The Spy Who Lived Inside Al-Qaeda | Morten Storm on his extraordinary life, being 'one of the worst spies' and the true cost of espionage | 4

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0:15From Wondery, I'm Charlie Higson, spy novelist, actor, comedian, and this is The Spy Who. Thank you for joining us for our final episode of The Spy Who Lived Inside Al-Qaeda. where I'll be sitting down with Morten Storm himself. It's hard to sum up Morten Storm's journey from Danish boxer, boozer and dropout to one of Al-Qaeda's most trusted soldiers. This, despite being a pale, ginger-haired, six-foot-one man speaking accented Arabic. To the people of Yemen, where he was based, he must have been quite the sight. Then, suffering a crisis of faith, He is disgusted by plans to kill civilians. It's here that three spy agencies find him.

1:04What followed was a cat-and-mouse game of friendship, loyalty and betrayal. The spy agencies cast him out, only to entice him back again with suitcases laden with cash. His final mission fell apart, but not before he suspected he was to be collateral damage in the hunt for another al-Qaeda general. To hear how his story unfolded, make sure you've listened to episodes one to three of this season. In this episode, I'm going to sit down with Morten to discuss his early days in Denmark, the moment he walked into that library and found Islam, and that explosive ending to his spying career. I always get a little nervous before doing these interviews, mainly because I don't want to mess it all up and they storm out halfway through saying, how dare you ask me that?

1:53and in Morton's case, I'm sitting down to a man who was a Muslim fundamentalist, who was desperate to go on jihad. He's a big guy, he's much bigger than me, so I hope that Morton and I are going to get on OK. We should also say that these are Morton's views, they're sometimes strong views, and there may be a little swearing.

2:24So welcome Morten. Thank you so much for joining me on The Spy Who. And how are you doing today? Well, I'm doing okay, I think. I keep fighting. Excellent, excellent. Now, we know a lot about your story, perhaps not absolutely everything. I'm sure you still have some secrets. But I mean, when you look back at the spying aspect of your life, how do you reflect on all that? For me, it's somehow surreal. And I have sometimes to pinch myself in the arm to say, Morten, this is actually you. Well, it was a hard battle. Was it worth it? I'm not sure. But I did it. And I'm here now, and I'm so honoured to talk to you.

3:10Likewise, I mean, there's so much to talk about. You've had such an extraordinary life. The central thing you had to do in order to become an effective spy was to get people to trust you. So how did you manage that? I mean, not just as a spy, but also from the perspective of being an outsider to radical Islam. Yeah, it was a little bit different from maybe other spies. It was easier for me to continue to live as Murad Storm, like the fundamentalistic Muslim, than it was to be a spy who just came in to infiltrate the Islamic terrorist organizations. So for me, it was easier to continue to live as Abu Usama, Murad Storm, as it was to live as Morten Storm, the spy who infiltrated Al-Qaeda.

4:05When you started, you weren't thinking about having any level of pretense. It was genuine. Yeah, I actually didn't, I don't think I understood the skill of what I was entering. So do you think you had natural attributes and aspects of your personality that made you a good spy? Honestly, maybe I was one of the worst spies in the world in history. And why do I say this? It's because you're not supposed to reveal yourself. You're not supposed to talk about who you are. But I'm not a hypocrite, and I don't want to live like a hypocrite. And that was somehow for me to reveal who I was to these people, a way to forgive myself for who I was.

4:56Okay. We'll come back to that later, I think. I mean, let's go back to your school days in Denmark in the late 70s and early 80s. What was your childhood like? So my childhood was filled with violence. It was a lot of neglect, betrayal. I had a really evil state who was very violent. And whatever I did, I would always face violence in my house. And this language or this communication between me and him, I turned it into other people in my life. So I became a very violent person myself in my very youth. I became a very unpredictable, a very dangerous person. So I have later on understood that he also lived a very tough young life, and he also have been exposed to violence.

5:47So I forgave him, and I think that's the only way forward. And you joined your first gang when you were only 13, and that was the Raiders. And they would commit armed robbery, you'd fight with skinheads, and the gang was mostly local Turks, Palestinians and Iranian Muslims. What attracted you to that group? So we were not really a gang, but we were nicknamed the raiders by the police and authorities. But we were more like immigrants. And they took me into their family, like their son. and while I was lacking this attention to be belonged somewhere, these people gave it to me. So you were attracted to them for their, sounds like for their outsider status, but also did you find amongst that group sort of strong family bonds that you had missed out on?

6:46Yeah, absolutely. Some of the best family bonds I have ever experienced in my life and throughout my adventure as a Muslim and non-Muslim is absolutely the Muslims have some of the best family values that I have ever experienced and I still communicate with some of my old friends and I love them and I tell them that you guys definitely give me what I never had before. Now back at the time you say the Raiders weren't officially a gang that was just what you were named by the police but after that you joined the Bandidos. Were they an actual gang? So after the so-called Raiders, I joined the Banditos, BMMC, one of the biggest motorcycle clubs in the world.

7:28Normally, that's something that I don't talk about because we have an unwritten rule that we don't talk about what we have done there. Did you ride a motorbike? Can you tell us that? I didn't, but I did afterwards. But I was in the war. I was in the war for two years against the Hells Angels. Well, we won't go into that. You'd been in prison and you'd said that you were feeling lost. And when you're 21 years old, you go to the library to take shelter and you find a book about the prophet Muhammad. What drew you to that? And what did you find in Islam that seemed to fairly instantly resonate with you?

8:04I think I was looking for some kind of structure in my life and a foundation, something that I could relate it to. In Islam, you don't turn the other cheek. You hit back. There is permission to fight. And that appealed to me. And also that Prophet Muhammad was married. He had a life. It's not like Jesus who was in celibate. So for me, Islam was more a realistic way of life and also an appeal that Prophet Muhammad was a human being who fought jihad, who also was forgiven and also was married. There was a lot of aspects in this book that made me convinced that Islam was the truth at that time. Had you had any sort of Christian religious beliefs before that or had you been largely atheist, do you think?

8:59Most of the Danish people, including myself at that time, was just Protestant by culture and not by practice or belief. We were always taught that Christianity was some kind of, it was just like a story. But today, I have to tell you, after leaving Islam and after leaving Christianity and all this, I came back to Christianity and I'm now a Christian. Oh, okay. That's interesting. So in order to embrace Allah, you had to sort of reject drink drugs whatever that was part of your banditos lifestyle and take on the teachings of Islam and you became Murad Storm I mean how important was that identity change did you feel that you'd left Morton behind completely I did for a little while I felt this was my mission Allah had chosen me to leave Denmark, to join up with the Muslims in the UK, which I did.

10:00I met a Danish Muslim who took me to the UK. And from there, I was praying five times a day. I asked Allah for forgiveness, and I was asking Allah for guidance. That's what I followed for the last, after that, 10 years. And I will say I have met, in those 10 years, I met some of the nicest people you can ever imagine and also some of the worst that you can ever imagine. When you embraced that new lifestyle, what was your family situation at the time? Yeah, I was engaged to a Christian Palestinian woman, Samar. She left me because of this. I think my family was happy about it because they knew that I changed for the better.

10:48They knew I wouldn't drink. They knew I wouldn't take drugs. But then again, they didn't know that I became more fundamentalistic and I became more radicalized and more hateful. And I didn't even know this myself until I stepped out of it. After you started in Yemen and after you learned the Arabic and after you learned the Quran and so on, you became even more dangerous than when you used to be as a bandit. You talk about it there as if it was like a sort of gradual process that you only realized, okay, I've become much more radicalized. Was there a particular tipping point or was it that gradual process?

11:25You don't realize it when you are living this moment because it becomes your life. It's a lifestyle. If you do find something that is not according to what you believe in, do you have the balls to step out of it and then cushion all of it? That's what I did. And that's why my faith felt apart like a cart house. Your first wife had left you. Did you then hook up with a Muslim woman? Yes. I married again in Morocco. And I have three kids from the Moroccan woman. And then after her, I have also been married to a Yemeni. You mentioned being in Yemen, which was Al-Qaeda's favoured training ground. Can you remember landing at the airport in Sana 'a?

12:17What did that feel like from Denmark to London to Yemen? I mean, that's quite a culture shift. It was indeed, yeah. So in 1997, I was just a new Muslim. So a guy in Regent Park mosque, Mahmoud al-Draib, who was from Saudi Arabia, he said, Murad, I'll give you a ticket to Yemen, go and study. and I said, all right, I go. And I don't have any hesitations. And two weeks later, I ended up in Sana 'a. When I had to go through the airport, the Sana 'a airport, I honestly thought with my hands on my heart that Sana 'a and Yemen was in Oman. So you thought you were going to Oman, which is much safer than Yemen.

13:11I thought I was going to Oman. So when I landed in Sana 'a, I saw the guys with their big knives in the belts. It's called Jumbia. I saw them with Kalashnikov over the shoulders. I saw them holding hands. And it was like I traveled into a time machine and we went back in time in a museum. I couldn't believe where I landed. one of the most intensified places to study the Quran and Arabic and also Islamic science. I didn't know anything about this. And I have not met any people in the world who's been more generous to me than the Yemenis.

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15:09After years of deep commitment to fundamental Islam, you said that by 2007, the faith had lost all meaning for you. Absolutely. And instead of supporting Al-Qaeda, you wanted to stop its attacks on innocent civilians. Yeah. You phoned PET, Danish Intelligence, who had paid you a visit previously. and well I guess you made a decision okay I'm actually going to fight on the other side now as a spy did you believe you could make a significant difference? Yeah I mean that's a huge decision Yeah it's huge I understood who I was connected to and what kind of network I had and also what kind of people I can have connection to but at the same time I also realised I don't want my children to leave in a world where there's a lot of risk control by Muslim terrorists and so on.

16:07That was my thought, actually. That was my maybe naive thought. I knew the consequences. I knew the people who was going to infiltrate. I knew my abilities to reach the top of al-Qaeda, the top of the enemies who wanted to fight democracy. And it wasn't just PET who were interested in you, other intelligence services. So the British and the CIA get very interested in you. And there was almost a sort of tug of war for your information. Can you tell us about the similarities, the differences between those different agencies? Yes. So in Denmark, we say the British, MI5, MI6, is our cousins. And then we say CIA is our big brother.

16:55So we used to call, hey, Morten, yeah, our cousins want to speak to you. I knew it was either MI5 or MI6. And if they say, Morten, Big Brother, I want to talk to you, I knew it was the CIA. So the CIA sent us to Iceland for team building. The MI5 were paid by the Queen of the United Kingdom at that time. Thank you so much. They sent us to the Arctic Circle up in north of Sweden. So there was always that rivalry between the British and the Americans. But we, the Danish people, always loved the British because they were so formal. You could always trust the British. The British never really wanted to fuck you over.

17:39They always wanted to do you the best so they could continue to work with you and get the best results. But they were more detailed, like to gather information. I went to Edinburgh in Scotland. I went for a counter and anti-Syverian training program with the MI5, MI6, the British intelligence, and they said, Morten, we're not like the Americans. We cannot give you money and all this, but we can give you a future. But you have to know that one day the Americans are going to fuck you. And they were right. They were right about this. Whereas the Americans want fast results, They were more superficial.

18:20They were more, it was finance and, you know, this is what we're going to give you and so on and so on. The Americans were just, money is black and white. And what about the Danish? What were they hoping? So the Danish said, more than listen, it's more fun with the Americans. So, I mean, do you regret choosing the Americans? In a way, yes, because I always felt secure with the British. I have the best protection. My kids had the best protection from the UK. They've always been very, very serious. There was not as much money. It was not as funny as the Americans, but they were so dedicated and so honest to the course than the Americans.

19:03That's why, personally, I do respect the MI6 and MI5 so much and much more than the CIA. And what sort of training did the CIA give you? Did you get a sort of training montage? No, this is the whole point. So the CIA was just cool cash. That's the way to bribe you. But let me tell you about the MI6. I went with the SIS. I mean, the British have really invested a lot of energy and a lot of time in me and the Danish government. And I think they don't get the deserved credit as the Americans do. We earlier on, we were talking about your character and how you got people to trust you. There must always, in a situation like that, be some level of suspicion.

19:53Do we believe Morton? Is he double-crossing them? Might he be double-crossing us? Did you get any sense of that? No, I wouldn't do it. I've never double-crossed and I've never lied to any one of them. If I have done, let's just say that I have lied one time. Don't you think that the media would have known about it right now and they would use that against me? I've always been honest. I always dedicated my work. I put my life at risk. I sacrificed my freedom to fight terrorism. You did double-cross Al-Qaeda, but you turned against them. Yes, yes, yes, of course. Of course, crossing the Al-Qaeda was natural for me because I was not a Muslim, and is the fight to protect people.

20:39And al-Qaeda is not that. So for me, al-Qaeda, a good terrorist is a dead terrorist or is someone in prison. I didn't have any bad feelings about that, to be honest. And the CIA trusted you from the start? I don't know if they trusted me from the start, but I never had a reason to lie to them, and I never lied. So they always checked me. I knew this. I mean, they would check my phones, they would check my emails, they would check my house, my car, whatever. Me and the British, one time I came home, I saw my Jaguar. I had a Jaguar. It was open, the panels, in front of the panels. And I told the British intelligence, I said, listen, guys, I know you put microphones in my car and all this, but, you know, I'm with you guys.

21:23I'm not here to spy against you or be against anyone. I'm here to fight with you against our common enemies.

21:42Before Turning Spy, you had met and befriended the jihadi preacher Anwar al-Awlaki. To the CIA in MI6, he was the future of al-Qaeda, and he called for some brutal terrorist attacks across the world. When Osama bin Laden was killed, to many, he was considered the next in line to lead the group. But when you met him, what did you make of him? So, Ennual Alok, when I met him, he was very honest, straightforward. I think it sounds really weird now to say this, but I could probably trust him more than I could trust the CIA because he would have put his life to protect me, whereas the CIA wouldn't have done the same.

22:31So in this way, he was, and him and his affiliates were more genuine to the cause. They were more genuine to me and genuine to their belief. At the same time, the reason why they were like this to me was because they used to think that I was a Muslim. if they knew that I was a non-Muslim the situation would have been different and I would have been executed in the most brutal ways you have seen beheadings from ISIS in Iraq how they crucified people and cut their throats and so on and behead them that would have been my way but they didn't know and I was playing my game they were playing their game obviously thinking that they were that I was on their team But Envoy himself was a very outgoing person.

23:26He was very educated, very well-spoken. He reached people to the hearts who were like-minded. But at the same time, he is organizing terrorist attacks. Could you see the threat that he posed? Yeah, I absolutely see that. But a terrorist attack in our eyes, in your eyes and our eyes, is not the same as the way that he looked at it. So for him, it was very justified to kill non-Muslims if they don't believe and submit to what he believed in. I was actually sad because, in a way, I tried to convince him that I didn't want to be a part of attacking civilians. he confirmed that al-Qaeda was targeting civilians.

24:18And for me, I'd rather see Anwar in prison and then change maybe later on than somebody who got killed. The CIA promised you$5 million to find him again. I mean, how conflicted were you? This guy was once your friend, and that's a lot of money as well. to be honest if I died that money will be worthless the money of course is good because the money I had before that the$250 ,000 that people forget to tell about and the media is that I spent half of that money to create a cover called Storm Bushcraft and Storm Outdoors I went to instructor courses in the Arctic Circle even with Ray Mears I know the British people know Ray Mears in the bushcraft.

25:16I went with him and I went to his school in the UK, studied how to for survival and so on. And then we spent two weeks in the Arctic Circle together. People don't understand how much I spent out of my own energy and money to continue this war. And I was not promised at that time$5 million. It was only after when the Americans said we can't find him. The CIA basically denied that your input had led to them finding where he was and reneged on the deal and denied you the$5 million. What state were you in at this point?

26:00Well, to be honest, in the beginning I believed them. I said, you know what, that's fine, and I have no issues with this until I read the Sunday Telegraph, explaining how CIA finally tracked down Anwar Alaroké. And that was my mission. And that was just after he got killed. So when I read that message or that article, I contacted the Danish government and said, guys, can you please read this one? Because it looks like wine. They read it. They said, yeah, that's it, brother. That's you, man. The CIA met me in Helsingor in Copenhagen and told me that I played the highest role in tracking down, in killing Anwar Aravé.

26:47You played the highest role. But yet they couldn't even say thank you to me for what I've done. Well, it's a dark and dirty world, isn't it? It is very ungrateful. and, you know, it even gets darker than this because I continued after this. I'm not going to stop here. I'm going to stop at the top. And then in the end, the CIA, there was an attempt or there was a plan, a plot to assassinate me on my last mission. And I got, you know, I was warned by one of their own agents from the CIA in China that they were going to assassinate me because they didn't want this news to get out. But it's just really dirty, really ungrateful.

27:30And I'm so disappointed about this, to be honest. I never imagined the people I used to risk my life for, my own colleagues, would turn their back to me like this. How did you feel when you heard that Anwar had been killed? Well, because I knew him before and after as a Muslim, I always said, I knew he was going to get killed. I knew. And I also knew that he plotted to kill a lot of innocent people. But in a way, I hoped it was not me. I was hoping that it was somebody else. Until I read that article in the Sunday Telegraph, I was happy that he was away, but I was also happy because a lot of innocent people will survive.

28:15But at the same time, I was also sad because I knew his son, I knew his family, I knew him. so I was somehow hoping that it was not me but it was, yeah, it's something that I have to live with.

28:45So Morten, let's talk about the third act of this story. How easy was it switching from Murad back to Morton? Oh, so difficult, man. I'm still trying to find myself. I'm still trying to find the purpose of life and the purpose of their belonging. Probably I'm in a huge identity crisis. It's not easy. It's not easy. It's been very, very difficult. I'm suffering I lost from PTSD and the Danish I'm the first one in Danish history who beat the Danish intelligence and got compensation for PTSD but I'm honestly trying to find myself and it's not easy Well you'd had so many versions of yourself I suppose and including ones that you had to keep secret and then now it's this is the real me.

29:49Yes, it's a culture shock from being a Muslim and being a cigarette agent and then sometime when I listen to my own I watch my own interviews it's like it's not me who's talking there and it's been very emotionally painful. I met up, by the way, I met up with some of my old colleagues from the Danish intelligence and also the British MR5 actually. They were so honest and so noble. And they gave me a hug and just to make sure that I am on the right path. I'm doing the right thing. And do you ever regret your decision to go to the press about your spying? No. To clear your name, to explain to your family who you were?