Lifeline - the Untold Story of Saving the Pulse Night Club Survivors (NEW 12/5/25)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
It's the Opperman Report, and now here is investigator.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Okay, welcome to the Opperman Report. I'm your host, private investigator,
Ed Opperman. I can get a whole man Opperman Investigations
and digital friends and consultant if you reached out to
me through my email Opperman Investigations at gmail dot com.
We have to be a returning guest. I was saying
for us, like the Steve Martin of the Opperman Report,
Trevor Aaronson. I met this guy. He came out with

(00:30):
the first book was of the Terror Factory Inside the
FBI's manufactured War on Terrorism. I think it was a
best seller. Excellent book. Check this out. It's all about
how the FBI sets up these terror operations. You got
their own guys inside, and then they rest some guys
out of his mind to begin with, just to make
himselves look good. Then he came back with this story.

(00:52):
I had him back with the story about Bundy Ranch,
and then how half the guys up there were Feds,
and the FED set up some kind of TV documentary
film Cune and went up there and everybody they interviewed
up there was some kind of informative FED to begin with. Uh,
he's got this other brand thing wearing. To ask him
about Cold into the Madness, a killer's game, a woman's obsession,

(01:13):
and a dark conspiracy. We'll check that out. But he's
start to talk about Pulse, the untold story. This thing
won a Peabody Award. It is like a podcast and
it's all about that Pulse nightclub shooting. And you know,
when you got Trevor Aronson, you're gonna get the real deal,
what really happened, not what you see all over the news,
what they're trying to push on you. So, mister Aaronson,
are you there?

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Hey, and I'm here. Thanks for having me, Thanks.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
For having me coming back. Man, I love having here.
Remind the audience. I know you from the Intercept to
intercept dot com, But tell me who is Trevor Aronson
and what are you have to late?

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Yeah. So I've been a journalist for about twenty years.
For a good part of that time, I've covered the FBI.
And so you mentioned my book to Terror Factory that
was about, you know, how the FBI SETSU seeing operations.
And I continue to cover the FBI, I for both,
you know, for both the intercepts as well as for
documentary podcast problems projects like Pulse that we're going to
talk about here, and and I'm now working on another

(02:09):
book about the FBI that will be released in March
of twenty seven or roughly around there.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
When you're poking around the FBI, do you have any
problems that they poke back?

Speaker 1 (02:22):
I mean, not so far, you know. I mean that's
the other thing too, You don't you don't really know,
but you know, I think, you know, I think you know,
there we have. You know, I certainly had brush ups
with you know, the FBI. You know, we've had sources
at the Intercept who've been you know, prosecuted under the
Espionage Act. And so, you know, the types of stories

(02:42):
we do do have like high impacts, and they come
with risks, and you know those risks include risks of sources.
And you know, certainly, you know, given how acrimonious the
Trump administration has been toward journalists on the whole, you know,
it's it's an increasingly tough topic to talk about or
to write about. You know, So that doesn't suggest that
you know, journalists like me have been targeted in ways

(03:04):
you know that are you know, illegal or ethical as
far as we know, that happened happened, but certainly, like
you know, it's it's become increasingly tough to report on
the FBI, and even tougher because you know, so few
agents want to talk now compared to early years previously,
because there's just a kind of a you know, there's
like a cloud of fear that they will either be

(03:26):
fired or face you know, potentially charges like under the
Espionage Act. So it's you know, the government has done
a good job across administrations. I shouldn't like, you know,
the Biden administration was also guilty of this, of making
it harder and harder to do this kind of journalism.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yeah, bidens are bad too, but we've never seen anything
like this. You know, I was looking at some of
some on your Facebook page. These helicopters in Chicago are
still on. A friend of mine lives over there, and
she says friends or hers are getting pulled over just
because they look Mexican. They're getting pulled over and searched
and ideed. You know, just we're in really bad times. Man.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
No, it's surprising. Yeah, yeah, I mean I have to
met like I've been really surprised by some of the
Supreme Court rulings, including including that one right which they
you know, basically legalized racial profiling for immigration enforcement. Yeah,
and we're also seeing you know, I mean, you know,
part of what I've been tracking kind of separately from
this is obviously, is like, you know, we are seeing
the FBI being pulled in more and more to immigration enforcement.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
You know, there's been a mandate I believe it's still
in the books that I reported a few months ago
that you know, the you know, FBI agents and field
offices were required to participate with a quota of immigration
enforcement raids. And a big part of that was just
that they wanted FBI jackets in the photographs that they
could post on social media of rounding up immigrants is

(04:42):
the way of kind of showing for uh, you know,
so you can kind of see the the way that
the FBI already has been politicized and kind of promoting
you know, specific policies and you know, creating kind of
the environment of fear that I think the Trump administration
wants around immigration.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
Yeah, and the federal linement local police and state police
being federalized to also enforce immigration. We have that Aaron, Florida.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
We're both dealing with that for sure. Yeah, and you know,
in some ways, you know, a lot of the stuff
that journalists like like I have, journals like me have
we're warning about people weren't paying attention or kind of
have metastasized in different ways, right, Like you know, I was.
I always used it as quite problematic, these Joint Terrorism
passporces that that kind of deputized local law enforcement to

(05:29):
the FEDS for the purposes of terrorism investigations. And you're
now seeing kind of an expansion of that, you know
now for immigration, you know, and it's kind of the
typical government problem, which is that like once you give
government power, it's really reluctant to give that power up.
And so you know, there was a huge amount of
federal power expansion during the War on Terrorism, just because

(05:50):
they can say, like, well, look, we need these powers
to stop the next Osama bin Laden, and Americans were
willing to kind of turn the blind eye, even as
you journalists like me were saying, like, this isn't a good,
good idea. It gets worse from here. And I think
we're beginning to see that now.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
Yeah. Go to Trevor Aaronson dot com. He's been talking
about this stuff at I met him ten years ago.
We've been talked rights for a long time, A little
ahead of the curve there, so, but we got a
couple of new projects here first before we get into Pulse,
the untold story about the Pulse life. But Peabody Award
went in reporting there into the madness, a killer's game,

(06:26):
a woman's obsession at dark conspiracy, what's going on with that?

Speaker 1 (06:31):
Yeah, So I really wanted to find a way to
tell a story that got into America's kind of conspiracy brain,
and I wanted to do it in a way that
was maybe counterintuitive. And so I'd heard about this shooting
in twenty twenty two, terribly tragic. It was a mass
shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, outside Chicago, heavily Jewish community.

(06:54):
It was during it's annual Fourth of July parade, and
the shooting was perpetrated by a young man named Bobby Cremo.
And Bobby had created a series of videos and online
clues that effectively created what's known as an alternate reality game,
and it was clear that his hope was that the
shooting would inspire people to play this game and try

(07:18):
to kind of solve it and then the solution included
clues that suggested that the FBI was secretly behind the shooting.
And you know, so obviously this is fell in my
wheelhouse for two reasons. One, I was looking for a
way into talking about the impact of conspiracy theories on
American culture. And then obviously then this conspiracy theory that
he was trying to create intersected with with the FBI

(07:41):
I've covered for a long time. And so the series
is really what makes up the basis of the series
are hours and hours of recorded calls between Bobby Cremo,
the mass shooter, and a young woman who was trying
to solve the alternate reality game and kind of got
sucked into his conspiracy, this conspiracy theory and helped promote
it even and so so the story is about him,

(08:04):
but it's told through the prism of this woman who
gets sucked into the conspiracy theory, wh which you know,
in the storytelling, I had kind of act as a
stand in for, you know, the way a lot of
Americans get get pulled into conspiracy theories. So anyway, so
it was it was it was just like, it's about
the shooting, but it's also kind of about something much larger,
and you know, kind of about the unmooring of Americans

(08:27):
from truth and reality through kind of the pervasive effects
of conspiracy theories on our culture.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
Yeah, we're in a place right now a lot of
people lose in touch with reality. Uh, we've got wars
and wars every day. But but now into the men,
it's these recordings, these conversations you talk about, Are these
real recordings before the shooting? Or was from prison? What's
what's the deal with this? Or actors?

Speaker 1 (08:48):
They're from prison? Yeah, so this particular No, No, they're
real recordings and actors. So this this particular woman had
known the shooter prior to the shooting, but not particularly well.
They've sayed that they meant once and stayed in touch online,
and then after the shooting, she reached out to him
and over the course of months, recorded hours and hours
of conversations with him. And so she participated with me

(09:10):
in this project that for interviews and then turned over
the recordings, and so the recordings are kind of a
window not only into the shooters world and the conspiracy
theory that he was trying to construct, but this woman,
Jamie's efforts to solve this puzzle this game, and in
doing so, was helping to kind of perpetrate the conspiracy

(09:31):
theory itself. And so, you know, you know, there's questions
about whether Jamie had kind of, you know, in some
ways kind of fallen in love with Bobby Krimo. There's
a psychological condition called hipristophilia, which is when someone becomes
sexually attracted to people who commit acts of mass violence
like this, and so, you know, that's one of the
themes we get into. But I think more than anything,

(09:53):
I think Jamie really believed that there was more to
the story than just this man wanting to like, you know,
kill innocent people for no reason. And so she thought
there was more to it and as a result, really
got sucked into the conspiracy theory.

Speaker 2 (10:07):
How did you get involved?

Speaker 1 (10:08):
This is great? How did you find this story?

Speaker 2 (10:11):
This is great?

Speaker 1 (10:12):
No, So, in a really roundabout way, you know, she
so the the conspiracy theory that the shooter, Bobby Kremo
was trying to promote was that, you know, this was
really an FBI fall flag operation and he had been,
he had he was a fall guy. And so this
this woman, Jamie, effectively believes that, and so she was
trying to find someone who could help her, you know,

(10:35):
untangle this. And so she is looking for a journalist
online who works on FBI issues and obviously found me
and so she had she had come to me, and
I quickly realized that the story wasn't that the FBI
was responsible. I never thought that was likely. It was
more that this was about This was a way and
to look at how a conspiracy theory is constructed in
real time. And so that's really that's really what the

(10:57):
audio documentary does is that follows means kind of pursuit
and my pursuit with her to investigate this, and you know,
ultimately how she falls into the into the conspiracy theory
of trapped. And I think that's what that's what made
this project so interesting for me, is like, you know,
you hear about pizzagate and QAnon and various other conspiracy theories,

(11:18):
but like, what if you could trace the conspiracy theory
and be there as it starts to take form. And
so that that's what this show offered us an opportunity
to do, was to kind of get behind the scenes
as a conspiracy theory was being put together and you know,
and show you just like you know and use this
one conspiracy theory as a way of telling a larger
story about how all conspiracy theories are constructed.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
Yeah, I was gonna say, she'd probably find it through
my show, probably what on my listeners? But what do
you call it? You can go to Amazon right this minute,
right now. Okay, it's four and a half hours long.
Into the Madness, A Killer's Game, A Woman's Obsession, aids
our conspiracy. And I got like a free trial, so
so you can go and you can listen for free tonight.
And I think it's canceled right Yes, Trev won't get

(12:01):
any money, but whatever, but it's free right now and
going to Amazon, write this minute and get this four
and a half hours of content. It's of great stuff there.
Into the madness, A Killer's Game, a Woman's Obsession. It's
our conspiracy. Now, mister Peabody, pulse the untold story. Okay. Now,

(12:21):
I always do the same idea every time I en
to be your promote. Tell us the official story, then
tell us what the untold story, What Wally happened?

Speaker 1 (12:29):
Yeah, yeah, so the story that most people know about
pulses the story that was told in the immediate aftermath
and you know, I think, like all stories about a
major crime, it's usually the first story that takes hold,
even if it's not true. And so what happened with
the Pulse nightclub shooting is that his father told the
media in the hours after the shooting that his son

(12:51):
had seen two men kiss at on Miami Beach and
that had angered him and he believed that's what set
him off to commit the crime. And then later the
media found several people who claimed that they had seen
Omar Matine at the Pulse nightclub, and including one man
who claimed that he had a sexual relationship with Omar.

(13:11):
And so all of that created this perception that has lasted,
this belief that Omar Matine, the shooter, was secretly gay
with self loathing, and had committed the mass shooting as
a hate crime, as a crime against the gay community.
And to be clear, you know, this is the deadliest
attack in the United States against the gay community, and

(13:33):
so you know, forty nine people were killed. This was
an enormously deadly mass shooting in a tragic event. And
you know, and I think one of the things that's
interesting about Pulse, and I say interesting in a way
that I should say tragic is that, you know, I
think mass shootings have become so common that it's really
easy to forget the last one when you hear about

(13:53):
the next one, and you know, they kind of blur
in our mind. And in some ways, like the Pulse
mass shooting was one of the last ones that had
such an enormous mark on society that like, people remember
that one, and so for that reason, I thought it
was a really important case to revisit. And so I,
you know, so I'd heard rumblings about, you know, problems

(14:14):
with this narrative, and what ended up happening in the
Pulse case was that the FBI charged his wife, his widow,
nor Salmon, with material support for terrorism, alleging that she
knew the she knew the right, she knew that Pulse
snight club shooting would happen, and in fact, they got
her to sign a confession in which she claimed that

(14:36):
Omar Matine had come down and showed her the pulsnight
club website and showed her that it was Latin night
and you know, provided evidence that seemed to suggest that
the narrative that they pushed forward was true, that that
Omar you know, targeted the club because it was as
a gay club. And so that's that's really the narrative
that cemented that this idea that Omar Matine committed a

(14:59):
crime against the gay community, hate crime against the gay community.
It became a symbol of anti gay violence. You know.
One Pulse, the foundation set up after the mass shooting,
you know, raised millions and millions of dollars with that narrative.
And so, you know, I started talking to Norris Almon's
defense lawyer, Charlie Swift, and you know, and he was

(15:21):
telling me, you know, that I needed to look into
this case more. And what he had told me and
that got me interested in this was years ago when
I first started looking through it was that he was like,
what he said was that this is an FBI accountability
case that like, this narrative isn't true. And the reason
that it's not true is that the FBI helped put
forward a false narrative because they didn't want to have
to answer hard questions about whether they could have stopped

(15:44):
the shooting. And so obviously, just like I found this
immediately provocative and interesting. I also was reminded of James Comey,
then the FBI director, holding a press conference immediately after
the Pole shooting, saying that you know, there was nothing
that the FBI did wrong and that they would look
and see if there was something that they could have
done to prevent the shooting, but he didn't think there

(16:06):
was anything. And then ultimately the FBI never came forward
with any additional information. And what we found out in
our series for Audible full cental story is that you know,
this entire narrative was false, and the reason that it
was false and the most provocating for most provocating proxcuse,

(16:26):
the most provocative part of this is that Omar Matin's father,
who was the man who started the whole narrative, had said, like,
the reason that his son committed his crime was because
he saw too gay man kissing in Miami. That man,
Sadik Matine was actually a long time FBI informant and
had worked for the FBI for over ten years, and

(16:47):
he's the one who kind of pushes this narrative forward
that ultimately the FBI doesn't correct. And the reason he
pushed it forward was that he was acting as a
counter terrorism informant and certainly it would be problematic for
his work with the FBI if his son had become
a terrorist, and so it was easier for him to
kind of create this excuse that Omarmatine was secretly gay.

(17:10):
And then what happened is, you know a number of
like media failings contributed to this. You know, men were
coming forward saying they'd seen Omarmatine at the club, those
journalists weren't corroborating that information. And then the most most
egregious was Univision did an interview that was quite impactful

(17:30):
with a man who claimed that he had a sextual
relationship with Omarmatine, and you know, he was not able
to provide any corroborating information, even that he photographs. It
was just a claim that he could not substantiate it.
So we interviewed him for this documentary as well, and
you know, it's pretty clear in that interview that you
know that he was an incredible source, and yet you know,

(17:51):
Univision put that forward. And so all of these reports,
you know, combined with the shooter's father claiming that the
reason he did this was because he saw two gay
man kissing, you know, created this narrative that a stock
that you know, the Pulse night club shooting was a
gay hate crime that couldn't have been prevented, when in fact,
what we found out was that you know, Omar Matine

(18:13):
likely didn't even know the club was gay when he
attouaged it. And I can I can go into like
and if you're interested in going to.

Speaker 2 (18:19):
Questions, yeah, yeah, a brilliant questions it first, First, if
it wasn't the gay motive, what was the motive?

Speaker 1 (18:30):
Yeah, so that's left a little bit unknown. I mean,
our best theorial is that this was this was a
story of a father and a son. You know, Omar
Matine and his father's a dec had a very very
strange relationship. And if you wanted to hurt your counter
terrorism father more than anything else, a good strategy might

(18:51):
be to go and become a terrorist yourself. And you know, ultimately,
while we can't, well only o market Matine can say
why he's committed the crime, and he no longer with us,
we'll never know this for sure. But the reasons we
think this is a possibility is a couple of things.
One is that we know very clearly that he he
was not gay, uh, and he did not know Pulse

(19:12):
was a gay club when he launched the attack. And
then when he ultimately talks to nine one one operators.
Not only does he not acknowledge that he attacked a
gay club, uh, he also starts mixing up things related
to Shia and Sunni Islam. So if you're if you're
a if you're a you know, an extremist, you know

(19:33):
you would not and you you support Isis, you would
also not support Hezbola, And you would also not support
one of the rival gangs on those rival terrorist groups
on those refront. And so in his phone calls, he
mixes a lot of these things up, which you know
clearly shows he was not sophisticated about terrorist groups. And
if you are truly a terrorist, you would be. And

(19:53):
so then the best, you know, the best explanation we
can come to is that this was a kind of
a you know, sociopathic revenge toward his father.

Speaker 2 (20:02):
Okay, now the father. You said the father was an informant.
But wasn't he involved to like Voice of America or
something like that.

Speaker 1 (20:11):
Yeah, So there, so one of the one of his
longtime friends in Afghanistan alogist that he believed he was
operating some sort of government propaganda campaign. We can't say
that for sure, but what we can't say is that
he was. He He had a show on a satellite
television program that was in uh that was broadcast to

(20:35):
Afghan Americans and in which it, you know, he was
talking about Afghan politics and really kind of pushing a
number of kind of US government lines related to that.
He was also a very unreliable source. You know, he
put together YouTube videos in which he claimed he was
the you know, president in exile of Afghanistan and asking

(20:55):
for information and cabinets, and so he was this very
murky fellow. But what we know is that he was
flying to California about weekly to give interviews, to conduct
this satellite TV show, and there really isn't a whole
lot of record of him making money other than being
an FBI informant. The show he was on was not
something that made money in any kind of commercial way,

(21:18):
and so, you know, certainly it raises a lot of
questions about whether you know the information he was putting
out the television show, the YouTube videos effectively, perhaps propaganda
was being underwritten in some way by the FBI or
maybe an intelligence agency.

Speaker 2 (21:34):
Where is he today.

Speaker 1 (21:36):
He still lives in Florida. He lives in South Florida.
We went to his house and we talked to him
for this documentary project, and he refused to cooperate with us.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
Did we know what he does around living to it
is the case that we working for the FBI.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
That's a good question, you know. I mean, I don't
think it's outside the realm of possibility.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
I know, that's the standpart the game of raise is Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:02):
Yeah, there's no you know, he his his family says
that he's a financial advisor, but yeah, we don't, you know.
We we interviewed Sata Yusufi, who was Omar Matins first
twice before he married Norse Selman, you know, and she
described him claiming to be a financial advisor, but says
that she never saw him talk to clients meet with clients.

(22:22):
So you know, it does raise the number of real,
you know questions. You know. The most logical explanation is that,
like you know, he was an informant for over a
decade according to the FBI Zone Admission the Justice ARTMA
Zone emissions, and so you know that that's a long
term informant. That that suggests that he was making you know, money,
almost as a full time job from the FBI. We

(22:43):
know that informants can make in excess of one hundred
thousand dollars a year. So the most plausible explanation is
that he was on full time pay role with the FBI.

Speaker 2 (22:52):
Yeah, that guy, Lawrence Ray, he was making like one
hundred thousand a year. Bring Kirk on'm an SBI informant
show and he was making one hundred thousand of the
year given nothing and no information could and he was
just the Sarah Lawrence Pandec.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
Yeah you can. Yeah, I mean I've done a number
of stories about informants who, you know, they realized that
they could. They can make a lot of money. You know,
it's not a lot of work. There's no taxes and
as long as you keep your you know, informant happy
to some degree, and sometimes you know, informants give bad
information just to keep on the payroll, right, And I'm.

Speaker 2 (23:22):
Sure there's some kicking back to to you know, the
guy you're informant too.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
You know, why would could be? I mean, that would
be scandalless if you could show it. But yeah, I've
probably found evidence of that. But yeah, I mean the
other thing that you know that's fourth noting is informants
are paid in cash as well. You know, so you're
talking about thousands of dollars in cash.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
They wouldn't be corrupt, these guys, but they have. Of course,
Now the ex wives one of them, you said, they
didn't like what she was saying, so they forced her
to make a statement and confess the terrible what's that story?

Speaker 1 (23:54):
Yeah, so so his his his second wife or someone
who's who is married to during the time of the day.
She she has intellectual capacity issues. I showed her she was.
She was tested for IQ levels and it was in
the low percentile. And so you know, she isn't She
is not the most sophisticated person. And what happened during

(24:16):
the during the shooting is they brought her into the
FBI office and well, first of all, they go to
her home and she they take her and her son
out and they put her in a police cruiser. And
one of the first things she hears is in the
parking lot is she's in the police cruiser. The FBI

(24:37):
agents are or excuse me, the local police and a
picked her up, are saying that. You know. She overhears
them saying that Omar had attacked a gay club, and
at that point she says to them like, that doesn't
make sense. Omar likes gay people, and the reason she'd
said that is that there was a history of Omar
saying positive things about gay people. And the reason he

(24:58):
said positive things about gay people was that he felt
that the gay community had done a really good job
of overcoming homophobia and you know, and and kind of
creating a movement, and that he believed that Muslims could
use the gay community as an example for how Muslims
tocome islamophobia. And so Nor, having heard her husband say

(25:21):
things like that, was immediately surprised that he would attack
a gay club, and so she says she likes gay people.
She's then brought to the FBI office and she is
interrogated for hours, and ultimately what happens is that the
FBI agent writes out a confession, and that confession includes

(25:46):
number of specific claims. One is that Omar, before the crime,
had showed her the website of the Pulse night club
and showed her effectively the calendar, saying that it was
going to be Latin night that night he attacked, which
it was. She also claimed that he came down in
his outfits and said, do I look Spanish? You know,

(26:08):
just to suggest, do I look like I'd be okay
going to Latin night. Uh. In addition, she she that
the confession claimed that she obviously then knew that he
was going to, you know, commit this this act. And
she also claimed in the confession that she and Omar

(26:29):
had gone to Orlando together and cased the Pulse night
club driven around it as if it was a premeditated target.
And so you know, that became the basis for her prosecution.
But what what what's notable about that is one, it
was the FBI agent who wrote the confession that Nor
then signed. The morning that the FBI agent wrote the confession,

(26:51):
it was all over the news that it was Latin
Night at Pulse that night. And so what ended up
coming out was that there was no way substantial parts
of that confession could be true. As part of Nor's defense,
they had access to all of her electronic equipment, Omar

(27:13):
Machine's electronic equipment, and they could not find any evidence
that they had those electronics, you know, the last top
of the phone that they had accessed Pulse Nightclub website before.
And you know, we get into the specifics of how
websites log visits and One of the specific things that's
notable about this case is that both Nor and omar

(27:33):
Matine had a very uncommon, unpopular phone, and that phone
had that model of phone, had never visited the Pulse
Nightclub website before, so there was no evidence that they
had actually that he had actually shown her that website.
And then in addition, they were given access to their
cell phone ping data. When your cell phone ping's a tower,

(27:55):
and the only time that omar Matine's phone ping the
tower near Pulse was night of the shooting, and so
that meant that her claim that they had cased the
club together before, you know, was likely not true because
their phones never ping there at the time, And so
ultimately the case against Nor falls apart. Jury finds Nor

(28:16):
not guilty. And it was during this trial initially that
the FBI and the Justice Department revealed that Sadik Matin,
omar Matine's father, had been an informant. And what's also
striking is that there is in omar Matine's phone, there
was information that the FBI had right away that should

(28:37):
have allowed them to know that the Pols nightclub shooting
wasn't a premeditated target, that it was actually a kind
of target of opportunity. And the reason they would have
known that is that Omar Matine's phone shows him going
to Disney Springs originally, which'd be known as Downtown Disney.
It's the nightclub restaurant area of Disney. And he goes there,

(29:02):
and when he goes there, he rents in order to
get there. He rents a minivan, and he rents a stroller,
and he buys a stroller, and that stroller was very
specific in that it had this covered area below where
the baby is that it would have allowed him to
conceal his rifle. And it appears that his plan was
to go to Disney Springs, used the stroller as cover

(29:22):
for his rifle, and commits the shooting there. But when
he goes there that night, according to security footage cameras,
he walks around, sees a lot of cops around, which
in Disney, Downtown Disney, there are a lot of cops
that were at the time, and seems to get cold feet,
realizes this is a bad plan, and so then he
goes back to his car without the beastroll. He never
brought the baby stroll on the gun into Disney Springs,

(29:44):
goes back to his car and he googles downtown Orlando
nightclubs and it brings up several results, one of which
his Pulse, but before Pulse was a club called Eve,
which is downtown a straight club, and the cell phone
data shows that he drove by Eve but ultimately didn't stop,
and the likely reason is that there's no parking around you.

(30:04):
You have to go to a parking garage and walk
like most downtown clubs, and that's when he then continues
the Pulse and ultimately commits the shooting there. And you know,
given the data, it does suggest that he was driving
around looking for a target once he'd abandoned both Disney
Springs and Eve, and Pulse became that target. And the
final piece of evidence was that one of the one

(30:27):
of the bouncers, the guy in front Omar, originally goes
into Pulse without his guns and when he gets there,
he pays the fee for the to get into the club,
and he asks the bouncer, He's like, where are the
girls at? Because he's looking around the club and he
doesn't see any women and it doesn't occur to him
that he's in a gay club. And that's why there's
not many women, and so all of these things, you know, combined,

(30:48):
you know, should have had the FBI know right away
that like that this was not a hate crime, this
was this was a target of opportunity, and despite that,
they allowed this narrative to pursue. That became the accepted narrative,
which was that it was a hate crime. And the
argument we make in pulsidential stories that the reason they
did that was that it gave them cover that they

(31:09):
didn't have to answer the question of like, how come
they didn't stop the shooter because in fact, the shooter's
father had been an FBI informant, and in fact, the
FBI had investigated Omar Matine twice before as the potential
violent actor, and both of those investigations that then dropped
because the father, the FBI informant, encouraged the FBI to
do so. So there was a clear, you know, failure

(31:32):
on the FBI's part not to see the potential of
violence in Omar Machine and they were able to kind
of sidestep those questions by allowing this narrative to go
forward that it was a gay hate crime.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
Okay, wait a minute, So now this whole giant that
prosecuting this woman. They were letting forty nine people die
and it's what their body is, you know, twist them
in the grace just to cover up that they put
had a poor performance with their investigation of their informants. Kid.

Speaker 1 (32:04):
That seems to be the case. Yeah, it's the only
explanation for why they would have would have done this, right.
They they they pressed forward with prosecution of North Salman
knowing that the evidence in the case did not support
the confession, which was the only true piece of evidence
they had that she was any in any way involved
with it. And you know, it's hard to know why

(32:25):
they would choose to do this, I mean, to what
degree it was coordinated other than there are a few
facts that suggest that this was part of a larger
effort to cover this stuff. One was that they were
they waited until the last minute to disclose in the
trial that Omar Matine's father had been an informant, and
and and and they also kind of waited and reluctantly
disclosed that Omar Matine had been investigated twice by the FBI.

(32:49):
You know, one of his co workers had reported him
saying comments about Hezbollah and thought he was somehow dangerous
they investigated him as a result of that. He also,
you know, had done some strange things when he was
wanted to be a police officer. He kind of harassed
some of the staff there, and so there had been
several investigations of him as a possible security threat, and

(33:11):
all of those investigations were closed in part and it
was the FBI has acknowledged this because his father, the informant,
encouraged them to close it.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
Do we know what type of work is father was
informing on, what information was he giving them? But were
there cases, did he testify anything?

Speaker 1 (33:29):
So the FBI has not disclosed any of that information.
The only thing that they have disclosed is that he
had worked for the FBI for at least eleven years.
But we do know that it was related to counter
terrorism investigations. One of the things that we do know
is that he was accused by members of his community
of trying to raise money for causes that seemed to

(33:52):
kind of be you know, he was raising money for
as an example, for a fund and past the stand
that was trying to overthrow the government of Afghanistan. The
presumption from people I've talked to you are kind of
familiar with how this works. This case was that he
was acting as an FBI informant in the Muslim community
in Florida, looking for people who might be interested in

(34:14):
terrorism or fundraising. So it's quite likely that there have
been prosecutions in the South Florida area related to his work,
but none of that has ever been disclosed. But what
we do know is that he was assigned to work
within the Muslim community in Florida providing information.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
Feels like more questions than answered.

Speaker 1 (34:31):
You know, it's a really mysterious case. Yeah, and I
think it's worth noting. And this is the one thing
that we note in the documentary too. It's like, you know,
when someone passes away, their FBI files are no longer
effectively limited from disclosures. You can request them and there's
a few exemptions that they've had. So one of the
things I did years ago was request Omar Matine's file

(34:53):
and you know, say even basically that he has passed
away obviously, and you know, we should have access to
his files. And one of the things that the FBI
has claimed is that it's an ongoing investigation and that's
why they kept the files field, you know, And the
question becomes like, you know, this, this mass shooting is
going on nearly ten years old, will be ten years
in June. You know, what possible way could you still

(35:16):
be investigating this case. And so that certainly suggests that
there's information in this case file at the FBI does
not want out.

Speaker 2 (35:22):
It's incredible. Now, Omar, what did Omar do for a living?

Speaker 1 (35:27):
He was a security guard. You know, his goal was
to become a police officer, but ultimately he did not
have the He tried to go into police academy, academy
training kind of washed out, then went in the corrections
officer training and washed out, and then ultimately was working
as a security guard for a large kind of golf

(35:49):
course community in South Florida. And that's what he was doing,
you know, ultimately when he you know, at the time
he committed the mass shooting.

Speaker 2 (35:56):
He's guarding golf balls. Okay, now what about that? Now
you said that there were tips that failed to investigate him.
Now what was the nature of those tips that he
was up to something? What was going on there?

Speaker 1 (36:10):
Yeah? So, so one was that he he had a
he worked before he worked at the golf course, the
golf course community. He worked at the Courthouse in Saint
Lucie County. I'm sorry, Martin County, Florida, and he he
had gotten into issues with his co workers. He alleged
that they were making fun of him. They alleged were
He alleged that they were making fun of his religion

(36:31):
and at one point being mad about you know that harassment,
that alleged harassment. He then claimed that he knew the
Boston Marathon bombers, and he also claimed that he uh
he was supportive of Hesbola. He allegedly yelled out to them,
I am Hesbola. You know, if anyone's familiar with Islamist extremism,

(36:52):
it's it's pretty weird that someone would support both the
Boston Marathon bombers who were Sunnies, and then hes below
to the Shia group. So these are incompatible groups. These
are very different. But if you don't know a lot
about terrorism, maybe you would make that mistake. The FBI
then investigated him and he uh and then an informant

(37:15):
one of his security guard colleagues ultimately recorded conversations with
him at that time, and it was it was Sadik.
Matein's FBI handler remembers Sadek his father is an informant
who then gets assigned the case, and he goes to
Omar's apartment to kind of confront him about these recordings.
And and what's interesting is that Omar Matine lies about

(37:38):
some of the things that he said, and that that
the FBI had a recording the show that it was
a lie. And the reason that's significant is that, you know,
what the FBI often does in situations like that is
like look for the hang looks to hang the person
up for lyne because to a federal agent is uh
is a crime. You can remember that that was the
Michael Flynn case right during the first Trump administration, and

(37:59):
for whatever reason, even though they hung him up on this,
they never used that is leverage to get him to
be an informant to anything. And what was testified to
in his case is that is the Omarmantine's father ends
up showing up at the apartment and encourages the FBI
to drop the case. And so you know, we do
have acknowledgment from the FBI that they did end up

(38:19):
dropping the case. Nothing ever came of it. You know,
one of the more provocative questions, and I say this
to say, it's a question But it's interesting, is that, like,
is it possible that Omar Matine was an informant as well? Right? Like,
oftentimes what the FBI will do is to hang someone
up on, you know, making false statements and then use
that leverage to get them to be an informant. And
so you know, that's one of the questions we raise

(38:41):
as well, is whether there's a possibility that not only
was his father an informant, but possibly Omar was as well.
And if that's the case, was he also an informant
when he committed to the mass shooting?

Speaker 2 (38:52):
Interesting? But there had to be something going on with
this guy. They went to all that effort to have
his coworker make or record it. That's not that's not
a cursory investigation. That's good because I know they stuffything along,
they get fun goos all day long and stuff.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
Yeah, I mean they did a serious investigation. I think
it's I wouldn't I wouldn't want to overstate it though,
because I think it's you know, the climate of the
post nine eleven era during that time was that, like anytime,
there was the suspicion of Muslim communities unfairly, and you
know when a Muslim was you know, when someone was
reported as a Muslim saying things like that, it required

(39:29):
the FBI to do those kinds of investigations. There was
a there was a kind of policy within the FBI
at at times and you know, not let any lead
go uncovered, and so, you know, I think that's what
you know, So they didn't have a great It's quite
likely that they didn't have much basis other than these
kind of unconfirmed rumors that kind of sparked the investigation.
But I think what's significant about it in the context

(39:50):
of the Pulse Nightclub shooting is that Omar Matine wasn't
just someone who like popped on the FBI's radar soon
after the shooting and they were like, well, we don't
know who this guy is. This was somebody that they
spent a good amount of time investigating. And you know,
that's certainly that raises questions about, you know, could the
could this, could the shooting have been averted had the
FBI acted differently? And to what degree did his father,

(40:12):
as an FBI and formant, help shape the bureau's willingness
to kind of turned the blind eye to him.

Speaker 2 (40:17):
I got that, now, Now, what about was there any
connection between him and the Boston bombers, but there must
have been something nothing.

Speaker 1 (40:25):
Yeah, that appears to be something that he made up.
The second investigation of him started when there was a
young man named Mura Muhammad Abu Sala who attended the
same mosque as Omar Matin. They knew each other, but
not very well. Abu Salah went to Syria and ended

(40:46):
up becoming the first American suicide bomber during the Syrian
Civil War. He was with a group called Nutsra Front,
which is like a rival group to ISIS, and so
that investigated that. That caused the FBI to then launch
investigations of who was related to Abu Sala where there
are other supposed terrorists in the United States who knew him.
And that was the second investigation of Omarmatine because they

(41:08):
realized that he had known Abu Sala, and so they
investigated him as part of that as well and ultimately
closed that investigation. And so the Omarmatine and also ends
up mentioning Abu Sala in one of his nine when
one calls. But what's interesting about it is that Abu
Sala had been part of Nusro Front, Omarmatine was claiming,
he was pledging his least allegiance to Isis. Like those

(41:31):
two groups were at the time in conflict with each other.
So it definitely suggested that Omarmatine was not really kind
of versed on, you know, these groups and their loyalties
if he was kind of claiming some sort of affection
for both groups at the same time, and.

Speaker 2 (41:45):
That would also kind of limit the suspicion that he
was an informant on those kind of topics.

Speaker 1 (41:49):
I see, exactly. Yeah, I mean that that's you know again,
like that's why you know, it's not a you know,
it's always tough to do a documentary project where you
can't answer all of the questions. Yeah, So the question
that we ultimately came down was exactly why he committed this,
But like for all of those reasons that we're describing here,
you know, that's why we tended to gravitate towards the

(42:10):
theory that this was some sort of you know, almost
like an edifice complex. He was looking to harm his
father in some way.

Speaker 2 (42:15):
Back to the father. Now, the only thing that anybody
has to hang their hat on a gay motive is
the father's comment to the news media that his son
sat to gay mentissing yes.

Speaker 1 (42:29):
So the the claim is that that was the that
was the spark. And then what ended up happening is
there were there were several individual men who claimed that
they'd seen Omar Matine at the club, and each man's
story was treated by the media as like an independent story,
and so then each story then verify the other. What

(42:50):
we later discovered was that those three men actually knew
each other and they would they would carpool together the Pulse,
and so it wasn't exactly an independent source. There's to
be some you know, what I suspect is that these men,
you know, we're not wilfully misidentifying Omar, but they thought
they'd seen someone who look like him, and then they
talked about it and they came to the conclusion that

(43:11):
it was him, even though it wasn't. And you know,
one of those men told a kind of fantastical story
about Omar brandishing a knife at the club. You know,
none of that could be verified, but in the mad
rush for an explanation of why this happened, you know,
the media reported those stories as if they were true,
as if they were verified, And that's just kind of

(43:32):
helped bolster this narrative. And then finally the lynchpin was
really this interview with this man who claimed that he
had a sexual relationship with Omar. But ultimately his story
was incredible. You know, we interviewed him and there there
were significant holes that we you know, showed in his story,
and so you know, these stories, you know, in some ways,

(43:53):
this as we described, this was immediate failure that the
media you know, latched on to this narrative because it
was understandable. I think, you know, not only was it
an it was the reason this narrative stuck was that
it felt like it could be true. Right, it makes
sense that the homophobe would commit an act of violence
against a gay club like that, but ultimately it wasn't.
And so I think, you know, you know, one of

(44:15):
the the big story that we try to reveal in
this is that, like, it wasn't just the FBI pushing
this false narrative. You know, the other kind of bad
actor in this was the media that you know, wanted
so desperately to get facts first fact in quotation marks,
I guess, and that they often like got got it wrong,
and you know, and then you know, media ended up

(44:36):
kind of using other media stories to corroborate this, and
it just created this narrative that you know, everyone wanted
to believe that it was a you know, he was
a self loathing gay man who you know, committed this
hate crime. And then you know, when we spent you know,
months kind of excavating all of this, we realized that
none of that could be corroborated and none of that
appeared to be true.

Speaker 2 (44:56):
Yeah, obviously there for October first in Vegas, the media,
you know, they they land, you know, they take over
the town and then gossiping back and forth and all
the wars over restaurants and trying to up each other
and trying you know, rumors circulate, all kind of crazy
stories going around. Uh Now, in this case here, especially
at the very beginning, a lot of people were making

(45:17):
that claim and these conspiracy theories that it was a
false flag this is a false flag operation. And one
of the things they showed was a video of some
men carrying a body in front of the TV cameras
and then once they got past the cameras, the guy
got up and started walking away. So people just wanted
to get on TV. Did Japan to catch it.

Speaker 1 (45:39):
You're talking about Las Vegas shooting.

Speaker 2 (45:40):
Right, No, I'm talking about it in Pulse then Pulse.
In the Pulse shooting that some characters maybe there were
parties at the club or whatever, but they carried they
carried their buddy across.

Speaker 1 (45:51):
Then he got walking up. I don't remember coming. I
don't doubt it. I mean, I mean, I kind of
blame Alex Jones. Was there's like a there's a long
history of like also a knee jerk reaction to these
kinds of events to say that they were some sort
of false flag or government you know projects, right, I mean,

(46:11):
which is like we were talking about Into the Badness
earlier and the claim that it was an FBI false flag.
I mean that's you know, like a lot of conspiracy
theories work from other conspiracy theories or kernels of truth,
and and that's an example of that. But yeah, I
mean you hear that almost all the time. I mean
you most recently there were lunatic conspiracy theories about Charlie
Kirk's assassins.

Speaker 2 (46:31):
Well, it would have been nice, though, that if the
press would have said, oh, yeah, those guys were just
you know, gooping around in front of the cameras, which
happens to every you know, every news report. What about
civil litigation? Now, usually you can roll on on civil
litigation later on. They must have sued the Nightcloud, the
insurance company, even maybe the FBI that sued. What kind
of civil litigation was there and what was the narrative

(46:52):
of Bosassons.

Speaker 1 (46:55):
Yes, there have been some civil litigation, nothing has been
you know, substantial and kind of adding any new information.
You know, a number of people blame the club owners,
and I think there's you know, I think there was
an aggravated part of it. You know, for example, there
was some code violations. The club had put up a
fence that was not permitted, there was an exit door

(47:16):
that was blocked, and so you know, what we've seen
come out is that there were some shoddy kind of
stuff happening with the owners that may have helped contribute
to like the deaththole unfortunately just because of their their
kind of flouting of safety and code issues. But you know,
as far as like suits against the FBI, like there
there there has not been any. I mean, one of

(47:37):
the one of the people that we talk about in
the series or we interview in the series is is
this guy named Adam who was a Orlando Police officer
who was working the consecurity detail that night the office
the security detail, and what ends up happening in his
case is that there was an underage drinker that had

(47:59):
gotten the club and he chased them off into the
surrounding neighborhood and it just bad timing. That's when Omar
Matine comes into the club with his gun, and so
Adam is returning back to the post nightclub as Omar
Matine is opening fire and he ends up engaging Omar
Matine in a gun gunfight where they fire at each

(48:19):
other and ultimately neither neither hit, but he tries to
stop Omar. I mean, it's incredibly brave. You know. Omar
Matin has a has an assault rifle and he's got
his like, you know, his his apartment is shoot sig
sour and and ultimately he was sued unsuccessfully, but he
was sued as kind of negligent duty that's responsible for

(48:41):
the crime. Yeah, and so like I think, you know,
one of the things that happened with Pulse. One of
the things we talked about in the audio series is
that there was an effort to find someone to blame,
you know, and I think that also contributed to you know, uh,
you know that when something terrible happens like this, we
want to like point the finger right it was it
was the people that ran the club, It was Omar Matin.

(49:03):
And I think in this particular case, what happened was
that it kind of obscured the truth. And you know
what we tried to do in this audio documentary series
is point out that, look, the people, the organization that
probably had more to blame than anyone else, you know,
has been left unaccountable, which is the FBI.

Speaker 2 (49:19):
Yeah, and people want to point the thinger right away
that same night, Oh this is what happened. When let's
close this case up, you know, oh ex worts. Yeah.
But now okay, now, I remember you were talking before
about the phone's pinging at that other they Eve nightclub
and there was no parking there. I remember seeing that
on the news. Okay, so that's been reported, But now
what about now? People are still trying to claim this

(49:40):
was a game motivated, a homophobic motivation, even now after
all these years.

Speaker 1 (49:46):
Yeah, I mean the foundation which recently shut down, they've
promoted this idea. You know. The other thing that made
this really hard. You know, there really isn't any one
group now that promotes this idea. But one of the
things that was a challenge for us in the storytelling
is that, you know, there were survivors who were shot
whose life has been changed, and you know, they want

(50:11):
to believe this right, like it gives them kind of
meaning for their pain. To say like, well, look, the
reason I was attacked was because I'm gay and that
person was a homophobe and you know, and he was hateful.
You know, that's a lot easier to kind of wrap
your head around when you've had your life transformed by
this event than to say, like, well, look, I was
just unlucky and he happened, you know, it was wrong face,

(50:32):
wrong time, he happened to go into this club, and
you know, that's that's the truth. But a lot of
a lot of the survivors that we interviewed as part
of this and this is part of the story we tell,
it's like, you know, they don't want to believe it, right,
And so that required us to kind of interview them
with a kind of level of sensitivity to understand that,
you know, because of their pain, they wanted to have

(50:53):
a kind of meaning. They want it to be about
homophobic violence, not about random violence. And I understand that,
you know, I can empathize with that, this idea that
your friends, you saw your friends die, and you were
shot and you live, and you wanted to think it's
more than just a random thing. And I can understand
why they want to kind of wrap their pain around

(51:14):
that narrative. And I think that's also partly why the
narrative has been so sticky. But I also think like
revealing that it wasn't that it's really important because I
think when we think about mass shootings, it's really easy
to think like, well, that can't happen to me, like
in this particular case, like I'm not gay, I wouldn't
be at a gay club, so that couldn't happen. And

(51:35):
I think it really underestimates the reality of gun violence
in America, which is that it's so random. You know,
it's not that you have to be gay and a
gay night club. You could be anywhere. And that's what
the post night club shooting really showed is that it
wasn't so much a gay hate crime as it was.
It's just an example of, you know, the randomness of
mass violence and how anyone anywhere can be targeted.

Speaker 2 (51:56):
And then how has the podcast been received by the public,
especially the people in the neighborhood, the locals.

Speaker 1 (52:03):
Yeah, so we've had like a great response, so, you know,
we it was written about by local media. Audible did
a really great job of promoting it. And then it's
also one awards, as you mentioned, like the most restig
just being the the A Mark excuse excuse me, the
Peabody Award. And then it also won an award for
from the Society of Professional Journalists for the book called

(52:23):
the A Mark Award for Investigative Reporting about the That's
Investigative Report in Florida. So I feel like, you know,
you know, we in an age of Twitter, it's sometimes
really hard for big investigative projects to break through, especially
those that you know, require you to listen to, you know,
a four hour documentary rather than read a like one
hundred and thirty character tweet. And so, you know, I

(52:45):
measure impact more on, like, you know, on kind of
the longer tail. And I feel like we have you know,
helped correct the narrative. You know, I've had a number
of people contacting me since it's come out, you know,
saying how eye opening they thought it was, and and
really that's what we're trying to do. I mean, you know,
the type of projects I work on are really the
type where you know, I'll spend a year working on them,

(53:05):
and my hope is to do something authoritative, to say,
like the story that you think you know isn't really
what happened. And that's not the type of story that
necessarily trends on Twitter. But I think it's the type
of story that you know ends up having a more
lasting effect.

Speaker 2 (53:20):
I tell you know, I keep saying this almost every week.
I am the luckiest man in the world. I get
to talk to the most interesting people in the world.
Trevor Aronson, Award winning reporter. Here a lifelong worker a
terror factory inside the fbis manufactured war on terrorism, into
the madness that killer his game, a woman's obsession. That's
our conspiracy. And then this incredible Peabody Award woman and

(53:42):
this arc it's called Art Award Pulse, the Untold Story.
Mister Aaron said, thank you again once again, man. You
always bring the goods. Man, I never disappoint my friends,
So thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (53:56):
Of course, any time. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (53:57):
I'll talk to you against him. Thank you, goodnight,