Key Reflections
* The blurring of borders and change of geopolitical structures has created gateways to human trafficking, drug smuggling, corruption, espionage, and terrorism.
* Hezbollah with Iran’s guidance, funding, and support has been able to exploit the Lebanese diaspora around the world including in South America.
* There is a convergence in Europe between crime and extremism with regular interchange between criminal gangs and ideological radicals.
* The Mumbai Siege Attacks represented one of the most important cases in terrorism as it demonstrates the interplay between Pakistani military intelligence, the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group and al-Qaeda, all of which have had ramifications globally.
* Investigations into the September 11 attacks have demonstrated angles involving Saudi nationals that require further analysis and introspection.
* The rise of China has resulted in the West shifting its geopolitical priorities to address the activities of the Chinese state, involving commerce, defence, espionage and intelligence. Australia has been the frontline for the West in its strategy to counter China’s expansion.
Transcript:
SG – Dr. Sajjan Gohel
SR – Sebastian Rotella
SG: Hello, and welcome to DEEP Dive, brought to you by NATO’s Defence Education Enhancement Programme. I’m your host, Dr. Sajjan Gohel. Each episode, we speak to experts and practitioners in international security and defence, counter-terrorism, and geopolitical current events to gain insight into the most pressing matters of global affairs.
In this episode, we speak to Sebastian Rotella, a senior investigative journalist at ProPublica As an award-winning correspondent, he covers international security issues including terrorism, intelligence, organized crime, human rights, and migration. His reporting has taken him across the Americas and Europe, and to the Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa. Working with PBS’s Frontline series, Mr. Rotella’s documentary, A Perfect Terrorist, focused on the investigation of the Mumbai siege terrorist attacks, and was nominated for an Emmy and received an overseas Press Club Award. Amidst the emergence of great power competition, his current research includes assessing the role and influence of China. Mr. Rotella has penned three novels: Rip Crew, The Convert’s Song, and Triple Crossing. He’s also the author of Twilight on the Line.
Sebastian Rotella, thank you for joining us on NATO Deep Dive.
SR: It’s my pleasure. Thank you very much.
SG: Let’s talk about your career in journalism and the research that you’ve done because it is so varied and so important. You’ve covered many critical stories when it comes to security, terrorism, transnational crime, and perhaps the starting point of your career. You began life as a young journalist covering border issues and organised crime and corruption in Latin America. What got you interested in that in the first place?
SR: My parents were immigrants from Italy and Spain. And so, I grew up speaking those languages and traveling and having a great interest in the Spanish speaking world and in Latin America and in writing and being a journalist. And so, from a young age, I was always interested in being a journalist and particularly in being a foreign correspondent, and it made sense to follow that line.
The first big job I had at the Los Angeles Times—I had been there about four years—was covering the Mexican border, which is an extraordinary opportunity, right, So I was based in the San Diego/Tijuana area and covering that entire border in the early 1990s, which was a period of great change and conflict and crisis. After the Cold War, this kind of erasing and blurring of borders and change of geopolitical structures really manifested itself. So, I’m covering for the Los Angeles Times this region, which is just full of stories and secrets, and as you said, stories about migration, about corruption, about the rise of the drug cartels—all these remarkably international stories, and difficult to investigate stories, just a couple of hours from Los Angeles where the paper was based, and it was really a rich area to discover.
And the Los Angeles Times was one of the few major newspapers that had someone covering that reality full-time, which was very important, and that I think is where I learned a lot of the skills and got interested in a lot of the issues that I’ve pursued ever since then. Borders are kind of gateways to secret worlds. And so, I certainly started learning a lot about migration, about human rights, about corruption, about law enforcement, about intelligence.
And it sort of led naturally—one thing led to the other—because of Mexico, during that period, I covered some major cases such as the assassination of the presidential candidate Colosio, the murder of the cardinal of Guadalajara in a shootout between drug traffickers, the dramatic changes in Mexico as it sort of moved towards a semblance of democracy. And from there, it became rather natural that I became a foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, based in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro and covering most of South America. And again, it was a very rich beat and a very interesting time, where I was covering issues such as the rise and fall of President Fuji Modi in Peru; the arrest of Pinochet, the Chilean ex-dictator in the UK and its impact in Chile; the election of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela which became a historic point of change for the region. And so, I really learned a lot there and got a chance to cover a whole range of stories in organised crime, intelligence, human rights, justice.
And actually, it’s where I first started covering terrorism, because in Buenos Aires in 1994—shortly before I got there—there had been one of the biggest terrorist attacks in the hemisphere, which was the bombing of the AMIA community centre, a Jewish community centre, by Iran and Hezbollah. And so, interestingly enough, down there in South America, I really found myself learning about Islamic terrorism for the first time and exploring all those worlds and the Tri-Border Area, which is where Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil come together. And there’s some great activity, where organised crime, terrorism, and intelligence services converge. So, it was a great experience, a lot of interesting stories, and a chance to really prepare myself for what would be the next step.
SG: Well, there are so many important aspects that you have been looking at, and in fact, many of these issues are still so relevant today when it comes to organised crime, human trafficking, the drug running that is taking place, and the different fissures that exist amongst all these countries. The Tri-Border region that you mentioned—that’s absolutely a fascinating part of the world, as well as Latin America. Is that something that doesn’t get enough attention?
SR: At the time, it didn’t. This was the late 1990s. After 9/11, there was more focus on it anyway, though, not always a great understanding of it. But at that period, it was this window into that world where terrorist groups and lawlessness thrive. It was a place that people would talk about without knowing much about it, and I had a chance to really spend a lot of time there on the ground, and also just working with sources—American and Argentine and Brazilian and Paraguayan—to understand it well. And what you had was this microcosm, the typical border community—where, as I said, the thing about borders is they become these windows into these global networks. So, you had a Middle Eastern community and an Asian community, you had drug trafficking, you had contraband, you had smuggling, you had all these different intelligence services operating there, because of the presence of people connected to Hezbollah, to Iranian intelligence, even to the some of the Sunni groups that would coalesce into al-Qaeda. So, it was a remarkable sort of landscape for a journalist to learn in and to try and to understand and tell these stories about. So, I think what was good about working there and seeing it firsthand was that I was a bit ahead of the curve in that sense, because after 9/11, a lot of places like that started getting more attention, but there I felt that I had kind of seen it first-hand.
And I had some interesting experiences. Just to give you one, I remember interviewing the head of the Chamber of Commerce of Ciudad del Este, which is the little border town in Paraguay, which is kind of the hub of all the illicit rackets down there. And he was a Lebanese gentleman who I had a long conversation and who was very charming and hospitable but also told me that there was no terrorism at the Tri-Border Area and if Hezbollah was there, it wasn’t really terrorism because that was the equivalent of Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln for his people. So, we had an interesting conversation there, and sometime later, he was assassinated in that very shop where I had interviewed him. And the theses as to who had killed him—there were about half a dozen of them because there were so many different forces at work there, whether it was organised crime or terrorism or intelligence. So, experiences like that really had a powerful impact on me as I realised that the way to learn about these forces is to really try to dig in as in depth as possible within the limits of newspaper work. And the way to really understand issues like terrorism and organised crime is to really stay on them over a long period of time, and I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to do that. And so, as you say, things like that—now we’re going on 25 years—have remained relevant and interesting to things that I’ve covered much later.
SG: Well, you mentioned the terrorist group Hezbollah and its ties to Latin America. Is it a group that still holds influence there? Do they have a presence? It’s interesting that in many ways, some other Latin America-based groups such as Shining Path—Sendero Luminoso, —had some ties, I believe, to Hezbollah. What is the Hezbollah dynamic when it comes to Latin America?
SR: It was very interesting—I think what Hezbollah has done, with Iran’s guidance and direction and funding and support, has been to really exploit the Lebanese diaspora around the world, which obviously is full of upright, hard-working, legitimate people—some of the most prominent politicians and popstars and others in Latin America are of Lebanese descent. But there are these networks in places like Venezuela and Colombia and Argentina and Paraguay, and then in places like Africa and others, and what Hezbollah and Iran I think were doing was using these networks for funding, which became increasingly important. And that’s why Hezbollah was always strong in Latin America, because it was a place to make money. So, there was a lot of drug trafficking, a lot of arms trafficking, a lot of mafia activity. And then looking for places to strike Israeli and Jewish targets. In fact, there were two attacks in Argentina: one against the Israeli embassy in 1992, and then the one I mentioned, the AMIA community centre in 1994, which were major, and some of the biggest attacks outside of the Middle Eastern theatre carried out by Hezbollah. So, it showed the reach and the sophistication of these networks—and this was difficult to cover because some people would simplify it a great deal. Some people would completely sort of deny that Hezbollah had any sort of criminal role. What became increasingly clear to me starting in that period—and then when I was in Europe and talking to people about the evolution of drug trade—was that Hezbollah got very involved in the drug trade, including the emergence of a new route into Europe from South America through Africa in the 2000s.
So, I think, Hezbollah has really been this vanguard of the fusion of the world of criminality and the world of terrorism, and that has been a very interesting phenomenon to watch. And again, I think with the involvement of Iran and with the dynamic that some of this was just people making money, some of this was people absolutely directly involved in terrorism, others kind of just helping out. Because Hezbollah has been traditionally this entity with many faces, right? So, it’s a political party, and it’s a military group, and it’s a terrorist group, and it has its charities. And it has needed money and global reach. And I think there in Latin America, I had a window into the development of that phenomenon, which there was a lot of debate about, I think for ideological reasons, but I think it became increasingly clear and has become increasingly clear that this organisation, as often happens with terrorist rebel groups, has gotten deeply involved in crime and corruption, as well as its military and terrorist activity.
SG: Well, this window that you talk about, it’s becoming clearer to me now to see how you evolved your research from looking at Latin America, which clearly has many transnational ties to terrorism, which perhaps don’t get the attention they deserve, and how that has moved towards the groups such as al-Qaeda and affiliates. But I’d be curious to get your take more specifically: what made you then want to start looking at al-Qaeda and the other affiliated jihadist groups that have been associated with them?
SR: I came to Europe as the Paris bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times in July 2001. And I had spent those final years in South America covering a lot of different issues, but very focused on that case and on the window into terrorist networks inside of it that I had seen in South America. I’d been hearing stirrings about al-Qaeda, and there were some cases in Latin America connected to it and people who I was talking to were telling me about the size of the al-Qaeda threat. But there in Paris, I really found myself less than a couple of weeks into my tour as Bureau chief, the 9/11 attacks happened in the United States. And our newspaper like so many other newspapers and like so many other academics and so many other people in law enforcement and intelligence sort of began this incredible effort to start covering this issue and understanding al-Qaeda, understanding the terrorist threat, understanding Islam in the West, and Islam around the world, and radicalisation, and all these connected issues.
And my editors at the LA Times put together a team and they sort of got me involved in a very central way to focus on al-Qaeda and take advantage that I already had some understanding and had done some investigations of terrorist phenomena and had some sources and had the languages and whatnot. And so, I really tried to make the most of it and move around Europe, also in, to some extent, in the Middle East, and try to understand al-Qaeda in the West working on specific cases, working on sort of concentric issues—so if it wasn’t specifically on terrorism, on Muslim immigrant communities and integration and things like that in Europe.
And Europe was a remarkable laboratory to work in, first of all because there were all these different countries with different takes or different experiences of this phenomenon. A lot of different sources—I had the advantage of speaking Spanish and Italian and French, so I could get to know people in different security forces and go out into these cities around Europe and see some of these issues happening. So, I sort of plunged headlong into learning about al-Qaeda and about these issues. And obviously, one thing led to another; we were working on issues related to 9/11 then the lead-up to the Iraq War, then jihadis going off from Europe to Iraq, the Madrid attacks, the attacks in London in 2005.
So, I just sort of stayed on that beat in a very intense way in the years in the aftermath of 9/11 and learned a lot as quickly as I could and really trying to understand how al-Qaeda worked in a very in-depth way, talking to as many different sources as possible, both in the communities and in law enforcement and intelligence, digging into specific cases, reading transcripts… really trying to go beyond the story on the day of the attack to understand the networks in depth. And understand how people talk and think and how radicalisation works and understand some of the nuances. All of us were trying to understand a world that we should have understood better. And so, I really sort of dedicated myself to that, ever since 9/11.
SG: Those nuances certainly bring back memories for me, because a lot of the case studies you’re talking about—that’s how we actually began to get to know each other and talk about the threats of terrorism that existed in Europe and then also had wider implications.
SR: That’s right.
SG: I remember a lot of your work was very much focused on primary research, so looking at the transcripts of terrorist trials, but also digging even deeper to see how those networks had been created and formed. Did you find comparisons between the terrorist networks and the composition to, say, the criminal networks that were involved in Latin America? Was there convergence in terms of the way they operated, or were there actual major differences?
SR: Well, there were obviously differences particularly I think in the al-Qaeda generation in the first years after 9/11. There were a lot of people who were radicalising in Europe. Joining al-Qaeda and becoming involved in al-Qaeda was a slower process maybe than, say, the Islamic State [ISIS] some years later, which I’ll talk about in a minute, but it took a while. Not everyone, but there was some sense that people actually knew the religion and had to learn about the politics, and there was a certain amount of reading, so to speak; to make your way to Afghanistan was not easy, people were sort of filtered.
But there was already a phenomenon happening that I think accelerated—and I think here are some of the parallels you mentioned that were valid—that there was always this convergence on the streets of Europe between crime and extremism. And I was fascinated by that. And that was something that really didn’t exist in the United States, for example, which ultimately was the audience I was writing for. And so, I was really trying to show that you had a lot of people—and I remember a French intelligence officer talking to me about this early on in the post-9/11 period, he covered the banlieue, the housing projects in the outskirts of Paris, and he’s saying the two dominant groups in these housing projects are the criminal gangs and the extremists. But these are people who have grown up together, who know each other, who are relatives or friends or went to school together, and there’s a lot of interplay. And he said, “The scary thing I’m seeing is that a lot of people are crossing from crime into extremism. And once they cross, they don’t go back.”
And that phenomenon, I think, built and built. It was interesting because one of the things I was fascinated by was radicalisation. And I did get a chance to interview for example, some people who went off to Iraq or people who knew them, some terrorist who had been in Afghanistan and come back and was awaiting trial. And you had a sense of these people who had kind of plunged into this world because it gave them meaning and gave them a sense of importance and power and to some extent, they were in over their heads. It reminded me of a little bit of a case I had covered, a street gang in San Diego. I had interviewed some of these young Mexican American kids who had joined the Tijuana Cartel and found themselves involved in this incredible world of violence and high-level corruption and intrigue in Mexico—starting out just as a street gang.
There was something similar going on the streets of Europe—that people who were starting out as common criminals were going to places like Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan and later Syria with the Islamic State and feeling a very dangerous phenomenon that all of a sudden, they felt they were part of— particularly in the Islamic State era—that they were part of the biggest, most powerful gang on the planet. And one of the things I think I learned was that while some jihadis very much knew about and understood the religious and political ideas involved, increasingly you saw a lot of people for whom the religion was a veneer. I think particularly during the years of the Islamic State [ISIS], you had more and more people who radicalised in superficial ways, and a lot of it was about the adrenaline and the violence. I remember another French intelligence official talking to me about someone who had been arrested when he came back from Syria early in the last decade and saying to his interrogators, “I’m not interested in Islam—I’m interested in jihad,” which shows a profound ignorance of both concepts, that you could separate the two. But it showed you the kind of mentality, the way radicalisation and terrorism evolve, which I think became particularly dangerous.
SG: Most definitely. So, perhaps we could say that the difference between al-Qaeda and ISIS —one of the differences is that ISIS dumbed it down, effectively. They made it more simplistic for people to join, that it didn’t have to be a battle with that ideological rigor that al-Qaeda so much had focused on. But it was more the propensity to violence and misogyny which ultimately fuelled ISIS and its foot soldiers, of which many had come from Europe.
SR: I think that’s right, and I think that they dumbed it down and they speeded it up, because the propaganda was so slick and so high-tech and so sort of geared to a young audience—being bombarded by slick slogans and images and choreographed violence, where if you remember, al-Qaeda was much more lengthy and long-winded, and people like Zawahiri and others would put out these tapes where they went on and on and on, and the Islamic State was much slicker about connecting and enticing young people. I remember an Italian police commander saying to me, “When we listen to these young men on the intercepts, they talk about bin Laden as kind of this sage, but who really interests them is someone like Zarqawi in Iraq who’s a hands-on killer on video.” And there was something to that.
But I think you’re right, dumbing it down and speeding it up. Some of my best sources are and have been law enforcement and counter-terrorism officials of Muslim descent, and I remember one of them saying to me, you have people showing up in Syria—people who all lived on the same block, say, in a European city—and rushed there, and they’re posing in Armani t-shirts with AK-47s saying they’re with the Islamic State. And they weren’t even, he said, radicalised—which is interesting, right? Because the Islamic State was the most radical group of all, you could argue, in terms of the savagery and the intensity of what they did and declaration of the caliphate. Yet you had this new sort of form of radicalisation, where you had, again, criminals who didn’t change that much in their lifestyle, but decided to join this army. So, it was an interesting evolution to watch, which had begun with al-Qaeda. The Madrid attacks had a component to that: there were a number of quickly radicalised drug traffickers there where you could see the harbingers already with al-Qaeda, but I think the Islamic State kind of took that phenomenon and amped it up.
SG: Well ISIS certainly presented themselves as an alternative ideologically-light version to al-Qaeda, but they, perhaps, as you said, they speeded the whole process up, and that perhaps galvanised their ability to, in many ways, come to the ascendancy when it came to jihadist terrorism. One group that I’d like to talk about, which I know you’ve researched very heavily, is the Pakistani terrorist outfit called the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), “the Army of the Pure,” that were behind the Mumbai siege attacks some ten years ago. In fact, the 10-year anniversary had passed on November 26, 2021. You researched this group, you researched the attack—I’d be very interested to take you back to that period, and have you explain why that attack was so significant, and its importance for terrorism and perhaps what we’ve learned from that subsequently.
SR: It was a very important case, and I think it’s one of the most important topics I’ve looked at in depth. And then for which teaches us a case that is just very rich and teaches us a lot about terrorism, about Lashkar-e-Taiba, about the interplay between Pakistani intelligence and terrorism, about al-Qaeda, about all kinds of issues. So, as I had been covering al-Qaeda through the 2000s, more and more obviously, al-Qaeda operations and training were happening in Pakistan rather than Afghanistan. And there were different cases in which different sources were saying these operations happening in Pakistan are happening with either the passive or the active support or protection of elements of Pakistani intelligence and the Pakistani military, and that’s a complicated area, and I was intrigued by it. And then, the Mumbai attacks happened, and they were one of the most spectacular and dangerous attacks because essentially, it was clear that they had been directed from Pakistan, and they could have caused conflict between two nuclear-armed countries, India and Pakistan. And they had such an impact, and they lasted for three days on television and put this group Lashkar-e-Taiba on the map.
And then a year later, an American was arrested: David Coleman Headley from Chicago, where I’m from—he had been based in Chicago. And he turned out to have been this figure who had served as a scout for Lashkar and was central to the attacks because he had done the very important reconnaissance in Mumbai, taking advantage of the fact that he had an American passport and had taken steps to erase his connections to Pakistan, though he was half Pakistani-American. And he had also been a spy—he had been working simultaneously plotting these attacks for Lashkar-e-Taiba and the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service.
And I really decided to dig into his case, because what I learned—and I think a lot of people already suspected this was going on, but for the first time, they had hard evidence in this case—was the symbiosis, the partnership between Lashkar-e-Taiba
and Pakistani intelligence, of the extent to which Lashkar-e-Taiba was a group, which shared many of the ideologies of al-Qaeda, and sometimes cooperated with and sometimes was a rival, but was very much part of this mouvance where you had all these dangerous international jihadi groups. But it was a loyal instrument and had been created by the Pakistani intelligence. And it had these incredible camps that functioned in the early years out in the open and had storefront recruiting centres in Pakistani cities, and had developed this fearsome machine of training and plotting, which both was dangerous in itself because of the kind of attacks and plots it was trying to carry out in places like Australia and obviously the Mumbai attacks and some plotting in other places, but also because many people who joined Lashkar then would go on into other groups like al-Qaeda.
And the more I learned about this group, the more astounded I was, as there was hard evidence in this case—in the case of David Coleman Headley, based on his confessions and his communications and all kinds of supporting evidence—that the Mumbai attacks had been carried out by Lashkar-e-Taiba with the direction of Pakistani intelligence, which had helped Lashkar design an attack which very specifically not only went after India, but went after jihadi targets, the global jihad—that is Americans, Britons, and there was a Jewish target as well. So, it really went out of its way…at the same time that Pakistan was taking all this aid and was supposedly an ally of the US and the West and the War on Terrorism, it was playing this double game. And this case was incontrovertible proof of it, in which it was supporting terrorism against the West.
There was a lot of debate back and forth about the extent to which this was all of the ISI, or some of the ISI, how high up it went. And obviously I think there were elements of the ISI that may have been working loyally with Western counter-terrorism forces and going after al-Qaeda and things like that. But I think the proof is that ten years later, we know—in fact, the US indicted in Chicago a major in the ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] for his direct role in that plot, who’s never been arrested, and many of the other masterminds have not been arrested—really, justice has not been done in that case. And I think ten years later, that is proof of how sinister and how scary that alliance between Lashkar and Pakistani intelligence is, and to some extent, makes us wonder about the connections and the role of Pakistani intelligence in the other kinds of terrorism that have prospered in Pakistan for so long.
SG: Well, that’s absolutely chilling, what you’re describing. You’re looking at one of the most audacious terrorist attacks that we’ve seen. In many ways, people talk about the Paris Marauding Attacks of 2015, but it was preceded by what we saw in Mumbai, with multiple locations being targeted by gunmen, who were rampaging across hotels, Jewish cultural centres, railway stations. And you said that justice has not been done, because several of the key perpetrators involved in the attack, in plotting it, have not been held accountable. Why did you feel that has not happened ten years later, and why is there perhaps not enough pressure to try and make, say, the Pakistani authorities hold those accountable that were behind the attack?
SR: It’s a fascinating question. And you and I have talked about it. And I’ve talked about it with many other people in counter-terrorism in India and Europe and the US. And it’s really remarkable. I think what happened was that the US definitely made a statement by indicting an [Pakistani] intelligence officer in that attack and indicting some of the top people in Lashkar and making it clear to Pakistan that the West now knew what was going on, so to speak. But there always seemed to be a reason not to push too hard. I almost think there may have been a trade-off in that Lashkar, there was pressure on Lashkar not to repeat another attack like this, something of this dimension, right. And that hasn’t happened, though, it’s caused all kinds of problems all over, including in Afghanistan. But for whatever reason, and I think a lot of it had to do with this lingering policy, this precept in the United States that we can’t push Pakistan too hard, because it might be destabilising, which I think is, probably erroneous, I can’t see why, turning over some of the name suspects in this group that killed 166 people, including American citizens, to the United States for justice, or actually going after them in Pakistan is going to bring down the Pakistani government. But for whatever reason, and I assume a lot of it also has to do with ongoing worries in the West about Pakistan’s nuclear armament and who has control of it, and whether extremists could get access to it. For whatever reason, there has always been this trade off, or this sort of restraint on the part of the West to push Pakistan to do things like this. There’s always this sense “oh, we need Pakistan for help in Afghanistan,” which I think obviously turned out to be not true, or Pakistan was not helpful in Afghanistan.
The other thing I think that case taught me was I spent, in the years right after 9/11, a lot of time trying to understand some of the stateless aspects of a group like al-Qaeda that could be so dangerous and function, rise, and have such an impact sort of on its own and understand that phenomenon. But what I started to realise, especially after covering Mumbai was that the ultimate danger here are groups like Lashkar and others, and that you always have to look for the role of the state in these cases, because I don’t think, Lashkar and other groups would be as powerful as they are, unless they have either active support, as happened with the ISI, or passive support, as has happened in other places, where governments are weak, and allow them to have sanctuaries. But that is something that I think — and it was interesting, because it kind of brought me back to my coverage of Iran and Hezbollah from years before and Latin America, that just realising that, as you said, Mumbai was such a sophisticated attack with all this planning, with all this technical help from elements of the Pakistani military, and including sort of maritime help and getting the boats there, you had 10 gunmen who have never set foot in, in in Mumbai and so they were guided through this high tech way on the phone the whole time, with real time, sort of command centre, and that was why it was such a devastating attack. And it shows you the danger of state sponsored terrorism, and the impunity in this case of state sponsored terrorism. So that was another of the big lessons I took away from reporting on this case.
SG: Well, your research was absolutely essential to uncovering that attack, and also the wider implications to the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s role, not just in terrorism in South Asia, but globally, its ties to plot in Europe, and the relationship with al-Qaeda as well. In fact, without your research, I think we would have been far more in the dark, as to what the group has done and what potentially it could do in the future. Another thing, Sebastian, that I’d like to ask you about, because this is something else that you’ve been trying to, to focus on, and also illuminate others on is, as we are talking about anniversaries of terrorism, we have also passed the 20th anniversary of 9/11, the September 11 attacks, which still remain perhaps the most devastating for terrorism, globally, and the consequences, and there was often this talk about the role of Saudi Arabia, and we know that 15 out of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. What have we learned subsequently about the connections to Saudi Arabia? Because I know you’ve been researching this for quite a while.
SR: Yeah, I obviously, as I said, having covered 9/11— but I had covered aspects of it from Europe and I had, you know, the plot that had taken place in my coverage area. But I was also very focused on some of the other events in subsequent years. But I had always sort of remained interested, as many of us were in 9/11. And a couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to return to the case and look at one of — as much as we’ve learned about 9/11, and about terrorism and the past 20 years — to look at one of the still secret areas, which was, that my colleague, Tim Golden, and I at ProPublica, we had a chance to get access exclusively to the secret investigation that the FBI had pursued for years into the question of whether there had been a Saudi support network for the al-Qaeda hijackers in the United States. And this had always been extremely, delicate to the extent that, for example, when we reported this case, and we reported it in the New York Times Sunday magazine, it was for the first time that the name of the operation, the investigation, was mentioned, it was called Operation Encore. And so, it gave me a chance with all this knowledge I had, and all these sources to dig back into this. And a couple things as you said, Osama bin Laden was Saudi, 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi and I think there’s no doubt we have learned that the context for 9/11 was Saudi Arabia, like Pakistan, played a great role in helping these networks develop around the world because of the way it fomented all over the world, the Wahhabi brand, fundamentalist brand of Islam, because there was so much support to extremist and even terrorist groups from people connected to the Saudi government or from Saudi donors, it’s kind of this game where they were trying to keep al-Qaeda, which obviously was an enemy of the kingdom at bay, but had there been specific ties between Saudi officials and the hijackers? And if so, how high did they go?
And so, we dug into the investigation which had dug into this and had continued until 2016 or 2017 and had been a great point of contention within the U.S. government, right. These were FBI agents, mainly in San Diego, and New York, and some NYPD officers who remained focused on this, and went after some clearly suspicious things. And I think what we found was that there really was not absolutely overwhelming, but strong circumstantial evidence and very tantalising leads that suggested that several figures connected to the Saudi government, a Saudi diplomat/imam in Los Angeles, and a Saudi guy who was believed to be an intelligence operative at San Diego had played a role — a crucial, compartmentalised, but important role. If you remember, the first two of the hijackers were sent out to the United States, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, are sort of tried-and-true jihadis who had been in been in combat and whatnot, and are trusted by bin Laden and the others, but are also particularly unsuited to the west. They barely speak English, they really haven’t functioned in the West at all, unlike some of the figures that come later, like Muhammad Atta.
And so, they come to California, and they meet up, supposedly accidentally with this figure, Omar al-Bayoumi, this guy in San Diego and they meet him in Los Angeles, and they go to live with him under very suspicious circumstances, he helps them find an apartment in his apartment complex. And a lot of stuff happened. Without getting into too many of the details with it, what I think Operation Encore did was find more and more evidence that there had been this network that was treated with great sort of secrecy and delicacy by the US government. And I can’t say we found a smoking gun or that the FBI found a smoking gun, but what we did find was a sense that the Saudi government and the U.S. government, to some extent, had done their best to keep this under wraps, and not to give this the attention it deserved. And it was kind of a tragic conclusion we came to because it is possible that these may have been very isolated figures who are who are helping in an innocent or naive way or a way in which they didn’t know that what was going on, but that the evidence suggested that it was more than that. And because it wasn’t investigated when it should have been, we remain with this mystery, and we remain with this sense that there are important things about the Saudi role, and again, no one is suggesting that it went all the way up to the top but that there were a lot of people within the Saudi diplomatic corps, for example, in the United States, this case reveals who had alarming and direct connections to people I’m involved in terrorism and extremism.
So that was a fascinating case. A frustrating one in some ways, but I think it was important that we focused on it because the main avenue where the truth may come out is this lawsuit that is now going on where, as you know, the 9/11 victims in the United States have mounted a major lawsuit against Saudi Arabia. And that is where some of these leads that these investigators had developed are being kind of aired and played out. And gradually documents are starting to come out, and information that the US government had is starting to come out. And it’s understandable, of course, what people in the US government would tell us was, number one, there was smoke, but there always wasn’t, there wasn’t necessarily fire. The evidence wasn’t that overwhelming. And what others would tell us was, well, there may have been fire, but there was always a need for Saudi Arabia to help on other things. And I felt that was, again, that was an important story to tell in that just looking at terrorism as like this abstraction, sort of trying to get at this question of accountability. And I think in this case, you know, that is an important area to focus on whether it’s in this case, or in the case of Mumbai.
SG: Absolutely. And if we look at the role of Saudi Arabia, tied to the 9/11 attacks, another dynamic, again, that is so important for 2021 is the Western withdrawal from Afghanistan, which is in many ways was why we went to Afghanistan in the first place, because of the September 11 attacks. What is your take Sebastian, on what is happening in Afghanistan? And are you worried that you could actually start seeing terrorism re-emerge from there that could have global ramifications? And I guess tying it into your work, do you envisage yourself being more busy and writing stories about Afghanistan in the future?
SR: I should say to start with it, that I’m not as much of an expert on Afghanistan itself as I am on other issues, obviously, I have worked on a lot of issues related to it. But I don’t have as in depth and understanding of Afghanistan as other places. So, I do want to give that caveat. But I do think I have focused a lot on Pakistan, and the role of ISI and Lashkar and in these issues. And I think what’s clear about Afghanistan, and it kind of surprised me that it hasn’t been more central in the debate is that part of the double game of Pakistan and part of its dark side as an ally, has been that it was not helpful in Afghanistan, and that a lot of what has happened in Afghanistan has been, essentially, the fault of Pakistan and the fact that it’s supported all these groups that were so active and that debilitated the effort by the U.S. and the West to bring stability to Afghanistan. That’s clear, I think, from the activities of the Haqqani Network, which U.S. generals have said in congressional hearings was an arm of the ISI and from Lashkar-e-Taiba was, which was extremely active in Afghanistan, and obviously, the Taliban itself.
And this was the catastrophe we saw in Afghanistan. And this ignominious departure, I think, was a result partly of never having called Pakistan to account and reined in Pakistan’s malign activity in Afghanistan, and now we are paying the price. I mean, I think it’s the debate, and I know people who think that it was that we needed to get, counter-terrorism experts with my respect, who felt that we needed to get out of there. There are others who felt well, we could have left, and I think this may be what, what would have been a more reasonable solution, to leave at least a small forest, without any illusions of turning Afghanistan into some kind of beacon of stability or democracy, but left enough of a presence to maintain, to prevent what has happened now. And so, am I worried? I am. I don’t know how rapid it will be, and how dramatic but I do think you have people running Afghanistan including some of the key ministries, who are, people who have been involved directly involved in terror, terrorism, like people in the Haqqani Network.
So, I can’t imagine that there won’t be some resurgence of groups and individuals using it as a sanctuary, using it as a place to project plots and attacks on other places. How brazen and how direct it will be, I think, remains to be seen, because if it really becomes a platform for major attacks against the West, you know, that’s going to, I think, going to require, you know, a strong and instructive response from the West. So, I’m interested to see if that will happen, or if it will be not unlike the way Lashkar has been since Mumbai, in that it has caused all kinds of problems, but it has not done another attack, like Mumbai. But I think Afghanistan is a tragic story, because it’s not like it was a mystery. People were saying for years that we know that this could happen. They’ve been pinpointing the reason. And one of the big reasons was this pernicious presence and undermining by Pakistani forces of what we were trying to do in Afghanistan. So, I think it may well generate new issues for us to look at.
SG: Unfortunately, so. The Biden administration has cited China as one of the reasons why this had to be a reprioritization of U.S. foreign policy, especially with the dynamic of great power competition. And you’ve been writing a lot about China, and its global role, and its activities. Talk to me more about what you’ve been researching in the last year.
SR: So, I think anyone who covers national security issues, there’s a range of themes that one can focus on, and I have covered quite a few, right, whether it’s Latin America, whether it’s drug trafficking, whether it’s migration, at an international level, terrorism, intelligence. But obviously, in recent years, more and more people who I talked to about other things, were talking to me about China, and the rise of China and the increasing aggressiveness of China, especially on sort of the espionage and intelligence front, in the United States and around the world. And during the pandemic, I was pulled into a team that looked very in depth at the rise of the pandemic, and the outbreak and response of the CDC in the United States and other things. But my particular focus was on the international aspects. And part of that was on the whole relationship with China. And what the what happened with the outbreak, why there wasn’t more cooperation, why there wasn’t more information sooner from China and why that delay really made the pandemic worse than it otherwise would have been. That. I think it seems clear that had the outbreak happened in Denmark or in Ghana, that there would have been much more information out there more quickly, and a much more robust response that would have, I think, ameliorated it. So, I think in covering that I kind of started to realise that the immense power of China the immense the difficulties in that relationship, all the work that had been done by U.S. authorities to kind of create a partnership where if something like this happened, there would be a response, and it didn’t happen, right. Because China, the power dynamic in China was to shut this down, to keep it secret, not to cooperate, for whatever reason. Whether COVID started in a lab, or whether it started by natural means, the fact that there was a cover up, and there was a restriction of information was clear.
And that kind of focused me more just on looking at issues as the US government has shifted towards this big geopolitical issue of looking at China, and particularly, the activities of the Chinese state, around the world and in the U.S. And one of the first cases we looked at was very revelatory and concerning, which was something called Operation Foxconn, which there had been an indictment of Chinese officials in New York, about this, and what it was kind of a window into this planetary effort, which so many things that China’s involved in our planetary in which you had many cases in the United States and other places, where teams of Chinese law enforcement were going around the world pursuing fugitives. Some of them were people involved in corruption, some of them were dissidents, some of whom were sort of relatively minor figures caught up in provincial political conflicts, who were wanted. And using all these illegal means to bring them back, right. You could almost describe them as soft rendition. You had cases in the United States where teams of up to 20 people, a mix of Chinese police officers and prosecutors, and hired muscle, and people who had relatives back in China in jail, so they were pressed into working as spies, and American private detectives who were hired either knowingly or unknowingly to help, which would relentlessly, stalk, track down, pressure, and try and bring people back, illegally. You know, clandestine activity sort of under the nose of U.S. law enforcement.
So, this was real, this was a remarkable sort of eye opening case, because the more I studied it, the more I saw that this this kind of thing was going on in the United States and Canada, in Europe, in Latin America, and it just kind of showed the reach of the Chinese security forces and Chinese intelligence and this kind of battle in the shadows that is happening between China and the U.S., as the regime in Beijing, I think in recent years, has become increasingly sort of assertive and aggressive and brazen. And the U.S. government, in particular, has decided that it needs to resist that. But I think what is remarkable is now that the Biden administration has taken over there really has been no change in the China policy and the perception of China as a threat, which we’ve seen, with things like the recent decision to help Australia arm itself with nuclear submarines. So, I think this is just one of the big issues of the moment. And as much as I’m, you know, interested in other things, it is something that is important, difficult to understand, complex, and which I’ve been trying to, as I have other issues during the course of my career, trying to dig into and understand well, with all the nuances and caveats and ambiguities that come with an issue like this and try and dig deep by looking at particular cases and examples like the one I just described to you, to try and shed light on some of these bigger geopolitical questions.
SG: Do you envisage having more stories to write on, without divulging any of your current research? Is this something that you see as a long-term area that you will be focusing on? And perhaps, if you could also just tie that into where you see the potential fault lines heading between the United States and China? And if it would bring in other countries, you mentioned Australia, there’s often this talk about the Quad, which involves Australia, the US, Japan and India. How do you see this unfolding in the next year?
SR: I mean, I think it certainly will be something I will continue to cover again, because it is such a challenging, relatively new, and complex issue for me. And because so many people I talk to and know are focusing on it in security forces and intelligence services around the world. And because it is, by nature, planetary, right, I mean, what is important about this, and why I think it is so urgent, is that we are talking about, there really isn’t a place in the world that isn’t a theatre in this in this emerging clash between China and the US and as you said, some of the other key countries. I mean, India, obviously, is going to be a crucial player in this because of its size and its geopolitical role and as being part of the quad. I think Australia has been the frontline of the West that’s closest to China, where the regime in Beijing has been one of the places where it’s been most aggressive, that’ll be another place where there will be a lot going on.
And I think what is happening with China, which I think there’s some comparisons to say, the Russians, but the strategy I think of the Chinese regime is to divide the West as much as possible the same way Russia has. So, for example, in a place like Europe, it may be easier for China to exert pressure in some of the smaller countries in particular. But also in other places, like, a place I’m very familiar with: Latin America. I was kind of surprised and interested to see how much influence China has developed in Latin America. So, I think you’re going to see multiple fronts, which is something that is a slow-motion conflict, in a lot of ways, but obviously could speed up.
And then some of these issues, which are, just can’t be ignored, like the plight of the Uyghurs and what U.S. has described as a genocide, there’s going to be more and more pressure on the international community, to respond and to do something about this. I mean, obviously, it’s complicated, because we’re talking about this huge country, and we’re not condemning the entire country, it’s the regime, and it is a country with a huge diaspora and it is a country, and this is unlike the Cold War, where we are, — ‘we’, that is the US and the Western, world —to some extent, are economically intertwined. So, we kind of depend on each other.
And so, it’s a kind of unique and fascinating conflict in that sense. And there are all these different fronts where things can play out, but I think there has been a reluctance in some quarters in the United States, I think, partly because of economic reasons and others to sort of confront this and to take on some of these issues of Chinese influence and this kind of exportation of things like repression and censorship, right? I mean, you have, people in the National Basketball Association (NBA) who criticise China and immediately there’s financial retaliation against them, or Hollywood changing its content so as not to upset the Chinese government in its depictions of certain issues. So, these things are worrisome, right? Because there are things that are that that affect the quality of our democracy and I mean, one of the things I’ve tried to do, as I’ve done all along, is to in the different areas that I’ve covered, there are a number of people, Asian American experts I talk to, and experts who I try and learn from first hand, because they speak the language and they understand the culture. And I think that perspective is vital to cover this kind of thing carefully and accurately.
SG: Well, it’s going to be very interesting to read your research as you continue to cover these angles. I think I’m also curious to see what happens with the Beijing Winter Olympics, if that’s going to be a potential diplomatic flashpoint, especially as there’s talk about some countries boycotting it, or there being a form of a boycott. So that could perhaps ratchet up tensions further.
SR: I think you’re right. That was exactly what I had in mind, that there are going to be some moments soon, where there’s going to be a lot of pressure which is going to build because governments are going to have to make decisions about issues like that and in the context of Taiwan and the Uyghurs and some of these other pressing questions. So, I think you’re right, I think there are going to be some moments where there’s going to be, sort of inevitably, an escalation of tension and pressure.
SG: One thing I’d like to end on Sebastian, which I spoke about in the introduction, is that you are a very prominent author of several books. Some are based on fiction. But it’s clear that a lot of what you’ve written has real life experiences and scenarios, and they’re all fascinating to read. And they cover so many different topics, as well, in many areas that you have in fact, been researching: Latin America, terrorism. Where does the role of fiction blur into reality? And where are the separation lines that exist? And how easy has that actually been in all your books that you’ve written?
SR: I’ve always been interested in writing fiction. And I have had the chance as I was covering different issues around the world. I’ve covered so many sort of tragic, fascinating stories, learned so much about secret worlds, in different places, met all kinds of interesting and rich characters and I have always wanted to write about them in fiction. I enjoyed writing journalism about them, and I’ve had a chance at the places I’ve worked, to write in a way that I think is evocative, satisfying and even can be literary. But there’s a limit to what you can write about these kinds of things when you have to worry about facts and sources and all the all the constraints of responsible journalism. I think fiction has been something of a release. I particularly like international crime fiction and I think that’s what my books are. Because I think there’s something about that genre, which has a structure, which is entertaining at one level, but which allows you to explore larger issues as well. One of my books is very much about the Mexican border and borders in general, it also happens in the triple border area in South America. And I look at questions of drug trafficking and corruption, and crime and the challenges and the pressures that people face when they’re in worlds that are so dominated by corruption and intrigue, it’s hard to tell who’s on which side and where someone’s personal code becomes maybe the most important thing because everything is so lawless and treacherous.
I have really enjoyed writing fiction, because it gives me a chance to take readers on a journey, sort of geographically to places that I think are fascinating and, and colourful, and also to try and describe some of the things going around the world that I’ve been able to develop an understanding of. And it’s interesting that you asked about the lines and how they blur. I mean, I try to take a lot of different elements that I’ve covered, whether it’s a specific case or a specific person or place and meld them into a larger story. So, I don’t just take one journalism story and sort of change the names and make it into a novel. My novels sort of dig into this mind, this wealth of knowledge and experience I have. And it is fiction. So, I feel somewhat liberated. But on the other hand, it’s funny because even in writing fiction I try — one of the things I really strive for — is to be authentic and realistic.
So, some of these stories are dramatic and exciting, and they move around the world, but almost everything I write from the small details and the way people talk and the way people move in the way, like, to some of the larger political work are very much based on things I’ve known to be true, and that I understand reasonably well. And so, it’s funny how, even in the world of fiction, some of the journalistic rigour still comes into play. And I’m like, well, would that really happen? Is that feasible? Is it realistic? And I enjoy doing that. And that’s the kind of fiction I like to read, or I like to see and there is some sense of connection to reality. And I think that’s, hopefully what good fiction like this does, is both entertain, but also help people explain and understand these worlds that otherwise are difficult to comprehend. So, I’ve really enjoyed it I’m and I do my best to combine it with a day job, so to speak. And it’s been very enriching and exhilarating.
SG: Well, it’s been very enriching talking to you today and just fascinating to get your perspectives, your journalistic rigour, on so many important geopolitical, global security issues. And you are one of the finest investigative journalists that I have come across, and it’s so important what you have shared with us today, so thank you again for joining us on NATO DEEP Dive, Sebastian.
SR: Well, thank you Sajjan, I think you are someone who is understanding of these issues, you know, I greatly respect and admire, and I have learned a great deal talking to you and reading your work, so it’s a privilege to be on this programme with you and I really appreciate it.
SG: Well, thank you for those kind words and we look forward to having you back in the future.
Thank you for listening to this episode of DEEP Dive. I’m your host, Dr. Sajjan Gohel. DEEP Dive is brought to you by NATO’s Defence Education Enhancement Programme. The production and research team are Marcus Andreopoulos and Victoria Jones. For additional content, including full transcripts of each episode, please visit: deepportal.hq.nato.int/deepdive.
Disclaimer: Please note that the views, information, or opinions expressed in the DEEP Dive series are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of NATO or DEEP.