Undercover Agent

"The look in Chiheb's eyes when he talked about killing infidels was something I'd never seen before in my life. It was a look of hatred and death."
"That isn't someone who isn't aware of what's happening, who's 'out there'. That's someone who's calculating to commit mass murder."
"You will never, ever hear me being the driving force behind any plot. I have been a sounding board and a comrade-in-arms, nothing more."
"There's 1.7 billion Muslims on the planet, and the only ones who seem to have a voice is al-Qaeda and ISIS."
"I believe in a strong vetting process. But ... I just don't know that we should be hiding from them [Islamists]."
"I think violence in the drug game is much more prevalent, and is much more likely to happen on a moment's notice, with no warning."
FBI agent Tamer Elnoury

The FBI have ensured Tamer El-Noury's true identity remains secret (file pic)

This is the voice of the man who was dispatched with a mission to gain the trust of a suspected Islamist and two of his jihadi colleagues, all three of whom had decided to make common cause with leading terrorist groups focusing on causing death and destruction both in the United States and Canada through plots they were assembling in the hopes of achieving success, reflected in the extent of the harm they might be able to manipulate through the careful planning of catastrophic incidents.

The FBI had alerted the Canadian RCMP national police force to the presence in Canada of a Tunisian-born man on a student visa to a Montreal university. Chiheb Esseghaier had made contact with Raed Jaser of Toronto for the two to work together on a destructive plot to kill as many people as possible, reflecting the malevolent violence they were determined to inflict on Western society. In an effort to get as close to the plotters as possible, Egyptian-born American FBI agent was tasked with gaining their confidence.

He proved to be successful through initiating a 'chance encounter', and in the due course of time as he portrayed himself as a wealthy Muslim prepared to finance terrorist operations in the West, he became a trusted confidante, recording conversations with the two and with a third jihadi, in the United States. Their discussions revolved around causing a Via passenger train from New York to Toronto to derail, with a massive loss of life.

Other plots involved a sniper killing Jews in Toronto, while Esseghaier flirted with the possibility of bombing Times Square in New York.

In the end, with the skilled confidence-building of the FBI agent working with the RCMP, the pair was arrested in Canada and charged with terrorism offences. Raed Jaser, a petty crook, claimed innocence of plotting to terrorism, he was only a drug addict hoping to pay for his habit through the generosity of the 'wealthy co-conspirator', which the FBI officer, Mr. Elnoury portrayed himself to be. During the ensuing trial, Esseghaier, recognized as the leader, left doubt that he was completely sane given his eccentric behaviour in court.

FBI agent Tamer Elnoury [an assumed 'cover' name], decided he would write a book, explaining in detail the circumstances and issues that made up his part of the investigation. Above all, he set out to dispute and put to rest the insistence by some that Esseghaier was not in possession of his full mental faculties so he wrote "American Radical" focusing for the most part on the Via case for which Esseghaier and Jaser were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison for conspiring to commit murder.

60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley and FBI-undercover operative "Tamer Elnoury" at the 9/11 Memorial, formerly known as ground zero    CBS News

Agent Elnoury, while through his persona as a fellow agent for terrorism, helped to rout out the presence of terrorists intent on slaughtering innocent people, was also concerned that their actions and intentions were giving Islam a bad name. As a devout Muslim he hoped that by writing his book he would help lead the public to regard these jihadis' actions as aberrant, unreflective of true Islam. What he overlooks in his zeal to redeem Islam is that it is not only al-Qaeda and ISIS, as he insists, that actively engage in violent jihad against the West.

There are numerous other, regional and far-flung groups in the Middle East, Asia and North Africa also engaged in mass slaughter in the name of Islam, not to mention the wide net thrown throughout the world by the Muslim Brotherhood; by groups nourished by Wahhabi Islam in Saudi Arabia, exporting their brand through the funding of madrassas in Africa, Europe and North America, and the Iranian-trained Shiite terrorist groups, all of which like the Taliban, Boko Haram, Hezbollah and Al Shabaab, wreak havoc throughout the world.

If they are not busily engaged in performing the work of the faithful extolled in the Koran and the Hadiths to engage in jihad, what is it that their odious jihad represents other than Islam?