In the Shadow of 9/11

>> I was never good at being no type of scam artist.

This is the first time in my life I’m ever really trying to run a scam.

>> They got convicted on not what they were able to do but what they were able to say.

>> The question is, are they willing to commit these acts?

>> My mind can’t see that it’s the feds that’s pulling the strings.

>> They gave who they thought to be an Al-Qaeda operative exactly what he had asked for.

>> They had no money.

They had no weapons.

They weren’t even Islamic extremists.

(car door closes) >> What time is it?

>> 6:48.

I think he's just gonna be so happy to be a free man.

So happy to see his children.

>> Oh, man.

Damn, boy... (indistinct) >> 13 years ago, my face was all over the news media.

The FBI told me I was on "Larry King Live" the day I was arrested.

All right, let me get one more hug from everybody.

Now, I'm just the average person walking down the street.

♪ ♪ >> This what took place because of bad choices of words that he made.

And that's all he ever did was say... speak, talk.

Nonsense.

>> Batiste intended to recruit and supervise individuals to organize and train for a mission of war against the United States.

>> Narseal, he had good intentions, but he is also a good conman.

And when the two run afoul, this is what you get-- mayhem.

>> Federal authorities described the group as radical Black Muslims.

>> Their goal was simple: to commit attacks against America.

>> Just like the gang that couldn't shoot straight, they got convicted on not what they were able to do, but what they were able to say.

>> Six to eight people are now in federal custody after allegedly plotting to attack well-known U.S. cities.

>> The federal government is calling this bust a major victory on the domestic front in this shadowy war.

>> Next to being a pedophile, a terrorist is the next-worst thing you can be.

>> Narseal Batiste claimed his soldiers would, quote, "Kill all the devils we can."

>> An FBI informant promised them $50,000 if they pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda.

>> Federal Bureau of Investigation, they invented the players, they invented the theme, they invented how it was gonna go down-- they, they wrote this script.

They wrote this script.

>> They conducted surveillance, they conspired to murder countless Americans through attacks that would be in their words "just as good or greater than 9/11."

>> It can be just as good or greater than 9/11.

>> This is not the case that they want America to see.

There are, there are some serious terrorists out there that America needs to be concentrating on.

This right here was just a...

It was almost like a, "Let's do a dry run.

If we can convict somebody as lazy and sorry as this crew was, then we can convict anybody."

♪ ♪ (engine running) ♪ ♪ >> In 2005, I was the acting supervisory special agent with the FBI in Miami.

The domestic Al-Qaeda squad.

I was born in the Bronx, my brother and I.

Both my parents became addicted to heroin.

Which wasn't very unusual for that period in American history.

My father had been arrested a few times.

He was involved in a credit card ring.

Another time, he was arrested for, uh, narcotics.

Coming from that experience, you're always looking for an angle because everybody has a hustle.

♪ ♪ So I graduate high school.

How, I don't know, but I did.

Spent nine years in the military, went to school at night, and then I put in an application with the FBI.

FBI calls nine months later and I end up at Quantico.

(indistinct chatter) Got out in '92, ended up in Miami, and you wake up and ten years have gone by.

And then 9/11 happens.

On September 10, if we would have saw a movie on the events that happened on September 11, we all would have left that movie theater and said, "That is a phenomenal movie, but it could never happen in the United States."

And on September 11, it did.

And what did they use?

They didn't use bombs or weapons, they used box cutters and, and complacency.

We got sucker-punched.

>> On September the 11th, enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country.

The evidence we have gathered all points to a collection of loosely affiliated terrorist organizations known as Al-Qaeda.

(applause) >> Director Robert Mueller had been the director of the FBI for one week prior to 9/11.

He went to brief President Bush.

Within a minute of telling the president, vice president, and others, uh, about the 19 hijackers that we'd already learned about and everything, President Bush cut him off and said, "That's all well and, and good, Mr. Director, but I wanna know what the FBI is doing to prevent the next attack."

Director Mueller's job was then to take that mission, to take the FBI from that reactive crime-solving agency to a preventative national security agency.

>> Mr. Pistole, with respect to preventing 9/11, obviously, you get a failing grade.

>> So, the concern within the FBI immediately after 9/11 is that there were other either sleeper cells or there were other terrorist operatives in the U.S. And who else did they have positioned to commit a second attack?

And what, how that attack might manifest itself.

We didn't know.

Because there was a gap, uh, in the intelligence about what attacks might be taking place.

We realized, there are huge gaps that we didn't know the answers to.

One of the, the good things about the FBI's history was the ability to identify and develop cooperating witnesses and informants.

So, in the decade after 9/11, let's say, there was a great focus on developing human sources of information about attacks, potential attacks.

>> We would get a tremendous amount of intelligence in the form of leads.

Now, it's post-9/11, so each one of these has to be shaken out.

One of my colleagues comes in and he says, "Look, I have some information, um, from an informant that there's a group of guys in Miami, in, in Liberty City, that are conducting military training, that are interested in overthrowing the U.S. government, um, and that wanna meet Al-Qaeda."

♪ ♪ This was, you know, like a unicorn.

How does Al-Qaeda pop up in Liberty City?

(indistinct chatter) Some areas were high drug- trafficking areas, and there were shoot-outs all the time.

The group were part of this hybrid religious-militant organization.

They do military-type training, they do not believe in the laws of the United States.

They were basically anti-government.

So at this point, we're assessing the veracity of the informant's information.

The person he was referring to was Narseal Batiste.

(camera shutter clicking) Batiste was the leader.

We're still trying to determine what his motive is.

What is he really up to?

(shutter clicks) >> I wanted to be an actor.

It was interesting to see myself intrigue people over a character.

I went to modeling school.

I had a big interest in modeling and in acting at the time.

I always loved martial arts.

That's just come from watching Shaolin Temple, kung fu master movies, you know?

>> Narseal was the baby, he was the last one.

My mother had just had Narseal.

She came home from the hospital and put him in my bed and told me it was my baby.

That she don't change diapers and she don't fix bottle milks.

And for me to take care of him.

My mom and dad, they did Baptist preaching.

They was ordained Baptists.

At that time, my parents were very wealthy from my dad's construction company.

My dad was doing government jobs like building post offices, colleges, prisons.

So, he really blew up in his construction business.

What changed in Narseal's life, he met this man that wore these diapers on his head and carried a cane, and his name was G-G-G something 'thena.

He was telling me Narseal's the 33-something of the 76-something, that he's Jesus.

I said, "No, my brother is not Jesus."

Then the next thing I know, my brother start changing.

He start wearing diapers on his head and carrying a staff.

>> Well, I created my own style of religion.

You know what I mean?

My, my robes and what I wore was very unique.

Nobody else on the street wore what I wore.

My style had something like, um, much more of a martial arts- Egyptian type of mixture outfit.

I wore a lot of velvets and Indian cotton.

Sage rope.

A staff in my hand or a rod.

That's what I looked like.

An ancient type of holy man, looked like I stepped out of the Bible.

>> Naz, beautiful brother.

Beautiful brother.

You see, like, he fell out of Heaven.

You know, he had that innocent quality to him.

>> And we choose... >> (translating to Haitian Creole) >> To worship almighty God... >> (translating) >> On this day... >> (translating) >> You are trusting in God.

>> (translating) >> I've come here to tell you today.

>> I was born in the United States, but my mom and dad from Haiti.

17, 18, I got baptized.

And when I got baptized, I was feeling it, you know.

It was just something on me, I was feeling it.

And by that time in my life, I knew things wasn't fair.

>> And have power and authority... >> When we talk about leaders and who we look up to, you know, we looked up to Naz.

'Cause Naz knew the Bible, he spoke it, and he really was about it.

>> As a prophet of God.

>> He grew up, you know, real close to God.

So, we always was searching.

So, when he smiled, you know, it was something that he had that was almost innocent.

You know, he ain't, he wasn't spoil, spoiled like the rest of us.

♪ ♪ Naz was perfect.

There was no street in him at all.

>> I was, like, 19, 18.

I was the youngest one out of everybody, and I, I was still going to night school trying to graduate-- a high school diploma.

Naz was a Black activist.

Wanting to help out the community.

(shutter clicks) That's what you got off the top.

(shutter clicks) He was really... (shutter clicks) ...savvy when it came to the Bible.

Decoding it or making the Bible in, in laymen's term, making it so, the point where I could understand it.

He asked me to read a passage or something, he realized I couldn't read.

And then he was, like, "Okay, it's all right, you can stop right there," and...

Pulled me to the side later, he was, like, "Um, how old are you?"

I was, like, "I'm, like, I'm 19."

He's, like, "You really should work on that, learning how to read."

And I was, like, "Yeah, I know."

He's, like, "If you want, I could help you sometimes."

And I said, "Okay, cool."

(shutter clicks) I done introduced Naz to Naudy.

I done introduced Naz to my brother.

Pat knew Sunny.

Sunny brought Levi.

>> Eventually, they did become my followers, they joined the temple, and they agreed to give me the, um, the head position as the, uh, the high priest of the temple.

The actual temple was right across the street from a projects that they call the Pork and Beans projects.

There's a lot of gun selling, drug dealing, and a lot of violence that goes on.

And, um, drive-by shootings.

>> So we rent the warehouse.

But it was supposed to be a temple.

A temple.

We had Bibles, we had Quran, we had certain books, the Hare Krishna, we had certain books, 'cause...

It was, everybody was welcome to our table-- that was the whole one thing about why we called it the temple.

Because what's in a temple, is where you actually get in your temple and pray.

>> We wasn't Muslims.

But we had to understand the religions of the world and how they related to the people that we going to talk to.

So, 99%, we studied the Bible.

>> The temple was called Moorish Science Temple of America and Universal Divine Saviors.

>> It sounded cool.

Naz said, "The whole reason I came to Miami was to make all of you guys Moorish, Moorish Americans."

I'm, like, "Moorish Americans?"

>> You may not have heard of the Moorish Nationals.

It comes from a Black religious group that's been around for nearly a century.

Most of its members obey the law, but not everyone.

>> This man was arrested by police in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

But his wife claims the arrest was illegal because he is a member of the Moorish Nation.

>> He has diplomatic immunity.

Why are y'all doing this?

>> He was telling me, um, the Moorish Science Temple is, like, indigenous people to America and we have sovereign rights.

And I didn't understand what none of that (bleep) was.

I was, like, "What the (bleep) is sovereign rights?"

>> What snatch you up is when they tell you you didn't come over here just on no slave ship.

And the Moorish Science Temple, it mixed Christianity, Judaism, and Islamism all in one.

They are geared to help the Black community.

>> So we sitting down just building on the Bible and talking about making a great change, you know, and can we do it, can we actually, you know, change not just our condition, but the condition of our moms and dads and cousins and community?

>> You know, you can't come into the community if you ain't no strong man.

So, we came across, like, "Yo, we are soldiers."

You know, "We soldiers for God."

♪ ♪ >> They had uniforms that they would wear, paramilitary uniforms.

Khaki-type shirt and they would wear the same type of pants.

This is the Moorish star, you know, for the religion.

And then of course, them living in America, they have the American flag.

And what was so ironic about this whole thing is that the government tried to paint them as that they were un-American.

>> You know, we brought in experts to tell us, "Hey, what...

Which, uh, what flavor of Kool-Aid is this, 'cause we haven't seen this before?"

Something is not making sense.

You had a group of guys that were in Liberty City that wanted to meet somebody from Al-Qaeda.

Everything had to be followed up.

Because some of the things that fell through the gap that allowed 9/11 to happen, we could not allow for anything like that to fall through a gap again.

I had never heard of the informant, Abbas Al-Saidi.

Abbas had worked at a convenience store, you know, in a medium- to low-income neighborhood.

>> He started out as a snitch initially for drugs.

New York City has its own intelligence unit, which was focused on terrorism after 9/11.

They found this young guy from Yemen who's pretty street-smart to be somebody that they could use in their investigation in New York.

At some point in time, there became a threat that they considered to be a threat against him.

They encouraged him to move out of New York City.

And, and ultimately, he, he moved down to Miami.

>> I was 18 years old at this time, going on 19.

I just kind of was in love with him and did what he... told me to do.

And I trusted him.

And that was one of my biggest mistakes.

We had three dollars between the both of us and we got into a really physical argument.

>> He beats the crap out of Stefanie one day.

Uh, ends up in jail.

>> I had bite marks on my neck, bruises on my face.

Even though it was his first domestic violence, he went to jail for a couple of months.

He kept calling the connections that he had in New York.

>> He reaches out to the lieutenant in New York, "Hey, can you help me out, I'm in jail," yadda yadda, tells him the story.

The guy says, "Look, I can maybe, you know, reach out to the FBI and see if they might have an interest," and an agent comes and visits him in jail.

>> He told me that when he came out of jail, that the FBI was waiting there to go to work.

He found the brothers and that's all he needed to do the job.

>> I used to go to the corner store and see him all the time.

And he was extra-friendly.

He would try to act Black so much.

Smoking weed in the (bleep) store, blasting Tupac.

And I'm, like, damn.

I was, like, this dude is wild.

He was, like, "What's up?"

I was, like, "Man, what's up?"

I used to go over to the store all the time buying 'gars and (bleep) to smoke.

>> The weed that he had, the marijuana he had, was great substance and it was the kind of substance that I really enjoyed, so my friend that worked there would get it for me.

>> One day he see me with Naz, he, like, "Oh, you know the brother!"

And he switched it up, now he's, like, all Muslim and he's, like, "Yes, brother"-- he's not even using it, he's not smoking, he's not using the N word, he's not cussing, he's all Muslim now.

(laughs): He's a Muslim now.

I'm, like, "What happened?"

>> He seemed very religious but he seemed very street.

Like, street hustler.

So, that's why I related to him in a sense, because he had game, he had a street vibe.

>> One day, his cousin comes down, he, like, "Man, y'all don't wanna mess with Abbas, man," and then, we couldn't get it, 'cause we ain't thinking about no FBI, no police, or...

He, like, "Man, y'all don't wanna mess with him, man, he dirty."

>> I remember him saying, "Abbas is working with the police."

Now, I was, like, "What?"

>> He said Abbas was involved in setting people up with law enforcement.

And that if he ever gets a chance to, he'll fabricate a story on me.

>> That's where we met him.

>> The government said that when I met Abbas, I went into his store asking him, "Can you hook me up with Osama bin Laden or any terrorist guy?"

That's what they were saying.

And... >> Is that true?

>> No, it never happened.

>> What the informant initially said: "I met a guy who has a group.

They wanna overthrow the United States, they wanna meet an Al-Qaeda operative, and they wanna align themselves with Al-Qaeda."

One of the critical capabilities that a terrorist organization such as Al-Qaeda needs is resources here in the States.

If they could acquire the capability of a U.S. citizen or a group of U.S. citizens that are completely off the radar, well, that's, that's a pretty formidable threat.

So, at the time, I'm thinking maybe something was miscommunicated, misunderstood.

You know, one of the ways we resolve that is reconstitute the conversation and capture it on audio.

(tape recorder starts) >> This is Special Agent John P. Stewart with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Miami Division.

Today's date, October 3, 2005.

The time, 2:45 p.m. (phone calling out) (tape recorder stops) >> Hm.

It was just one of the worst, I guess you could say, things that could have ever happened to us in our life.

Because this cry from this man for Narseal to help him turned out actually to be what actually set everything for us in turmoil.

>> The turning point between me and Abbas is when I went to the store, I seen ICE there.

Immigration Custom Enforcement.

Abbas was rampaging back and forth in the store, "Brother, um, I'm in a lot of trouble right now, they, they're trying to deport me."

>> Of course, being the man that Narseal is, he would want to help at any given opportunity.

Narseal had told him, "If you need any help, reach out to us."

And of course, he did.

(sighs): And then from there started the nightmare.

(tape recorder starts) (phone calling out) >> How you doing, brother?

Eid Mubarak.

>> Just working like crazy.

>> What time, what time exactly are you gonna be at the temple?

>> Uh, I can't really say right now, 'cause I got so much work ahead of me today.

(tape recorder stops) The phone calls of him calling me just, just increased.

Instead of being at, like, every two weeks, he'll call me, see how I'm doing, it was, like, every day.

(tape recorder starts) (phone calling out) >> Um, I don't know, if you want me to come over or if you wanna come over, I'm, I'm, I'm free right now.

>> They just called me on a job and I have to go look at a job at the airport, so I'm gonna be leaving in about an hour.

He's saying he needs to meet me right away.

(tape recorder stops) >> And what was your response?

>> Uh, as soon as I get a chance to, 'cause I was very busy with work.

With the construction company.

(phone calling out) (voicemail beeps softly) >> Azteca Stucco & Masonry.

I loved the name Azteca because of the Aztec, um...

Ancient Indians were, uh, master builders, so I adopted that.

(camera shutter clicking) >> Pat was in the construction field.

Sunny was in the construction field.

Naz was a truck driver.

I was doing security and a little side hustle.

And we needed to make money.

Pat was, like, "I have an idea."

>> We gonna team up and, you know, let's put a small construction company together.

We got the skills, we got the determination, we got a willingness, and we got-- there's the need.

(shutter clicks) >> I'm coming home, dead tired, and man, I was happy.

I was, like, "Man, I'm doing something, I'm doing something.

You know, change is coming."

(shutter clicking) It was the first time in my life I was working towards my own business.

My own business.

(shutter clicks) >> I dived all in, I had all my cards in the construction game.

Sacrificed weeks without even getting paid, wake up... early, and go to sleep late.

And there's no money on the table-- I'm not getting paid.

>> We had several instances where we were not getting paid, plus the investment we already had made into, uh, remodeling the temple.

So we was at a financial... Just rough.

>> The biggest mistake he was consistently making was using other job money to cover other job because he underestimated this job.

The number-one rule in construction: every job pay itself.

You don't use money from another job to cover bills in another job-- that's bad business.

>> I just knew it became very overwhelming for him.

Oftentimes he would just not sleep.

Everybody wanted a, a better way of living, so he felt the pressure of all these families on him.

(shutter clicks) >> Test.

This is Balan, today's date is 11-21-2005.

Time is 1:38 p.m.

This recording includes A.K.A.

Brother Naz.

(phone calling out) >> Hi.

>> As-salaam alaykum.

>> Yeah?

>> How you doing, akhi, what's going on?

>> Hey, what's up, Ab?

>> Alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah, you okay, akhi?

>> Yeah, (inaudible), hanging in there.

>> I hear you, brother.

>> I've been working, but I'm gonna get off early today.

I'll probably be at the temple around 7:00.

>> Okay, so you want me to meet you at the temple at 7:00, or do you wanna come over to the, to the, um, to the house?

>> Uh... >> I mean, I'm in my house.

It's, it's more safe, you know?

Over here, it's, it's quiet.

>> Okay, I'll, I'll be there around 7:00, then.

>> All right, brother, thank you very much, man.

(phone disconnects) >> Abbas kept begging and begging, begging, he just kept promising, "You just don't realize the opportunity that I can have for you."

You know, "We're gonna do something really, really, really great.

Together, financially."

"I could really help you guys, if you just trust me just a little bit, just to come by and talk."

>> So it wasn't, "Let's see how we can build a mousetrap, put a big piece of cheese on there."

Listen, I don't even know if this is a mouse.

And if it is a mouse, I don't even know if this mouse wants any cheese.

So... We looked at Batiste and said he doesn't look like, you know, I don't know, he's...

He's saying these things that a mouse would say, but let's give him another shot.

And then we had nowhere else to go but to put the piece of cheese on the trap.

When you're sending an informant into a meeting, you're not giving them a script.

You're giving them an outline, with a, with some objectives to achieve.

Revisit this conversation.

Let Batiste explain in his own words what it is that he was asking Abbas for assistance in.

The outline for that was in the form of Abbas telling Narseal Batiste, "Remember you told me you wanted to meet an Al-Qaeda guy.

Um, well, I, I got the guy."

>> Abbas has a friend of his that he wants me to meet who's a financial guy, a rich guy, this, that, and the other.

And that he would help back us at whatever we needed.

But we need to follow his direction in this.

>> Okay, so he wants us to make sure that we're really good Muslims.

He's, like, "Yeah, you gotta be really good, good Muslim men.

And no Christianity, so, so go buy some Qurans."

I'm, like, "Uh-huh."

>> Abbas told Naz he has a uncle coming down who's a philanthropist.

And he love people who's helping the community.

That's what Abbas must have repeated a thousand times: "Man, my uncle like to help people who help people.

Don't worry about nothing.

He's-- that's what he do."

>> "I'm gonna talk to my uncle.

My uncle going to help you.

You know, he gonna get some money and we all gonna, you know, we're all gonna make some money."

>> We wanted the money, we wanted the funds, 'cause we... We were (bleep) up bad.

Nobody had the knowledge of how to run a business.

So we was (bleep) up what we was doing.

>> This is Balan, the date is 11-21-2005, the time is 7:58 p.m. (phone calling out) >> Akhi!

>> Akhi, how you doing, man?

That's Brother Naz, huh?

>> Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> I'm waiting for you, man.

How you doing, what's going on?

>> Rock on, brother, rock on!

>> All right, all right, I just don't wanna be missing anything, because I'm praying alone and I don't like it, man, I'm waiting for you for isha.

>> Oh, inshallah, we're gonna be there in two or three minutes.

>> Okay, inshallah, akhi.

>> Inshallah, man, salaam alaykum.

>> Mashallah.

(phone disconnects) The time is 7:59 p.m.

This recording is ended.

(tape recorder stops) (dog barking, crickets chirping) (knock at door) (indistinct chatter) >> When we get there, we're still in our work clothes 'cause we just left a job.

Me and Patrick Abraham.

(indistinct chatter) We were just kind of, like, clowning around.

(indistinct chatter) Just laughing and talking about the situation that Abbas was, was talking to us about.

>> Our intention from the beginning was to put this to bed.

He wants to meet Al-Qaeda?

Okay, tell him you got a guy, see what he says.

The expected response would be, "Well, what are you, what are you, what are you talking about?

I, I never-- I don't remember ever saying that."

>> He could have said, "Hey, listen, I, I was a little out of my lane, I was off my meds, and I don't know what you're talking about."

And then we would have happily have closed that investigation, because it wasn't like we were looking for work.

>> I thought Abbas was an avenue to relinquish my financial difficulty.

If I can just get the money, I can pay these immediate bills.

That was the only thing that kept driving me: that if I get that one handful of money, then it's over with.

I had no belief into, um, fighting any jihad, holy war, or anything that's going on in the Middle East.

And even though it was against my morals and values, I felt like if I could go through it and just get the money, then all of that would be washed away.

>> "Well, Tony, we got the tape."

"Okay, so what are we doing?"

"Well, he asked him, 'Hey, you remember when you wanted to meet the...?

', and he said, 'Yeah.'"

"So what, what are we doing now?"

"Okay, well, you, you're gonna have to put somebody that's gonna pretend to be Al-Qaeda in front of him."

>> My name is Elie Assaad, former undercover operative for United State, uh, government.

>> We identified an informant that had been previously used in another FBI investigation in Miami.

>> So, they needed to, to get somebody else, a little bit stronger, a little bit more forceful, so they bring in the closer.

The closer is, is, uh, Elie Assaad.

And Elie Assaad was a professional informant.

He used to refer to himself to his friends as Tony Montana from the, uh, "Scarface," you know, the, the evil character.

>> Are we ready?

>> You ready?

>> Hold on, one second.

>> Sure, okay.

>> When we initially got the information, we're looking at this, and we're, like, "Do we think that these guys really wanna meet somebody from Al-Qaeda?"

You know, common sense sort of suggested probably not, but let's see where it goes.

And so we decided on using him because we did not expect for it to go beyond that first meeting.

>> I'm good, I never lost a case.

I never lost a case all these years-- even sometimes, uh, when they have already on, ongoing cases, where they feel they gonna lose it, and they bring me to, uh, jump in and put it back on track.

>> Abbas is talking about Elie Assaad, but he's using his name as "Uncle."

Yeah, that's, that's his name.

Elie Assaad.

No good mother(bleep).

>> We rented a hotel room.

The Hilton, Downtown Miami.

Again, we set up surveillance so we could capture the meeting in video and audio.

I'm in a room close by, where we can monitor the meeting.

We also have a surveillance unit outside of the hotel.

>> Abbas continued to call us and call us until Elie Assaad came and he called me on that day to go meet him.

He initially promised me, like, around 20 grand or whatever.

He said, "I'll have it for you.

I just need you to meet him ."

>> The surveillance team says, "You're not going to believe this, but your subject is walking down Biscayne Boulevard in a white robe and a cane that's six feet tall, looking like Moses."

I got on the radio and I said, "Are you sure it's our subject?"

And they're, like, "It's, it's your guy."

I look at our team in the room and I'm, like, "What, what's going on?"

>> Room 612, I knocked on the door.

Assaad opened up the door and he says, "Come on in, brother, let's talk."

I figured I could be slick enough to say what I had to say in there and just get that money and break off.

>> Batiste doesn't blink.

He could have said, "Listen, I was just joking, I'm going to a Halloween party..." And fine.

>> Elie Assaad.

He had somewhat of an ego if you will.

>> I think he sort of felt he needed to guide this conversation more affirmatively, and at times I think he, he may overdo it.

>> I was never good at being no type of scam artist.

This is, this is the first time in my life I'm ever really trying to run a scam.

>> And he was, like, "All right, so what do you need?"

I knew that I had to make something up right then and there.

Course, I was not prepared for any kind of list, I didn't bring any kind of list, because this was just something I was just brainstorming on.

So I wrote a whole bunch of crazy things down on the list.

I needed knee-high boots, things that didn't make sense.

>> Yes, I put guns on there.

I couldn't name them, he kept asking me the name for them.

I didn't know any name of guns, 'cause I never owned a gun.

The list that he took he tore up several times, and eventually, there was a list that was made.

And he was, like, "I'll go back and talk to Abbas about everything and we'll work on getting the money to you."

I left the room.

I felt a lot of fear.

I felt like a big cavity was inside my chest.

Empty.

>> We're-- we're in the room and we're, like, "Okay, well, what happens now?"

So, we went back to the, uh, to the bullpen, and sat down and says, "Okay, guys, it's, let's whiteboard this.

What are, what are we gonna do?"

Okay?

We could go knock on Batiste's door and say, "Hey, listen, we... You met with somebody who said they were with Al-Qaeda.

Now, how serious are you?

'Cause if you're not, okay, you need to knock it off."

They could just... go off and not do anything for another year, or two years, or three years.

There aren't enough resources to commit to that type of, you know, monitoring.

So, we wanted to find out, um, how committed Batiste was to what he had told Elie Assaad.

>> This whole thing was way beyond me.

The rhetoric and the talk and the relationship with Abbas just went... way out of control.

My hustle wasn't even talking about terrorists at the very beginning.

I was slowly wielded into that with Abbas.

>> He really set these guys up.

There's really no other way for me to put it.

Abbas saw, from working in the store, that these men didn't have a lot of money.

And he also played on that, that they were poor.

>> They just kept getting pushed forward and forward and forward by Abbas.

And Abbas is putting all these ideas in their head.

It was like a big joke to him at home, it was... All he could do was laugh about it, it...

He thought it was hilarious.

He was, like, "I can't believe they think I'm really Al-Qaeda."

It didn't matter if that's how he was gonna get his money, if that's how the FBI was gonna pay him.

>> In the informant world, are they paid?

Of course they're paid.

They got paid expenses.

It wasn't, like, "Hey, listen, if you get a conviction, you're gonna get a hundred, a hundred thousand dollars."

That's not how we operate.

I finally get a call from Abbas telling me, "Look, um, Assaad definitely wants to meet with you-- he's got the money, you just have to pick him up."

He told me that, "If you gonna get the money, you gotta make it sound for real.

Talk big, like you gonna blow something up."

He said, "If you say that, they're gonna come through."

I was high off marijuana one time when we was riding in the back seat of a car, and he whispered over to me, says, "You got anything in mind you could say big?

Say, you're from Chicago, you should be able to come up with something."

And I thought in my mind, "Well, the Sears Tower, I guess I'll blow that up, how does that sound?"

And he cracked up laughing and he said, "That would be great."

>> That was the basic motivation of it, was, the whole thing was about who could scam who out of the money.

>> Did you think that that could go wrong for you?

>> Yes.

Did I linger on that thought?

No.

>> He's gonna give you money.

What the (bleep) you think the money is for?

Terrorism.

He wants you to do an act, just like a, uh, murder for hire.

What's present in our mind is, "When you give it to me, I'm not killing nobody.

This is mine, (bleep) you.

What you gonna do?

'Cause if you really that powerful, you would have had your own crew right here.

You ain't (bleep).

You just a rich mother(bleep) that is gonna give the money to us and then you gonna disappear."

>> Whoa, man, it's, like, terrorism.

You know, it never popped in our mind like, "Yo, this is something serious."

It's like these two (bleep) fake guys playing some (bleep)-damned game.

Batiste fighting for control over some damn donations, and it was-- it all made me sick.

>> I wanna prove these guys didn't wanna do this.

I wanna prove that this conversation that the informant may have misquoted didn't happen.

And this is what it is.

But that's not what happened.

Every time I thought we were gonna get off the highway, we hit another mile marker.

>> Yeah, he left yesterday.

>> (exhales) >> He left yesterday, so... >> I was taking a lot of marijuana substance.

At least an ounce every two days, and it had me living in a world of fear.

And fear was pulling all of this into a detrimental path with myself.

As far as trusting my own, uh, judgment of what's right and wrong, in terms of the scam, of going further or not.

>> Whenever I, I, you know, my attention fell on him, it's like, "Yeah, he talking, talking crazy.

You know, doing all of that just to get the, convince the guy to get you some money."

I was just trying to get into Assaad's head, you know, say what would make him happy.

'Cause he kept looking at me like, you know, "I need more.

Say something more."

>> This guy just make a crazy-ass statement and then, less than ten second later, he's in a basketball game.

The TV faced us.

So, a lot of time, you see me there, I'm, I'm looking, I'm watching the game.

I wasn't feeling good about what I was saying.

But at the time, I felt like I had to, to make up this story one more time for this guy.

So, I was just constantly just flipping through different pictures in my mind that I seen on the media.

I grabbed that from just end of world type of movies.

'Cause a lot of that was going on at the time.

Tidal waves type of movies.

>> (clapping) >> I'm not gonna do anything.

I'm just talking a whole bunch of crap here.

And I'm high.

>> If Batiste is having these conversations with somebody he believes is from Al-Qaeda, you know, Al-Qaeda would say, "Okay, maybe, maybe we should target the Sears Tower.

And, and, and by the way, you think we should, as the survivors run out, shoot them?

We didn't even think of that.

Write that down."

(laughs) >> Dude.

You, you, you really have to do all of that?

Did you have to really, doing all that back and forth with the guy?

"Yeah, he, he gonna, you know, I'm gonna get the money.

I'm gonna get the money."

All right, whatever, man.

>> I was sick of it.

Matter of fact, I remember, uh, when I went home, I got sick somehow or another, I was doing a lot of vomiting.

>> It's, like, "Okay, let's say he is crazy.

That's a dangerous dialogue."

We never expected, again, to get to where we ended up, because we thought at some point, he would say, "Look, this is what I'm...

This is all a charade."

>> Director Mueller was being briefed daily.

And we knew that this was included in his presidential briefs.

That brief is, "Look, there's a group of kids in Miami-Dade that formed an organization, that want to align themselves with Al-Qaeda to start a war in the United States."

>> The prosecutors wanted more overt acts.

So anytime there's a conspiracy involved, you have to have overt acts in furtherance of that conspiracy.

Anything that a prosecutor could use as evidence to convince a judge or jury that these people were serious.

>> A conversation is an act.

So, uh, you don't need to pick up a gun or, or let off a bomb or make a bomb for it to be an overt act.

I think the idea came from the FBI through C.I.A., and the idea was to have some sort of formal allegiance, some pledge to Al-Qaeda, to see if they went forward with it.

>> The idea was introduced to further test their commitment to their interest in aligning with Al-Qaeda by saying, "Well, look, you have to take an oath of loyalty."

♪ ♪ >> Assaad came by the temple.

He says, "The reason why I hold back the money from you is because you don't have a commitment."

I said, "Well, what do you mean?"

He says, "We gotta have some type of commitment between us."

And he didn't call it an oath or any, uh, swearing allegiance to any organization or anything.

He says, "Just a commitment."

So he says, "Well, we have to meet and we have to discuss this commitment some more and then we can proceed further."

I drove to his location and he got in the car and he pulled out this piece of paper and he says, "This is the commitment or the oath that I need you to read."

>> Listen, if, if you're not a hundred percent on board with this, here's your, here's your chance to get out.

Here's your chance to get out.

>> And so eventually, I read it.

>> I felt like it was stupid.

I didn't feel like it was a real Al-Qaeda oath.

Um, usually, when somebody wants you to swear allegiance to a dangerous organization, it's gonna be something, some type of dramatic thing-- they ain't gonna actually read from no piece of paper.

They're gonna probably, you know, do something crazy to you or have you do something crazy.

>> Were you not worried that this could all catch up with you very quickly?

>> Of course I was worried.

>> And yet... >> Yet I thought I could still, uh, make this deal go through.

>> The direction that was given was, if, if Batiste takes the oath, then you tell him that all of the members of his organization have to take the oath.

So, this was already pre-planned.

I felt like I was getting deeper into a trap.

That I might not be able to get myself out of this trap if I play this game even further.

♪ ♪ >> The approach that we took was to create a platform to capture conversations with the group.

That particular area where their warehouse was was incredibly difficult to surveil.

It was a high drug trafficking area.

So, we looked at telling Batiste, "Hey, listen, one of the things we can do is, we could get you a better training facility."

♪ ♪ The idea came up, renting a warehouse, pre-wiring it, so we could capture audio and video.

Then take that warehouse and identify three other warehouses, and tell Batiste, "Hey, listen, let's go, look at some warehouses."

>> I was told by Assaad, "I got a warehouse.

And we need to go look at one, you can pick out any one, and we'll just give it to you.

And that'll be a part of the financial help that we'll give you."

>> I mean, this isn't rocket science.

We got a really nice warehouse.

It's a Bentley of warehouses, and then two other warehouses that, you know, you wouldn't even wanna, you know, burn for insurance money.

The question is posed to Batiste, "Which warehouse do you want?"

>> We picked the one the FBI wanted us to pick.

How, how much control is... That's why I'm tripping.

The one we pick, we pick, is the one they had set up that they wanted us to pick so they'll...

This is how so much it was over our head-- they knew how to make us pick what they wanted us to pick.

>> There was a boat in there.

There was a van in there.

They both had keys, both had deeds in them.

It was all ours.

There was a, a refrigerator filled with fish and all type of seafood.

Like, ten pounds of shrimp.

I was, like, "Wow.

Somebody just bought this.

It was fresh."

>> And we flipped the switch.

We got a Title III wiretap intercept.

Okay, let's see what happens.

>> It was huge.

You know, so we had places for bunks, places to work out, places to store our equipment.

It was an office in the front.

So even for us, it was, like, whoa, this would be a step up.

(laughing) >> Did you talk to the brothers about this?

>> Uh, in part.

In part.

>> Do you feel you were being honest with the brothers at this point?

>> In terms of holding back information?

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah, I held back information.

>> Why?

>> Uh, I felt like they would have judged the situation to be not worth it.

And we could lose out on an opportunity that we've already worked ourselves into.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> Naz was telling us already that, "Don't worry about what this guy is saying.

It's just all bull(bleep)."

'Cause before then, we came from a construction site.

Before we went in here that day, we came off of doing a job.

>> I didn't give a (bleep) what he was.

>> Really?

>> I really didn't, that's what I'm trying to get you to, I don't give a (bleep).

We grew up from... nothing.

We grew up from watching people that we love die, get shot in the street.

We didn't grow up where everybody talked their way out of trouble.

We grew up, everybody got killed or got sent to jail.

So it's, like, our way of life was if he didn't...

If we didn't see him display this type of violence, then he's not on it.

He's not, he's just talking.

And he's full of (bleep).

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> The scenario was: Batiste would bring them in and each one would have to take the oath.

Not as a group.

Again, the reason for that is, maybe somebody is in that group, and they're not saying anything, but they're, like, "I..." You know, "I, I draw the line here."

>> I told them that he had some silly commitment that he was asking us to read, but don't take it serious.

>> Batiste already spoke to us, that's, no matter what's going on, he's just trying to get some money, to just, don't say nothing and just back him up.

>> Okay.

>> And I can't really tell you detail of how it transferred to the whole oath thing.

I just know it happened.

'Cause during this whole time, I'm getting high like a mother(bleep).

When he says that, I looked towards Batiste, I was, like, "Hey, uh, Batiste, is this cool, or this, this all right, man?"

>> We, like, gritting our teeth and we, like, we put our hands up.

You know, we backing up our man.

>> That's crazy, man.

>> Meanwhile, I was in the background just giving the brothers the eye wink for assurance, like, this is just...

This ain't real, it's just a game.

(indistinct).

>> Okay.

>> We barely had time to even think, and who gives oaths to Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda?

That (bleep) is for the movies.

This is what we see on TV.

It's not-- even if it was real, it wasn't real.

'Cause it doesn't happen where we come from.

>> Once everyone took the oath, Elie Assaad was instructed to introduce a plot by Al-Qaeda to blow up five FBI offices, Miami being one of them.

And that Al-Qaeda would like some assistance in doing reconnaissance and surveillance and other things.

And then provide a video camera.

Even though it didn't make sense to me, I was more focused on... Batiste.

That moment, I felt betrayed.

I felt betrayed.

And, and honestly, that was the one time I should not have hold my composure, because that time, I really wanted to punch him in the face.

>> I'm thinking, this, this straight bullcrap.

This straight bullcrap.

>> I felt really like Batiste crossed the line.

So, after everything finished happening, I took my wife, my kids, I took my kids out of school, rented a rental car, and left.

>> That soiled us to a point where...

I don't know if we, we would have, we was able to come back from that, that night, 'cause we started to lose respect for, you know, not just ourselves, but for Batiste and for what we was doing and...

It's, it was, it was ugly.

It was ugly.

>> They were very disappointed in themselves, as well as disappointed in me.

That all this had to happen from just one single thought of, what about if we can scam money out of these people?

It was just a nasty deal, a nasty scam, that nobody really liked.

♪ ♪ Assaad had rented a van for us.

'Cause I told him I didn't have any transportation or anything.

I figured that if I just ride around with a camera in my hand and then say it's all I'm gonna do, that would satisfy as far as the end of my hustle and my scam.

♪ ♪ >> Batiste, he, like, "Man, these pictures right here, you can get these pictures online, you know, we gonna just give it to him, and this is the last bit we have to ever do, to deal with this guy.

You know?

This is it.

It's over."

>> Assaad said, "You do this one more project for me, take the picture, I'll give you the money."

It was $50,000, too.

>> Do you know why he wanted pictures of those buildings?

>> Oh, yeah, he wanted to blow them up, oh, yeah.

That was no secret.

>> Did that bother you?

>> No and yeah, because...

I didn't believe it.

I didn't believe it.

♪ ♪ >> You know, I'm not scared as thinking there's a real terrorist group, really wants some pictures of federal buildings.

You know, I'm not scared of that, 'cause this guy is not no (bleep) terrorist.

Assaad.

You know, I was trying to put him together-- why is he doing this?

My mind can't see that it's the Feds that's pulling the strings.

I can't imagine, you know, a government agency put this together.

♪ ♪ >> They take footage of the U.S. attorney's office in Miami.

And I believe they took footage of the Miami Police Department.

We had only asked for reconnaissance on the FBI office.

Um, and then they provided that, that video footage to, to Assaad.

>> They could have gone to Walmart and took a picture of the back.

So, they could have done a number of things, even at that point in the investigation, but they didn't.

What they did was, they gave who they thought to be an Al-Qaeda operative exactly what he had asked for.

>> Batiste is mentally competent to represent a threat that would be of interest to somebody like Al-Qaeda or ISIS, you know.

They, they'd love to identify people like this.

>> And I'm not suggesting that they're gonna recruit him to put a backpack filled with explosives and walk into a mall.

The fact that he's willing to assist in a conspiracy to blow up a building in the United States is no less dangerous.

Whether that's acquiring SIM cards, or checking out library books, stealing a car, on its own, it's, doesn't seem like much.

But if the ultimate purpose is to conduct a terrorist attack, well, then, yeah, I think he does represent a threat.

♪ ♪ (camera shutter clicks) So the decision was made that we were going to indict Batiste, the other six members of his group, and arrest them.

One of the things that they did to earn a living was, they did stucco for buildings.

And so, we called a contact that has several rental properties in Miami and says, "Would you call these guys and see if you could hire them to do some stucco work for you?"

My understanding is, they were actually on ladders when they were arrested by the SWAT team.

♪ ♪ >> Breaking news out of Miami.

Anti-terrorism raids by the FBI, as well as state and local police.

Seven people right now are under arrest.

>> I had Minerva there, I had my daughter Narcassia, and my son Prince.

And they told me and my family to get on the ground.

They all, they held machine guns to my kids' and my wife's head and my head.

>> I was scared for my life or they would shoot us.

They had guns drawn at us, pointing at my children.

I thought it was just something of, as, a ticket he hadn't paid, or, or maybe a violation he had made somewhere.

>> It was, like, 50 agents.

They swarmed around me real quick.

They were, like, "Get on the ground, get on the (bleep) ground!

Get on the (bleep) ground."

I said, "(bleep)!"

I'm thinking of everything I did back in the day.

I'm, like, "Damn, they caught up with me."

And then the oath and then the pictures and everything flashed in my mind, I'm, like, "It was a setup."

>> Breaking news tonight, terror-related arrests in Miami.

>> FBI agents swoop in on a Liberty City neighborhood to foil an alleged plot to commit terror acts in Miami and Chicago.

>> I see my brother on television saying he's a, a terrorist.

>> Investigators say one of the seven, Narseal Batiste, was the ringleader.

>> "Ringleader"?!

I said, "A ringleader?!"

Oh, my God.

I said, "This boy can't even put cows in the pasture, how's he a ringleader?"

I'm, like, this is no way, and I mean, I was so hurt.

I just fell to my knees and I started crying, because I'm, like, "This is not true.

This is not my brother."

>> We now go back to Larry King's exclusive interview with the director of the FBI, Robert Mueller.

>> Federal agents are conducting a terrorism-related investigation in Liberty City.

That's an area of the city of Miami.

What can you tell us?

>> I can tell you that we do have ongoing operation in, in Miami.

We are conducting a, a number of arrests and searches.

>> Big concern?

>> Whenever we undertake an operation like this, we would not do it without the approval of a judge.

We've got search warrants and arrest warrants and the like, and so, yes, it's a concern.

(siren blaring) ♪ ♪ >> Good morning, I'm joined today by FBI Deputy Director John Pistole and Assistant Attorney General Alice Fischer of the Criminal Division.

The fact that there was a press conference where the attorney general speaks, it's a pretty big deal for the Department of Justice.

Seven men were arrested yesterday in Miami on charges of, of conspiring to support the Al-Qaeda terrorist organization by planning attacks on numerous targets, including bombing the Sears Tower in Chicago...

Listen, we're gonna go after people that engage in any, any kind of contact that's similar to this.

And I think that's a very powerful message, a very powerful tool, that the attorney general is using the stick of the Department of Justice to try to discourage this kind of behavior from happening again.

These individuals wished to wage a, a "full ground war against the United States."

>> The ridiculousness of that opening announcement by Gonzales is astounding.

I think I wrote that, "Wage a ground war against the United States?

This group couldn't wage a ground war against a jar of peppercorns."

>> It was clear that from the highest levels of the Department of Justice, that this prosecution had been approved and was being touted as, like, a success of the government's counter-terrorism program.

I think what struck everyone was that Alberto Gonzales seemed to know very little about the specifics of this case.

>> Did any of the, uh, men have any actual contact with any members of Al-Qaeda, that you know of?

>> Any...?

>> No.

>> Yeah.

The, the answer to that, the answer to that is no.

>> They had no money.

They had no weapons.

They weren't even Islamic extremists.

Ultimately, we realized it was a sting operation.

The way this all unfolded seemed very improbable.

Very forced.

And it really looked like the FBI had led these men down the primrose path.

>> Was there anything against the Sears Tower except this one apparent discuss... just kind of a mention of the Sears Tower?

Doesn't look like they ever took pictures or did any of...?

>> One of the individuals was familiar with the Sears Tower, had worked in Chicago, and had been there.

So was familiar with the, with the tower.

I wanted to distinguish this for the media, 'cause one of my concerns was that we not over-hype things.

That, you know, this is, this is another 9/11 cell, that they're ready, willing, and able to die and had means of accomplishing their attacks.

And so, I described it as an, that this was an aspirational group rather than an operational group.

In terms of the plans, it was more aspirational than, than operational.

>> I think the public and the media began to realize very quickly that this was just not a strong case.

That it was a weak case.

>> It looks like these guys were actually asking for material support from what they thought was Al-Qaeda.

These, these guys couldn't buy boots on their own?

They don't sound like very sophisticated or, or, you know, effective operators.

>> These guys didn't have, you know, the ability to, you know, blow up anything, let alone the Sears Tower.

>> Did you find any explosives, weapons...?

>> And you raise a, a good point.

You know, you know, our philosophy here is that we try to identify plots in the earliest stages possible, because we don't know what we, what we don't know about, about a terrorism plot.

>> You know, I hate to criticize an attorney general, but when he said, "We had taken out an Al-Qaeda cell," yes, I...

I knew that was going to be a problem.

He went overboard.

They were not an Al-Qaeda cell.

They were not directed by Al-Qaeda.

You know, that is an overstatement.

So the charges were valid.

It was, it was the over-hyping of the case.

>> So they're charged with providing material support to a terrorist organization, namely Al-Qaeda, even though there was no actual connection to Al-Qaeda.

>> The problem with terrorism cases is, you have to stop the act.

And so, you really, in a way, have to predict who's going to do what.

And so, stings are very important, but if you overstate what you have done in a sting, then people begin to lose confidence in what you're doing.

They think that you're just out there creating a terrorist yourself.

>> I had been doing undercover work in terrorism cases for a decade before 9/11.

And before 9/11, if I had called FBI headquarters and said, "I want to initiate an undercover operation targeting a terrorist group," uh, the first question they would have asked me is, "Okay, what terrorist group do this, these individuals belong to?"

And if I said, "Well, they don't actually belong to a terrorist group, they're just saying things that sound kind of scary and things that terrorists might say."

And they would say, "Okay, well, what kind of weapons do they have?"

And if I replied, "Well, they don't actually have any weapons, and part of the plot would be to supply them with weapons."

And then they would say, "Well, what plot do they have in mind?"

And I would say, "Well, they haven't actually identified a plot yet.

Part of the operation would be to identify a plot and then provide them the weapons so that they could be terrorists."

Uh, they would have sent me for counseling.

>> Thank you.

>> Thank you.

>> Through 2005 and 2006, there had been a very heated debate over extending expiring provisions of the Patriot Act.

So I think that there was great pressure on the FBI to demonstrate both that there was a powerful threat that still existed inside the United States that justified this expanded surveillance authority, and that the tools that they had been given through the Patriot Act were actually effective in identifying these plots.

(siren blaring) >> Correctional officers in the building all of a sudden start running to my cell and pointing at me, and bringing people.

So, it's, like, all of a sudden, everybody coming to take a look at me.

And it was, like, "Well, this is a terrorism case.

You know, you finna get shipped to Guantanamo."

When he said that, I could feel my stomach turn.

I think for the next three days, I had, like, diarrhea-- it was just, it was a shock.

And then I knew what I was getting charged with, and, you know, I just, I just hid up under the, um, the blanket, you know, while people come point at me, and, you know, it was, it was horrifying.

>> If they were homegrown terrorists, they grew up here, on this Miami street.

Stanley Phanor was born in this house.

Lyglenson Lemorin moved in across the street with his mom when he was just six.

And today, the two mothers, both Haitian, told us in disbelief there were no terrorists raised on 45th Street.

>> They have this, everything.

They have this to put on... (indistinct) >> And they calling him illegal immigrant on the TV.

>> My son is good from your country!

♪ ♪ >> The objective then becomes to solicit the cooperation of one of the defendants.

To flip someone.

>> And he was telling me, "Are you seriously thinking about spending the rest of your life in prison?"

I said, "Man, I don't wanna spend the rest of my life in prison."

They're, like, "Okay, then, so the only way you could do that is by signing these papers."

I'm, like, "I'mma set myself free without signing those papers."

>> We was looking at the younger brothers, um, Naudimar and B.

And we was, like, "You know what, just, um, just sign what you gotta sign."

You know what I'm... ♪ ♪ (shuddered breath) We told them brothers, Naudimar and B, "Man, sign what you gotta sign, man, and get out of this.

You know, you real young."

And, you know, they got upset.

They was, like, "No, we're not signing."

We facing 70 years and three life sentences, and, you know, them brothers was, like, nah, they not.

You know, and I definitely wasn't.

You know, so... Yeah, nobody was willing to sign off that they was terrorism.

But more so, nobody was willing to... Yeah, nobody was willing to send they brother, who they know what we was out there doing in them streets, you know, up the road for a charge that, that wasn't us.

>> I refused every plea.

I talked to my lawyer, I told my lawyer-- my lawyer couldn't understand it.

I told him that's basically how I got to be, because I was with these brothers.

I knew what they was about.

I knew if I get, take any plea, even regardless of plea that said that I didn't know nothing about that, then I'm, then it actually saying something about my, my brothers that's left in there that I knew they was not about what they say they was about.

>> Prosecutors laid out their case against seven men dubbed the Liberty City Seven, accused of conspiring to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago.

>> You have to understand that, in the counter-terrorism field, the criminal penalties associated with the laws that are used, particularly laws like the material support for terrorism law, come with draconian penalties.

So, if a defense attorney went to a client who was charged with terrorism charges and said, "Hey, look, you know, you're looking at 30 or 40 years in jail if you go to trial and are convicted, but the government's offering you to plead out to five years," even somebody who is entirely innocent or believes that they were induced into committing some kind of crime, it wouldn't be unusual for them to plead guilty to it.

So, the Liberty City Seven case was fascinating to me, both because it showed me that all of the defendants were willing to go to trial, showed me that they were convinced they had done nothing wrong.

And moreover, it gave one of the very first opportunities to really examine the FBI's tactics, because all of the information would come out through the criminal trial.

>> The challenge for the Liberty Seven defense: the suspects did indeed pledge an oath to Al-Qaeda.

>> When you have the attorney general of the United States having a press conference, I realized that I was in for a major battle going forward.

Our story was a simple one: they didn't have the manner and means, they had no money-- they barely had vehicles.

They didn't have horses and they certainly didn't have bombs.

This is a case manufactured primarily by the government, or in my case, my client's case, this wasn't his idea.

It was just a complete, you know, setup by the government.

The plot was being moved forward by the informants and the FBI.

Who directed their activities.

They ran this whole show.

They, they provided the script.

They provided the choreography, okay?

They provided the direction.

This was not a terrorist case at all, let alone a case where the actors, the defendants, were moving the plot forward.

>> They invented the players, they invented the theme, they invented how it was gonna go down.

They, they wrote this script.

They wrote this script.

>> One of the other defense attorneys said this was all really a inner-city scam.

>> Well, we do know that, first of all, that one of the things that was done in this case was that there was a serious question with regard to $50,000 being given to these individuals to help them to revitalize this building.

Here's Narseal saying, "We've gotta get this $50,000, so, man, just go along with this plan for me, and then we're gonna be good after that.

Just go along with it.

No, we're not gonna do anything, but just go along with it."

>> And so, the defense became that, that these guys were doing this just for the money, that this was one big scam.

>> It would have been a scam.

It would have been a scam had he given us pictures of the Waffle House.

Or, you know, given us a blank disc.

Or, or just not have given us footage of the FBI office, the U.S. attorney's office, and the Miami Police Department.

So, it's not a scam.

I mean, that is a, an executed agreement.

>> Whether these people were being paid or not, the question is, are they willing to commit these acts?

Whether it's for money or it's for free.

So it really made no difference.

>> Prosecutors told the jury they'll hear from among 15,000 government recordings of the group's plan to create chaos.

>> I'm hearing this for the first time.

Now I know why we got indicted.

Because in my mind, I thought the only meetings that occurred was the ones I was there.

>> He's a (bleep) nut.

What the (bleep) is you running your (bleep)-damn mouth for?

On and on and on.

>> My life was on the line, but I just couldn't believe the words that was coming out of Batiste's mouth.

>> I couldn't believe I was on trial for these conversations.

♪ ♪ >> Narseal got on the stand.

I was literally yelling at him about how his stupidity and the things he did got these guys in trouble.

And he's sitting up there and he's crying.

And, you know, and I said, "And here you are.

You stepped off what we call a, a... the square, if you will, which is of righteousness, and you led these guys down, you know, to the wrong path.

And everybody is now sitting up here indicted by a federal government, looking at and being called terrorists," and he's...

He's bawling, he's crying.

>> I cried about it on the witness stand.

Said it was something that I really didn't mean inside.

That I was just going along with Abbas's game, using his language.

Him and Assaad.

I wanted to stand up and shout and say that, "I'm not this person.

I'm really a good person on the inside.

I would never do these things.

It was just a con game."

♪ ♪ >> I kind of felt that he should have been a little stronger.

You know what I mean?

'Cause we was all together, you know, trying to give each other support.

But he'll just, um, he'll just ball up in a corner, and it was just, it was a lot of guilt.

You know, of the things he said, you know.

You know, all of us getting locked up with him and, you know, his family image, you know, everything was destroyed and, you know, it took a toll on him.

♪ ♪ I did a, maybe a year and eight months in Miami FDC.

I was in solitary confinement.

They call it the SHU.

Yeah, you probably go crazy in there, you know, and I tell people maybe I am, maybe I'm not, I...

But it's, um... You don't do that to another human being.

♪ ♪ One day, a guy walked by me.

And then he, like, said, "What's up?"

to me with just a head nod.

And, you know, I was at the little window, it's like a little... six-inch window, and I'm looking, and I gave him a head nod.

And then I walked back to my chair, and I'm just sitting there, and it hit me, "I just seen Batiste!"

So, I...

I couldn't believe it.

You know, I couldn't believe it.

He was a totally different person.

He was skin and bones and, you know, it was times I hear...

I heard him, you know, screaming in his cell.

I think it just about killed him.

I think it just about killed him.

♪ ♪ >> After two long months of trial, the jurors couldn't decide any of the charges for the so-called Liberty City Seven.

>> There was a lot of disagreement, but all of the jurors worked very hard.

Um, everybody gave it, gave it their all and came here every day, for many, many months, and uh, and did the best that we could.

I think the jury as a whole kind of felt sorry for these guys.

That they got, they've wound themselves up in this position, but, you know, they, to some extent, they did it themselves.

There were a few people that really bought into this idea that they were just doing this to scam this guy out of money.

Which seems sort of odd, like, um, to be scamming Al-Qaeda.

They're not the type of people that you would think about really running a scam on, I wouldn't think.

They would seem like kind of scary guys to, to cross.

That's why I think there was a hung jury, except that one defendant who they felt really had very little connection and wasn't around for most of this, and we dismissed the case against him.

Found him not guilty.

>> One of seven Miami men accused of plotting to join forces with Al-Qaeda has been acquitted, and a mistrial has been declared for the six other men.

>> They said, "Lyglenson Lemorin not guilty for the first charge.

Lyglenson Lemorin not guilty for the second charge, for the third charge, for the fourth charge."

And everybody was so happy.

>> Was he crying?

I couldn't tell... >> Yes, we both were.

Very emotional.

Levi was found not guilty at the first trial.

And it was fantastic.

Thought he'd be able to move on with his life.

>> Well, I went back, we all thought I'm going home, packed my stuff, and then that's when Immigration came and got me.

♪ ♪ >> The judge found that he had associated himself with a terrorist group, and that in and of itself was deportable.

>> You look at my case, I have no conviction-- nothing.

That trial was my only thing and I've been working all my life.

I got kids, wife.

I married a American.

I beat the case.

I beat the case and I'm sent home.

>> You can be found not guilty, but it still doesn't mean you're not guilty in the eyes of the U.S. government.

He couldn't even come back to the United States for his 15-year-old son's funeral when he was killed, um, along the highway, trying to assist a motorist who had been stalled and their car had broken down.

>> It's a pain where you can't... You don't know, it's almost like your heart's closing and you don't know what to do.

And I zoned out.

You know, life start over, life ain't finished.

God is great.

I'mma continue to be me.

I'mma continue to strive to better myself.

(indistinct chatter) It's really, nothing changed about how I feel America.

I love America.

America's a great country.

But what happened to us, it's not America that did it.

You know, it's not America.

It's a few people in America that people put their trust in.

>> Federal prosecutors say they will retry the six men on whom the jurors deadlocked.

Judge Joan Lenard set jury selection for January.

>> It's hard to be able to look at the media once you've arrested somebody and called them a terrorist, and then drop the case against them after one trial, saying, "Okay, we're gonna let them back out on the streets to complete what they were trying to do."

>> And so the government had to retry the case.

And they tried it a second time.

And it hung a second time for the same reasons.

>> We did, we tried it again, and there was another mistrial.

>> A federal judge has declared another mistrial.

Prosecutors now have a week to decide if they're going to try them for a third time.

>> When that trial came to, um, a hung jury again, we just knew they was gonna throw this case out.

There ain't no way they coming back again for another trial with us, 'cause it was so embarrassing.

>> My experience has been, it's, it's two times and they're done.

But it depends on the case.

If they want somebody bad enough, they continue to go after the person.

And they wanted these guys, badly.

>> Two juries failed to reach a verdict.

Now a third jury will try.

>> Imagine if we did nothing about this case, and instead of the FBI coming to, to Batiste, one of these organizations actually came to Batiste and provided him the explosives.

So, could we ignore it?

And if we had ignored it, and he had blown up a building, he had done damage to this building you're sitting in right now, and people were killed, wouldn't you be coming back to us to say, "Why didn't you do something about it?

Why did you ignore it?"

This is the question: do you want us to stop them before they commit this kind of crime, or, or do you want to let it happen first?

>> So the government said, "We're gonna give this one last try.

A third time."

And each time they tried the case, the case got smaller, and more defined and more focused.

And even with the third trial, they really flailed, because the jurors were out for almost 12, 13 days.

So, it looked like it was gonna be another hung jury.

>> The jury went out for deliberations and there was one juror who refused to deliberate.

She just refused.

So, the judge had to excuse that juror.

>> Within 24 hours, an alternate was brought in and he joined the other 11 and convicted five of the six.

A sixth defendant was found not guilty.

>> After the verdict was read, the one Liberty Six member who was acquitted called the prosecution of his friends "bogus."

>> You had no intention of doing any of the things that you talked about?

>> It was all a whole bunch of hogwash from the beginning.

>> You weren't serious about any of it?

>> Nobody was serious about nothing.

It's not real.

>> Give us a little space, please.

♪ ♪ >> It took three years and three trials, but a group of Florida men accused in a plot to destroy Chicago's Sears Tower are each facing decades in prison.

♪ ♪ >> I felt like I got hit in the head with an 80-ton concrete ball or something.

Or knocked out.

I cried.

Thought my life was over.

All based on what I said.

>> A certain part of me just died there.

And now, I was left with four young children to raise without no other family, no other help.

But just me and them.

You're taking this innocent man away from his-- and all the rest of these young men-- away from their families, without no evidence.

I can't be living this.

I can't.

I can't be living this.

♪ ♪ >> I have a responsibility to the people that I, I work for, which are the citizens of the United States, to, to go where the facts and evidence leads.

I've looked at this a thousand ways to Sunday.

I wish I could say, "Look, this is what happened, and, and this is how..." I, I just can't...

I can't get myself there.

They did what they were convicted of.

♪ ♪ >> The problem was, there were a lot of sensitive issues in this case.

For instance, we got them a warehouse where we had cameras and, and they had a meeting, and they swore the oath to Al-Qaeda.

But we could have delivered them a, a load of arms and munitions; made the arms and munitions inoperable, but delivered them.

Once they accepted that, we could have taken them down with the, the munitions in their hand and I think that would have been far, far more effective.

But at that time, the bureau was so nervous about providing potential terrorists with weaponry that they just flat- out said, "No, you can't do that."

>> Al-Qaeda didn't know any of these individuals.

They didn't have anybody who could have done a full ground war in the United States or, uh, taken down the Sears Tower.

But many Americans believe they did because the FBI manufactured this plot.

I was hoping that they would learn that this case was an overreach, they had gone too far, and perhaps undermined public trust in the counterterrorism tactics that they were using.

But they seem to have taken the opposite lesson.

And what you see in the sting operations after Liberty City Seven is an effort to sensationalize the cases even further, to where they will go to the extent of actually providing significant weaponry to these groups.

>> ...yesterday during an FBI sting operation.

He's a U.S. citizen... >> Demetrius Pitts faces charges after he communicated with an undercover agent.

>> He believed that the FBI planted this bombing plot... >> ...undercover agents who said they could help him bomb the mall... >> They set this kid up.

>> If you lay out sting operations on a chart, you know, what you see is this enormous uptick after 2009.

I think it's just further emboldened the FBI and the Department of Justice in its use of these types of sting operations, knowing that essentially, if they can convict these guys in Miami, you know, they can convict just about anybody.

♪ ♪ >> The Liberty City/Sears Tower case was significant in the sense of taking people with bad motives, bad intent, off the street, holding them accountable, and then serving as a deterrent to other potential terrorists.

>> Were these terrorists in a real sense?

>> My personal opinion was no, because-- and that's why I describe them as aspirational rather than operational-- because I didn't believe they, they could do something based on what I had seen.

>> I'm not gonna hype these cases to be something that they're not.

But they're very important, because if, if we can't do 'em, it's gonna be hard to stop terrorists.

The Liberty City case was one of the cases that we would use in training: okay, this is a cautionary tale.

You know, be careful as to how far your, your undercover agents or your informants push.

And when you do arrest, you know, don't overstate what, what you've got.

The goal is not to take somebody that is not a terrorist and make them a terrorist.

They weren't really the, the terrorists that we were seeking out.

♪ ♪ >> This is my job.

I was hired as a supervisor, underneath the project manager, to run the job site with small contractors.

This is excellent, uh, it's...

It might not be as, as good as me subcontracting things on my own, and making more money in a, in a momentous type of way.

But it's a steady income, I'm on salary pay.

And I'm, I'm just happy.

♪ ♪ >> Did you ever imagine that you were being recorded?

>> Yes.

>> You did?

You knew that you were being videoed?

>> Yes.

It was, it was clear.

>> Did you see where the video cameras were?

>> No, they were hidden cameras.

>> Did you tell the brothers that you thought your meetings with Assaad might have been recorded by law enforcement?

>> Yes.

♪ ♪ >> I still don't really understand how you thought you could get away with it even if you got the money.

>> Yeah, I didn't seem...

I didn't really... At the end of the day, I thought about it and said, "I probably won't get away with it, but I'll just spend some of it, and if they caught me, 'Hey, I'm sorry I took the money.

Can I give it back?

I spent some of it.'"

That's what I thought I could use as an excuse.

♪ ♪ >> I wonder if he's trying to save face.

Because he realized how stupid he was.

Everybody makes mistakes, but not everybody's mistakes is recorded for the world to see over and over and over again.

His is.

So that was his best answer is trying to say, "Aw, yeah, I'm smart."

Nah, you was just that dumb.

That's all that was.

That's all that was.

>> He didn't know?

>> He didn't know.

He didn't know.

♪ ♪ >> Finance was becoming a problem because of my case.

So it was hard to find employment or anything else.

So, when I did find employment, it was, like, a bull(bleep) ass job.

And I said, "I'mma take this job, or take this check, and I'mma mix this through what I know best."

Which is go back to the street and go back to the hustling game, to the cocaine or whatever, and just mix and mingle with the people I know.

They're so concerned with terrorist, uh, watch, I was selling dope under their eyes the whole time, and I was on federal probation.

So they couldn't be that concerned with me.

They couldn't have.

I made money.

♪ ♪ >> In terms of Batiste, nah, I wanted to strangle the guy, man, because I felt like, you don't listen.

You got caught up in yourself, and now this is what this come down.

And this is not just something that affect us immediately.

It affect all, every last one of our families.

Of course I wanted to strangle his ass.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> I lose part of me.

I lost everything I was.

My whole 30s was spent in prison.

In your 30s, that's when you buy a house, you know what I mean?

You start to be financially sound, you know?

Having kids, you know-- I spent all that time in prison.

So, I'm out right now, I don't got no kids.

No, no wife, no girlfriend... No real job.

(laughing) Oh, man!

(whistles) ♪ ♪ Captioned by Media Access Group at WGBH access.wgbh.org >> For more on this and other "Frontline" programs, visit our website at pbs.org/frontline.

♪ ♪ Frontline's "In the Shadow of 9/11," is avaliable on Amazon Prime Video.