CHIHEB WAS DUE into New York in a week and FBI Headquarters wanted to talk about the plan.
They called a meeting at the joint operations center in midtown Manhattan. I sat next to Nelly at the conference table and stared at a wintry, cold Hudson River. Ari, the assistant special agent in charge of counterterrorism in New York, went over the plan. The Canadians agreed to let him travel. Doug and two of his bosses were scheduled to arrive the day before Chiheb to monitor the operation. The embassy in Ottawa granted his visa on our request, and his flight was booked. The last hurdle was the money. We needed to show Chiheb the cash or the ruse wasn’t going to work.
Joey waited until the end of the meeting to spring it on Ari.
“By the way, we’re going to need two hundred thousand in cash to show the bad guy,” Joey said.
There was a pause as Ari chewed on the request.
“We’re not going to put that kind of money in this guy’s hands,” Ari said. “There’s no way.”
Ari was worried Chiheb was going to steal it, but we assured him Chiheb would never be alone with the money. And even if he was, it would still be safe.
“You don’t need to worry, because that money is safer with him than anyone in this building,” I said.
Ari cocked his head in disbelief. He was used to dealing with criminals, not terrorists.
“Listen,” I said. “He is not a criminal. I understand what he is doing is criminal. But he believes this money is going to help his cause. He would die before anyone touched it, let alone spent it. I’ll make you a bet. Not only will he protect that money, I bet he finds a way to add whatever he has in his pocket to it.”
Ari just shook his head.
“You’re out of your mind,” he said.
I shrugged.
“Gentlemen’s bet, then,” I said.
“No,” he said. “Put your money where your mouth is. Twenty bucks.”
I held out my hand.
“You’re on.”
We shook on it and then Ari turned to Joey.
“Approved,” he said.
As we walked out of the conference room, Joey patted me on the back.
“Good job,” he said. “And it only cost you twenty bucks.”
“I think he just made a sucker bet,” I said.
Nelly nodded his head in agreement.
“I think you’re right.”
The day before Chiheb’s arrival, I met with Osman, a new undercover officer. I’d planned to use Yasser, my Palestinian buddy whom I traveled overseas with to meet the Sheikh, but he wasn’t available.
Osman grew up in the Midwest and joined the FBI right out of college. Prior to the undercover school, he was saddled to a desk. This was one of his first chances to go undercover as the courier sent by my uncle. We met in Brooklyn at a Buffalo Wild Wings near the Brooklyn Nets arena. We ordered lunch and we talked about Chiheb. I warned him to steer clear of religion. Osman is a devout Muslim and had trouble bending his religion to fit into the jihad ideology.
“Listen, this guy is hard-core,” I said. “Watch yourself. For the sake of this investigation, you can’t let him know you’re a true Muslim. You need to be a like-minded brother.”
“No problem,” he said.
“Do not correct him,” I said.
“No problem.”
“You’re the courier,” I said. “You just arrived from Egypt. My uncle sent you to bring back a suitcase.”
“The money?” Osman said.
“Yeah,” I said, putting down my iced tea glass. “But you don’t know what you’re carrying. You’re just here to get a suitcase and take it back to the brothers.”
Osman smiled.
“No problem,” he said.
“Good, I’ll call you in a few days and set up the meeting with the target.”
I kept in touch with Abassi via e-mail. He was still in Quebec City. But he was getting ready to fly to Tunisia. I wanted to firm up plans to meet again. Abassi suggested that we meet the first week in February back at his apartment to finish our conversation.
“Mark it down,” I wrote to Abassi. “I will be up there for business and I’d love to meet for dinner, dear brother.”
“I can’t wait, brother,” Abassi wrote back. “We have a lot to discuss.”
But first I had to pick up Chiheb. His flight landed at LaGuardia Airport around four fifteen in the afternoon on December 15, 2012. I met him outside the terminal. I could see his smile through the scruff of his beard. He threw his arms around me in a bear hug.
“Good to see you, brother,” I said.
“God be praised, how are you, brother?” Chiheb said.
“I’m well,” I said, walking him toward the car.
I put his bag into the back of my Mercedes C300. I purposely chose the smaller sedan because I wanted to have a nice car, but not too flashy and certainly not wasteful. I took the Grand Central Parkway to Interstate 278 to the Manhattan Bridge. We were headed for lower Manhattan. Chiheb was staying at one of my rental properties next door to Ground Zero. It was not done on purpose. It was the only apartment the FBI could get on short notice. As I drove, we talked about Abassi. Chiheb had come around a bit and saw some value in meeting with him.
“He is for real,” Chiheb said. “Raed is gone and we need to see what he can do to help us.”
“We need to talk about that,” I said. “That first week in February I’m going back up there to talk to him. I think we should do that together.”
That was my backup plan if the Canadians didn’t file the paperwork to get a wire for Abassi. If Chiheb was in the room I could record. Chiheb agreed and then changed the subject to the American sleeper.
“I got great news from Abu Hamza,” Chiheb said. “Our dear brother is back from Afghanistan, but he is now in Syria helping the brothers.”
I was annoyed.
“You’re here for a week, brother,” I said. “We need to set this meeting up ASAP.”
“I have a number,” Chiheb said. “We can try calling him tomorrow.”
After dinner, we went back to Chiheb’s apartment and made several calls to the number. None went through. We didn’t have the correct country code. I promised to figure out the right one and left Chiheb to pray.
The next day we planned to go to dinner near my apartment in midtown, but not before we went over the plan for the money and courier.
“My uncle sent his best friend’s nephew instead of the Palestinian brother,” I said. “He is good. He is just a little green and gets a little nervous.”
I set the stage for Osman to be nervous on his first major undercover operation.
“Do you trust him?” Chiheb said.
“I do,” I said. “I trust his family. His heart is in the right place. He is a good Muslim brother. He is just like us.”
If I trusted him, so did Chiheb.
“Here is how it is going to work,” I said, quickly moving to the next topic. “This is the way we’ve done it in the past. We have a guy in customs in Cairo …”
“Is he your guy?” Chiheb said.
“My uncle’s guy,” I said. “My uncle will be there waiting to receive the package, because we’ve lost money in the past and this can’t be lost.”
“Okay, what is the plan for us?”
I told Chiheb about my baggage handler at JFK—another FBI undercover—who would make sure the suitcase got on the plane.
“I need you to help me pack the suitcase and make sure Osman doesn’t know what is in it,” I said. “All he knows is he has to deliver the suitcase. You’re going to help me hide the money.”
“Perfect,” Chiheb said, content with being one of the trusted brothers in the operation.
“We’ll count the money once I get it,” I said. “You need to watch over it until it gets to the airport.”
“With my life,” Chiheb said.
He would never question why I needed his help, especially when it was for the cause.
“You’re another set of eyes,” I said. “I’m trusting you. The brothers are trusting you with the money. We have to deliver it.”
I told Chiheb that Osman was around for dinner if he wanted to meet him. We planned to go to the Palm, a steakhouse on West Fiftieth Street. It was only a few doors down from my apartment.
Chiheb hesitated.
“I don’t know about dinner,” he said.
I didn’t blame him. He wanted to talk with Tamer more and not waste time on a courier. I was happy, because I wasn’t sure how Osman would do over a long dinner.
“Once we’re done with dinner, I’ll text him and he can have dessert,” I said.
“Okay,” Chiheb said.
We got to the Palm around eight. One of the waiters remembered me from past visits and greeted me warmly. He was Egyptian and spoke Arabic. I purposely got to know him prior to Chiheb’s arrival in an effort to show Chiheb that I was a regular at a restaurant near my apartment.
Chiheb studied the menu.
“Have the lobster, brother,” I said.
He put down his menu.
“I’ve never had it before.”
“You’ll love it,” I said, ordering him the whole lobster.
There was no way he could eat the whole thing. It was my solution to waste not, want not. I couldn’t have him scooping food off of a plate again. The lobster arrived on a white plate. It was bright red and wisps of steam rose from its shell. Chiheb slid the lobster bib over his head as I showed him how to crack the claws and pull the meat out with a little silver fork.
He smiled as he chewed.
“It’s good,” I said. “Right?”
“Masha’Allah, ” he said. “It is wonderful.”
Between bites of my lobster, I watched Chiheb crack open the tail and another claw. By the end of the meal, he was rooting through the pieces of shell to make sure he got every morsel of lobster meat. As the waiter cleared the table, Chiheb grabbed the butter from the bread basket. He held it in his left hand at an angle and started to spoon it into his mouth with two fingers from his right hand.
“You know that’s butter, right?” I said.
Chiheb looked at me and then went back to eating it.
“Thank God,” he said.
I understood the idea of not wasting food, but now he was eating butter. I took out my phone and sent a message to Osman.
“Come now.”
Osman was nervous when he arrived. He wouldn’t sit down until I motioned to the empty chair. Chiheb didn’t take his eyes off him. The Arab Santa was gone. I had flashbacks to our flight from Houston to San Jose. Chiheb ran through the hadiths, listening closely to Osman’s interpretations. When I could, I answered or guided the conversation away from Osman so all he had to do was agree. By the end of dessert, I was exhausted.
“We’ll see you tomorrow at my apartment,” I said. “I’ll call you when we’re ready.”
“Great,” Osman said, shaking my hand and Chiheb’s before leaving the restaurant.
As Osman walked out, I looked at Chiheb.
“What do you think?”
“He is a little nervous,” Chiheb said.
“I know he is,” I said.
“May Allah protect us,” he said.
I paid the check and we walked out to the curb. I didn’t want to go back to the apartment and have the same conversations over again. Times Square was only a few blocks away and it wasn’t too cold.
“Want to go walk this off? I’ll show you Times Square.”
We started down the street toward the massive video screens. Chiheb was silent as the lights of Times Square got brighter. We joined the crowd heading toward the pedestrian plaza. Neon illuminated signs and “zipper” news crawls surrounded us. I let it wash over him.
“That’s where the ball drops?” Chiheb said, getting his bearings from the countless movies and shows filmed there.
Times Square was crowded with shoppers getting ready for Christmas. Chiheb kept his eyes up at the buildings and the neon. I watched as several times he cocked his ear, picking out some of the languages spoken around us. We stopped near a McDonald’s and he started to scan the tops of the buildings.
“This is the center of the universe of the West,” he said. “What a brilliant place to have an operation. Operation Happy New Year.”
I pretended not to hear as we walked back to the parking garage.
“We’ll need multiple bombs,” he said. “The best-case scenario would be vehicles, but the security could be tight around New Year’s Eve.”
I looked over at him as we drove down Eleventh Avenue toward his apartment.
“It’s two weeks away,” I said.
“Not this year,” he said. “Next year. It will take some time. I’m going to have a job for you. Can you come here for New Year’s Eve?”
“Sure,” I said. “I live here.”
“You need to take pictures from an elevated location,” he said. “Show me what the security looks like.”
“Okay,” I said.
I stopped listening before we reached Canal Street. At his apartment, we tried El Massoul’s number again, this time with the correct country code. But a recording told us it was disconnected. Frustrated, I told Chiheb I was tired. I suggested that he reach out to Abu Hamza again and figure something out, because we were running out of time.
I picked up my peacoat off the couch.
“We’ve got a lot of work tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll pick you up in the morning.”
When Chiheb got into the car the next morning, he started quizzing me about who was getting the money.
“Are you sure this money is going to the mujahideen and not the munafiqeen?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
“Who is it going to exactly?”
“Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,” I said.
“Not Hamas.”
“No,” I said.
The divisions among groups like al Qaeda, ISIS, and Hamas are stark. They all use radical Islamic teachings to brainwash their followers, but that is where the commonality stops. Each group has its own goals. Hamas is a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic group whose primary target is Israel. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is a franchise of al Qaeda based in Yemen whose primary target is the United States. All the groups compete for the same pool of recruits. Chiheb was recruited into al Qaeda and didn’t want to support a competing group.
“I have five thousand dollars in my checking account,” Chiheb said after I convinced him the money was going to a group he supported. “I want to give half of it to the brothers.”
“Chiheb, I’m sending two hundred thousand dollars,” I said. “All due respect, that is plenty.”
“Are you telling me I can’t do this?” he asked, an edge in his voice. “This is for Allah. I have to. I have an opportunity to send money.”
I shook my head. I didn’t care that he was about to give the American government money. I just didn’t want to add anything to the plan.
“That’s too much,” I said, turning into the parking garage of my apartment building.
“I insist,” he said. “Don’t stop me from getting this credit from Allah.”
“Okay,” I said, closing my door and heading for the elevator. “How are you going to get the money?”
After an hour on the phone with his bank in Montreal, Chiheb withdrew slightly more than a thousand dollars from an ATM across the street, because that was the most they would allow him to take out in one day. We wrapped it up with my two hundred thousand. When we were done counting and wrapping it in bundles, Chiheb took out a twenty-dollar Canadian note and added it to the pile. That was all the money he had in his wallet.
The suitcase had a hidden compartment in the base and we packed the money inside. I called Osman to come pick it up and ordered a pizza for lunch. While we waited for the pizza to arrive, Chiheb watched as Osman transferred his clothes from his suitcase into the one with the money. Before lunch, we prayed. Chiheb acted as the Imam. Osman and I removed our shoes. Chiheb kept his on as he recited the call to prayer.
“He’s got his shoes on,” Osman whispered to me.
To a mainstream Muslim, that was frowned upon. But to a mujahid, it was accepted. I shot him a look like I wanted to strangle him. No religion talk.
After prayer, we sat around the table and ate pizza. Chiheb laid out his rationalization for killing innocent people. Osman flinched at each interpretation. I could tell he wanted to argue. Finally, Osman had enough.
“Time out,” he said.
Osman started questioning everything. He broke cover and stumped Chiheb using my father’s rationale. Chiheb had no answer for why his views violated the Prophet’s rules of war. I was proud of Osman as a Muslim. But at that moment, I wanted to smash his face. Shut it the fuck down and finish the operation, I thought as the conversation got heated.
“Alright, guys, we’ve got to get going,” I said, breaking up the argument.
Chiheb shot me a look like he wanted to talk. I gathered up the pizza boxes.
“Hey, Osman, can you take these pizza boxes to the trash chute?” I said.
Chiheb pulled me aside after he left.
“What’s up?” I said, knowing damn well what the problem was.
“Are you sure you trust this guy?” he said. “Can he be trusted?”
Chiheb wanted to know how Osman, who clearly believed in mainstream Islam and was possibly munafiqeen, was chosen for such an important job.
“He is young and naive,” I said. “He is on his way. Just like the brothers you introduced me to in Montreal. He is close. He is being converted. He is a good soldier right now, but he is still confused by the munafiqeen mind-set. He is okay. Trust me.”
Chiheb didn’t say anything at first.
“I don’t trust him,” he said as he waved his finger in my face. “May Allah watch over us.”
Chiheb sat down on the couch as I put the last of the dishes in the sink.
“He probably couldn’t find the trash chute,” I said, hoping to catch Osman before he came back to the apartment. “I’ll be right back.”
I grabbed my key and met Osman in the hall.
“No more religion talk,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
He looked down at his shoes and started to explain his actions when I gave him a throat-slash gesture. I was still wired.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
“It’s time for us to go,” I said. “Got it? Silent ride to the airport.”
Osman and Chiheb avoided each other as we rode down the elevator. A car driven by another FBI agent was waiting to take us to the airport. The (FBI) baggage handler met us at the terminal so Chiheb could see him.
“Wait with the car,” I told Chiheb. “I’ll get Osman checked in and be right back.”
The next morning, I called Chiheb and told him the money arrived safely and my uncle was taking it to the Sinai Peninsula to give to the brothers. Chiheb was fired up after being challenged by Osman. I spent hours listening to him rail against everything. It was six hours of hate.
By dinner, I’d had my fill. All I wanted was to identify the American sleeper. But Chiheb was focused on Operation Happy New Year. The U.S. attorney was ecstatic. He had listened to the previous day’s recordings and knew we already had a strong case against Chiheb. He’d gifted us by putting his own money in the suitcase and verbally earmarking it for a specific terrorist group. Now he was planning an attack on American soil, and the U.S. attorney wanted audio. I did my best to stay plugged in, but it got harder as each hour passed.
By the time I reached his apartment after dinner, I was fried. I parked around the corner and we walked the half block to the front door. The building sat next to the entrance to the 9/11 memorial. One World Trade Center towered above us. Chiheb stopped and looked up at the building. He slid his arm over my shoulder and pulled me close.
“Tamer, this town needs another nine-eleven. And we’re going to give it to them,” he said, rubbing his beard. “Come upstairs. I want to tell you about Operation Happy New Year.”
I saw red.
I could feel a pen in my jacket pocket. Every fiber of my being wanted to grab it and jam it into Chiheb’s eye. I wanted him off the face of the earth. He died in my mind that night. Any concern I had for the human inside that monster was gone. I shoved him away. He looked at me funny.
“You know what, brother, I’m not feeling good tonight,” I said, turning back toward the car. “It might be something I ate.”
“Are you okay?” Chiheb asked, not sure how to read my body language.
I started to walk away.
“Just an upset stomach,” I said. “See you tomorrow.”
I got to the safe house on the west side first and sat by the window. I left the lights off. I felt like I had let everyone down. It was my job to separate my personal feelings from the goals of the investigation. My anger was turning to shame. I was not a professional undercover that night.
Joey arrived a few minutes later.
“Can I turn the light on?” Joey said.
“Sure.”
“Are you okay?” Joey asked.
“I fucked up, bud.”
“No you didn’t,” he said, failing to be convincing.
“I fucked up. I know I fucked up. Are they losing their shit?”
Joey shifted in his seat.
Everyone in the operations center was listening in on our conversations. A known terrorist was about to lay out a plot to attack the United States and I walked away. I found out later the U.S. attorney listening to the wire lost his shit. He should have. I failed.
“Fuck them,” Joey said. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I will be.”
Joey pulled out a tin of Copenhagen Long Cut Straight.
“Put a pinch in,” he said, switching off the light. He sat in silence for the better part of an hour as I collected myself. I didn’t want to talk about the case anymore. I didn’t want to talk about killing people. I didn’t want to be fake.
I finally pulled the wad of Copenhagen out and looked at Joey.
“Tell them they’ll have everything they need tomorrow morning.”