I’ve been fascinated by the story of Najibullah Zazi since it was unfolding in the fall of 2009 as I was researching “The Threat Matrix.” Even as the plot unraveled, I was out in Denver interviewing agents, getting a tour of the “Operation High-Rise” command post, and visiting Zazi’s bucolic condo complex in Aurora. To me, the case of the Denver shuttle bus driver who almost bombed the New York City subways never received the level of attention it should have.
This summer, 5280 Magazine gave me the chance to rectify that to a certain extent. There was much more information available now, including hundreds of pages of court documents, and I supplemented that with extensive interviews of most of the major players in the case. The result was just published in the November issue, “Homegrown Terror,” and significantly—in my biased opinion at least—advances and changes the narrative of a bumbling terrorist. Zazi is in fact the closest al-Qaeda came to successfully striking the United States in the decade after 9/11:
Counterterrorism work is all about chasing ghosts. On an average day, the United States government fields some 3,000 terrorism leads. Virtually none pan out, because the bureau’s routine record searches quickly eliminate most leads. “We had expected the next piece of information that comes in would wash him out,” Olson says. But in the first hours of the investigation, every trap, every records check, every step pointed to one thing: This was no ghost. “People don’t understand how close he was to being successful,” Olson says. “Another 24 hours and he would have gotten in his car without us knowing who he was.”
I’d encourage you to read the whole article on Najibullah Zazi.
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