Know and as we follow the media in these days, the rising concern about young men going to the middle east in search of the hawthorne venture, finding themselves caught up in extremism and violence and in many cases converting either to extremist causes were becoming disillusioned and returning. And this perhaps results in their becoming a problem when they return to the west. There was a book during the cold war which was in 1949 book called the god that failed that was about people who had embraced communism and felt that they were true believers and they realized that that was not the holy grail. Tonights story is very much a story of conversion and an epiphany and eventual loss of faith. And i think he will find it absolutely fascinating. The story is one that was developed initially by doctor mark stout and i will introduce them shortly and he will introduce or speakers. Mark developed the story having encountered the individual of interest on facebook and anything can come out of facebook, whether its Academic Research or discoveries. And it will involve, as you will see, a very complicated case and involved case and involving the inequities of the eia. Given my own background, i made the choice not quite to accuse myself, i still have to be the Museum Director to give mark and his associates their lead. To let them to develop the case and let the case take them where it may and that is what mark and his successor, doctor houghton, have done. Tonight marple introduced the speakers and i believe also i dont know if we will have dialogue, but they will certainly handle the q a. And i would say just a word to him that mark was our historian in 2010 to 2013. He now directs the Masters Degree Program in Global Security studies and has a graduate certificate in intelligence at Johns Hopkins. He had 15 years in the federal government as an analyst and holds a degree from stanford and harvard and has coauthored books and published a number of articles. Please help me welcome our guest this evening, mark stout. [applause] well, thank you very much. I am really honored to be here this evening to introduce our guests as well as our most important one, morten storm, for this book launch of agent storm my life inside al qaeda and cia. This is just coming out today in the United States and it is a remarkable book. If you look on the back you will find more. A few words about the authors starting with tim. He joined the bbc just out of college and work for a number of years in the middle east and then in 1996 he moved to cnn and spent quite a number of years with Cnn International and he specialized not exclusively but particularly in terrorism. The odds are fairly good that you saw some of his repertoire when he was at a knicks obscure village in afghanistan and im also told that yesterday at this time he was in the eastern ukraine. So he is an interesting individual. Paul is a cnn terrorism analyst an Investigative Reporter and his website says based out of new york city, but i think he does every bit as much of running the world as tim does and he had degrees from cambridge and teaches advanced studies at Johns Hopkins university. I should add that not only is he an excellent reporter but hes done really good scholarly work on al qaeda. I just sent off a book chapter last week myself about his work and its such a pleasure to be with him this evening. Last but not least is morten storm who you will be seeing on this screen here. Hes originally from denmark and is coming to us from an undisclosed location in the uk tonight. And morten, you can come on out. Here we go. And there we are. I wont say too much about the story because that is the substance about what we are here for tonight. I will they that he did some extraordinary things to contribute to our joint struggle against violent jihad is him and the Al Qaeda Network and im so delighted to be able to call him my friend. Very briefly ive been studying in various ways violent jihadism for 20 years now since the russians invaded chechnya at the end of 1994. Aware of only two other cases even slightly like morten storm at all. The first is collins, hes an american that converted to islam and became radicalized and went to chechnya in the midtolate 90s to fight alongside one individual. He de radicalized when heard about people who he thought shared his understanding of the islamic faith who are in egypt blowing up women and children and he said thats not what im in the store. Eventually he became an informant for the fbi and he wrote a book in 2002 called might she hot. And the other one is omar, he is a moroccan who in the mid1990s got involved with a hottest extremist in brussels. And he decided it would be a good idea to embezzle money from them and then realize that he is had done something dangerous and went to the french government and ended up with a government where he reported from inside the camps and later reporting on it she hottest in london. In the late 19 90s he also fell out with his handlers and he wrote a book called inside ge odd, my life and surprise story. Both of these individuals do their work in the 1990s. The story of morten storm is much more interesting for a number of ways. Hes more recent and important. Both of them were by and large at the margins of a story when they were active working for western intelligence, it was not tremendous a big deal for most western governments, but he was right at the core of the most important al qaeda affiliate and his work, we are told, is directly related to the president of he played an Important Role in the precise nature is probably disputed, but an Important Role in the killing of Anwar Alawlaki as well. One or two technical notes, we hope to have him physically here with us this evening. There were some visa issues about which im sure you can imagine what the parameters are for some of that that prevented that from happening. So hes joining us on video link from the United Kingdom and the audio is insane, the video may come in and out of aint just a little bit. So please dont let that disconcert you. So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, here are three guests including morten storm. [applause] while they are taking their seats, those of you who want to go into more detail on the thinking that went through his mind in these various epiphanies that he went through, it was a terrific podcast made with our guest this evening by doctor vince houghton. I will refer you to that podcast it should be there within two or three days at the most. An indepth interview on their experience with morten storm. Thank you very much, everyone. It is a pleasure to be here and i thank you so much. We are delighted to be here and so happy that morten can be here as well. Its not necessarily a real palm tree behind him. [laughter] but his story is quite exceptional. We have never seen a story like this of someone who has gone so deep inside the world of al qaeda and that sort of comeback and then someone who has been so deeply involved with western intelligence and the sort of tip of the sphere and some of the most important targeting operations since 9 11. So the journey that we embark on has been so rewarding that we have learned so much from him and he really does have exceptional insights and experiences and one heckuva story out. We found out that it his rolodex with Something Else because there were so many people that we know now from various times over 10 or 15 years, with weather in london or yemen or lebanon, he was everywhere and he had met these people and he had been friends with them and then came the moment and the conversion where he decided he couldnt deal with it anymore. There were all sorts of reasons and it wasnt an instant moment or something that happened in a week but a protest and eight disillusionment and hes not alone in that. But the case study is just fascinating in that asked that, as well as so many others and so what we are going to try to do is working through the story with some of the incredible volume of physical evidence that he brought to us, whether it is recordings, visa stamps, everything that helps to substantiate his account of what happened to him. We also talk to his family, the people that knew him, we kind of built this picture that was complicated of a guy who was into all sorts of bad stuff when he was a kid. There you go. And he was a biker and a boozer and all the rest of it and he found islam at the age of 21 years old on the coast of denmark, which we visited. And he was a true jihad as for nearly 10 years before he decided in 2006 it was not for him because it moves beyond where he was comfortable. But by that time his contacts were gold dust for the rest of the intelligence agent. So that is the bare bones of it and now we will have some more detail. You can see his mentors that we met back in 2006. A friend of martins, and obviously connections that he had became extremely interesting to the cia and other western intelligence individuals. He began a campaign of terrorism against the west, inspiring them to launch attacks. Also he was the guy behind the underwear bombing and more after that. The heart of the book is the story about the friendship and what became a necessary betrayal for all of our security. Morten, introduce yourself, buddy to. Hi, guys, thank you very much for coming. I want to thank you. Colin tim, you guys are superstars. [inaudible] and i want to say thank you to Richard Pines and thank you to the whole team. Its amazing. Take you so much. And what can i say . I never imagined to be in this position when i can see you guys. Im so delighted and honored. And once you leave this room you are have been enriched with information that will benefit you and hopefully an understanding and an impact on to how radical muslims and fanatics used to assume. [inaudible] and so thank you. Thank you. And if we could just go ahead . Okay, i want to say also that my life is in danger people around here have tried to take very good care of my family. And one of them is my friend gavin whose next may. And so there are definitely people here that have helped me. What we are going to do is play a video to set the scene. This may of 2005 outside the u. S. Embassy. There have been reports in the media in afghanistan and pakistan that there is anger on the street. And morten came down with a group that is a proal qaeda support group and they have all come down to protest what they see as a desecration, which is, as you can see, he appears on the screen on the right hand side of the video. [cheers] [applause] [applause] [cheers] [cheers] [cheers] the crowd chanting at the american side. So how did you get to this point . How did you grow so angry . And laughing at it, but at the same time i am shaking my head. What drove me to that place was frustration, and i honestly understood that the worst had been these people with western democracy and what you saw there was im just looking at these people now and at that time now many of them are fighting. Many in the people in this video are fighting with isis in syria and iraq and perhaps involved with atrocities and the mindset carried them in the introductory. Were story ended up really differently. Lets say you back a little differently in your story that you grew up in denmark and had a pretty troubled childhood, you got involved in some games and biker gangs. Can you tell us how you sort of discovered this and what happened . I was a young man with no direction in my life and it was difficult at times. So the only thing became one of the reasons and one of the things that we belong to. We discovered that maybe wasnt it wasnt really what we wanted to do with my life. And i started to question life and i try to keep this up. The reason why we did this is because a lot of my friends were muslims and they just wanted to know about this. But the life of profit mohammed attracted me and he spoke to me. And i couldnt let it out or let it go and each effort compounded into another one. I ended up staying up until the Late Afternoon and i was a different person from the time that i entered. You ended up you can see the summary here, one of the fallacies and centers of learning in the air world. Tell us about your experience in yemen as a muslim convert, you have just converted to islam, you decided to embark, as we described in the book to yemen. Can you tell us about that experience and the islam that you were being taught about . When i converted, i was considering that yes, we did have differences between she is and sunnis. But that wasnt a big deal until i went to yemen. And so then it was the most intense institution and we have People Living here that are disconnected from big crowds. I would even be amongst two students, getting used to islam and that is why our founders talked about this. Talking about this fundamentalist version of the religion where you guys were talking about this and everyone else was wrong and then you came back to london around year 2000 or just before. And really what was part of this scene, was kind of a growing radical cauldron in london at the time, you met people, the 20th hijacker, men that were going from a fallacy mind that toward the more to hottest mindset. What was making him go towards the more to hottest mindset . Pc, jihad is obvious that one of the most noble acts it can do as a muslim. To have two died or to have the intention of dying and so the obligation was quite clear that something must be done when you consider that they were all occupied and so these things radicalize me and made me aware that there was more than just a theoretical part of islam at least in particular when it came to this. How far did this go when it was a part of your passions. And the people that you were with in london, did you find that there was a patent to their background or the sort of people that they work in a. At that time we had somalia and sudan and the christian and there was jihad in chechnya as mark said. And there was obviously when i was part of it, just a few years before, it was real. And so those people who talk about afghanistan in those places, to answer the question. Theres a lot of people that you met and rich agrees. What were they like reign. I came across some interesting people who have made impact and some of them were setting up a new Training Camp [inaudible] and then there was and some of us [inaudible] we will need this and i will need different people as a muslim. I have to say that at that time the most able crew is or [inaudible] and they were actually running the show is in the jihad a society. Morton returned to yemen after he met people with close ties involved with al qaeda. He was actually in a barbershop on the day of 9 11 and he saw the images of the towers coming down. Can you describe the events of that day and what you went through and what happened next two can you describe the atmosphere of what happened with the people youre with two. Sure. What happened was at that time about two months before 9 11 he invited me to go over there and i said that i had to bring my wife. And so i didnt want to leave her or bring her. So a few months later we had 9 11. There was a barbershop was a friend of ours and suddenly we saw 9 11 and i said, ive been to that place. And then suddenly there was another head and casey then there was news that something was going on there. So we turn on the radio and as you stated everything was under attack. And this mosque that we went to see what was going on, the mosque was run by a very politically active group of people. And i remember he was saying that by the grace of ahmad, america has been attacked and we should all have gratitude for what is happening. Here in the United States, you were sort of talking about the atmosphere in the weeks that followed there was a plan for the United States go into afghanistan and george w. Bush made his speech that had a particular effect on you. Can you describe a little bit two. Yes. So we didnt have tb television. So we never saw the buildings. So i could only hear what i heard in the radio. And i remember that Osama Bin Laden said it wasnt me, i didnt do it. But i knew that it was a permissible way of lying when you are facing enemies. And so now i know that what happened was he said this is a crusade. [inaudible] and he said you are either with us or against us. So there was no options because even though i do disagree there was no choice in the matter and the least we morley side with al qaeda. Just a couple of years later, you are here in london and youre protesting you said he plans to film the u. S. Embassy. But ill raise the there would be some frustration with some of the leaders that were blowhards and you say that in 2006 you traveled with this american cleric and mentioned in the 9 11 report living and teaching back in the capital. Can you talk about meeting him and what he was like . He was thinking of making permanent immigration to the muslim land. And it was very deep and so for me the only option was to migrate to yemen. So i was introduced by some australian muslims and invited to go up to his house and eat lunch and so i needed to take home what was going on. However, he had this way, this noble way that he was very calm. And, i mean, he considered this and everything he said made sense. It was like, wow,. And then we all talked about this. And so you had to study and many of these actual studies were in your house and some of the most famous orifice infamous youtube hits of Anwar Alawlaki, actually were first given in your house. Many gravitated toward leadership around the world. So we had a front row seat and he became close to him and you became almost like a mentor to you. So can you tell us about that a little bit . Extraordinary religions we can now find, unfortunately in many increments and all over the world even in indonesia and africa, how much has he reached from this place . And that no one individual who had actually talked about this and we had many prominent figures in the big group that went to somalia and we had those that were trying to get in in syria. [inaudible] and so it was very sincere. What was the attraction of Anwar Alawlaki to all of you . What made his message resonate . What was it about him that drew the following in yemen and obviously run the world . I think that the worst with Osama Bin Laden, we can see that he was he didnt have a really bad reputatio