So fast, in fact, that by the end of the week, he subtly tried to recruit me. But I pushed him away. And my pushing him away turned out to be the catalyst that solidified our friendship, our connection. Now, Ralph, I wish I could tell you that I pushed him away because I'm a brilliant undercover and I was playing the long game, but the truth is, I pushed him away because this guy was Canada's fucking problem.
Now, listen, I was up to my ears in my own cases, and yes, we helped to identify a potential threat for them. But at the end of the day, I thought we were punting. At least I thought we were. But Ralph, I will tell you this about Chiheb Esseghaier. In all the years I've been doing this, I sat with and spent time with so many monsters, no one made the hair on my neck stand up like Chiheb Esseghaier.
The look in his eyes when he talked about killing Americans was something I'd never seen before in my way. Chiheb Esseghaier was a Tunisian citizen living in Montreal who had traveled to Iran twice over the past two years and had made contact with al Qaeda operatives online. He was also a brilliant doctoral student at the National Institute of Scientific Research, canada's top research university and world renowned for his work in biological nanotechnology.
His trips to Iran were a red flag to the FBI because as part of his research, he had access to infectious diseases. A devout Muslim, he had stopped attending mosque because he felt most Muslims weren't dedicated to the cause of jihad and were therefore an affront to Islam. And he was taking direction from the most wanted man in the world.
The new leader of AlQaeda, Egyptian born Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri Tamer's job was to convince Chiheb that he was a successful and wealthy Arab American businessman who had been hiding his jihadi beliefs, and he had to make jihad believe that he needed him. He was essentially a lost soul. Now, it's funny because in my book, if you recall one of the middle chapters, the Best of Them with Jehadim, I dive in to his radicalization.
Someone like him, being as brilliant as he was, was essentially a lost soul. When he came to the Western world, he'd never seen snow before, he'd never seen women in skirts. Things just threw him for a loop. And because of his intelligence and the fact that he was a lost soul, he was looking. He read the Bible, he read the Torah, he read every single religion. He was very well versed. And he did all that. He was searching for a connection.
And al Qaeda's senior leadership saw that lost soul and preyed on them and realized, we have someone with a brilliant mind that could execute our plans. And he had access to the west. So he was recruited, brought there for training and for programming, as I call, and he became a weapon for them. And he had a very particularly warped sense of Islam, which is key right? Absolutely. And it wasn't that warped Ralph until they got their hands on them. And that's the thing.
So, again, every major religion, if you read the Bible, you read the Torah, there are some things, the eye for an eye, and certain things in there that basically are subject to interpretation as far as how far you go. What they do is they interpret it in a completely violent and sadistic way to fit their political agendas.
And at the end of the day, if you are a lost soul and you're browbeaten with this information and you see videos of drone attacks and things, that happen overseas, it's not very hard to program anyone into this world of hatred. And Tamer, particular passages in the Quran that are very specific about you don't hurt innocent people, you don't hurt women and children. How was he able to steer around that? Exactly. And it's in black and white.
Certain things in the crown, just like you said, Ralph, is even in times of war, you cannot touch your enemies. Women, children, and men who are not on the battlefield. It's literally verbatim. They justified it. And I said that to Chiheb in a conversation in a car once, and that was played for him, for the court. During that time. His justification was very okay, and you could tell it was someone who was brainwashed.
That justification was that Israel is an ally to the United States and had a hand in a lot of these atrocities. Every Israeli citizen, men, woman and child, is born into their military. Therefore the Americans yes. You're seeing the stretch. Exactly. It takes everything in me when I'm having conversations with these psychopaths, to pretend that I'm enlightened by what they're saying. When I want to say, that must be fuck is wrong with you. Yeah, exactly.
You want to shake them. Exactly. Incredible. So you meet him in California, and even though he's a Canadian really recruiting people to do something in Canada, you're pulled into this case. And how does that happen? Well, again, at this point, because I only spent a week with him, and even though the bump went great and we developed a connection, the bottom line was I was not a member of his cell, and I was on the outside looking in.
I was just another Muslim brother from the United States that shared his views, that had the same passion as he did. But that's where I drew the line. We told the Canadians, keep an eye on this guy, and transfer this to the RCMP, the Canadian FBI, because at that point, the Canadians had that same wall between their agencies to protect intelligence agents and their techniques from the court system, from discovery.
But at that point, June of 2012, there was the RCMP had no idea who she had was, and they believe the Canadians, that this was still only an intelligence operation. So Chiheb and I stayed in touch. That whole summer, we talked all the time. We needed to keep tabs on this guy because he was just too dangerous and the people he was communicating with overseas was terrifying.
So a year before this case ever happened, I promised some very dear friends of mine that I would be around for their destination wedding in the Caribbean. Labor Day Weekend 2012. You know how it is, Ralph. My friends knew my job, kept me on the road, so they gave me plenty of lead time. So I jealously guarded that weekend, of course, the day before I was scheduled to fly out, I got a phone call from the Special Agent in Charge, john The Sac of the FBI New York Field Office.
He asked me if I could swing by the office to meet the Assistant Director and his entourage prior to my flight because they had a bunch of questions about my new best friend, Chiheb. Now, we had this meeting, and during this meeting, the Assistant Director of CESUs basically dismissed all of our interpretations, all of our observations, not in a disrespectful way. He was convinced that he was just a lost soul and that he did not pose a threat.
So after we explained to him what the Jahadin mindset was, what the jihadi mindset was, who we believed he was, he basically said, yeah, okay, we know for a fact that he's going fishing this weekend. We just wanted to get some insight into the people he was going to meet in Toronto. Now, we just got done telling him that jihadis don't take a break. Everything they do is to serve a purpose. While they are in the Western world, that purpose is jihad.
I'm from Jersey, so I don't know Canadian geography. Right. So I didn't know that Toronto was a six hour drive from Montreal. That's a long way. Yes, it is. And Ralph, whatever professionalism I had left at that point went out the window and the Arab and me came out a little bit. And I was definitely a lot louder than I needed to be. I said, Let me put it to you this way. Stopping all conversation in a room, it was like you could hear a pin drop.
If I ask anybody in this room, anybody at all, if you had any plans this weekend, even if you didn't have anything firm, you all have something. Some of you might be going on vacation. I'm going away in about an hour. This is how normal people live their lives. They take breaks. They travel for pleasure. Chiheb does not take a break. He does not take a vacation. Everything he does is for the sole purpose of jihad. There is no way he is going to travel 6 hours.
One way to cast a line with an old Muslim buddy to catch up. Yeah, dead silence. After I did that, people didn't know whether to shit or go blind because there's some crazy guy in shorts and flip flops yelling at him. Every American in that room agreed with me, and every American was trying to say the same thing. But of course they were much more polished than I was, and we're trying to avoid an international incident.
The assistant director gave me the hand and said and looked to the sac and said, we know for a fact that he's going fishing this weekend. The area in Toronto he's going to is a very popular fishing destination. They even rented a boat. He didn't finish his sentence. I popped out of my seat, said goodbye to my team and left. Now, I hoped and prayed that the Canadians got this one right and that no one got hurt. But I decided we've done all we could, right? I'm not going to argue with these guys.
It's their country, it's their target, it's their threat. Obviously we have the American piece of it, but we can only do so much because of the fact that he was in Canada. A couple of days later, ralph I was on the beach. The only phone I had on left on was ringing off the hook. It was Nellie, the case agent. He couldn't tell me much on an open line, but he said that the fishing trip was nefarious and that I needed to get home as soon as possible.
And that's when I caught the next flight home and found out that the fishing trip was a recon mission and the target was a train bridge. And the plot was to brillow up a train from New York City to Toronto. Labor Day Weekend 2012 when members of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, CSIS, were convinced that she was going on a fishing trip to Toronto, tamar was skeptical.
He knew that Jihad did nothing that didn't support the cause of Jihad, certainly not a fishing trip that involved a twelve hour drive back and forth from his modest apartment in Montreal. It turned out Tamer was right. The real purpose of Chiheb's trip was to recon a train bridge for a terrorist attack, specifically the welltraveled via rail line that carried passengers from New York City to Toronto.
The plan was to cut a five meter hole in the track with jackhammers, causing the train to derail and plunge into the gorge below, thus killing all the passengers. Intercepted communications from overseas proved that Chiheb was getting his instructions from high level Al Qaeda leaders, all of whom were on the FBI's most wanted list. Both the FBI and CSIS were convinced that the attack was scheduled to take place on the 11th anniversary of 911, which was only weeks away. The clock was ticking.
Tamer had to work fast. The crazy part about it is, Ralph, at that moment it was early September. Based on what CESAs the Canadian CIA saw and heard that Labor Day weekend, they believed the threat was imminent because the bad guys used the words. Anniversary attack. They thought this was going to be a 911 anniversary attack? Yeah. So at this point, they had no choice but to turn this over to the RCMP.
Finally, they walked into their office that Sunday night, labor day weekend, and said, this guy is a terrorist. Meaning Chiheb Esseghaier. He's planning an attack very soon. Remember, they couldn't tell much Ralph at that point because of that wall. These are his friends in Montreal, these are his friends in Toronto. And, oh, by the way, his best friend is an undercover FBI agent out of New York City. And that guy is a dick.
I may have lived that last part, but I'm pretty sure that's what they said after the meeting I had with him a few days earlier. And your legend was created very skillfully to make you very attractive to him. How was that done? Well, the first thing I do is a deep dive into their personal beliefs, who they are. A lot of times in these classified documents that we talked about earlier, Ralph, is nothing in there is going to help me make a human connection with my subjects.
None of that stuff matters to me. I want to know what they're doing when they're not being a jihadi. Their likes, their dislikes, their good habits. They're bad ones. They're vices that he thinks no one knows about because I need to make my legend tailor made for them so that they picked me. And what was your legend? Who were you? Tamer Elnoury was a real estate mogul that after the death of his mother, became radicalized by a fake uncle who was a small real estate guy.
In Tamer Elnoury's connection and knowledge of American culture and business led him and his company to be the big company that it was. And Tamer Elnoury and the Al Noury investment group were financial supporters of the Mujahideen brothers overseas. That was all. Exactly. That's what he needed. That's what he wanted at the time, was someone who saw the world through his eyes and had a grudge against his enemy. And we served it up to him on a platter and had money and access to money. Exactly.
And access to the entire planet because of his reputation. Right. Which was something that he needed. Correct? That's right. That's exactly right. Okay, so now your focus changes. Right. Everybody wants you to stick to this guy and find out how advanced this plot is and how it's going to be carried out. Yeah. Well, after the case got dumped to the RCMP, they called us immediately for help. Now, they agreed to afford me the same protections in Canada that I have here in the states.
So we dove right in. Now, there was some good news and some bad news. The good news is I was able to get on target pretty quickly, and we were able to identify everyone involved. It turns out that anniversary that they were talking about wasn't 911. It was Christmas. Jesus Christ's birthday in Arabic. Ralph. Birthday and anniversary are synonymous. So there was a little bit of a misunderstanding by CSIS there. We had everything we needed to arrest everyone involved by the end of September 2012.
Even multiple overt acts, as you saw in the video before, the surveillance video of us doing a recon of the train tracks after I became embedded in the cell. So now you're thinking, why did this case drag on for almost another year? But that's the bad news, Ralph. During this investigation, on a drive from Toronto to Montreal, she had revealed to me that there was another Al Qaeda operative sent to the United States right before she had was sent to Canada, there was an American sleeper cell.
And that's everything. Our worst nightmare. Exactly. So how does this change your mission? Well, the only connection to that threat was Chiheb Esseghaier and his Al Qaeda handlers overseas. So we needed to keep the app going until we could get a lead on this American cell.
We needed to have Chiheb orchestrate a meeting with this American sleeper through his Al Qaeda contacts overseas, which, of course, as you know from Al Qaeda's playbook, that was no easy task because we were simply asking them to break their number one rule compartmentalization. And meanwhile, as you're spending more time with him, you're seeing sort of the plot unfold in Canada in terms of the bridge attack. And that takes some very interesting twists and turns, to say the least.
And you end up on a sort of a scouting mission with him and another gentleman, a Palestinian. Can you tell us about that? Yes. So the other individual involved in this train plot was Raed Jaser, a Palestinian who's lived in Toronto most of his life. So I got introduced to him, rather, and I was brought into the cell. And we were brothers and arms at this point, and we were planning towards the Christmas train attack. But obviously now we had two tentacles of this investigation.
For lack of a better word, we have the American end of it, and then we had the Canadian end of it. Now, to essentially wrap up the Canadian part of it in a nutshell, is they had everything they needed, Ralph. They were done. They didn't need this case to go on any longer. They had everybody ready to go and ready to be arrested, and they wanted it done now.
In their defense, they were spending time, money, resources, energy to keep the case going for our sake, our benefit of trying to identify the American sleeper. But if you look at it from their perspective, it made sense. Like, how much leeway would we have given them? So we had all kinds of issues, as you pointed out, and we were able to successfully delay the Christmas train attack indefinitely, and I was already embedded in the cell.
So at this point, anything that was going to happen, I was going to know about it. So now we could focus all our efforts on identifying the American sleeper. So we did a full court press on that on a trip to Montreal, which you have. In early September 2012, when Tamer learned that the train attack was scheduled to take place on Christmas Day, he also found out some very important things.
One, that she had received his terrorist training from an Al Qaeda operative in Iran who he called Almasul, but whose real name was Muhammad Alrayal. One of the four terrorists who had hijacked Pan Am Flight 73 from Paris to Pakistan in 1986. Two jihad had received direct communications from the man who is currently leading Al Qaeda and had succeeded Osama bin Laden Egyptian born Doctor Ayman al-Zawahiri .
Three, that Shaheb had recruited another radical Islamist, a Palestinian named Ray Josser, to help him carry out the train attack. And fourth, and most alarming, that Chiheb had information that there was an Al Qaeda terrorist cell operating in the United States. Every single jihadi that I've ever come across all have their own personal gripes.
And sometimes when the body is shifting a certain way and it doesn't fit the mold of who you want to kill or how you want to kill them, that's where all of that starts to break down. And yes, believe it or not, that is a huge advantage to us that they're not that has organized that way because everything they have, everything they're doing is built on personal hatred and agendas. And his interest was more like he wanted to launch sniper attacks in Canada. That's exactly right.
Which seems bizarre, but he had his own perspective on the whole situation based on the fact that he was Palestinian. That's exactly right. And he just wanted to target certain people and for certain reasons and they were all his reasons. Meanwhile, Chiheb was taking orders from overseas. In his mind, his attacks took precedence. Can you tell us about the incident on the bridge itself where you're there with these two men and then kind of how that leads to this, like, falling out? Yes.
So we were doing a recon on the bridge and Chiheb was inspecting the bridge and Jasper was all in, he was taking videos, he was inspecting the bridge. But Jaser was more concerned with getting caught than sheb was. In Chiheb's mind. Who cares if the cops come? Who cares if the government sees us? At the end of the day, they can never prove anything. And all that matters to me is executing this mission, then come find me.
Whereas Jaser wanted to continue to do these attacks from a distance so that he wasn't caught. So there was the initial crack in the foundation. So then, of course, because we were on an area that was blocked off to civilian traffic, someone called the police after the train conductor almost killed us. On the bridge. That was pretty scary. Yes, it was. And we ended up getting felony car stopped in the parking lot right there and then. Chiheb could give two shits.
He's like, it's a bump on the road. We're on the path that we are traveling. Jaser got spooked and said, we need to do my things. So that she has said, we're not doing your things until we do my things. So at that moment in time, I could tell there was going to be a fracture between the two guys. And I had a tactical and strategic decision to make. Who do I side with? I could side with Jaser and identify all the people in Toronto that he was going to recruit at this compound to create monsters.
Or I could side with Chiheb and get to the American sleeper. It was a no brainer at that point because surveillance was already set up. Jaser and Chiheb were both under arrest. They just didn't know it yet. So at the end of the day, leaving Jasser, where he was under 24/7 surveillance by the RCMP was the right play. And siding with Chiheb to help identify our threat was the only move I had. Okay, and then what happens with Chiheb? So we were able to successfully delay
the Christmas train attack now indefinitely. Right. So I invited Chiheb to New York City Christmas Week 2012, under the ruse of having him help me send money to the Mujahideen brothers overseas. The money ruse worked brilliantly and Chiheb, now Ralph was convinced more than ever of the benefit of combining these two cells, the Canadian cell and the American cell. Now we needed him to convince his handlers.
So of course, when you're reaching out to Al Qaeda senior leadership, you can't just pick up the phone or send an email. That's much more complicated than that. And it took time, but that week we got the ball in motion and now all we could do was wait. And the New York trip was important for another reason as well. Right. Isn't this the point where Chiheb was going to travel overseas? Yes, that's exactly right.
So basically the Canadians got word, we found out, and we knew this as well, that Chiheb was planning to travel to Singapore for another conference and another recruiting mission by Al Qaeda the Christmas week that year. And the Canadians basically said, you have until then to figure out who the American sleeper is because we're arresting him at the airport. We can let him leave. Exactly. They were not letting their golden goose leave the country, and I don't blame them. Yeah, I don't either.
It makes perfect sense. So the Christmas week in New York was crucial in order to divert him from Singapore and get the ball in motion to have him see the benefit of combining these two cells. And you did it in a brilliant way. Can you explain that? Sure. So we basically told him that I needed his help, and he's one of the few people I trusted with this significant amount of money to send this money to the Mujahideen brothers overseas. This was December Ralph, 2012, if you recall.
The Arab Spring was happening. Every government in the Middle East was upside down. Banks were shut down, the streets were a disaster. And I told him that My uncle said the Mujahideen brothers needed money to fight the fight. He dropped everything and came to New York. And we invited the Canadians to keep an eye on their golden goose and watch the show. So, yes, we were able to bring them down.
And now I had to convince FBI executive management of giving me 250,000 in cash to put in a terrorist hands. But that's the story for another day. It works. Following the trip to Toronto, timer had to decide whether or not to ally himself with Chiheb, who wanted to go ahead with the train attack, or Raed jaser, whose goal was to launch sniper attacks against individual targets. Tamer chose Chiheb because of his links to Al Qaeda leadership and the US.
Sleeper cell. In October 2012, Chiheb introduced Tamer to another one of his radical Islamic friends, a fellow Tunisian and nuclear engineering student named Ahmed Abasi, who was living in Quebec City and planning an attack against Times Square in New York. As Tamer spent more time with Chiheb, he observed that he could be kind and selfless when he wasn't in jihadi mode and talking about murdering people as a good Muslim, Tamer questioned whether or not he had an obligation to try to save him.
He turned to his father for advice. About a month, it was right around Thanksgiving. It was about a month before she had got to New York City, before everything that happened in New York that week happened. But I called my father, and obviously I can't speak to anyone, especially when the case was still ongoing or anything that's classified about anything specific. But I called my dad, and he asked me, he kept hounding me, what's going on with you? You don't see him yourself?
So I simply asked him. I said, let's say there's somebody out there, dad, that is destroying our religion. He is of the mindset that killing is the right thing to do in response to everything that's happening overseas. And he said, Listen, I have no idea where you go, I have no idea what you do, but always take this to heart. Anyone that feels using Islam as a weapon is not a true Muslim. That is not Islam. It is a religion of peace, judgment, and things of that nature.
And he went on and on, is God's work, not ours. He said, Our job is to forgive our job. God praises you more and gives you more credit. It loses a little translation from Arabic to English, but gives you more credit. If you forgive, you forget, and you do well by others. It's that simple. And it wasn't that I was feeling sorry for Chiheb in any way, seeing what he had to offer humanity.
I mean, the work that he was doing, his thesis, being world renowned for saving human lives and at the same time planning the deaths of thousands of innocent people. It didn't compute. Exactly. Yeah. He was clearly a broken man. Okay, so now there's another important person enters the story at around this point. Yes. Can you talk a little bit about that? Sure. This other individual, his name is Ahmed Abbasi. I had met him initially in October, about a month after the train recon incident.
I met him in Quebec City, and she had known him for a few years now, also a Tunisian national studying some sort of nuclear engineering program there. He was very intelligent and very savvy, and his extreme hatred was specific not towards the west, not towards any atrocities. It was towards us Americans, period. Everything that he wanted to do in the world of jihadi terrorism was towards the United States.
He was someone that we knew from the get go, from the day that I met him, was a different kind of evil. And like I said, his name is Ahmed Abasi. And we needed to focus on him as well because of the threat that he posed to our security. So now you're managing both of these men. Didn't Abasi recruit Chiheb? Yes, abasi was the one that turned him to the dark side, for lack of a better word, when she'd had when I mentioned to you earlier in this podcast that he was a lost soul.
He met Abasi at a conference in Quebec, and Abbasi noticed that he was leaving to go pray. And then he put his arm around him, and he filled his head with all these things, and he basically told him, you're missing the most important pillar of Islam, jihad. Which isn't a pillar of Islam. Ralph there's only five pillars. The 6th pillar is a very jihadi thing to say, and he built that into his head, and he guided him into this world before she had dropped everything and flew to Iran for training.
I don't know if you knew this or you would assume that Abbasi was also in touch with Al Qaeda leadership in the Middle East. He was definitely speaking to certain folks that were all red flags, but I do not believe that he was trying to become more in their midst, actively recruiting himself to be more in the Mix, as opposed to Chiheb, who was already trained and launched towards us. So, yes, he had the same ideas, the same ideology, but he wanted the longer play. He wanted the long game, and
Chiheb wanted to attack immediately. Okay. And this developed into two operations right. That they were planning. Correct. So Abasi wanted to essentially start recruiting people here in the US. That he may have known from different online forums and so on and so forth in an effort to create his own sell here. Whereas Chiheb Esseghaier said, OK, you do your thing, even though he was disgusted by it, because he felt that they should be answering to Al Qaeda's in your leadership now.
So they both arrived in New York City to visit with me in March of 2013. I spent several weeks on target with both Chiheb and Abbasi. And towards the end of that, I was exhausted mentally, physically, because it was literally a ton of jihadi bitch fighting and all that mattered to me at this point. And again, the investigation was going in so many different directions. There were so many moving parts, but none to me or to us, our entire team, more important than identifying the American Sleeper.
So I had to placate both of them and talk a little bit about your effort, because you had to obviously push prod him to reveal the identity of the American Sleeper. How are you able to do that? Or what was your strategy? So, first and foremost, the money ruse from Christmas was a huge help. Chiheb realized at that moment, even though he knew it, he had seen or he had heard, okay, that I was supporting the Mujahideen brothers overseas. But now he saw it, he felt it.
He was an active participant in sending a quarter million dollars to the cause them through Tamer ElNori and his team. So that in and of itself convinced him to start the process with reaching out to Al Qaeda senior leadership to ask to combine the two cells. Now, the fact that I showed my loyalty to him over all others, Jasser's team in Toronto, Abasi's team, he then believed at that point the play was to get a meeting with the American sleeper.
And I prodded him and I coached him through the different forms of communication to Al Qaeda's senior leadership and his handlers. And as I mentioned to you, this was all taken place while I had them both in New York City. So I had to placate Abbasi because we needed the evil that was in him to be exposed. So it all came to a head. Ralph, before we get to that, what was Abbasi planning?
Abbasi wanted to create a bacteria, because of his engineering skills and his scientific background, to place in several different water supplies throughout the United States, specifically in the tri state area. Initially, that would be able to bypass all. It was like an invisible virus, if you will, like a synthetic one that none of the computers would be able to pick up that would essentially kill hundreds of thousands of people, anyone using that water supply.
That was his plan to develop, in addition to the nuclear end of it, of being able to essentially break down some of our nuclear reactors from within. He wanted to wipe our country off the map and you've got to listen to this and nod your head, right? Yeah, I got to do more than nod my head.
Sometimes I have to show because a lot of times when they're coming up with these plots and plans, your knee jerk reaction as an American in New York City, you're on hallowed ground, you're steps away from where 911 happened, you got to keep it together, and you have to show almost that you have a level of fervor with these plans. I can never be the driving force. I never was. I have to be a sounding board. But at the same time, I had to be supportive. So it was a very delicate balance. Wow.
Incredible. And at a certain point, you kind of lose it, right? Well, yes. The emotional twists and turns that you have to take and the pressure that you're under must get so intense. It does. And it's a shame, because the incident you're referring to, ralph I'm not very proud of it, but I'll tell you, it was when she had was in New York City that Christmas week, back in 2012, I took him to see Times Square for some sightseeing. It was his first time in New York.
Now, naturally, he didn't see Times Square like any other farmer would. He saw it as an opportunity to kill and create mayhem in terror. I watched his Al Qaeda training taking over. I fielded questions about New York City security protocols, pretending not to know why he was asking. We all knew where this was headed. So, of course, a couple of nights later, we're downtown near the apartment he was staying, we're going for a walk.
He stopped right in front of the Freedom Tower, and he put his arm around me, and while rubbing his beard, he said, Tamer, this town needs another 911, and we're going to give it to them. And I lost it. Ralph yeah, that's a lot. That was a lot, I guess. Listen, I'm not making any excuses. I'm a professional undercover, and it's my job to put my personal feelings but you're a human being, too, right? Not at that moment, not at that night, but it was 20 deg outside. I felt like I was sweating.
And he invited me upstairs to his apartment so he could tell me about his plan to place multiple IEDs throughout Time Square to kill thousands of innocent people while standing at that location. So, needless to say, I shoved him off of me and pretended that's something I ate earlier didn't agree with me, and I left him standing there.
I know I spooked him that night, but worse than that, that night I was worried that because I wasn't a professional undercover, that I thought I blew our chance at identifying the American sleeper because I was getting too emotional. But thankfully for the case, the next morning, I was able to recreate that conversation, and I got everything the US. Attorney wanted on this new plot and then some over bagels and coffee in his apartment that morning.
But, yeah, that was a low point for me professionally. In early December 2012, as Tamar and Chiheb stood in front of the new Freedom Tower and Chiheb announced that New York City needed another major terrorist attack, tamar struggled not to break character. Despite his training, this was too much to take. He was facing a man who was talking about killing innocent Americans like it was no big deal.
In Tamer's words, he was spitting in the eyes of God and talking about doing something that was in complete violation of the Quran. Tamer had to take a break, at least for one night. Later, he realized he had no choice but to pull himself together and focus on the goal of finding the American Sleeper. At this point, communication with Al Qaeda was moving slowly, and there was still no lead. Right. But thankfully, it was about mid April 2013.
Remember I Was Entertaining Chiheb And Abasi in New York City. Chiheb went to another scientific conference in San Francisco, and Abbasi and I flew out to Las Vegas together to meet with a jihadi friend, a potential recruit of his. But that weekend, Ralph, finally, the stars aligned for us. I was out to dinner with the bad guys in Vegas. When she had called me, I stepped out to take his call. He was excited and out of breath. He couldn't wait to tell me.
Al Qaeda senior leadership agreed to combine the two cells. They invited Chiheb and me to Dubai for a meeting for the introduction to the American sleeper. They never reveal that information over any medium that could be intercepted. It had to be in person. But, Ralph, after almost a year of hard work by all of us, it worked. I was one flight away from getting all the answers we worked so hard for. So you're excited, you're preparing to fly to Dubai, you're
going to actually meet the guy in person, right? Yes. This was it. Ralph I mean, that light at the end of the tunnel that we were all looking at for a freaking year? Yeah. You're not going to just get a name. You're going to actually meet the guy. Exactly. And you're going to meet Al Qaeda senior leadership as well, right? Exactly. It was huge. At that moment, as soon as I hung up with you, my mind was already in Dubai.
But I still had to deal with these two idiots in Vegas, one of which Abasi, we had an arrest warrant for. So I wrapped up my meetings and drove directly to the safe house. Chiheb canceled the rest of his conference and flew back to Montreal to wait for me so we could fly to Dubai together.
I drove to that safe house in Vegas so fast, I couldn't wait to meet with my team, because I knew they had to be excited and bouncing off the walls, because I knew they just heard the conversation I had with you. But when I got there, Ralph, the mood in that safe house was anything but exciting. Excitement? Quite the opposite, actually. We ran out of time.
The Boston Marathon bombing happened, and even though that had nothing to do with our case, that was that made everyone nervous on both sides of the border. That, coupled with the fact that the Canadians were adamant they will not let Chiheb overseas, even with me, and a bunch of other politics between the two countries, led to the shutdown of this case before we could get a lead on the American sleeper. Wow. Yeah. We were devastated. So Chiheb Esseghaier is arrested, Abasi
is arrested, Jaser arrested. Yes. And the Canadians basically just pull the trigger, right? Yeah. They allowed me and Abbasi to fly back to New York, and on April 22, 2013, arrests were made and search warrants were executed simultaneously in New York, Toronto, and Montreal. I was also arrested for show with Abasi upon our arrival back from Las Vegas at JFK, were you privy to I mean, there must have been a lot of words exchanged between Canadian and American officials over this.
Yes. This was during the Obama administration. Our case was briefed daily after the revelation of the American sleeper to the White House, and President Obama sent the Attorney General at the time, Eric Holder, to meet with Canadian officials, and they were able to buy us some time and get us off of certain trips. But at this point, at this moment, none of us really could argue.
After the tragedy that took place in Boston, the Boston Marathon bombing, and now we were playing around with a handful of terrorists in two countries, no one wanted to see this go any further, and they wanted everyone arrested. I understand. Executive management's position. Yeah. I mean, one of them could have easily slipped through your absolutely. And done something horrible, and then everybody would have been called on the carpet. No doubt. And so now the trials take place
in Canada, and you have to testify. Yes. Were you prepared for this? No, of course not. As I mentioned earlier, Ralph, everything I've ever done in the world of counterterrorism will never see the light of day, and that's by design. And when these two, Chiheb and Jasser, decided to take me to the hoop, that was a game changer for all of us. And what was that like for you? That must have been not only is your identity going to be revealed, but now you have to face these two guys in court.
Well, thankfully, my identity was protected because the Canadians did agree to afford me the same protections as we have here in the States. So they jumped through the same hoops that would have happened if I was testifying in the US. So I testified. The media was shunned from the courtroom. When I was there, I testified for three and a half weeks, and the trial prep took several months. To me, it wasn't my typical trial, because even though Canada is similar to us, they're not us.
They have different rules, they have different court rules, they have different everything, right? So I needed to wrap my head around that and understand and use their playbook for when I testified, because there are certain things I can and can't say that would bias the jury, and it's the same thing here. So I had to learn that. It took me several months to learn that and work with their prosecutors and understand what the trial would look like.
But thankfully, no one was allowed in the courtroom during my testimony, and the media could hear me, not record me, and not see me. Oh, good. So that was a relief for me. But the crazy part about this whole thing, Ralph, is after she had got arrested in Montreal on that day, he was immediately transferred to Toronto, where he was being prosecuted and he was interrogated for weeks. He protected me at every turn. He never once gave me up.
Even after the government played recordings for him of our most private conversations. He assumed they were just trying to trick them and that they found a way to record us. It wasn't until about a month later, when he got enough discovery, when he finally realized that I was FBI, that he broke his silence. But he didn't break his silence to investigators. It was to the media. Well, that's a testament to how well you did your job.
It was a connection that we had, and when you spend that much time with someone doing this sort of thing, no matter what line of work you're in no. Well, obviously you were highly skilled at what you did. Thank you. Thank God for that. Now, there's an interesting part in the trial where you feel that the media is trying to sort of making this about religion, right? Yes. So the Canadian security detail, these guys were awesome. Just pure SWAT monsters, right?
They wouldn't let me go to the bathroom without a couple of their guys in the vicinity. So they would take me to and from the safe house while I was testifying there. And every night I'd get home, I'd watch the local news or whatever. I had nothing else to do. And I would see that every media outlet kept referring to it as radical Islam. And this was happening. There was a media circus surrounding this case.
And that kind of broke my heart, because the prosecutor's only witness, their main witness, was an undercover Muslim FBI agent who infiltrated their ranks and was testifying against them. So I asked the head prosecutor if I could address that. He bought at first, but I was able to get it out. And I said that we are not at war with Islam. That the radical mindset is what we are fighting their agendas. They are criminals using a peaceful religion to further whatever political agendas they have.
And that was when Sheheb lost his mind in the courtroom, and they had to clear the courtroom, and he wanted to address that with me personally, and it was crazy. Well, you hit the sore spot there. Yes, that was it. And that's where the malignancy lies. Right there. Absolutely. Exactly right there. Whatever happened with the American sleeper, it got turned over to the intelligence community, and they're doing the best they can.
Honestly, at this point, I obviously can't get into the specifics of that, but for all intents and purposes, as far as our case was concerned, that was the one that got away. April 23, 2013. Two weeks after the Chechenamerican Tsarnaev brothers detonated two homemade pipe bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring hundreds, the Canadians arrested Chiheb Rahed Jasser and Ahmed Abbasi. Tamer was relieved, exhausted, and disappointed.
He had penetrated a very active and potentially lethal Al Qaeda cell in Canada that was planning attacks in both Toronto and New York, and had discovered the existence of an Al Qaeda sleeper cell in the US. But he had fallen short of getting Jehib to reveal the identity of the US. Sleeper. The Canadians had pulled the trigger first. Tamer still had to testify in court where his identity was protected.
January 2015. Chiheb Esseghaier and jaser were found guilty of conspiring to commit murder in association with a terrorist group and sentenced to life in prison. Abbasi pled guilty to a lesser charge, and after spending 17 months in jail, was deported back to Tunisia. Tamer had stopped at least two potentially devastating terrorist attacks. He's the epitome of a true patriot. He still hasn't revealed his real name, nor does he expect to be celebrated.
He just wants his fellow Americans to know that there are courageous men and women like himself, including Muslim Americans, who, forsake personal safety, to work in the shadows and keep the rest of us safe. We thank Tamar Elnoury for his skill, bravery, and dedication to our country. We're deeply honored to call him today's Hero Behind the Headlines. Thanks for listening. I'm your host, Ralph Pezzullo. Our producers are Frank Hobbs, Ralph Pezzullo and Apex Media.
If you haven't already, please download, rate review and subscribe. And don't forget to tune into the next episode of Heroes Behind Headlines.