S2 E8: Bigger Than 9/11

You're listening to Law and Order Criminal Justice System, a production of Wolf Entertainment and iHeart podcasts.

In the criminal justice system, landmark trials transcend the courtroom to reshape the law. The brave many women who investigate and prosecute these cases are part of a select group that is defined American history. These are their stories. September eleventh, two thousand and one, New York City.

It started as a beautiful fall morning, crisp air and bright blue sky. People grab coffee, caught subways and ported to offices. Then a jetliner slammed into the North tower of the World Trade Center. It appeared to back sharply and smash directly, perhaps purposefully, into a.

On the thirty sixth floor, facing west. And I had just commuted through the Trade Center, and I saw the side of the north tower explode, and I instinctively yelled, and I got a bomb as I saw papers floating in the air and fire ripping through the building, and it looked to me like a giant air conditioner kind

Seventeen minutes later, a second plane hit.

Oh, oh my goodness, there's another one. Seems to be on purpose.

Oh my goodness.

Now you lean.

Now it's obvious.

I think that there's a second plane just crashed into the World Trade Center. And then I saw the South tower explode. So I got the hell out of the building, you know. I knew that it was a terror attack, and I didn't want to be killed.

At the Pentagon, flames rose from a gaping hole in its western wall. In Pennsylvania, a fourth plane crashed into a field after passengers fought back.

It is absolutely an appalling day, not only here in Manhattan, but also in Washington, where the Pentagon also was apparently the subject of a strike by one of these hijacked airliners flying bombs.

Sirens wailed across Lower Manhattan. Crowds ran as the towers fell, ash and paper drifted from the sky.

I saw the building.

Say that again, I didn't hear you.

That's the building just coming down. By the end of the morning, thousands were dead, and for families across New York and far beyond. The grief was overwhelming. Joe Connor was among them. His cousin Steve, worked in the towers.

We went into the Saint Patrick's Churches, a little church down in like China Town, and I came out of there and the smoke was around them. They had collapsed. Actually, while we were in the church saying at prayer, I knew Steve wasn't.

Come at home. In the middle of that devastation. Joe also recognized the fragile line between life and death. People within feet of each other were only mere blocks. Some survived and others did not. But the attacks left another truth as well. Even with its many safeguards in place, law enforcement hadn't seen this coming incomprehensible.

We plan for all kinds of terrorist.

Attacks, a biological warfare, chemical warfare, but nobody envisioned to commercial airlines slamming into the World Trade Center.

It was the single deadliest terrorist attack ever in the world, and in the days that followed, leaders vowed change.

This is a vicious attack upon New York, It's an attack upon America. It's an attack upon the whole concept of freedom in our way of life. And we cannot let these attacks succeed.

The mission was clear, never again.

I got a call, get out to LaGuardia Airport. There's been a bombing.

There was a thirty two foot crater in front of what was left of the building. I was trying to figure out, Am I dead? Am I alive? Where am I? I'm Aniseega NICOLASI.

That's why terrorism works. It doesn't care who you are.

From Wolf Entertainment and iHeart podcasts, this is law and order, criminal justice system. The months after the nine to eleven attacks were marked by thousands of funerals. Nearly three thousand lives were lost that day, and for almost a year, recovery teams moved around the clock at ground zero, one point eight million tons of rubble were removed in the search for remains and answers for families, first responders, and an entire city. Life would never be the same, and

My name is Robert As. I was investigator for the New York Joint Terrorism Task Force and I was an investigator for the threat Squad.

Robert was part of the Brooklyn DA's office, but his path changed course when the FBI came looking for reinforcements.

I went over to the JGTF in two thousand and three. I was working in a threat squad, and at that point, even two years after nine to eleven, we had thousands and thousands of leads that we were just running down from a call center that came from calls from the public.

Most of those tips led nowhere, But one night in early two thousand and six, Robert got something that felt different.

I was working the four twelve shift and it was kind of late at night, and I got the lead.

The details were thin, but the subject was alarming.

This individual that was from Brooklyn but was down in Guyana, South America, was talking about blowing up the pipelines. That led to the fuel tanks a chafcreport.

The first step was to look into the person purportedly making the threats to help assess if it was real or just talk.

Subsequently, we did some background checks on the person that supposedly was making the threats. Russell defriedis the fact that the person worked at JFK can keep it a little more validity.

What began as a vague tip suddenly felt legitimate. It meant to FreeDOS knew the airport, its routines, and its vulnerabilities, and that made his threat far harder to dismiss. This was now aunofficial investigation. A potential plan to blow up pipelines at JFK Airport quickly got the attention of other agencies.

My name is Marshall Lee Miller, and I worked for many years at the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York.

The Joint Terrorism Task Force was built on the concept of partnership. From the beginning, prosecutors were looped in navigating the legal side, working alongside investigators.

The US Attorney's offices, both in the Eastern and the Southern District of New York were embedded essentially in the JTTFS. We had investigators that worked with their colleagues at the JTTF, and prosecutors were there regularly working through cases and doing intake of cases and discussing how to assign cases and how to divide cases between the Eastern and southern districts of New York.

In every case, the stakes were the same. Public safety was number one.

Job Number one for the Joint Terrorism Task Force and all of its members is making sure that there is no terrorist attack. So one of the first orders of business was to try to figure out how real this potential plot was.

The question was how to get close enough to find out.

Really early stage, One of the first things that was done was to look to see whether there was a source of information working with law enforcement that had any kind of connectivity to Russell Defriedis, the individual that had been identified by that incoming tip.

Law enforcement began piecing together Defritas's background, and.

It quickly became apparent that mister Defritis was a naturalized US citizen from Guyana and that he had worked as a baggage handler at John F. Kennedy International Airport in years past.

But knowing his backstory wasn't enough.

In all of these investigations, all of the players involved are always worrying about whether they are seeing the whole picture or whether you're only seeing part of the picture. And like an iceberg below the waterline, there's some much bigger thing happening with activity that's outside of your site line that might result in an attack while you're investigating.

Our first investigative step would be to verify the information that we had to see if this person was talking about blowing up the pipelines, the goal would be to get an informant to meet mister Defriedis and to have that same conversation with them again to see if it is valid.

They couldn't send just anyone into talk to the Friedas whoever went in had to be credible and cautious. Agents spent weeks coming through files looking for someone who could naturally slip into de Freedis's orbit.

We were looking through the FBI database for different reports of interviews and different information about FBI informants throughout the country. It would be days and weeks of just reading reports of different FBI informants, and not just for terrorists, about the criminal informants, just to find the right fit. So we came across an individual that had some ties to a local mosque in Brooklyn that mister Defritas also had ties to.

For law enforcement, the decision to use an informant is really an easy one. Credibility and reliability are always an issue, but if their information can be corroborated, it can sometimes be worth its weight in gold.

And so the next step was for the source that was identified who had acquaintances and friends in common with

With the plan in place, the case shifted. Here's former FBI Special Agent Kim Widow.

My role was the source handler. That was a full time job and tires why because during the day we were riding up the reports that he was providing us, we were listening to the recordings that were being made in his truck that he was getting when he was sitting in a cafe with the Fritis or just running around. We were getting the permissions for him to conduct consential monitoring, to fly to Guyana, meeting with him to debrief him, and late night phone calls.

Kim recalls the background of the man they chose.

Our source had just gotten out of federal prison and had converted to Islam in prison, so he was able to move in a variety of different groups within New York. There are two different sects of Islam, Sunni and she, and being a new convert, he was able to explore both of them without raising any type of suspicion. And they found out that they knew some folks in common that gave our source an inn and some bona fides with the Fretis.

To protect his identity, he would be known by a single name.

What he was known as in the plot was honest, so we'll call him honest.

In reality. Most cooperators don't come forward out of civic duty. More often they are driven by self interest, like resolving their own charges or for money, and a NASA agreed to cooperate was no different.

In this matter. This source was out on bail and had a pending sentencing that needed to take place, and so he was cooperating largely because he was hoping for a reduced sentence in exchange for his cooperation.

To be his full time job. And to that end, we were going to provide him with a stipend that would enable him to pay rent on a very modest place in New York City and to have a vehicle. Also, as we got to know this individual, he was a very I don't want to say patriotic, but New York City was his city and he didn't want anybody to do another nine to eleven type attack. He didn't want his friends and family to be subject to that in

A NAS had another quality that made him stand out his ability to blend in.

We found somebody who was very charismatic, very able to adapt to all kinds of different situations, and who was very street smart. So this was somebody that we had lucked into that could move in various different circles and be a chameleon and do whatever the situation required him to do. He had survived in a bad neighborhood and associations with drug dealing organizations before he went to prison the last time, and just had a ton of street smarts.

The mission for a noose was clear. Get close to Russell Defriedis and find out whether his talk of blowing up JFK was just words or an actual plan.

If he actually potentially could come up with an operational plot, or if he has contacts with somebody who could come up with a real plan against either JFK or any other target in New York City.

A successful strike could ripple through national security and global travel.

It is one of the biggest airports in the particularly for international flights. The sheer physical size of JFK Airport is huge. It has multiple terminals, hundreds of flights coming in every hour departing, and there is a large support operation there. The mail from overseas comes in cargo. Pretty much any and everything you can think of that comes into the United States can come in through JFK Airport. It's also located in Queens, in an area right off

And NAS would need to get close to Russell Defrieda's and it wouldn't be easy. It was a balancing act for law enforcement as well.

We have to walk a thin line between putting a human source into an investigation and making sure that they don't entrap a subject. So at the beginning, we really didn't tell the source anything more than just hey, here's where this sky's going to be, go meeting, go tell us about him.

And NAS had to figure out where Defridis went and how he spent his time and then try to naturally cross his path, and the FBI would help.

We have to use least intrusive investigative means, and one of the least intrusive means is just physical surveillance, just following somebody around, and the case squad had followed the FreeDOS around found out that he was selling some goods at Gertz Plaza mall in Queen's.

That gave a nosin opening when we knew.

What his routine was. You just have the source bump into them. So he was able to offer to freed Us a ride to Freedis didn't have a car, so that was one of the early things, just driving him to wherever he needed to go and chatting.

Their relationship grew quickly.

They went out for meals a lot of the time. Da Freedis didn't have a lot of money, so he liked the fact that our source was paying for meals. After they got out and run a few errands, and he just kind of began to rely on the source as his assistant, his helper, his confidant, and that relationship just developed as they worked together and broke bread together.

Those small favors soon turned into trust.

At first, we weren't recording the conversations because consentual monitoring has to have certain approvals. We had to get the AUSA on board for that. We had to get FBI management on board to send him out with recording devices. So we had to make sure that he really was talking about committing an act of violence before we could do that. And it was pretty quick for Defreedos to bring him into confidence on the fact that he wanted to do something.

And from there law enforcement sprang into action.

We were able to wire up the source and listen to the conversations.

The surveillance then widened, phone calls, in person meetings, and every conversation in between. The rhetoric wasn't just casual bluster.

When Russell Lfriedez talked about the plot, he just had this passion in his voice that gave you chills that he really wanted to do something. He just had this hatred.

Defriedis's motives were tangled. It was a shifting mix of grievances and ambition.

I certainly think a primary motivation was the view that there was a conflict going on between the United States and other allies of the United States, Israel, Europe, other places, and the Muslim world, and that this would be something sort of a geehad that mister de Friedez could engage in as part of doing his part in that conflict.

There were also more personal dimensions.

At times he would gripe about the way he was treated as an African American and as a Muslim at the airport by people when he worked there.

And sometimes his ambitions veered more towards greed.

There were moments where there was talk about whether they could sell the idea and make some money off it, as well to different higher level and more well trained terrorist actors and groups, groups like Al Qaeda, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps or IERGC terrorist group in Trinidad known as Jamatt al.

Muslimin Investigators also realized that Defridis was searching for significance, a way to turn his anger into action, and before long his talks with Anas veered into specific schemes.

Once he started opening up a little bit, it happened fairly quickly where he started talking about the JFK PLUT.

What came next erased any doubt. This was a plan for mass destruction and there.

Would be something that was bigger than nine to eleven.

By the spring of two thousand and six, FBI informant Anas had become a confidant of Russell Defriedis, who was threatening a large scale terrorist attack and once Defrieda's trusted Anas, he talked a lot.

He felt very comfortable, very quickly opening up that, hey, it would be easy to attack that fuel farm out at JFK, and JFK is a huge airport. I believe one of his quotes was, it's named after President Kennedy, and if you could blow up the airport, it would be like killing the man twice. He wanted to make a very big splash his budding career is a want to be terrorist.

And Nas quickly became the one Deafriedis leaned on.

Defridis didn't seem to have any other very close acquaintances in New York, so he latched onto the source fairly quickly and started bringing him into the plot.

The scope of the case soon expanded beyond New York.

It became quite clear quite quickly that mister Defritis was actively considering engaging in terrorist activity, and that he was reaching out to and was already in contact with a number of potential co conspirators overseas in Trinidad and Guyana.

I believe he also told the source at one time that it was the Middle Eastern Muslims that were getting all of the credit for defending their religion against the American oppressors, and there were plenty of folks down in Guyana and in the Caribbean who were willing to take up arms for the cause as well. In a matter of months, he was suggesting that they take a trip down to Guyana to meet these folks and to try to get some help for the plot.

And that's when he came across Abdul Kadir in Guyana. He pitched the idea to Abdul Kadir, and Abdul Kadir took an interest.

In the plot, and Kadir was well connected.

Abdulkadir was involved in the government in Guyana. He was in the parliament and he was the mayor of this town of Lynden, Guyana. It's also ran a mosque in Guyana.

Kadir's connections made the plot more viable.

A lot of the conversations had to do with the funding of it in Abdul Kadir's contacts. Abdul Kadir had contacts in Iran, and that was something that we were very concerned about.

The investigation had reached a turning point.

To us, it appeared they start to have the means of inducting an operation. They had an individual that, according to him, he had access to funds, to weapons, and access to individuals outside of our country and of Guyana that could possibly help with this plot.

And Kadir wasn't the only new name.

So at that point, Kadeer introduced the Friedas and the Nas to some contacts in Trinidad. So they went to Trinidad and met Kareem Ibraheim. He was an imam in Trinidad that supposedly had connections that could get the plot off the ground, and that's why Kadir introduced to Friedis to Kareem. So the fourth individual was abdel Noir. He was an associated of Bbram Kareem.

In the span of months, a grudge carried by one man in Brooklyn had become a multi national conspiracy linking New York, Guyana, and Trinidad.

There was a lot of conversation about how long we should go with this and let it go. There were definitely some voices within the FBI that wanted to take it down at that point and arrest freed.

S, But for the agent's closest to the investigation, the path was clear. Let to freedis keep talking, keep planning and see who else would emerge.

It wasn't our informant that was in charge of this, It was to Friedas that was leading it and looking for other people to do this. So we felt it was necessary to let that progress on its own and see where it went before we took it down.

And the further the plot deepened, the more danger for Anas.

We had to take a lot of different tactics to keep him safe. We had a team down there that was shadowing him, but they couldn't get too close. He was living and staying with some of the co conspirators, so he was living this twenty four to seven while he was in Guyana.

Every day brought new risks, not only for him but for the people waiting for him at home.

When we first started working with him, he was single and fancy free, and by the into this married with the family, so that was very difficult for him to juggle.

The jtt APP needed to ensure the safety of his family too, and Nas couldn't keep the secret any longer.

At some point, the source had to bring his wife into this and let her know that hey working for the government. This is why I'm gone all the time. I'm not out running around and carousing, but I'm meeting with these people. It's the job that I do and prepare her for the fact that at some point her life was going to be uprooted for their safety.

And it would soon change everything for Adnas and his family.

We were going to have to take them away from where they'd been living, that they were going to have to pretty much go underground and isolate themselves from everyone they'd known before for a while to keep themselves safe.

Defridis would bring that on sooner than they'd planned.

There was a key moment in the case where after meeting with potential co conspirators, Monsie de Fried has decided he wanted to conduct surveillance at JFK and indeed take some video tape of JFK Airport as well as get we think of now sort of Google Maps, sort of satellite imagery but just from Google of the airport, but also did do visits to the airport where they videotaped the airport and they particularly focused on the fuel tanks, which if you've driven to JFK Airport at times you

The video set the stage for the final phase.

So that was a big moment and I think again some thinking at that point of is it now time to take this case down? Given the video tapes and the fact that Minstere de Friedis wanted to take those

Defriedis used his homemade surveillance tape to find powerful backers who could help turn the scheme into reality.

It was presented to that Trinidadian terrorist group leader who basically said things are too hot here and this is going to draw too much government attention and declined to join the plot. And then ultimately a decision was made that would be presented to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and a emissary would be sent to Iran with potentially the videos of JFK Airport, with the Google Earth images, and with the plan for the plot to secure monetary

The possibility of losing control forced the FBI's hand.

The freight train got moving at a very high rate of speed. We were looking to find the perfect opportunity where we could disrupt this plot before it actually got to somebody who could provide them the means and opportunity their.

Race was on.

Government officials say they have uncovered a terror plot to attack New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport, and attack which one of the suspected terrorists said would quote cause greater destruction than the September eleventh attacks. The target a jet fuel artery that runs from New Jersey to the New York Airport.

Chasing a conspiracy that stretched into other countries meant stepping into trickier and sometimes far riskier territory. The FBI could no longer rely on its reach alone. Every move also depended on allies abroad, on timing that had to be flawless, and on the hope that no one slipped away before the net was cast. The margin for error had never been thinner. In early June two thousand and seven, after months of surveillance, the FBI and its partners decided to act.

We didn't plan on taking it down when it did go down, but we got word that Kadeer was flying to Venezuela or possibly to Iran via Venezuela. We didn't know if he was going there to talk about the plot. Information you had for the plot, so we decided to take it.

To hunt that point, it was now a race against the cock Russell.

The FRIUS was in the United States. He was in Brooklyn at the time with Anna, so we had a lot of control over that, which was good.

Arrests in New York could be handled closely, but overseas was a much tougher task. If just one suspect slipped away, the entire plot could escape their grasp. That danger became very real when investigators learned where abdulah Nor was headed next.

Nor was booking travel through Venezuela onto Iran to go look for some support for this plot, and we knew that if he got into those countries, we might not

In Brooklyn, agents staged a takedown. It was also meant to disguise and NAS's true identity in the ongoing priority to keep him safe.

The night of the arrest, we arrested Defriedis and on Us in a diner and we made sure that they were booked together so it looked like, you know, we were arresting in Nas as a plot or two.

The illusion didn't last long.

But very quickly it came out that he was the source.

At that point, keeping a Nas and his family away from harm meant moving quickly.

And we had taken action that night, after the raiment and booking of Defriedis were over, we went to the apartment where he had been living and moved out everything of his apartment.

The priority was to get them out before anyone connected to the plot could find them, and that urgency only grew when a NASA's true identity became public.

And when that came out in the paper a couple of days later, with his full background in history, we realized we had to do even more to make sure that he and his family were safe, above and beyond just relocating them out of the New York City area.

While New York was secured, partners overseas moved in on the rest of the South.

It was pretty quick. We had a very good relationship with the counterparts in those countries and we provide the evidence in the warrants to the other countries, but they have to affect the arrests and then we go through the extradition process to get them back into Nine States. Abdulkadir was in Trinidad getting on a plane when he was arrested Abdulnor was in Trinidad. He was on the run for a couple of days and they found him. Abraham Comma was in Trinidad.

Also, what began as whispered conversations about an attack ended in a coordinated sweep across two countries. All four men were taken into custody within the span of a single week.

Today's arrests remind us that we're at war. The reality is, over the last couple of weeks we've had two now major arrests of people who were organizing to attack in America and to attack Americans. It should remind us that the terrorists are at war with us, both overseas and here in the United States. And sometimes I know this is a different kind of war, so it's sometimes hard

The plot was dismantled, the arrests had been made, but for Anas, the end of the case was and treat them.

The day of the arrest, we arrived after dark with a bunch of agents and a box truck and loaded everything from their lives into this box truck to take them somewhere where they wouldn't be bumping into folks on the street. We had to instruct our source and his family. They had to get rid of their cell phones, they couldn't be using their Internet accounts. Basically anything that could be used to identify them trace them had to go.

It was the start of a life cloaked in secrecy.

We couldn't guarantee them that at some later point that it would be safe for them to walk back into their old lives, and in fact, to this day, I know that there is upheaval in the sources life as a result of this, that his life has been forever changed, and he's not been able to maintain contacts with all of his family and not be there through key events in his relatives' lives.

But even in hiding, and NASA's cooperation remained essential.

We had to organize for a couple of years meetings at various locations throughout the United States so that he could assist in trial preparation and then, of course, a full time security detail for him when he was in New York waiting to testify.

Meanwhile, Defratus' fury remained with him behind bars.

We found out he was trying to recruit some of his fellow prisoners to murder the source and the prosecutor. So he was definitely looking to harm the source. And then there were also wanted posters that were put up on the streets of Brooklyn around the area that he had been working that had his name, his face wan a dead or alive for being a snitch. That made

While the plot had been thwarted, the court battle was only beginning. The first Hurtle wasn't in court, but overseas extradition. It took some time, but eventually all defendants were returned to the US. Once all four were in Brooklyn, the case moved forward. The defendants faced a series of federal charges, all tied to the same core allegation, a plan to blow up JFK airport and its fuel system. Prosecutors can continued to partner with law enforcement right through the trial.

It was very intense, it was very exciting. The pressure was there to make sure that everything was aligned and done correctly. We had a ton of evidence, a ton of recordings that we had to transcribe, and.

That was have you left abdel nor pled guilty? The three remaining defendants went to court.

It went to two trials, first of mister Kadeer and mister de Fritis, So that's what happened to the four defendants. There was also a fifth defendant who testify, who came to the United States. He was one of the early co conspirators, came to the United States, pleaded guilty to terrorism crimes and testified against the others.

So ultimately the.

Trial included both the source testifying and this other cooperating.

Witness from the prosecutions side of the table. The evidence was overwhelming, but would the jury see it that way?

Well?

The government be able to convince a jury that these men were a real th threat to the nation's security when even the government itself acknowledges that they did not have the means actually to carry out the attack.

The defense only needed to plant doubt, and they searched for a way to do it.

The defense became a bit of a subject of debate at the trials. I would call the defense entrapment light. They was sort of all the trappings of entrapment, but without actually claiming entrapment. So it was sort of a combination of this wasn't real. These were just people spouting off, so there was no real intent here. They weren't really going to follow through with it.

Here's the question. Was the US government right to take this bomb plot seriously or were these suspected terrorists simply amateur wannabes who could never have pulled off a real attack.

But in the end, the most powerful evidence wasn't documents or testimony, It was the defendants themselves.

I think the record definitely were the strongest. Just the jury hearing those recordings and hearing the voices of the people sitting there on trial and hearing them talk about this plot and what they wanted to do was definitely the most damning part of it.

The recordings also cut off the defense's line of attack, arguing that the government had manufactured the crime.

So in this case, what the jury and the judge agreed with was this was all Russell Defriedez's idea. He was the one who came up with the target. He was the one who came up with the method. He was the one who decided that they should videotape the place where he used to work. He was the one who introduced the source to people in some foreign country. The source had never been to before in Guyana and Trinidad.

To make their case, two of the defendants did something rare in terrorism trials.

And ultimately they did take the stand to try to explain away the things they were saying on the recordings, and so that made for I think a rather made for media moment of to terrorism defendants in separate trials testifying on their behalf and giving me the opportunity to cross examine them.

The GAMP had backfired documents and recordings undercut their stories, and the jury wasn't convinced.

They were found guilty on all charges well freedom.

By early twenty twelve, the trials were over. Russell Defriedis was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Abdul Kadir and Kareem Abraham were convicted and also given life sentences. Abdul Nor received fifteen years. The case closed the book on a plot that, if successful, could have caused immense devastation. Even after the sentences were handed down, the story didn't

We definite concerned for his safety. There were some serious individuals in Guyana that obviously we're not happy that he was an informant. We did put him in the witness protection program.

The trial changed his life forever for a nas survival meant vanishing. Investigators still remember what they accomplished together at that point.

There are essentially fifty different agencies in the JTTF, and I would say almost every single one of them were working together. It really was a tremendous group effort and kind of just a highlight of why there is a JTTF and the success that the collaboration brings. I think bringing everybody onto one roof and one office and working together as one kind of builds this camaraderie and it helps to this day making the JTTF the success.

This case is also an example of this system working in unison across borders and jurisdictions.

I think this is a case where the JTTF worked exactly as it was designed to. We got information and were able to develop that and act on what we knew. We were able to work with partners in foreign countries. We used pretty much every tool in the tool bag and were able to come up with a solid case for the US attorneys to take to court. So it was very much a textbook case on how a case investigation with an international nexus should work.

From Marshall, the case represents why his work is important, and you have.

To step back at the end, or at least at key moments in the process, and then at the end to take stock. There were times, though, when you were able to step back and say, we've done something here, We've done something that matters, that really has an impact protecting lives, shaping the future of these kinds of investigations and prosecutions.

Looking back, this case is a golden example of what can be achieved with a preemptive approach to terrorism and teamwork at its best.

JTTF generally they work in a very difficult environment where if the dots aren't connected, or if the mistakes are made, there can be catastrophic consequences, but also it's kind of the best of law enforcement, where folks are committed to the mission, they're working together hand in hand, and they're working also hand in hand with the prosecutorial folks and with their intelligence community partners, and it's like exactly what you want out of government.

This would be the start of a new era for the JTTF. The organization would only improve from here, and what followed was even more successes. In the coming decade, the JTTF would thwart hundreds of new threats, some involving organizations and others single individuals acting alone.

Next time on law and order criminal Justice System.

At BI agents say that this investigation took them into a hidden culture of both hate and violence.

He had a framed picture of Timothy mcveay in his room. He idolized McVay and he wanted to do something similar.

He went off on the Somalies. He was calling them names, and he said he wanted to shoot some of them.

He was working on constructing explosive devices.

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Law and Order Criminal Justice System is a production of Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts. Our host is Anna Sega Nicolazzi. The show was written by Cooper Mall, Executive produced by Dick Wolf, Elliot Wolf and Stephen Michael at Wolf Entertainment on behalf of iHeart Podcasts. Executive producers Trevor Young and Matt Frederick, with supervising producer Chandler Mays and producer Jesse Funk. This season is executive produced by Anna Sega Nicolazzi. Our