we are against evil. and america as a whole has turned into a nation of evil. al awlaki has many like-minded followers. and there s a great concern that he s inspiring, even helping them to plan and launch terror attacks inside the united states. we will fight back and incite others to do the same. it s late october 2008. the cia is desperate to find al qaeda leaders like al awlaki. and storm is exactly what the cia needs. i had these different names. i had different personalities. i was morten storm, murad storm, abu osama, abu mujahid, polar bear. it s some kind of schizophrenic lifestyle.
vision goggles he d requested, some secretly implanted with spy software. then, storm says, he gives al awlaki one more cia gift, $5,000 cash. he looked at me, and he tapped his chest pocket where the $5,000 were, and he said, can we buy bullets and weapons? i said, yeah, of course you can. my handler, cia handler in denmark, he said, you know what? you ve just been tested, and you just passed it. because if i said no, he knew, anwar, that this money was from intelligence, and he knew they were not allowed to sponsor or to pay for weapons and bullets. storm is loving his 007 life, but, as he drives away from this meeting with al awlaki, he is worried. the tables have turned. al awlaki has grown more violent, and the world should be afraid. anwar was wearing a green
mcdonald s, shows her al awlaki s notes on his computer. but the cia agents are angry. storm says they think he has gone rogue. again, i improvised for myself. i took control. aren t they supposed to be running you rather than you running them? in the ideal world, probably, yes. bottom line, the cia can t be picky. to locate and eliminate al awlaki, they need storm, and they are willing to pay if his plan works. you get $250,000 from the cia when aminah crosses into yemen. that s correct. after seven weeks, storm s sent back to vienna for another meeting with aminah, the next step in the matchmaking. he shows her this video from al awlaki. this recording is done specifically for sister aminah. the brother who s carrying this recording is a trustworthy brother. what s her reaction when
six hours, hundreds of pages. within weeks, he is converting to islam. it changed me. it spoke to me, that book. this is the truth. the truth. i found the truth. he takes the name murad storm, travels to yemen, attends a seminary, learns arabic and a strict, uncompromising interpretation of islam. i was taught everyone else is wrong. as simple as that, black and white. you have the truth. they re wrong? that s right. and those who are wrong, storm believes, are the enemy. all he can think about is training for jihad. storm is white and european, traits that might help a terrorist living in the west avoid detection. he says he soon catches the eye
and he has made surprising connections with al qaeda leaders. according to counterterrorism expert magnus ranstorp. by almost sheer luck to some extent that he had been to the many places, he had met all the right people. he s almost a forrest gump of radical islamism. i don t think that there are many people like him that have all those different dimensions. he was the real deal. the real deal. a larger than life personality who reveals his journey from jihad to james bond in this book agent storm: my life inside al qaeda and the cia, co-authored by paul cruickshank and tim lister, both cnn contributors. coming up, how storm goes from boxer to holy warrior. i was invited by osama bin laden to join up with him in the training camp in afghanistan.