The Confession Tapes (2017) - full transcript

Now, my understanding, Hamid,
is that you attended some camps.

Bring me up to speed a little bit.

Um, you mean what kind of camp were they?

- Yes.
- They were like training camps.

How many people discussed
or talked about being martyrs?

- Murders?
- Martyrs.

How many people talked about
being suicide bombers?

Oh, none of them were like suicide bombers
over there, what I would see.

I need you to tell me details
about targets, what they said,

and this is where I need your memory
to come back.

They said that you have
to go to America for jihad.



I said, "Okay, I will."

Regrettably, we are not immune
from the threat

of homegrown jihadist cells.

The government took the position
after 9/11...

that they were going to do
everything and anything to prevent

any kind of terrorist act
here on US soil.

The bill before me will help
law enforcement to identify,

to disrupt,

and to punish terrorists
before they strike.

This was not a case about a building
that was blown up,

where forensic investigators
collect physical evidence.

Material support for terrorism

requires that you get inside
the defendant's mind.

Hamid admitted that he had, in fact,



attended a jihadist training camp
in Pakistan.

He also confirmed that the camp
was run by Al-Qaeda operatives

and that they were being trained
on how to kill Americans.

What we had was evidence
that he had traveled to Pakistan,

gone to a jihadi camp,

and that he had come back
with the intention

of committing some act of violence.

Lodi in central California,

you know, it's a small town,
historically a farming town.

Everyone kind of knew each other.

Pakistani farmers
working with Latino farmers.

I mean, everyone kind of just,
you know, got along.

A lot of folks at that mosque
were from the same village.

They knew each other for a long time,

and that was kind of the center
of the community,

kind of the social, spiritual center.

After 9/11, you saw talk of,

"There's sleeper cells around America
waiting to be activated."

Some in the government thought
that there was going to be

a terrorist training camp
right in the middle of rural Lodi,

next to a church
and next to the community.

The government was
getting tough on terrorism,

and so there was pressure
on the Bureau to...

the Department of Justice to bring a case.

The Sacramento office had
a surveillance team down in Lodi.

My understanding is they had an informant,

and the informant told them
that he attended mosque in Lodi

and he had observed Ayman al-Zawahiri
in the Lodi area.

Zawahiri is Bin Laden's number two man.

And so the fact that the informant was
reporting that Zawahiri was here in Lodi,

in California, was remarkable.

And that was the basis
for their undercover operation.

Hello. Testing, testing, testing.
Hello, hello, hello.

Testing.

Today is March 2003.

I am going to the second meeting
with Imam Shabbir.

Begin recording now.

A government informant, Naseem Khan,

worked at K-Market convenience store,
making $7 an hour.

All of a sudden,
he's now employed by the FBI.

He was housed at an apartment
right behind the mosque.

So he was there on a regular basis,

interacted with the community.

His cover was the computer IT guy,

and so pretty much he was going around

helping everyone
with their computer issues.

He was looking to the imams.

Naseem Khan started to realize
the imams, there's nothing on them,

there's no case against them.

But there was this young man, Hamid Hayat,
who kind of just ran his mouth.

He portrayed himself as a radical,

and so the focus turned to him.

That was the beginning
of the whole ordeal.

They said that Hamid
was a jihadist.

This is Hamid as well.

They thought we're gonna have guns,

bombs, knives,

but we're a normal family
living here in America.

This is Hamid
when he was just three years old.

Hamid...

Growing up with him was really fun.

He was the brother
that always took my side.

We used to watch wrestling.

Then we would always get together
in the garage,

my cousin, my dad, my brothers,

and we would just lay down anywhere
and watch the wrestling together.

He wasn't a big, strong person.

He was really skinny
because of the meningitis.

Meningitis is a brain infection
that he got when he was young.

He got it in Pakistan.

So that affected him a lot
through his personality

because as he was growing up,
he became more and more like a kid.

After the meningitis,
he didn't want to go out of the house.

He wouldn't focus on school.

He wanted to play more video games,

just stay at home most of the time.

Naseem Khan,
he was my brother's best friend.

He told my mom he doesn't have a mother.

So because of that,
she treated him closely, as her own child.

He had really nice cars.

Hamid was like, "What kind
of friend do I have with nice cars?"

Hamid was kind of a loser.

Like, he didn't really hang out
with any other kids.

All of a sudden, this really cool guy,

ten years his senior,
started paying a lot of attention to him.

I mean, Naseem Khan gave Hamid

the attention that he craved
that he wouldn't get from anyone else.

Because Mr. Khan
was an undercover informant,

the nature of his relationship
with Mr. Hayat was that they were buddies.

It began with the statements
that Mr. Hayat made to Naseem Khan

about his admiration and, um...

delight, really, in some of the activities

of some of the most violent jihadi groups
in Pakistan.

He spoke to Mr. Khan about the murder
and mutilation of Daniel Pearl...

and talked about what a good job that was

and how they would never be able
to send Jews to Pakistan anymore.

I'm going to fight for jihad.

You don't believe me, do you?

Why can't we go?

It's our duty as Muslims
to go and help other Muslims.

When we go for training,
we will go to Mansehra, right?

That's up to you.
You wanna go to Mansehra, go.

Okay, okay, okay.

The biggest
training camp of all is in Kashmir.

Have you seen this place?

- I've seen a video of it.
- You've seen a video of it.

If one goes for jihad, go to the one
in Afghanistan, or to the one in Iraq?

Anywhere in the world
where Muslims are attacked.

Jihad is the duty of every Muslim.

In April, 2003,
we went to Pakistan as a whole family.

We went to Pakistan
for my sister's wedding

and to look for a bride for Hamid as well.

My mom found a bride for Hamid
in our village, Behboodi.

So everyone was really happy.

After the actual wedding day,

we did joke around. I'm like,
"Hey, so was your, you know, wedding?"

He goes... He was like,
"Dude, it was better than I expected.

Beyond my expectations."

In Pakistan, it's a tradition, you know,
when somebody gets engaged,

we shoot guns.

We told him, "Hey, it's your wedding day.
You should shoot."

He's like, "No, no, no.
I'm too scared," you know.

"What if it goes up and it comes back down
and hits me in the head

or something like that?"

He would act like he was,
like, a bold person,

like a big shot, but he wasn't in reality.

He was a bit of a storyteller, yeah.

If he would meet somebody new,
Hamid's like,

"Oh, yeah. My dad, you know, he owns
Kmart and all these stores in Lodi,"

and we were like,
"Why would you even tell them that?"

He's like, "Don't worry about it." He just
wanted to be that person, you know?

Before his wedding,

his mom bought him a cell phone.

Naseem Khan,
he would constantly call and call.

He would call, and Hamid would be
telling his mom, "Hey, you know,

I'm not home right now. I'm sleeping,"
or something like that.

One day, I think he was watching
a cricket match or was playing cricket.

He left the match,
came home and broke his phone

because he was like,
"Why did you give him my number?

Because I'm tired of him.
He's not a good person."

The informant
was getting desperate.

Naseem Khan was calling

and trying to convince him
to go to a training camp.

No, no, no vacation,
man. You're sitting there in Pakistan.

You told me, "I'm going to a camp."
You're sitting idle.

You're wasting time.

And I can't do nothing,
man. There's no choice, see?

God willing,
when I come to Pakistan and I see you,

I'm gonna force you,

get you from your throat
and throw you in the madrassa,

in your grandfather's madrassa.

- I'm not gonna go with that.
- Oh, yeah, you will go.

Yeah, you will go.

Maybe I can't fight with you in America,

but I can beat your ass in Pakistan,

so nobody's gonna come to your rescue.

So in 2004, during that conversation

with Naseem Khan, the informant,
and Hamid,

you know, he threatens him
to go to a camp and...

or to get training, and then that was it.

After that contentious call,
they didn't speak after that.

The government had a theory
that he left his village of Behboodi,

took a bus to Balakot,

where supposedly he went to train
for six months.

And the FBI believed that his intent
was to come back to the United States

to attack our country.

After the wedding,

I spent two years with my family
in Pakistan.

My dad was rebuilding our house
in our village in Behboodi.

Was there a moment
when Hamid could have slipped off

to go and train?

No. He went to his friend's wedding,
to Multan for one week.

That's the whole period of time
that I haven't seen him

while we were there together
for two years.

But other than that, I mean,
he didn't go anywhere else.

Coming back in 2005 was the worst.

And they announced that there's someone
sitting here in this plane

that's very dangerous, so we have
to go back all the way to Japan.

When the plane was about to land in Tokyo,

the air hostess came by and asked Hamid,

"Are you guys the Hayat family?"

There was cameras flashing
and asking something that's in Japanese,

and Hamid was kind of angry,

like, "Why are they taking
pictures of us?"

When we went inside,

there were these two FBI agents.

They were asking if they could
interview Hamid in a different room.

I was sitting down
with my mom and my sister,

and they're asking me,

"What were you guys doing in Pakistan?

What kind of friends did Hamid have?

Were they tall? Were they big?
Did they have beards?"

Hours later, they told us that
everything got cleared up for Hamid

and all of you can go back.

Some days later, an FBI agent
came knocking on the door,

saying that they want to talk to Hamid.

Little did we know that that was
the last day we were gonna spend together.

Friday night was the last day
eating together,

talking.

And after that, we never seen him.

Lots of Muslims in the world do have
issues with the United States right now,

and that's okay.

It's not a bad thing.

You're free to have those kinds of issues.

You're free to explore... those thoughts.

That's not...
There's nothing illegal about that.

Okay?

And the old Hamid had issues
with the United States,

and so I want the new Hamid
to be honest with me...

about the old Hamid.

Does that make sense?

Okay.

Well, my take on this,

I mean, one thing that's true
is that after 9/11,

Robert Mueller said,
"I am gonna convert the FBI

into a national security agency,"

and I think that Sacramento thought
they had made the big-time.

To quickly recap,

he was interrogated in Japan
on his way back to the United States...

And then he voluntarily agreed
to go to the FBI office

where he was questioned and he denied.

You know, this is his third time
being questioned about this.

But they did not record all the times
he denied going to training camp.

It wasn't till much later,
after a long interrogation,

that they started recording.

In the interrogations,
you see certain tactics being used.

One is, in this case,

saying to Hamid Hayat,

"How would you explain
that we have aerial surveillance

showing you that you're in a camp,"

which was false.

Look, we know and we see a lot of things.

As has probably been explained to you,

we have satellite imagery
and all sorts of other things

that give us an idea
of things that are going on.

So you're in camp
for three to four months?

- Is that...
- Yeah, something like that.

I thought you guys had information
like that.

Okay.

Once they broke him with,

"Oh, we have photographs of you
in the camp,"

you know, the bullshit started,

and he thought that he would go home
at the end of the session.

Most of the camps,
you have weapons training,

you have explosives training.

Over there in the camps?

And you... They do karate or...

I didn't see no karate over there.
That's the thing I was thinking.

I was going to tell you, but I forgot.
I didn't see no karate over there, sir.

Did you run? Like run or jog or work out?

Jogging, like running, yeah.
I told you, sir, jogging, you know.

Looking at my body, they knew that
he's not that tough or anything like that,

- any big thing like that so...
- So...

Um, and then different kinds
of weapons training.

They have a variety
of different kinds of weapons.

Yeah, I got to do the pistol. That's it.

So you did pistol training...

I did it. I'm not good at it, either.
When I do it,

"You're not doing it right. You have
to do this, do that." It's like...

- Do you remember what kind of gun it was?
- No. It was a black one.

I can remember the color,

but I don't remember what the name was
or anything like that.

So you take how many shots?

I think I took, like, three or four shots.

Three or four shots. Did you reload?

- Because normally...
- I didn't know how to reload it.

I didn't...

I mean, I'm sure in three, four months,

three and a half, four months,
they teach you how to reload.

The thing is, they put, like,
bullets in there for us up there.

Not in the thing. Up there.

Oh, one at a time?

- One at a time, yeah, like that.
- Okay.

You know, they grew frustrated afterward

'cause he was saying yes to everything,

so it showed that, you know,
he was just making stuff up.

It just...

The stories were so far-fetched

that anyone who heard them
would just start laughing.

Tell me about rifle training.
There's...

Oh, rifle training is very hard, sir.

They made me stand over there,

and I said I barely couldn't pick it up
'cause it's very heavy.

I'm skinny, you know.

They said, "You can't shoot that again
'cause you don't have that much power."

And I was thinking, "God, that..."
You know, I don't want to do that again.

How many times can you go back

before they send you out for jihad?

Do they have, like, you have to be here
for so much training

before you go to jihad or...

I think so, for six months,
seven months...

Six or seven months.
So you were getting close.

Yeah, like that, but, you know, I didn't
get trained that much or anything.

They were using me, like,
for the kitchen and the cooking,

but I don't know how to cook
or anything.

You don't know how to cook?
Did you learn?

- No, I...
- No?

I was washing vegetables
and everything like that.

Oh, okay.

Hamid tells the FBI that he shot it so bad

that they never allowed him
to shoot again,

and they put him in the kitchen
to help cook and all that

because he's a lousy shot.

The agents asked him, you know,
whether or not...

how he was going to
receive his marching orders,

whether to...

blow something up or something else.

You came to the United States,

you've got to go to jihad, and...

you left with marching orders.

- What's that?
- You know what that is?

- No.
- Here's what your mission is, what you do.

So, what did they want you to do?

They didn't tell me nothing.
They say you can go right now,

and if we need you or anything,
they'll let me know.

Who was gonna tell you?

'Cause they're not...
Are they gonna call you up from Pakistan?

I don't think so. I think somebody...

Maybe send a letter or anything like that,
maybe.

I don't think they'll send a letter.

His answer is that he thought
maybe they'd send him a letter.

I mean, that just has to give you...

his state of mind,

what he thinks he's involved in here.

He was gonna get
some kind of certified letter

delivered by
the United States Post Office?

Absurd.

This is all I'm trying to...
That's all I'm trying to understand here

is what they said.

They said
that you have to go to America for jihad.

Okay. To fight? Yeah.

Yeah. America, you know, to fight.
That's what they told.

To go to America to fight jihad?

All right. That's all I'm trying to hear.

That's all I want to hear
is just what they said.

All right.

That night, for sure, he didn't understand
what was going on,

and I don't think he ever really got it

until he probably went to prison.

So I come back here tomorrow again?

No, you're not leaving here tonight, no.

No, I mean tomorrow.
I'm gonna be here tonight, staying here?

- No, you're gonna go to jail.
- You're going to jail.

So do I get a place to sleep
over there like that?

It's jail, Hamid. You know that?

I know it's a jail, but can I lay down
because my head is hurting?

I want to sleep. I'm just saying,
will I come back here again tomorrow?

On Monday,

the FBI came to search our house.

They had a search warrant.

They called on the house phone,
said, "Umer, open the door,"

and, boom, the door opened.

They pour into the house like
you know how an ant goes out of a hill?

Like...

Like that, with their guns drawn.

I was sitting on the sofa,

and I was crying because they had
the gun held to my mom's head.

I thought they're gonna shoot her.
She's gonna die right there on the scene.

And they had a gun pointed right here
to my head right here as well.

And they said,
"Go stand next to your mom."

And they shattered
everything in the house.

In his scrapbook
that was found in his home,

he collected articles
about political parties

and other political groups
that were devoted to violent jihad.

Assuming that Mr. Hayat
truly had gone for jihadi training,

and assuming that he came back here

with the intention of awaiting direction
to commit some act of violence,

that's dangerous.

And we'll never know exactly
what the danger was,

but that's part of preemptive prosecution
is that you cut that off,

rather than waiting.

The traditional approach to these things

had been to wait to see specifically
what risk was being posed,

but the additional risk that you accept
when you do that

is you might not be able to stop it
before it happens.

Well, a suspect, Hamid Hayat, is due
in federal court in Sacramento.

A judge will determine whether
he is a danger to the community.

Meantime, some of his family members
say they are under surveillance

and are being asked
to take lie detector tests.

Many journalists who were sitting
in the audience were in shock.

They were like,
"This is a scary day for America."

In this climate of fear,

they're gonna go after individuals
who might have inclination

towards radical ideas.

They never committed a crime.

They said, "This is a new era we're
heading into," and sure enough, it was.

One of the most important
pieces of evidence

was a piece of paper in his wallet

at the time that he traveled to Pakistan.
It was called the ta'wiz.

It's a supplication in Arabic

that spoke about, "Oh, Allah, we place you
at the throats of our enemies."

And the experts who testified at trial

talked about the fact
that this was something

that would be carried by a person

who expected to go into battle
against an enemy.

It would also be something

that if it were found on his body
if he were to perish,

that it would identify him as a martyr.

So all of those facts

all were evidence
that was presented to the jury

as something that was evidence
of his intent to commit violence.

You know, this is the note that
the government called "the throat note,"

and, you know, in a book that
almost every Muslim household has,

Riyâd-us-Sâliheen,

under
The Book of Etiquette of Travelling,

"Supplication If One Fears Harm."

This prayer,
it's under the chapter of travel.

A prayer that Muslims use
for protection in travel

all of a sudden is being weaponized,

that this is a jihadi prayer for war.

I mean, it was just one scary thing
after the other for our community.

And a lot of people were afraid, too.
Afraid to speak about this case.

A lot of people were afraid to come
forward and to show support for him.

Ready to go.

How do you feel about
the jury selection yesterday?

I feel good about the jury.

I'm confident
that they'll make the right decision.

Wazhma Mojaddidi.

My impression of her was that
she was passionate about this case,

felt it was a grave injustice,

and absolutely convinced
of her client's innocence.

Wazhma saw the confession
as the evidence, okay?

It was... It was...

unequivocal. It was the government's case.

But she considered it weak evidence

because it seemed
so discombobulated to her.

You're all over the map here, yeah,

and you're not helping yourself
by doing that. Yeah.

I'll say Balakot.
That's the first thing I'll say.

- Where's the camp, Hamid?
- That's what I'm trying to say to you.

The camp will be in Elaqa Ghair,
Tora Bora something or at Torkham.

Near Afghanistan?
Bora Bora, are you talking about?

This is the place where you were,
where you trained.

You were there for six months.
You know where it is.

The final thing I'll say,
it was in Afghanistan.

Now you're in Afghanistan?
We're not playing a game here.

This is at the heels
of a four-year undercover operation.

So I was expecting
that the agents would have known

or would have had some verification
where a camp was.

It brings to mind that something's wrong

and you need to try to corroborate
what in fact happened.

I don't believe that there was an effort

to investigate Mr. Hayat
while he was in Pakistan.

But there were at least six times
that Mr. Hayat mentioned Balakot.

So there were satellite photos
that we were able to use

from the Department of Defense,

and these were commercial-quality versions
of photographs taken from satellites.

The FBI has a major office in Islamabad.

They've been arresting people
related to 9/11 all over Pakistan.

They've got CIA and FBI in Pakistan,

and this supposed camp
is a drive up a road from Islamabad.

They say the camp's at Balakot.

And look at this case. Look at
its importance and so forth and so on.

They didn't drive up the road
to see if it was there.

Why didn't they do that?

I submit to you it's 'cause they know
there was no functioning camp.

What is incredible to me

was that the government really thought
that Hamid was such a terrorist

that they would have done more
to corroborate

and document what he was doing.

Did he go to a terrorism camp?

You know, that was a question
they never really answered.

What the expert says is,
"Okay, here's four photographs."

Well, they've got some buildings there.

There's a 50% chance
that it's a militant camp,

and there's a 50% chance
that it's a Pakistani military facility.

That's nothing.

If you say that something
is either an apple or an orange,

equally, you haven't offered any proof
that it's an apple or that it's an orange.

But the government doesn't offer
any photographs

that positively show people
training with rifles on the ground,

I mean, with sufficient detail
that you can detect that.

Any good lawyer would have
pressed the government on this point.

"Let's see all the photographs."

But in order to do that,

you have to have what's called
the security clearance,

and Wazhma Mojaddidi
never got a security clearance.

The fact that the government
never investigated the camp

was not something that the jury heard,

which we now know is true,

and it's because
she didn't get a security clearance.

I don't know why the defense attorney

in the Hayat case
chose not to receive a clearance.

I know that in the years
I've been a defense attorney

since I left the government,
I've been cleared in cases,

and I've considered it important to
review the information that's classified

that's provided to me to make sure
that there's nothing there...

that would assist my client
or contradict the Government's case.

Why did you ultimately decide

that you didn't need
to obtain a clearance?

Um...

I don't honestly remember right now.

But at the time,

the strategy seemed sound and rational...

and it made sense.

This is a lawyer who had
never tried a case before,

was two or three years out of law school.

This is a case that needed a lawyer
who had done a hundred trials.

The government had four highly-skilled,
highly-trained lawyers

on the prosecution side.

It's just a punch in the face,
you know,

to think of a lawyer with no experience
attempting to defend this case.

Her heart was in it,

but, frankly, there was a kind of hubris
and ambition that blinded her.

She said that she had to learn on the job.

When somebody's facing, you know,
the rest of their life in prison,

you don't have a lawyer who has to learn
on the job in order to defend them.

And those are her words.

What was your thinking on...

why you were qualified to represent Hamid
in this very serious case?

I thought that it could work.

I thought that... I mean, even though
I had never been in a criminal courtroom,

I felt comfortable in the courtroom.

I thought it was something I could handle

if I had some guidance
on just the procedural stuff.

Uh, and I was willing to learn it.

I was willing to get in and... do it.

The news
just out of federal court today,

Hamid Hayat has been sentenced
to 24 years in a federal penitentiary.

Hamid Hayat never attended
a terrorist training camp.

This fight is definitely not over.

There will be a motion for a new trial,

and ultimately, Hamid Hayat
will be proven innocent, as he is.

It is my hope that any others out there

contemplating taking the path
chosen by Hamid Hayat

will see this sentence as a wake-up call

and change their course
to a more favorable one.

They really sent a dangerous message to...
to not just the American Muslim community,

but the future of our democracy
and the rule of law.

They knew he was innocent,

but they were afraid
if he does do something,

how could we live with ourselves?

But for American Muslims
in a post-9/11 climate,

you get a different type of justice.

And the bar... beyond a reasonable doubt...

we lower it to just the minimum,

just even the idea that
someone might do something.

In the beginning, we didn't know

who did all of this.

We didn't know the person, so...

When they brought Naseem Khan
inside the court,

telling Hamid and our family members
this is the guy who was after Hamid,

we were like,
"How could he do this to us?"

It was literally like an earthquake

because my mom treated him as a son.

They felt very heartbroken.

The FBI let this guy,
this informant,

getting paid $235,000,

you know, who before that
was just working in a 7-Eleven,

you know, at a cash register.

And then not to pick up
the aggressive nature

of his conversations with this
18, 19-year-old kid,

that kind of behavior is not acceptable.

You know, it blew my mind.

It still blows my mind.

I have chosen to conceal my identity today

because this is a very painful subject
for me to talk about.

Most of my community members
don't know about Naseem as my son.

I personally am very humiliated
to have to say that I'm the mother.

Naseem is very, very clever.

He was capable to say all kinds of things.

He deceived his own mother...

and was using the FBI and everyone else
that he came in contact with

for his own gain.

I truly feel very badly
for the Hayat family.

I have an obligation as a Muslim
to speak the truth,

to give up any knowledge
that I have of a situation

which will rectify an injustice.

It was really hard
to see my parents like this.

My mom, she's such a nice person.

She loves everyone.

And now when I look at her,
she's always sad, depressed, crying.

She's always on medication now.

Her first child,
all his happiness, just gone.