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tv   CNN Special Report  CNN  September 16, 2014 6:00pm-7:01pm PDT

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and a doctor in the detroit area has pled guilty to giving patients unnecessary chemotherapy to defraud patients. the doctor faces up to 175 years in prison when he is sentenced. >> unbelievable, all right, susan, thank you very much. we'll see you 11 p.m. eastern, another edition of "ac360." a double agent inside the al qaeda for the cia starts now. the following is a cnn special report. morton storm. for half a decade he says he moved back and forth between two worlds and two identities. when one misplaced sentence could have cost him his life. >> you don't know what angle he is playing. >> traveling between atheistim,
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and hard line. >> on one area, he is part of the militant circles. >> between being an agent for western intelligence and a sworn member of al qaeda, storm says he was a double agent so trusted by al qaeda terror leaders he even fixed one up with a blonde european wife. a unique powerful weapon in the war on terror, who says he got results. >> i have been responsible for 30 kills. 30 terrorists killed. >> reporter: in a race against time, trying to bring down the most dangerous terrorists before they can launch their next attack. double agent inside al qaeda. for the cia. driving deep in yemen's lawless
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south. morton storm is at the wheel on a spy mission for the cia. he is hoping this video may help to lead his spymasters to the hideout of one of the world's most dangerous terrorists. >> if you want to follow the mobile satellites, you can also see where i'm standing still and not moving around. >> the cia will get the video, storm says, only if he survives the mission. the stakes could not be higher. >> if it was released or revealed i was a spy there is no way i could get out from that place because i'm there by myself. i would get executed. >> how would they execute you? >> in the worst possible way, either slash your throat, behead you, or shoot you, hang you up, crucify you. >> storm's target? one of the united states's most wanted al qaeda leaders, american born cleric, anwar
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al-awlaki. now in yemen. bursting with hate for the u.s. >> we're not against americans for just being americans. we are against evil. and america, as a whole, has turned into a nation of evil. >> anwar al-awlaki has many like-minded followers and there is a grave concern that he is inspiring even helping them to plan and launch terror attacks inside the united states. >> we will fight them. and incite others to do the same. >> reporter: it's late october, 2008, the cia is desperate to find al qaeda leaders like anwar al-awlaki and storm is exactly what the cia needs. >> i had these different names. i had different personalities.
quote
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i was morten storm, polar bear, some kind of schizophrenia life-style. >> reporter: and he has made important connections with al qaeda leaders, according to the counterterrorism leader. >> by luck, to some extent, he had been to many places and met all the right people. he is almost a forest gump of sort of radical islamism. >> i don't think there are many people like him that has all of those different dimensions. he was the real deal. >> reporter: the real deal, a larger than life personality. who reveals his journey for jihad from james bond in this book. agent storm, my life inside al qaeda and the cia. coming up, how storm goes from
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boxer to holy warrior. >> i was invited by osama bin laden to join up with him in the training camp in afghanistan.
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loves laser tag, but behind the smile there is trouble. >> i grew up with no dad. >> how did that affect you? >> it affected me emotionally. you feel frustrated and angry. >> seemingly hard working, selling vegetables at market at age 13. but he is already committing armed robbery. >> armed robbery. >> armed robbery, what was going through your head? >> i felt -- the adrenalin, the excitement. >> adrenalin and anger become morten storm's trademark. by his early teens he was a boxer. >> boxing was a way to get out the aggressions. >> so your fighting was not limited to the rings. >> it was not limited to the rings. >> first time i met him, he was kind of a crazy person. and he talked a lot. >> what was he talking about? >> fights, brawls that he has
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been into. >> i would go to the clubs with friends, they were hated because they looked different. and i felt the need to stand up for them. would beat men with one punch. >> at age 19 he joins a famous biker gang. storm says he was their toughest enforcer, raw muscle. boxing, biking, armed robbery, whatever storm is doing he is always doing it to the max. his life is descending into criminality and chaos. storm craved insanity, stability. coming here, his local library drawn to the tiny religion section. he sees the book, the life of
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the prophet, mohammed. >> it is the moment when his life changes forever. he pulls the book from the shelf and finds somewhere to sit down. begins reading. six hours, hundreds of pages. within weeks he is converting to islam. >> it changed me. it spoke to me. that book. this is the truth. the truth. i found the truth. >> reporter: he takes the name morad storm, travels to yemen, attends a seminary. and a strict, uncompromising interpretation of islam. and those that are wrong are the enemy. all he can think about is training for jihad.
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storm is white and european. traits that might help a terrorist living in the west avoid detection. he says he soon catches the eye of al qaeda's leader. >> i was invited by osama bin laden to join up with him in the training camps in afghanistan. >> reporter: storm won't make it to afghanistan. but he names his son osama in honor of osama bin laden. >> he was a person who dared to challenge the americans. >> reporter: next time he is seen in denmark, storm is a different man. >> the things that he was saying was so extreme that some of the people couldn't cope with it, the stuff he was saying. so he was hanging out on the streets and preaching a lot. >> preaching what? >> he was preaching actually jihad. >> that is him in 2005. part of a radical islamist demonstration and flag-burning
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outside the american embassy in london. storm is hungry for real action. for jihad. >> he has been in -- >> he sees his opportunity when the journalist says he wants to shoot a film about mujahadeen. in yemen? >> the access that he gave me in yemen was very unique. it was crazy, some of the persons that he introduced me to. >> reporter: including the radical cleric, anwar al-awlaki. >> jihad against america is binding upon myself. >> they talked a lot about jihad, for example. again, storm was an extreme guy. storm was being talked down from anwar al-awlaki. >> talked down from an extreme view? >> yes, anwar al-awlaki was
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telling storm to chill out. >> yet storm wouldn't be calmed. he decides to join the jihadists in somalia. >> i had to join them for my religious beliefs. >> reporter: he returns to denmark and gathers military supplies to prepare himself for war. >> i said good-bye to my children and family. >> reporter: then, at the last minute a phone call from somalia. >> he said we have lost the airport. >> in mogadishu? >> in mogadishu, what does that mean? >> he says you can't come, it is too dangerous. >> what is going through your mind? >> so it is a last will that i don't go. i am so deeply disappointed and devastated. i feel betrayed, you know? >> reporter: betrayed by his god, unable to fight for his religion, he says. just as fast as islam had taken hold doubt and questions enter. >> i sat down in front of the
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laptop and i type, contradiction. and i'm daring to ask this question, i had to enter -- and i saw plenty of websites talking about contradictions in the koran, it took times to research them. but once i concluded that they were general contradictions, that is when it wiped totally away from my faith. >> is that when you stopped being a muslim? >> that is when i stopped being a muslim in my heart and belief. >> years of radical training strip away in seconds and storm makes a stunning decision to switch sides. >> i told them guys, i am no longer working for them. i want to fight the war on terror. >> the question now would anybody believe him? asian debt that recognizes the shift in the global economy. you know, the kind that capitalizes on diversity across the credit spectrum and gets exposure to frontier and emerging markets.
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morten storm has lost his faith in islam, but not his desire to fight. now he wants to switch sides to work for the west as a double agent. targeting his former friend, the radical islamist. he tells us he reaches out to danish intelligence agents. they meet immediately. the first order of business? room service. and storm orders what no devout muslim would eat or drink. >> i told him i want something with pork and bacon in it and i want the beer. >> beer and bacon for a muslim?
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>> they couldn't believe it. i told them guys, i'm no longer working for them. i decided i want to fight the war on terror, and when i told them i was on their side he high fived me and said it would be great. >> storm is a spy master's dream. >> here you have so many different personas able to switch through the different personas in such rapid succession. >> and he appears to have connections at the top level of al qaeda. >> there was no doubt he was an agent and has connections. they really want to get access to him. >> storm says that danish intelligence wastes no time and sets him up as an operative, giving him a cell phone and about $2,000 a month. >> i said yeah, that would pay my bills. i was happy. it wasn't for the money. >> according to storm his early missions are successful. in lebanon, predicting a jihadi
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uprising, in denver, helping to identify suspects. he quickly becomes an agent in demand with other agencies, including the british. >> he quickly came up with ideas for them and in terms of being able to improvise and stay in character, it's perfect. >> storm says he is now on the radar. they meet inside a hotel in copenhagen. >> the british want to use more than storm. is this heard of in the spy world like this? >> no, i think it is very unusual for everybody to sort of want the feed off morten, i think it is and then he became one of the african jihadists.
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>> this is where they went in the nondescript nairobi, a nd this is tucked right inside of kenya can's most famous mosque. he said that he delivered a bugged blackberry for a wanted operative wanted in his role for the embassy bombings that killed 224 people. three months later that terrorist was dead. storm says, because of him. but his most important mission is yet to come. in yemen. >> there was just the time that allaa anwar al awlaki became interesting to them. >> he has been inspiring attacks around the world, and the 2005
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suicide bombings in london on a double-de double-decker bus leaving 52 dead. and two foiled 2006 plots. one to blow up planes flying to the united states and the other to blow up buildings in canada. and in 2008, a deadly attack on the u.s. embassy in yemen. and storm says he can provide the cia something that no one else can. access to awlaki, himself. he tells us that the cia sent him on this dangerous spy mission. october 2008, a month after the embassy attack to see awlaki now hiding in a remote part of yemen. >> he was worried about security, but he is worried that people were following me.
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>> the mission is to give awlaki a laptop and solar panel goggles that he had asked for and some secretly implanted with spyware and then he gives awlaki one more cia gift, $5,000, cash. >> he looked at me. he tapped his chest with the $5,000, and he said, can we buy bullets and weapons, and i said, yes, of course you can. and the cia handler in denmark and he said, you have been test and you passed it. because if i said no, he knew that the money was from the intelligence and he knew that they are not allowed to spend it to pay for weapons or bullets. storm >> storm is loving the 007 life.
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but as he is driving away, he is worried. awlaki has grown more violent and the world should be afraid. the tables had turned. >> and he would wear a camouflage jacket over his ceremonial robe and he had a ceremonial sword in his belt, and i tried not the look surprised. the preacher had become a fighter. >> he stays in touch with the radical cleric. they share an e-mail account, messages written and saved as drafts and read, but never sent, avoiding awlaki says spy agents reading them. storm says that the next visit, awlaki is even more paranoid and tells him to tighten security. >> when i met anwar in 2009, he instructed me to use the encrypted message system invent
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ed to create the secure online communications between the terrorists or the al qaeda all over the world. >> the message can be unscrambled and read only by the person to whom the sender has been given a code to unlock it. jihadi spy kraft to install the most important mission yet. awlaki is fast rising up the most wanted list, and storm the believes that he has the perfect plan to trap him. >> this is me. >> using a european blond as bait. >> i hope that you will be pleased.
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the situation is the many muslims around the world -- >> this is the voice of american-born cleric anwar al awlaki and video obtained exclue suv i ively by cnn. >> he is talking to very wealthy donors hoping to get money for al qaeda. but this skycall is much more
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than what it seems. this is spy kraft in action. morten storm says he has arranged this call to demonstrate allegiance to awlaki and the other militants. but what they don't know is that he is working for other side. >> and whether it is we're talki talking about somalia or afghanistan or iraq or chechnya. >> and it is affecting muslims eve everywhere. months after the skype call united army major nadal hasan goes on a shooting rampage in his army base in ft. worth, texas. he kills four soldiers and calls
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awlaki his inspiration, and they had exchanged e-mails. the cleric takes credit. his website reads, hassan is a hero. >> it was very clearly. everyone knew it. >> and just one month later. awlaki sends the underpants b b bomber to
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. cute young european is getting to go to to marry one most wanted terrorists. >> this was better regarding this proposal. >> the sexy blonde is begged, an
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unsuspecting sacrifice in a plot to kill an al qaeda leader who has inspired terror attacks in america. morten storm says it is plan backed by the cia. >> it is unbelievable that he has been able to be so trusted by one of the world's most hunted terrorists that he would even become a matchmaker. >> if all goes as planned the unwitting bride-to-be will travel with a suitcase that has a hidden tracking device. storm scrolls mission plans finalizing the plan to get her to yemen. amina meets, and needs a cover story to get to the embassy, a plane ticket and secret e-mails to keep in touch. $3,000 cash sanctioned by the cia. if she gets to yemen, the cia
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promises storm $250,000. he knows it could cost the blonde her life. >> how do you reconcile that? >> she was an innocent. well, she weasn't according to y judgment of her, she was a ticking time bomb, running around europe and convinced what she wanted to. and if we could encourage her to get close to him, that is the way it goes. >> anwar al-awlaki dictates she bring one carry-on bag and one medium suitcase, storm says he picks a gray samsonite and hides the message in the handle. as she arrives at the vienna airport for her flight the attractive blonde has no idea what she is carrying. >> amina is getting on her plane
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for yemen, storm is hundreds of miles away in denmark. the honey trap plot with the blonde is finally in play. if the plan works they will find one of the world's most wanted terrorists. storm tells us inside this seaside villa with his danish and cia handler, it's serious. eyes are laptops and blackberries, they are tracking every step to amina's travel to yemen. >> the atmosphere is electric, but hanging over the operation questions what happens if the european blonde dies, collateral damage. amina makes it to yemen. storm recalls receiving a text message from one of his danish handlers. >> saying congratulations, brother, you just became rich. very rich. >> soon, he is in yet another
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meeting with intelligence agents. one from the cia is anxious for storm to open the brief case they brought with them. >> and he looked at me with a massive smile on his face, what do you think the call is? >> i have no clue, i didn't even think that there were three numbers on each side. come on, come on, he says, come on, think about it. i said, i don't know, i have no clue. he says try, 007, he told me like this. >> james bond. >> james bond, secret service, he told me. and you know, i just -- it opened up. >> so happy with the cash he took this photo of the $250,000 inside. then this, an encrypted message from anwar al-awlaki, an update, it is about amina, we got
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married. anwar al-awlaki adding martial law, she turned out better than i expected and better than you described. >> she was a very pretty girl and he was happy. >> he was happy, yeah. >> but there is also an e-mail from amina, a bombshell. security-conscious anwar al-awlaki had told amina to dump the suitcase before they meet. leaving behind it and the tracking device. cnn contacted amina's family who declined to comment. storm says the cia is furious if the plan failed. >> the americans refused to speak to me for six months. >> no u.s. official here in denmark or anywhere else has ever acknowledged storm's claims of a role with the cia. the cia itself declined our requests for a comment. the cia keeps storm side lined
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even as anwar al-awlaki's killer crusade continues. sophisticated printer bombs like this. on cargo planes headed to the usa, luckily they're intercepted before they explode. storm says he gets a text message from the cia which says they have lost all track of anwar al-awlaki. they are desperate and want storm's help again. >> one of my handlers, he told me that there would be a bounty for this one. and i would get rewarded with the $5 million. >> $5 million? >> yes. you would get paid $5 million for this. >> next, anwar al-awlaki eliminated. >> the man known as one of the top terrorist recruiters in the world has been killed. >> and storm in the cross hairs of jihadists.
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>> radical islamist, has caused terrorist attacks worldwide. london. yemen. the u.s.
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intelligence agencies are desperate to stop him. morton storm who al-laki is a friend has tried before to locate the radical cleric. now he tells of a new plan one in which an unsuspecting yem n yeni courier is handed a thumb drive to take to him. what happens next unclear. then three weeks later, we begin with the biggest blow to al qaeda since the killing of osama bin laden. >> one of the top terrorist recruiters.
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awe daytona cou the death could mean a $5 million bounty for storm. it's from a danish agent, saying i'm so sorry but it wasn't us. but, two days later, he learns more when he picks up a copy of the british newspaper, "the telegraph." sprawled across the front page, how america finally caught up with anwar al-awlaki. the capture of a low level errand runner was a break through that led to the al qaeda leader's death.
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storm believes he was key in leading the cia to al-awlaki. he feels cheated and lets intelligence agencies know he is furious. according to storm, they set up a meeting at the marienlyst hotel in denmark. inside the lobby, storm says he starts secretly reporting as danish agents approach. >> i put my iphone in my pocket and i recorded the conversation. then inside a private room, storm says he continues recording, as he comes face to face with a man he says is cia agent michael. >> either you trust us or you don't. in this case, i guess you don't. >> i don't. we had our team. we had our whole project going forward. of which you played the highest
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role. okay, the president of the united states. okay? knows you. he knows about your work. >> the cia's attempt to placate storm fails. tempers are rising. >> i'm not sure why you think we would [ bleep ] you. why do you think that? >> first of all it is about honor as well. >> now we don't have any honor. >> you asked me. i want to answer. i want to yemen again. i establish aid contact with anwar. and i was the only one, anwar, he trusted to deliver. i even sent anwar a wife. did any of your agents manage to send him a wife? >> cnn has the not authenticated the recordings. the meeting ends when michael leaves without saying good-bye. storm believes his spying career is over. senate must have been an incredibly hard moment? >> yes it was hard.
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because i liked these people quite a lot. and -- well -- >> three years later this is still hard? >> it's very hard. oh it's very hard. the blowup here is a turning point. trust between morton and the cia, if it ever existed, will never be the same again. the very next day, a defiant storm pulls into this roadway rest stop near copenhagen. he is bitter and has arranged to meet newspaper reporter. carston elegard at sunset.
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>> he said, well, by phone, what you got, and put it in your car. >> storm doesn't want to be recorded. he is still thinking like a spy. yet he its about to blow his cover. storm wants him to tell the world that the cia is double crossing him. >> he was angry and he was -- upset. and maybe he also was a little bit nervous because it the very first time that he told anybody that he has been living a double life. >> he warns storm that going public has consequences. >> i tell moreton it can be dangerous for him and will change his life for good. the last thing i said to him, go home, think about this. >> he does. and decide he is not ready to reveal his spy story to the world. soon he gets this e-mail from
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amena, al-awlaki's blond bride turned widow. she writes i want to do a martyrdom operation and join her husband in paradise. she asks can storm check an i on the cia wanted list or no fly list. in fact a european counterterrorism official has told cnn that a threat bulletin was issued warning that amena could be dangerous. many months later storm contacts ellegard again. this time the newspaper, jumps on the story. and it becomes a sensation in denmark. and storm becomes a marked man. jihadists in syria release this video. faces of their enemies, lined up on a wall. including, a photo of morton storm.
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>> the american, british, danish spy agencies, all decline cnn's request for comment on morton storm. to date, storm's story and his value to those agencies, has never been publicly contradicted. >> my jenn was to do a change to people's life. now i have done so, so, so i was, a bad spy, able of creating good results. >> multiple identities. shifting loyalties. a life of extremes. from radical islam to top level secret agent. now, morton storm has emerged from the shadows. taking his chances in the spt
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light. left with what he says are few allies. but plenty of deadly enemies. ♪ ♪ this is "cnn tonight" i'm don lemon. >> great to have you back, don. i'm alisyn. a rochester man indicted for allegedly recruiting for isis and plotting to attack u.s. troops returning from iraq. is the terror threat growing at home? >> plus, manhunt. police searching for a pennsylvania man they belief ambushed two state troopers killing one and wounding the other. and threatening to commit mass murder. eric matthew frein armed and dangerous with survivalist skills. we'll talk to a friend of the

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