“Alhamdulillah.”
“He wanted to kill and cut the throats of anyone that was in the US against his country. He wanted to take the whole building down.”
“When he dialed the number, it would detonate the device and murder thousands of people right in front of him.”
Adrenalinefueled manhunts, tactical takedowns, highstakes games of cat and mouse across America. Elite teams of FBI agents are on a mission to hunt down the most wanted criminals in the country. Every day they put their lives at risk to save yours.
This is law enforcement to the extreme. This is FBI takedowns.
“working in counterterrorism. I think the the most haunting thing is a lone terrorist or homegrown violent extremist that may start researching other individuals that are like-minded online.”
“The subjects that we identify online are extremely dangerous because of the anonymity they have. But we don’t really know who they are, where they are.”
“They could be in your backyard.”
“They could be at your church. They could be at the mall. They could be anywhere. They’ll attack anybody anywhere at any time.”
“They’re absolutely some of the hardest people to track. They’re the number one threat in the United States as we see it right now.”
“And when it comes to fighting terrorism on American soil, the FBI’s joint terrorism task forces get the job done. The joint terrorism task forces are the action arm of the counterterrorism division. JTF provides that nexus between the American law enforcement community and the United States intelligence community to bring this one team concept to the war on terror.”
“Their critical mission, identify potential attackers and neutralize the threat. Trouble is, the plotters are hiding deep in the shadows of cyerspace.”
“Al-Qaeda, like any modern organization, morphs, stays current, and to get their message out, they’ve gone online.”
“As part of those hunting strategies, we have to be online where so much of the radicalization occurs.”
“The FBI never stops monitoring extremist forums, trolling for terrorists planning the next attack on America.”
“Hey, Agent Smith, come take a look at this.”
“And in early 2009, an intelligence agent hones in on alarming posts from an anonymous user, calling himself Aba Alubi.”
“What made this subject stand out were two things. First of all, he made very clear that he was in the United States. Secondly, that he wanted to attack and that his motivation for that attack was to serve as a soldier of al-Qaeda to personally serve Osama bin Laden.”
“Once he started mentioning as far as carrying out attacks in the United States and wanting to be a part of that, then that became very concerning to us.”
“It’s called beaconing. He’s signaling to other extremists, hoping someone will help. This jihadist burns for action and wants tools and training to launch his attacks on America.”
“Can you pull up the source?”
“Yeah.”
“The fact that he was specifically asking for tools for these weapons uh was very concerning.”
“Looks like he’s located in Italy, Texas.”
“Italy, Texas.”
“It was critical to ascertain who he was and where he was.”
“Yes. Give me the Dallas field office.”
“and to begin the more in-depth assessment of whether uh he posed a threat.”
“Morning, gentlemen. It’s a new case we’re looking at.”
“FBI analysts track the jihadist post to the IP address of 19-year-old Hassam Smati outside Dallas, Texas.”
“Jordanian citizen, as you will see, it’s located in Italy, Texas, right off I35.”
“An attack in the state’s third largest city could claim thousands of lives.”
“Tom Petroski, supervisory special agent of the North Texas Joint Terrorism Task Force, orders his agents to build Somati’s threat profile.”
“I’d like you to be prepared on this matter tomorrow morning.”
“Joining the team is Dallas police detective Mitch Bird.”
“They informed Dallas that there was a potential terrorist in Italy, Texas, which is a little suburb of Dallas about an hour south.”
“I’ve spent my entire career in Dallas, so I know the city pretty well.”
“He has repeatedly made bomb threats and terrorist threats online.”
“These posts were a lot more expressive and a lot more threatening than most other posts that are read online.”
“Make sure we read over everything. We do not want to miss anything.”
“This person said that they wanted to cause harm to the US and that they were here for the purpose of committing an act of jihad. He had a specific interest in Osama bin Laden and that was a big factor in him doing what he wanted to do on this.”
“Do what you guys do best.”
“I’ll see you in the morning.”
“The next step, put eyes on Smotty and track his every move.”
“He worked at a rest stop along I35 corridor. People traveling from Dallas down to San Antonio, Austin, and back and forth. How’s the guy going through?”
“That afternoon, I happened to be driving to San Antonio on another matter. So, I stopped in the convenience store and noted Somati was working the cash register.”
“Have a nice day, miss.”
“Thank you.”
“My first take was that he was a gregarious, outgoing, talkative young man as I observed him from across the convenience store. Very unremarkable in any other respect. It’s very common for it not to be obvious on first glance. I often compare the homegrown violent extremist to the pedophile who may be living a very normal life and appear very normal.”
“Have a good day.”
“How you doing, sir?”
“Good. How about you?”
“And certainly understanding that they need to conceal the monster within.”
“Come back.”
“Thanks.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Sensing they’re on to something big, agents begin surveillance on Somati’s home. But tailing him isn’t easy. Haley, Texas is a very rural community where everybody knows everybody. So we had to make sure that the people we use were able to blend in but still able to surveil Serati wherever he went in that area.”
“Keeping tabs on Smotti is not enough.”
“Hey, how are you?”
“Petroski’s team has to get up close to confirm’s deadly intentions against America.”
“Albe the posting is alarming. It wasn’t a crime. he couldn’t be arrested for simply exercising first amendment freedom of speech and we didn’t actually see him using the computer and so we had to tie an actual person to the posts themselves we could watch we could conduct surveillance of him we could read his postings to really understand his true intention we needed to engage him in a conversation”
“tell him we are encouraged by his enthusiasm”
“agent Petroski doesn’t wait long. He orders an Arabic-speaking undercover agent to email Smotty directly to probe how far he’s really willing to go.”
“We needed to initiate conversation to assess him quickly before anyone else did.”
“We are convinced he has the talent.”
“We want to make sure that he is not meeting up with any other groups.”
“With our assistance, we can provide him”
“or he is actually going to do an actual attack on an American or an American facility. We are the only organization that can provide him with this opportunity.”
“Waiting for Smotti to respond is nerve-wracking, but it buys the team time to dig up everything they can on him.”
“The intelligence team in Dallas put together a good background on Somat indicating that he was a Jordanian national.”
“The town in Jordan he is from very peaceful, very tranquil, so he had a a pretty stable background.”
“Smotty’s relationship with his father was close, but then that disintegrated with the divorce with his parents.”
“After his mother dies, Smarty is sent by his father to the US where he dreams of building a new life for himself. Relationship with his father after his mother died was very negative. He didn’t have any type of base that he could plug into either with family or among those around him in Texas. That’s when the taking time bomb started taking off.”
“Angry and aimless, Smotty hates his new home and starts fantasizing about hurting Americans. He is ripe for radicalization. Like a loner drawn to gang culture, Smotti cops an attitude known as jihadi cool.”
“Jiadi cool is the glamour that goes along with the the violence that was occurring overseas in Iraq and in Afghanistan.”
“Rejecting the peaceful tenets of his religion and notions of nonviolent jihad. Smotty chooses to follow the militant path of al-Qaeda.”
“what he was consuming online and how he was being inspired by Elkcata. In one way, shape or form, he was going to carry out a violent act.”
“After weeks of unblinking surveillance and online tracking, agents get him to bite.”
“Sir, sir, he responded.”
“Ham Smotti replies to the undercover agents email. It’s taken two months to finally hook him. And if the FBI fails to reel him in, Americans will die.”
“It’s taken 2 months of hard work and cleverly disguised messages. But the FBI’s joint terrorism task force in Dallas has successfully engaged wannabe American jihadist Hassam Smati.”
“Sir, he responded. We made somebody believe that we were an al-Qaeda cell. Our undercover that interacted with him online played a lieutenant, somebody who knew bin Laden, somebody who had access to bin Laden.”
“Smotti’s need was to find someone likeminded that could produce a tool for him. He said, ‘If you are with me, I want to meet you. I want to talk to you. I want to work with you. But if you are the intelligence/ the government, may you go to hell.'”
“After the first few email correspondences, we knew that he was progressing in in the radicalization process. He was bent on carrying out an attack. There’s no question poses an imminent threat that must be neutralized.”
“But lacking hard evidence to make an arrest, the FBI must keep him tethered to the online agent until he makes his move. Time was of the essence because it was easy for him to get handguns. He could have absolutely done an act of terror in a mall, an act of terror at his workplace. Uh so we wanted to process this case as expeditiously as we could.”
“Outside Dallas, the joint task force steps up its surveillance. But with each passing day, Smarty’s fears of being discovered makes it tougher to maintain visual surveillance. Especially in Italy, Texas.”
“Italy is a very, very small town. Everybody that lives there knows each other. They know their vehicles. They know what they look like. They even know their patterns of life. It was always a concern whether or not Smotty had come in contact with any of the people that were surveilling him or if he became suspicious of any of the undercovers or worse, Smotti’s plotting with real jihadists while playing the FBI for fools.”
“With each email message to the undercover agent, Ham Smotti steps up his call for jihad. The FBI must tread lightly. In reply, they can’t suggest violence or they risk enttrapment. They must wait for Smotty to fully lay out his plans.”
“If the FBI is entrapping people, then we lose all credibility. We want to make sure that this person is an actual threat and not a threat that we’re manufacturing.”
“The undercover adopted a posture of trying to talk somebody out of it or otherwise challenging uh his beliefs and motivations indicating he did not have to commit an act of violence.”
“Every single time Smarti came back more vehement in his mindset and that he wanted to kill and cut the throats of anyone that was in the US. He accepted no other mission, no other path of jihad other than mass murder in the name of al-Qaeda.”
“He’s reached the tipping point. Over the past 2 months, agents have watched more from a Shrill Online extremist to a jihadist with a violent mission.”
“Indicate that we would like to meet with him as soon as possible. We had taken the online portion of this investigation about as far as we could.”
“The next logical step is to find out if this person is that way when you’re face to face with them. So, we communicated through our online undercover that there was a sergeant of al-Qaeda here in the US that could meet with him.”
“Are they going to talk the same talk that they talk online?”
“If he’s making an effort to come to this meeting, then he’s actually serious about actually going through with something.”
“He can contact us here 24/7.”
“The team invites to meet an agent posing as a soldier of al-Qaeda who will judge Smotti’s dedication to the cause. Smotty jumps at the chance. Agent Petrosk’s task force secures a hotel suite in downtown Dallas for the meeting.”
“Marshall, let’s get that wide up here.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We did not want to go on Smotti’s turf. We didn’t want to be alone with him in his house because one of the factors was that we wanted to ensure that we could record the events for evidentiary purposes.”
“The setup was two hotel rooms side by side. In one hotel room, we were set up with cameras and in the other hotel room, we had the monitoring equipment as well as a safety crew to help protect the undercover employee.”
“During the meeting,”
“we weren’t sure what was going to happen.”
“Is he really going to show up? And if he shows up, who’s going to come with him?”
“It’s a highstakes case that lives or dies on the agent’s ability to convince he’s truly a soldier of al-Qaeda.”
“You have to have somebody that will relate to the individual.”
“Let me know when it’s up.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Audio is ready.”
“Great.”
“Someone that he can talk to, somebody he can believe. We found uh an experienced officer who at that point had uh around 20 years of undercover work.”
“Stay on him. He’s early.”
“There’s a number of ways this could have gone badly very quickly. We had a plan for those.”
“Stay on him.”
“So, most important is to make sure he’s not speaking to anybody else.”
“One of the fears was that he would sniff out his meeting and and take vengeance on our undercover agent. No visual on a weapon. Be alert and stay quiet.”
“There was no weapon visible, but somebody certainly could have been armed. And until he knocked on the door, we were all very concerned of the threat he potentially posed to the undercover.”
“Our number one priority is the safety of the undercover.”
“Three months of careful planning and cultivation come down to this makeorb breakak moment. At risk is not only the safety of one of their own, but the fate of potentially thousands of innocent Americans.”
“For three long months, the FBI has courted wannabe domestic jihadist Hassam Smati. And the ticking time bomb has finally agreed to meet with an undercover agent he believes to be an al-Qaeda operative. Next door, special agent Tom Petroski and his joint terrorism task force are secretly monitoring the meeting, ready to storm the room at the first sign of danger.”
“He was very confident, showed no fear, didn’t appear nervous, anxious, appeared cold and confident and they sat down and began having a conversation.”
“We were very nervous to make sure that this wasn’t some sort of setup.”
“If there wasn’t something that he was trying to accomplish,”
“if there was any oddity to him, was there something where he could become violent quickly?”
“Though an Arabic language analyst is recording every word, the other agents don’t know what Smati is saying, forcing Petroski to trust the translator’s body language.”
“I remember noting the non-verbals on my translator. As he would shake his head, his eyes might widen several times. He would look up and glance at me, indicating that what he was hearing was very, very interesting. So, we were pretty well packed in that room. Everyone was trying to be very quiet, making sure that we could listen and watch monitors to see if anything happened. Very tense for us, but even more so, we could tell for our undercover who was next door, who was in harm’s way.”
“Working without a script, the undercover agent convincingly plays his part while extracting what he needs from.”
“Samadei gave the reasons why he was wanting to do jihad and he showed this comfort level that caused a bit of an alarm for us and that he was so serious right away just upon meeting this person.”
“He was not happy with the United States. he was not happy with our involvement overseas and that he was in fact dedicated to doing a terrorist act within the United States.”
“Smotti’s chilling oath hardens the agent’s resolve to take him down. So far so good. Ham Smotti believes he’s found a sleeper cell to fulfill his dreams of destruction.”
“Smotti was allin. We decided that we had to make sure that we stayed on top of this every minute of the day.”
“Samati left the interaction having no idea that he had just spoken with the FBI and believing that he had cemented his relationship with this al-Qaeda sleeper cell.”
“I think everybody was kind of a little bit in shock about how the meeting went.”
“I pulled the undercover aside and I just said, ‘Look at just between us. Uh, what what do you really think? I’ll never forget it. He He looked at me and he said, ‘Tom, I just looked into the eyes of Satan.'”
“So, what do you think?”
“This one is going all the way. This kid is the real deal. This is going to go the distance. So, fasten your seat belts.”
“Within a day or two of that first in-person undercover, we resumed online communications with Somati and asked him what he thought he should do on behalf of the al-Qaeda sleeper cell. Samati at that point began his online reconnaissance of targets. He had made very clear in the first meeting that he wanted to attack.”
“Smati almost from the beginning keyed in on financial infrastructure. He was under the impression that we had a weak economy at this time and that any direct impact on that would cause the financial institution of the United States to crumble.”
“the first things he wanted to do was attack a credit card company. And when he did that, he brought up certain things that he would do, such as using a vehicle, parking that vehicle in a location, walking away from it, and detonating the bomb.”
“It definitely ramped up the concern level when he would do his own missions.”
“At that point, our assessment of him as a potential threat went up exponentially. Once we communicated with our headquarters on what we had, how it was moving, this became instead of the largest case in Dallas, one of the largest cases in the FBI.”
“[snorts] In order to keep close tabs on Smotti’s progress and ensure he’s too engaged to contact genuine al-Qaeda soldiers, the task force arranges several meetings.”
“We still had the concerns that he would be impatient or just sniff out that this wasn’t a uh a real al-Qaeda operative and that he could go out and do something on his own.”
“The agents are walking a tight rope. They need to convince Smati they’ll provide the tools for jihad while never suggesting violence.”
“Giving Sami an out, giving him reasons why he doesn’t need to do jihad violently, he can do it some other way.”
“That’s something that we have to do in order to prepare for trial. And that means putting their comrade in greater danger.”
“If he does find out that he is communicating with law enforcement, he could become very violent very quickly.”
“The part that gets scary is if we were to lose control. What in your head?”
“I think at that point then we’re very concerned of what could possibly happen.”
“10:19 the first call into 911 of a shooting at the Army Navy Career Center at 912 Rodney Pam.”
“While FBI agents are carefully courting, another domestic terrorist strikes. A lone gunman attacks a military recruiting center in Little Rock, Arkansas.”
“I hear about six, seven loud bangs. I looked over and uh there’s a black sports truck pulling out.”
“The driveby shooting is carried out by Carlos Bledsoe, an American who converted to Islam and became radicalized while teaching in Yemen. The crime invigorates to broaden his list of targets. He applauded the effort, but wanted to make sure that his effort was larger than going in and shooting up one location. And he believed a bomb would make that large impact.”
“Somati indicated he wanted to hit a military target because he was very impressed with the fallout of the attack that Bledo did.”
“The Army National Guard in Dallas would make a worthy target. But Smotty once massed civilian casualties, setting his sights on Dallas’s Lovefield Airport.”
“That’s when he came up with the potential idea of having multiple targets where he could leave a backpack, maybe in a bathroom at Lovefield, and then go to another location.”
“He noted that multiple attack scenarios overseas appeared to have a much more terrorizing impact uh than one single uh attack. He obviously put a lot of thought into this and was trying to imitate what al-Qaeda was doing overseas.”
“Somebody planned on putting a backpack type bomb with a shrapnel into a bathroom area of the airport close to baggage claim.”
“I walked through the airport and tried to put myself in somebody’s shoes and in his mindset and how I would do it and where I would do it. And then I figured out that it would be pretty easy to execute and that was very very frightening at that point.”
“For 5 months, the Dallas task force has been consumed with the careful monitoring of Hassam Smotti’s every move, but they’re far from finished with Smatty running loose through the city, handpicking potential targets. The operations demands are growing.”
“It was extremely stressful. Samadei at this point uh had been designated as a tier one threat and the dayto-day tasking of conducting surveillance of such a target was really stressing my team.”
“He could do anything without us being involved. He could decide that he wanted to attack somebody with a knife or he could find a gun and go attack any group.”
“You’re never 100% sure on what the subject is thinking. He can change his mind. He can do what he wants. it was time to pick up the pace and decide what we were going to do with Samati. He really was trying to find that perfect attack. This was not random. He he was putting a tremendous effort into this. And I remember he wrote finally saying, ‘This is it. I have found the target. I’ll prize you soon.'”
“Aspiring terrorist Hassam Smati is tired of talk and ready for action. After five months of plotting with undercover FBI agents, the jihadist has picked his target.”
“We were at the office and the phone rings and they said, ‘Hey, is somebody supposed to be coming up to Dallas to meet y’all?’ And we’re like, ‘No, we haven’t heard anything from him.’ Well, surveillance had followed him. So, we’re like, ‘Stay on him. see where he’s going.'”
“Obviously, our surveillance teams were very nervous when he was driving around different buildings in downtown Dallas. Especially in the Fountain Place building.”
“Fountain Place was a 60story glass skyscraper in downtown Dallas.”
“It’s a beautiful building. It’s one of the main cityscape structures that you see when you when you come in through town.”
“It’s also exactly the target Smarti’s been looking for, a major banking center.”
“A bombing of Fountain Place would be a 9/11 in Dallas’s eyes.”
“When he did his reconnaissance on foot, he took a backpack with him because he wanted to see if he could get that backpack into the building past security.”
“He knew exactly where he wanted to go. He knew how he wanted to deliver the device. Even as an untrained uh operator, he was making very astute observations and generated a very thorough report on what he thought of fountain place as a target.”
“Smotty proudly reveals his new target to the undercover agent.”
“Husami was drawn to bombing Fountain Place in downtown Dallas. First of all, because it’s one of the most prominent uh buildings in Dallas, but then also a very significant economic target. and he thought by taking down this big building he would again affect the kind of damage he wanted for the financial stability of the United States.”
“He made several comparisons to the World Trade Center in New York in explaining why he wanted to target Fountain Place.”
“So once he had his target, uh the conversation turned to what he wanted us to do for him.”
“The only thing he was missing was an explosive device.”
“He quickly realized that one backpack bomb in the fountain place wasn’t going to do enough damage.”
“So he decided he wanted a bigger bomb, a vehicle improvised explosive device. He knew there was a parking garage underneath.”
“I want a truck bomb. I want to drop the building.”
“His only problem, Smotty doesn’t know how to build a bomb.”
“So to keep him under their control, the agent agrees to build one with the destructive power wants.”
“that allowed us to make sure that the tools that were provided were something that would not endanger the public at all.”
“We could control the timing. We could tell him that the other brothers were working on the device and that it would take us some time to process.”
“Bent on mass destruction, Ham Smotti won’t be kept waiting indefinitely. But before the FBI can bring him down, agents need to build up their case by providing him with the bogus bomb as soon as possible.”
“It was an all office special. But everybody that had anything to do with the case all came together. So we used our special agent bomb technicians. We had people locally that worked hours and hours. Headquarters entities, tech agents. I don’t think any of us really saw our families that much to include the weekends. This case drove everyone.”
“While FBI bomb techs rigged the fake car bomb, Agent Petrrowski’s team must take one last precaution to strengthen their case and prove Smarty’s allegiance to al-Qaeda.”
“The in-person undercover explained to him that we had the technical ability to get an electronic recording of him to the shake, as he would refer to Bin Laden, where he was hiding in Southwest Asia.”
“The undercover agent encourages to create a video message for his idol Osama bin Laden.”
“He revered Osama bin Laden even greater than God Allah even though he was doing this ultimately in the name of uh of God for the agents listening next door’s pledge to bin Laden is chilling You are not going to believe this guy.”
“I love you more than my mother. I love you more than my father. I’m going to die for you. I’m going to die for al-Qaeda. Uh this is what I was put on this earth to do.”
“It’s just amazing. Frankly,”
“how could someone be so willing to kill uh the innocent masses, but at the same time love someone he had never met so much that uh he was willing to die for this guy.”
“It showed you his core”
“to make sure that Osama bin Laden knew that he was a soldier for al-Qaeda and that he was continuing on by hurting the United States.”
“That’s when you kind of turn on the game face and you know that he’s getting ready to commit this act. You’re ready to put him in jail.”
“The day has come to take down terrorist Hassam Smati. For 9 months, the homegrown jihadist has been plotting to kill thousands of Americans. While the FBI has meticulously built its case and a fake bomb to bust for good.”
“It was his day. He was happy to be there. He decided to dress up as a what he believed to be as a Texas businessman. He wore all black with a red tie and a black cowboy hat.”
“The bomb that was crafted for somebody was built by special agent bomb technicians in the Dallas FBI office. Every component was real except for the explosives. We used inert C4, but the wiring, the command detonating devices were all wired correctly. So that if it was adapted with a real explosive, it would have gone off.”
“It was hard to believe that he wasn’t backing out at that point.”
“He looked at it and it’s game on.”
“This guy’s committed. He’s on the move. He’s on the move.”
“Smotty leaves for the target 60story fountain place where he’ll plant the car bomb. Agents head to the takeown location, but they’re not to make a move until returns to trigger the bomb.”
“There’s a stairwell right up at the top of the parking garage, right where we wanted the undercover to park when he brought somebody back so that they could actually detonate the device. All we had to do is open the door and step out and we’d be right on them.”
“Surveillance keeps close watch as Smarty initiates his sinister scheme. Smotty would drive the vehicle down into the parking garage, park it in a location best suited to cause the most damage when it detonate. In the truck were several tubs of ammonium nitrate. Out of the ammonium nitrate were explosives that he could see, detonators, and lots of wires that were all leading to each other. It all led to an arming device that was in the middle of the truck right next to where he drove. We had come up with a 13-point arming plan. It was written all in Arabic. He would set the timer and then he would walk away from it and then if nothing else happened, the timer would tick down and then the vehicle would detonate. But he also told us that he wanted to be able to utilize a cell phone. He wanted to personally command detonate the device. in his words, like the brothers do overseas, when he dialed the number, when the phone rang, it would detonate the device and drop the building and murder thousands of people.”
“The undercover was set up a short distance away. And when somebody finished arming the bomb, locking the vehicle, and walked out of the fountainplace building, he was going to pick up Samati and drive him back to the parking garage where somebody would then detonate the bomb.”
“We had surveillance folks with eyes on But it was critical that Somati actually attempt to detonate the device.”
“After arming the device, Smotti rendevous with the undercover agent and for the first time he panics. He realized that the car bomb was not underneath fountain place directly and his concern was that it might not drop the building.”
“Somati wanted to go back to move the vehicle to the exact center of the garage.”
“He said to the undercover, ‘I I’ve got to go back in and put it in the employee parking where it’ll be directly under the building.’ And the undercover asked them, ‘Well, how will you get it in there? You don’t have an employee badge to open the gate.'”
“I’ll ram the gate, arm it, and run for it.”
“If Smaty goes back, it will jeopardize the take down.”
“Plus, there’s a fear he hatched a secret alternate plan, and installed a real bomb.”
“The undercover must get Smotty into that car.”
“The undercover was able to convince him, ‘No, it’ll it’ll still drop the building. It’s only slightly off. Not worth the risk.’ And they sped off.”
“While Smarty and the undercover return to the parking deck, the rest of the task force preps for the take down. 9 months of planning hinge on just a few fast approaching seconds.”
“We were actually only in the stairwell for approximately 15 minutes, but it seemed like hours waiting on this.”
“I was parked halfway in between the parking garage and fountain place where I could observe both. From my vantage point, I could see Samati in the undercover on the edge of the parking garage.”
“Smotti has chosen a prime view of Fountain Place. When he taps send on his cell phone, the 60story tower of glass will shatter before his eyes. Or so he thinks. Unbeknownst to Samati, he was actually dialing the arrest team of the JTF that were in a stairwell very close to him. And that was their cue to enter stage right and arrest him.”
“Our plan was to go out, control somebody, to take him to the ground, and to handcuff him. It was very surreal. None of us had arrested anybody who tried to bomb an entire building and kill thousands of people before.”
“A nauseating wave of lastminute doubt surges through the agents. What if Smotty has been playing them all along? What if he’s armed a different bomb to detonate when he hits that button?”
“We all remembered 9/11 very vividly. There was still a part of me that was hoping that he wouldn’t go through with this act of terror.”
“In 27 years of being a cop now, that stairwell is is a moment I’ll never forget.”
“We can’t see anything. We’re waiting on the phone to vibrate. After 9 months, I still hoped that he would just stop.”
“I don’t know if any of us were prepared when that phone started to vibrate. And I know I pictured 911 in my head. I pictured the boom.”
“I just took it and held it up to the crew. I remember seeing Mitch’s face.”
“I do remember both of us just having the same thought. I just can’t believe he did this. Then it was time to go to work.”
“To Smarty’s disbelief, the Fountain Place tower is still standing. He keeps hitting the send button.”
“Get down. GET DOWN. GET DOWN on your knees.”
“Even as JTTF agents swarm toward him.”
“He knew it was over. I looked face to face with him and I knew and he knew and the team knew that we had overcome.”
“9 months is over in 3 seconds.”
“It was just relief. I’m just glad it’s over.”
“It was an emotional dump.”
“Suspect is in custody. I repeat, suspect is in custody.”
“My team was safe. We succeeded. It was a moment I won’t forget.”
“After pleading to one count of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, Hassam Smotti is sentenced to 24 years in prison.”
“The joint terrorism task force not only foiled a terrorist attack, but created a model for future lone offender terrorism cases.”
“As successful as this was with respect to this one lone wolf, we won that day, but we had much, much more work to do. This is what the FBI, this is what joint terrorism task forces are here to do. If anyone out there is trying to hurt the United States, we’re going to do everything in our power to bring them to justice.”
