Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Keeping track of your life can be a lot more
exhausting than living like dons.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
How the gold card from American.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Express, where you were, what you did, how much you
spend all in the year end summary of charges reads
and alan to possess the gold.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Card unbelievable, unbelievable.
Speaker 4 (00:19):
You know, my next guest is old enough to remember
when when American Express gold cards were a big deal.
And and and my next guest would have been probably
stomping around Manhattan nightclubs around the same time Donald Trump
was and saw the and saw the whole saw the
whole scene.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Uh, that's not what we're here to talk about today, though.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
My friend Paul Morrow is a retired NYPD inspector and
headed up their intelligence unit. And he's an attorney, and
he's a Fox News contributor, and he's the proprietor of
a fantastic substack called the ops Desk O P S
d e sk dot substack dot com.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Uh, good morning, thanks for being here, Thank.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
You, But we need to clarify Donald Trump is older
than I am.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
I know, I know, I was just wow, I was.
I didn't mean to imply that you were the same age.
Oh no, it is Paul.
Speaker 4 (01:19):
I just I was just telling listeners the story at
the risk of boring them. I'll tell you when I
first started trading on the options Exchange in Chicago in
the in the late nineteen eighties, my very first day
in the office, when I when I came back up
to the office around noon, there were a bunch of guys.
And remember these are like guys in their twenties making
(01:41):
way too much money. There are a bunch of guys
with a glad sandwich bag full of cocaine, cutting it
with American Express gold card and snorting it through rolled
up one hundred dollars bills. So I was thinking to myself,
you know, back in the day when Paul was you know,
a beat copper or whatever, I.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Bet you saw plenty of that.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Yeah, you know, we almost had a cocaine economy, and
it was as open as you say it was. Actually
it didn't have the bijarda that it has now. When
he did that was crack. When Crack came in all
of a sudden, you know, the cocaine stuff sort of
got dirtied up, and that was the beginning to shift.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Interesting.
Speaker 4 (02:17):
I have so many things I want to talk to
you about you know, I'm gonna do a random thing
here first, and I'm not going to use a name,
even though you know the name.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Because I emailed you about it.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
But I met a guy who used to work at
CIA and for a time was tasked to NYPD, and
I asked him if he worked with you, and he said,
he worked for you, And I just wanted to ask
you to tell us a little bit about NYPD intelligence,
(02:52):
which I suspect is is, you know, not as big
as the CIA, but bigger than most people understand.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Yeah. Yeah. The distinction I would make too so people
understand and don't get creeped out on it, is that
our remit was counter terrorism. The NYPD was not doing
counterespionizer operations or anything like that. Our remit was to
harden New York City and the surrounding area. Is because
our assessment, after having done a lot of research, was
that a lot of the attacks on New York City
(03:21):
came outside in so we had contacts, We worked with
agencies there. We didn't just send our people out. We
always had a partner agency if you were outside New York.
But I sat in the Federal Task Force, and you
know it was constituted that way, so we were in
league with the FEDS. And look, there was a lot
of synchronization that had to happen. I'm not gonna lie
(03:42):
to you. There will there will rivalries. The JTTF didn't
love that we were there, but part of the reason
we were there. And Ray Kelly, the Police Commission, who
really geared all of this up, made no secret of this.
He wanted a rivalry. It was a little bit one
of his management techniques, and he liked us being there.
(04:02):
And we were bigger than the JTTF. The JTTF generally
tops out in New York about one hundred hundred and
twenty hops, and we had a total of sixty seven
hundred at any time. I had two or three hundred
at any one time under me alone, So we had
a lot of horses. We worked with them, We were
always available to augment their efforts surveillances and things like
(04:24):
that and the reverse and yeah, that was the things
we had some people. Now the guy you're talking about
was not detailed to me. He had left the agency
and come over, But we did have some people who
did do what you're describing, and again it was purely
counter terrorism. Did we bump into the kind of counterintel
kind of recipe and our stuff Shorty you want is here?
You know, there's all kinds of characters running around New
(04:45):
York those things. I was always very very scrupulous about
handing off because it was not our remit and you
never know in that world what you've blundered into. So
if you got into something where it looked like, hey,
this is you know what, Chinese operation, Russian operations, some
of that, even a snip of that, off it went
and we stuck to our main mission.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. First, it's not where you're
best at. Second, you might not know. You wouldn't know
which quote unquote Russian guy is actually a CIA agent.
You wouldn't want to blow that. There's all kinds of
reasons you wouldn't get involved. Okay, is there anything that
doesn't fall into the category of I could tell you,
(05:26):
but I'd have to kill you that. You could tell
us a story of, let's say, a success that NYPD
Intelligence had while you were running it.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Just one interesting story.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
I'll give you the first one, because we brought the
first genuine terrorism case that went to conviction under a
state law. These had never been done at anything other
than the federal level. The federal statutes, though, are quirky.
You have to have a connection to a foreign power.
Now they have attenuated that to get it under the statute,
(06:01):
but sometimes it's tricky. So we had a guy that
was very much it would have previously certainly had been
a hate crime. At the least he wanted to bomb
a synagogue, and at the very least he wanted to
say if nothing else, he was trying to get the
something a bomb or something or grenade or something like that.
(06:21):
If nothing else it didn't do enough damage, they were
going to go in shooting. He had a co conspirator
and his great insight here was that quote unquote, the
Jews have all the money. And so, as I said,
normally it would have been a sort of a hate
crime thing, we trigged to it through an asset. This
guy was a guy that was in trouble a lot
of his adult life, but it morphed very clearly into
(06:44):
something that had terrorist intent because he started talking about
how he wanted to send a message and that he
was tired. He was Algerian and he wanted to send
a message that Muslims would no longer be kicked around.
He's tired of it, et cetera. And so that puts
you in the terrorism bucket because you have an ideological
purpose as opposed to profit motive. So that satisfies the
definition the terrorism. And he did not have a direct
(07:08):
connect to a foreign power. He was more sort of
radicalized online etc. By at the time this is even
pre isis al Kaita propaganda, et cetera. And so we
had a very treacky operator. He was a big guy.
He used to pick up prostitutes and torture them and
steal from them and etc. And then having a guy
like that, with some co conspirators and a lot of
connections in the criminal underworld, all of a sudden decide
(07:30):
that he has terrorist intent was a pretty scary thing. Well,
and we didn't have perfect coverage on him. It's very
hard to cover these guys so that you can sleep
at night. He's running around in the city doing all
this stuff. He was trying to set up a drug
network to fund his quote unquote schehtty operations and all
this sort of stuff. And fortunately I had a very
good source, an undercover who they should be naming airports
(07:53):
after my estimation because he took down a couple of
very important cases, including this one. And this was the
first time that you'd had a state consecution of a
terrorist in charge, certainly in New York and nationwide. The
first I ever heard. Those laws only came in after
nine to eleven, and so I was able to cycle
somebody next to him through somebody else. It was all
(08:13):
very delicate. He's a very aggressive guy. I had to
keep my asset very passive that way. There there's no
implication of entrapment or anything like that. We were way
over that hump, and ultimately, in a sting operation that
was fully recorded. I had the car wired up and
everything else. We sold him a couple of guns and
(08:33):
inert grenade, and it was legally issue interesting because the
grenade being inert, you know, did it come under the
definition of a bomb and so on and so forth.
But between that and the guns and everything else, we
certainly had enough and we were able to have the
terrorism charge stick on the state level. You don't need
the connection to the foreign power. And he went away
(08:55):
to jail for a good long time. Look, it wasn't
something the federal gun notual. I shouldn't say that Washington
didn't like it so much as you might imagine. There
were calls up here, why is NYPD taking this case?
And was? It caused some consternation, But at the end
of the day, I was indifferent to that. My role
was to protect the people of New York City. This
guy was going I hurt somebody. They had already done
(09:17):
surveillance on a particular synagogue I won't say where it was,
but a big one here in New York. And I
had to get this guy off the street, and ultimately
we did. And you know, his first week in jail,
he was preaching in jail, getting into fights with Latin
kings and all kinds of stuff. So he was a
guy that was just bound for glory and I was
very gratified to get him away.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Did he did he live through his prison sentence?
Speaker 2 (09:43):
He did. He caused a lot of trouble in jail,
and you know, last I heard, he was still in ok.
You know, he there is a you know, there is
an Islamist population in prison now. A lot of them
just say that they get better food and certain privileges
and stuff. But this guy would have the bona fides
(10:04):
for that. Yeah, unless I heard, you know, he was
going strong.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Yeah, and just so so listeners understand it's been going
for quite some time that some of the best recruiting
for jihadist organizations occurs in prisons.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Call?
Speaker 3 (10:19):
Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Yeah? Yeah? Sure?
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Okay, all right, So let's switch gears. I still so
many things I want to talk to you about.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
So you've got a new Fox Nation special called Blood
in America.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
I've just seen a clip or two. Tell me about it.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
So this is Trendy Argula, the Venezuelan and Prison gang,
and they have been ushered into America and in some
instance has paid there. We've had we've paid their way
into America under some of our immigration programs, and they've
set up nationwide. They're loosely connected, but there's a lot
more communication between and among them than anybody anticipated. And yeah,
(10:57):
the analogy I use is the early days of the
month because for decades, for whatever reason, Jago Hoover denied
that there was a mafia, and as a result, they
established themselves. They had a national organization, and they are
so powerful they influenced, you know, the operations of government here.
And Trendy Arago was kind of on its way. We
were ignoring the fact that they were there for I
(11:17):
think political reasons. But the difference between them and the mafia,
I would argue, is that they just seem to be
far more prone to random violence, whereas the mafia was
always profit motive and you know, try to keep out
of the papers as much as possible until you know,
the later days. Whereas these guys are capable of all
kinds of random viral violence. And we've seen cases like
Lake and Riley attempted to rape and murder just on
(11:41):
Nungerade down in Texas to alleged TDA members. So they're
real bad news. They're scattered across the country, they're set
up in cells, they travel city to city, and nobody
had really taken a hard look at them. I've been
ringing the bell on Fox and on your show, Russ
for a while now, just to tell people, look, wake up.
We got to take these guys out there, we dele
Thing we need is another organized group on top of
(12:03):
the cartels in MS thirteen running streets here in America,
especially a group that seems to be so dedicated to
violence against women. And finally, there seems to have been
something of an awakening, certainly with the new administration, and
just as timing would have it, we had been gearing
up this special and out it comes. We did a
(12:23):
ride along with the NYPD, and you know, if you
do a deep dive on TDA, you begin to realize
they're connected to the Venezuelan government, and in fact, there
is likely a sort of a nexus to what we
were just talking about, because the former vice president and
then head of intel for Venezuela was a guy named
Tarika Al. I saw me, and I saw me. You know,
(12:45):
he's disappeared. Maduro says he's under arrest. I don't believe that.
And he is a Lebanese of Lebanese extraction and is
has Belah adjacent. You know, I'm sure this classified reporting
and I don't know. I'm not giving anything up, but
just open source you can see his connects to that group.
And there's some Innditia that he may very well have
trained and had a hand in directing TDA. So there
(13:09):
is indication from some of the academics that are in
this program that this thing punches above the weight of
just a simple criminal organization. So anybody who's interested in
national security, true crime even etc. I urge you to
check it out. It's on Fox Nation. I learned a
lot just in doing it and bouncing off these academics
and some others and some excellent producers, and I'm really
(13:30):
proud of it. And it's very entertaining, and they've packed
a lot into forty two minutes.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
We're talking with Paul Morrow.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
He's a former NYPD inspector and headed up NYPD Intelligence.
His substack is opsdesk opsd sk dot substack dot com,
and we're talking right now about his new special called
Blood in America on Fox Nation. Just as directly related
but somewhat tangential. I just wanted to say to you
(13:59):
in public, congratulations on your success here in media. You're
a great voice, You're a great guest on my show.
You know an immense amount of stuff that almost nobody
else knows, and you deserve to have this level of success,
and I'm really glad to see it.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Oh, thank you, man, I appreciate that. That's hey, look,
I gotta be honest. This all just hoppinged to me
on accident. You know, I was a street cop like
everybody else. You had to do your time on the
street et cetera, and ultimately just was very fortunate to
have a career path that ultimately put me in charge
of intelligence. You know, I guess I had a skill
set that they thought was going to be a good
fit and it was. And as a result, I was
(14:40):
exposed to a lot of things that I would not
have been exposed to if I was just running around
in a bank robbery task force or something. You know,
I got solid security clearance and got to go around
the world really on federal remits to try to keep
New York in the home front safe, and we were
successful most the time. Is one that sort of haunts
(15:03):
me that we missed and I don't know that we
could have got it, but it was the West Side
Highway attack here in New York with the vehicle attack
on Halloween. You know, that's the one that will bother
me forever. But you know, having gone through nine to
eleven and at as of Street Cup, I was on
the street for that. You know, I got detailed down
there for a number of months like everybody else, you know,
really imprinted on me the idea that this is going
(15:24):
to be the battle of my generation. And they were
foolish to put it in the rearview mirror. We have
all these other challenges, but terrorism things in terms of generations,
and certainly it's not gone away.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
Yeah, a guy I know who I know. Not all
my listeners are super fond of him, but Mike Morrell,
who used to, you know, was deputy director of CIA.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
I got.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
I got to know him because of the book that
he wrote, which you just reminded me of, and it's
about Islamo fascism and terrorism and the book is called
The Great War of Our Time.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Yeah. Yeah, And Morell is a sharp guy. I would
be stating at to say I knew him. I met
him on you know, a couple of occasions. You know,
you go to a lot of these conferences and stuff
like that with these things' important though, Yeah, because everybody
you know says the trends and everything else. And look,
he was very sharp in the terrorism world. He was
single minded and you know, look, I'm not going to
(16:16):
mince words. His role in the fifty one Intel Officers.
I know people who were asked to sign that and
had the you know, the insight to say I'm not
signing this. However you felt about Donald Trump or Hunter
Biden or the bidens in general, et cetera. It was
a very bad idea. I think it's one that Moreau
would like to have back because it was just so
(16:37):
blatantly political. Yeah, I know, I knew at these three
or four people who signed that thing and knew it
was too big a term. I bounced off of them. Yeah,
and I was disappointed. It was a mistake. They shouldn't
have done it, and it distracts from the good work
that many of them did in the war against terrorism.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
I agree completely, and he definitely would like to have
it back. He and I are pretty good, pretty good friends.
So all right, I got about just over two minutes
left here. One of the other one of the things
that I hear and see you talk about quite a
bit on Fox News is this Brian Coberger trial. I
shouldn't have you. I don't even like using their names.
This mass murderer in Idaho. What's the latest here?
Speaker 2 (17:20):
He lost all his motions to suppress the evidence that's
going to really sink him, namely to DNA is the
key thing, because the DNA genealogical DNA. They took the
DNA that they had, they submitted it to a public
database and commercial database, they got some likelys. They followed
the trail. Then the detective work starts and my understanding
and this is just rumant, but I got it when
(17:40):
I was out there covering the case that it resolved
to his father. And then they had to say, Okay,
this guy lives all the way east in Pennsylvania. Well,
then who in his family tree could be near the
crime scene? And lo and behold is the sun tim
in it's away. Now there's timeline issues because they had
supposedly already developed him as it as it possible thanks
(18:01):
to the University of Washington cops. But nonetheless, he was
looking to suppress that technique. And if that goes away,
then you could potentially get the probable cause for some
of the search warrants they did. That got you his
phone movements, and so that was the tactic of the defense.
They crept out. It didn't work. The judge, this is
the second judge now, because remember there's a change of venue.
(18:22):
Second judge now says no, the genealogy comes in as
so he's done. So now you start to see a
bit of a shift. Now they are looking to take
the death penalty off the table by virtue of mental defect,
because now you're hearing, hey, he has autism, and so
we'll get into a battle of experts. Now does he
have it? Is that a mitigating factor? A relative to sentencing,
(18:43):
it's not relative to charging. It's somewhat amorphous under the
idahole law. It won't impinge in my opinion, and I
think most legal observers won't impinge on guilt or innoscence.
The case is very strong. He's innocent till proven guilty,
but the evidence is quite strong, and they're probably gonna
try to bring this in and sentencing because he does
(19:03):
face the death penalty by firing squad and they obviously
don't want that. And nobody seems to be interested in
a plea here. We're going to see a trial that
could be televised this August. So strap in Paul Morrow.
Speaker 4 (19:16):
Fox News contributor, retired NYPD inspector, proprietor of the Ops Desk,
and you got to check out his new special on
Fox Nation. It's a good one. It's entitled Blood in America.
Thanks for your time, as always, Paul is great to
talk to.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
You and you Ross, thank you very much. All right,
Keeping track of your life can be a lot more
exhausting than living like dons.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
How the gold card from American.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Express, where you were, what you did, how much you
spend all in the year end summary of charges reads
and alan to possess the gold.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Card unbelievable, unbelievable.
Speaker 4 (00:19):
You know, my next guest is old enough to remember
when when American Express gold cards were a big deal.
And and and my next guest would have been probably
stomping around Manhattan nightclubs around the same time Donald Trump
was and saw the and saw the whole saw the
whole scene.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Uh, that's not what we're here to talk about today, though.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
My friend Paul Morrow is a retired NYPD inspector and
headed up their intelligence unit. And he's an attorney, and
he's a Fox News contributor, and he's the proprietor of
a fantastic substack called the ops Desk O P S
d e sk dot substack dot com.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Uh, good morning, thanks for being here, Thank.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
You, But we need to clarify Donald Trump is older
than I am.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
I know, I know, I was just wow, I was.
I didn't mean to imply that you were the same age.
Oh no, it is Paul.
Speaker 4 (01:19):
I just I was just telling listeners the story at
the risk of boring them. I'll tell you when I
first started trading on the options Exchange in Chicago in
the in the late nineteen eighties, my very first day
in the office, when I when I came back up
to the office around noon, there were a bunch of guys.
And remember these are like guys in their twenties making
(01:41):
way too much money. There are a bunch of guys
with a glad sandwich bag full of cocaine, cutting it
with American Express gold card and snorting it through rolled
up one hundred dollars bills. So I was thinking to myself,
you know, back in the day when Paul was you know,
a beat copper or whatever, I.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Bet you saw plenty of that.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Yeah, you know, we almost had a cocaine economy, and
it was as open as you say it was. Actually
it didn't have the bijarda that it has now. When
he did that was crack. When Crack came in all
of a sudden, you know, the cocaine stuff sort of
got dirtied up, and that was the beginning to shift.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Interesting.
Speaker 4 (02:17):
I have so many things I want to talk to
you about you know, I'm gonna do a random thing
here first, and I'm not going to use a name,
even though you know the name.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Because I emailed you about it.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
But I met a guy who used to work at
CIA and for a time was tasked to NYPD, and
I asked him if he worked with you, and he said,
he worked for you, And I just wanted to ask
you to tell us a little bit about NYPD intelligence,
(02:52):
which I suspect is is, you know, not as big
as the CIA, but bigger than most people understand.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Yeah. Yeah. The distinction I would make too so people
understand and don't get creeped out on it, is that
our remit was counter terrorism. The NYPD was not doing
counterespionizer operations or anything like that. Our remit was to
harden New York City and the surrounding area. Is because
our assessment, after having done a lot of research, was
that a lot of the attacks on New York City
(03:21):
came outside in so we had contacts, We worked with
agencies there. We didn't just send our people out. We
always had a partner agency if you were outside New York.
But I sat in the Federal Task Force, and you
know it was constituted that way, so we were in
league with the FEDS. And look, there was a lot
of synchronization that had to happen. I'm not gonna lie
(03:42):
to you. There will there will rivalries. The JTTF didn't
love that we were there, but part of the reason
we were there. And Ray Kelly, the Police Commission, who
really geared all of this up, made no secret of this.
He wanted a rivalry. It was a little bit one
of his management techniques, and he liked us being there.
(04:02):
And we were bigger than the JTTF. The JTTF generally
tops out in New York about one hundred hundred and
twenty hops, and we had a total of sixty seven
hundred at any time. I had two or three hundred
at any one time under me alone, So we had
a lot of horses. We worked with them, We were
always available to augment their efforts surveillances and things like
(04:24):
that and the reverse and yeah, that was the things
we had some people. Now the guy you're talking about
was not detailed to me. He had left the agency
and come over, But we did have some people who
did do what you're describing, and again it was purely
counter terrorism. Did we bump into the kind of counterintel
kind of recipe and our stuff Shorty you want is here?
You know, there's all kinds of characters running around New
(04:45):
York those things. I was always very very scrupulous about
handing off because it was not our remit and you
never know in that world what you've blundered into. So
if you got into something where it looked like, hey,
this is you know what, Chinese operation, Russian operations, some
of that, even a snip of that, off it went
and we stuck to our main mission.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. First, it's not where you're
best at. Second, you might not know. You wouldn't know
which quote unquote Russian guy is actually a CIA agent.
You wouldn't want to blow that. There's all kinds of
reasons you wouldn't get involved. Okay, is there anything that
doesn't fall into the category of I could tell you,
(05:26):
but I'd have to kill you that. You could tell
us a story of, let's say, a success that NYPD
Intelligence had while you were running it.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Just one interesting story.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
I'll give you the first one, because we brought the
first genuine terrorism case that went to conviction under a
state law. These had never been done at anything other
than the federal level. The federal statutes, though, are quirky.
You have to have a connection to a foreign power.
Now they have attenuated that to get it under the statute,
(06:01):
but sometimes it's tricky. So we had a guy that
was very much it would have previously certainly had been
a hate crime. At the least he wanted to bomb
a synagogue, and at the very least he wanted to
say if nothing else, he was trying to get the
something a bomb or something or grenade or something like that.
(06:21):
If nothing else it didn't do enough damage, they were
going to go in shooting. He had a co conspirator
and his great insight here was that quote unquote, the
Jews have all the money. And so, as I said,
normally it would have been a sort of a hate
crime thing, we trigged to it through an asset. This
guy was a guy that was in trouble a lot
of his adult life, but it morphed very clearly into
(06:44):
something that had terrorist intent because he started talking about
how he wanted to send a message and that he
was tired. He was Algerian and he wanted to send
a message that Muslims would no longer be kicked around.
He's tired of it, et cetera. And so that puts
you in the terrorism bucket because you have an ideological
purpose as opposed to profit motive. So that satisfies the
definition the terrorism. And he did not have a direct
(07:08):
connect to a foreign power. He was more sort of
radicalized online etc. By at the time this is even
pre isis al Kaita propaganda, et cetera. And so we
had a very treacky operator. He was a big guy.
He used to pick up prostitutes and torture them and
steal from them and etc. And then having a guy
like that, with some co conspirators and a lot of
connections in the criminal underworld, all of a sudden decide
(07:30):
that he has terrorist intent was a pretty scary thing. Well,
and we didn't have perfect coverage on him. It's very
hard to cover these guys so that you can sleep
at night. He's running around in the city doing all
this stuff. He was trying to set up a drug
network to fund his quote unquote schehtty operations and all
this sort of stuff. And fortunately I had a very
good source, an undercover who they should be naming airports
(07:53):
after my estimation because he took down a couple of
very important cases, including this one. And this was the
first time that you'd had a state consecution of a
terrorist in charge, certainly in New York and nationwide. The
first I ever heard. Those laws only came in after
nine to eleven, and so I was able to cycle
somebody next to him through somebody else. It was all
(08:13):
very delicate. He's a very aggressive guy. I had to
keep my asset very passive that way. There there's no
implication of entrapment or anything like that. We were way
over that hump, and ultimately, in a sting operation that
was fully recorded. I had the car wired up and
everything else. We sold him a couple of guns and
(08:33):
inert grenade, and it was legally issue interesting because the
grenade being inert, you know, did it come under the
definition of a bomb and so on and so forth.
But between that and the guns and everything else, we
certainly had enough and we were able to have the
terrorism charge stick on the state level. You don't need
the connection to the foreign power. And he went away
(08:55):
to jail for a good long time. Look, it wasn't
something the federal gun notual. I shouldn't say that Washington
didn't like it so much as you might imagine. There
were calls up here, why is NYPD taking this case?
And was? It caused some consternation, But at the end
of the day, I was indifferent to that. My role
was to protect the people of New York City. This
guy was going I hurt somebody. They had already done
(09:17):
surveillance on a particular synagogue I won't say where it was,
but a big one here in New York. And I
had to get this guy off the street, and ultimately
we did. And you know, his first week in jail,
he was preaching in jail, getting into fights with Latin
kings and all kinds of stuff. So he was a
guy that was just bound for glory and I was
very gratified to get him away.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Did he did he live through his prison sentence?
Speaker 2 (09:43):
He did. He caused a lot of trouble in jail,
and you know, last I heard, he was still in ok.
You know, he there is a you know, there is
an Islamist population in prison now. A lot of them
just say that they get better food and certain privileges
and stuff. But this guy would have the bona fides
(10:04):
for that. Yeah, unless I heard, you know, he was
going strong.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
Yeah, and just so so listeners understand it's been going
for quite some time that some of the best recruiting
for jihadist organizations occurs in prisons.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Call?
Speaker 3 (10:19):
Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Yeah? Yeah? Sure?
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Okay, all right, So let's switch gears. I still so
many things I want to talk to you about.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
So you've got a new Fox Nation special called Blood
in America.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
I've just seen a clip or two. Tell me about it.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
So this is Trendy Argula, the Venezuelan and Prison gang,
and they have been ushered into America and in some
instance has paid there. We've had we've paid their way
into America under some of our immigration programs, and they've
set up nationwide. They're loosely connected, but there's a lot
more communication between and among them than anybody anticipated. And yeah,
(10:57):
the analogy I use is the early days of the
month because for decades, for whatever reason, Jago Hoover denied
that there was a mafia, and as a result, they
established themselves. They had a national organization, and they are
so powerful they influenced, you know, the operations of government here.
And Trendy Arago was kind of on its way. We
were ignoring the fact that they were there for I
(11:17):
think political reasons. But the difference between them and the mafia,
I would argue, is that they just seem to be
far more prone to random violence, whereas the mafia was
always profit motive and you know, try to keep out
of the papers as much as possible until you know,
the later days. Whereas these guys are capable of all
kinds of random viral violence. And we've seen cases like
Lake and Riley attempted to rape and murder just on
(11:41):
Nungerade down in Texas to alleged TDA members. So they're
real bad news. They're scattered across the country, they're set
up in cells, they travel city to city, and nobody
had really taken a hard look at them. I've been
ringing the bell on Fox and on your show, Russ
for a while now, just to tell people, look, wake up.
We got to take these guys out there, we dele
Thing we need is another organized group on top of
(12:03):
the cartels in MS thirteen running streets here in America,
especially a group that seems to be so dedicated to
violence against women. And finally, there seems to have been
something of an awakening, certainly with the new administration, and
just as timing would have it, we had been gearing
up this special and out it comes. We did a
(12:23):
ride along with the NYPD, and you know, if you
do a deep dive on TDA, you begin to realize
they're connected to the Venezuelan government, and in fact, there
is likely a sort of a nexus to what we
were just talking about, because the former vice president and
then head of intel for Venezuela was a guy named
Tarika Al. I saw me, and I saw me. You know,
(12:45):
he's disappeared. Maduro says he's under arrest. I don't believe that.
And he is a Lebanese of Lebanese extraction and is
has Belah adjacent. You know, I'm sure this classified reporting
and I don't know. I'm not giving anything up, but
just open source you can see his connects to that group.
And there's some Innditia that he may very well have
trained and had a hand in directing TDA. So there
(13:09):
is indication from some of the academics that are in
this program that this thing punches above the weight of
just a simple criminal organization. So anybody who's interested in
national security, true crime even etc. I urge you to
check it out. It's on Fox Nation. I learned a
lot just in doing it and bouncing off these academics
and some others and some excellent producers, and I'm really
(13:30):
proud of it. And it's very entertaining, and they've packed
a lot into forty two minutes.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
We're talking with Paul Morrow.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
He's a former NYPD inspector and headed up NYPD Intelligence.
His substack is opsdesk opsd sk dot substack dot com,
and we're talking right now about his new special called
Blood in America on Fox Nation. Just as directly related
but somewhat tangential. I just wanted to say to you
(13:59):
in public, congratulations on your success here in media. You're
a great voice, You're a great guest on my show.
You know an immense amount of stuff that almost nobody
else knows, and you deserve to have this level of success,
and I'm really glad to see it.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Oh, thank you, man, I appreciate that. That's hey, look,
I gotta be honest. This all just hoppinged to me
on accident. You know, I was a street cop like
everybody else. You had to do your time on the
street et cetera, and ultimately just was very fortunate to
have a career path that ultimately put me in charge
of intelligence. You know, I guess I had a skill
set that they thought was going to be a good
fit and it was. And as a result, I was
(14:40):
exposed to a lot of things that I would not
have been exposed to if I was just running around
in a bank robbery task force or something. You know,
I got solid security clearance and got to go around
the world really on federal remits to try to keep
New York in the home front safe, and we were
successful most the time. Is one that sort of haunts
(15:03):
me that we missed and I don't know that we
could have got it, but it was the West Side
Highway attack here in New York with the vehicle attack
on Halloween. You know, that's the one that will bother
me forever. But you know, having gone through nine to
eleven and at as of Street Cup, I was on
the street for that. You know, I got detailed down
there for a number of months like everybody else, you know,
really imprinted on me the idea that this is going
(15:24):
to be the battle of my generation. And they were
foolish to put it in the rearview mirror. We have
all these other challenges, but terrorism things in terms of generations,
and certainly it's not gone away.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
Yeah, a guy I know who I know. Not all
my listeners are super fond of him, but Mike Morrell,
who used to, you know, was deputy director of CIA.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
I got.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
I got to know him because of the book that
he wrote, which you just reminded me of, and it's
about Islamo fascism and terrorism and the book is called
The Great War of Our Time.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Yeah. Yeah, And Morell is a sharp guy. I would
be stating at to say I knew him. I met
him on you know, a couple of occasions. You know,
you go to a lot of these conferences and stuff
like that with these things' important though, Yeah, because everybody
you know says the trends and everything else. And look,
he was very sharp in the terrorism world. He was
single minded and you know, look, I'm not going to
(16:16):
mince words. His role in the fifty one Intel Officers.
I know people who were asked to sign that and
had the you know, the insight to say I'm not
signing this. However you felt about Donald Trump or Hunter
Biden or the bidens in general, et cetera. It was
a very bad idea. I think it's one that Moreau
would like to have back because it was just so
(16:37):
blatantly political. Yeah, I know, I knew at these three
or four people who signed that thing and knew it
was too big a term. I bounced off of them. Yeah,
and I was disappointed. It was a mistake. They shouldn't
have done it, and it distracts from the good work
that many of them did in the war against terrorism.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
I agree completely, and he definitely would like to have
it back. He and I are pretty good, pretty good friends.
So all right, I got about just over two minutes
left here. One of the other one of the things
that I hear and see you talk about quite a
bit on Fox News is this Brian Coberger trial. I
shouldn't have you. I don't even like using their names.
This mass murderer in Idaho. What's the latest here?
Speaker 2 (17:20):
He lost all his motions to suppress the evidence that's
going to really sink him, namely to DNA is the
key thing, because the DNA genealogical DNA. They took the
DNA that they had, they submitted it to a public
database and commercial database, they got some likelys. They followed
the trail. Then the detective work starts and my understanding
and this is just rumant, but I got it when
(17:40):
I was out there covering the case that it resolved
to his father. And then they had to say, Okay,
this guy lives all the way east in Pennsylvania. Well,
then who in his family tree could be near the
crime scene? And lo and behold is the sun tim
in it's away. Now there's timeline issues because they had
supposedly already developed him as it as it possible thanks
(18:01):
to the University of Washington cops. But nonetheless, he was
looking to suppress that technique. And if that goes away,
then you could potentially get the probable cause for some
of the search warrants they did. That got you his
phone movements, and so that was the tactic of the defense.
They crept out. It didn't work. The judge, this is
the second judge now, because remember there's a change of venue.
(18:22):
Second judge now says no, the genealogy comes in as
so he's done. So now you start to see a
bit of a shift. Now they are looking to take
the death penalty off the table by virtue of mental defect,
because now you're hearing, hey, he has autism, and so
we'll get into a battle of experts. Now does he
have it? Is that a mitigating factor? A relative to sentencing,
(18:43):
it's not relative to charging. It's somewhat amorphous under the
idahole law. It won't impinge in my opinion, and I
think most legal observers won't impinge on guilt or innoscence.
The case is very strong. He's innocent till proven guilty,
but the evidence is quite strong, and they're probably gonna
try to bring this in and sentencing because he does
(19:03):
face the death penalty by firing squad and they obviously
don't want that. And nobody seems to be interested in
a plea here. We're going to see a trial that
could be televised this August. So strap in Paul Morrow.
Speaker 4 (19:16):
Fox News contributor, retired NYPD inspector, proprietor of the Ops Desk,
and you got to check out his new special on
Fox Nation. It's a good one. It's entitled Blood in America.
Thanks for your time, as always, Paul is great to
talk to.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
You and you Ross, thank you very much. All right,
The Ross Kaminsky Show News
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