With hundreds of British-born Jihadis on the loose, one man knows better than most about the threat they pose — because he used to be one. Muslim convert MORTEN STORM later became an MI5 spy, working deep undercover around the world.
Here, in the concluding part of our nerve-shredding series from his new book, he tells how the pressures of his double life eventually became too much to bear.
Being a double agent and living a constant lie was never easy. On the outside I was Murad Storm, Muslim convert and zealot, a man who had pledged to wage holy war against all kuffars [infidels] in the name of Allah.
Beneath the mask was the real me — Morten Storm, who had turned against the faith he once so stridently professed and was now an undercover agent for western intelligence agencies, spying on my Islamic contacts in Britain and around the world to prevent terrorist outrages.
I struggled with these twin roles. The loneliness, the deceit and the mistrust gnawed at me.
On the outside Morten Storm was Murad Storm, Muslim convert and zealot, a man who had pledged to wage holy war against all kuffars
I could tell my wife, Fadia, nothing and had to deceive her constantly. She was left believing I was still the fanatical jihadist I had been when we met and married. It was a necessary deceit — to protect us both.
If she knew about my real work and let it slip, her life could be in danger, as could her family back in Yemen.
The same went for my children, Osama and Sarah. I longed to tell them that my Islamic robes, my beard, my prayers were all a sham, and I was secretly working for the good guys against terrorists. But I never could. Such knowledge would only have put them in danger.
I created a fiction to explain my frequent absences — that I was helping to build a retreat in the Kenyan bush for pious young Muslim men to attend.
The truth was that I was risking my life infiltrating extremist Islamic groups in Britain, Somalia and elsewhere in order to neutralise them.
I remember one evening sitting down with Fadia to watch a George Clooney spy thriller set in the Middle East. I was soon absorbed in the film, recognising the tradecraft of espionage it tried to recreate, especially the mistrust among some its characters.
I was desperate to point to the screen and tell her: ‘That’s how I feel.’ But I knew it was impossible. The pressure was such that I even resorted to self-medicating with cocaine, snorting it joylessly on my own.
In Yemen, I had met an honourable tribal leader named Abdullah Mehdar, who passionately wanted his country to become an Islamic state with Sharia law, but had no interest in attacking the West.
Later he got caught up in a special forces raid against a truly dangerous terrorist, for which I provided the intelligence, and was shot dead. I was upset.
He was no global jihadist with dreams of bringing carnage to the streets of Europe or the skies of America, like some of those I was happy to see taken out of the game.
But Morten Storm, former undercover agent, led CIA agents to Anwar al-Awlaki. But he says they reneged on a deal to pay him for his services – before he became a target himself
This was a man I’d liked and had broken bread with, and I was responsible for his death. I was plunged into a dark mood, paralysed with guilt, and couldn’t even run basic errands such as going to the supermarket.
But this was the business I had got myself into, and I just had to get on with it.
And it was a business in which increasingly I learned never to totally trust my handlers.
One morning I got into my car, a venerable old Jaguar, and noticed that the panels above the glove compartment had come loose. Had a bug been hidden there by my MI5 ‘friends’ to keep tabs on me?
At a rundown hotel in Birmingham, I had a meeting with the MI5 station chief, who assured me: ‘Morten, we trust you. On my son’s life, we wouldn’t do something like that.’
I doubted he even had a son, and from that point on I presumed my car, my phone and my home were bugged.
I had to face the fact that loyalty was not exactly overflowing in the secret intelligence world, where no one got results by fair play. I might be discarded or betrayed at any moment as priorities shifted and demands intensified.
For my handlers, the first, ruthless rule was that ends always justify means.
And even if they weren’t playing, there was always the chance that one of them would get careless, or I would slip up — and be unmasked by the groups I had infiltrated. And then my fate didn’t even bear thinking about.
In the end it was ‘Big Brother’ — the CIA — who did the dirty on me. Their number one target had been an out-of-control American-Yemeni terrorist cleric named Anwar al-Awlaki.
He and I had been close friends, and in many ways I’d admired him — until he simply became too dangerous. In the end, as I explained yesterday, I was instrumental in tracking him down. He was killed in the desert by a missile strike.
But then the Americans denied my part in finding him, claiming that another source had been the crucial one. I didn’t believe them. A senior Western intelligence official had briefed the media that a messenger boy had led them to Awlaki.
But their description of the boy was almost identical to the young courier Awlaki had sent a few weeks previously to pick up items I had brought to Yemen. The timing of the arrest described by the official was the same as when this pick-up took place.
Protesting outside the US embassy in London in 2005. Storm turned against the faith he once so stridently professed and became an undercover agent for western intelligence agencies, spying on Islamic contacts in Britain and around the world
Yet they refused to give me the credit or the $5 million they had promised me for this operation. As one of my British intelligence contacts had warned me might happen, I had been ‘f***ed over’.
I was furious. I was being cheated by the people for whom I’d been risking my life on the front line of the war against terror for five years — and now my part was being disowned.
In an angry meeting with them they tried to soft-soap me with flattery. President Obama knew all about me, I was told, ‘so the right people know your contributions, putting your b***s on the line, day in day out. And we are thankful.
‘But it’s like being at the World Cup, you’re moving down the field and you’re in the position to score, the other guy could have passed it to you but he didn’t, he took the shot, he scores. And that’s what happened.’
However let down I felt, I had no real choice but to accept this. But something had changed in me and the weeks after Awlaki’s death were a dark time. I felt guilty about his killing. In my sleep he would come to me, reprimanding me for what I had done.
I brooded incessantly over the behaviour of the Americans, who were now writing me off as damaged goods and a loose cannon. But I was desperate to prove them wrong. I wanted them to take notice of me again, to show them I was still in the game.
So I went back to work with PET, the Danish intelligence service, who had been my first employer in the espionage business.
There was now a new Al Qaeda danger man in Yemen to target by the name of Nasir al-Wuhayshi and I went back into the field to try to make contact with him.
I still had all my contacts among the militants here in Europe, and was introduced to yet more young warriors full of enthusiasm to be martyrs. They were ticking time bombs every one of them — but they were also my route into his circle.
I posed as someone wanting to avenge Awlaki’s death. ‘His death must be revenged with the kuffar’s bloodshed,’ I wrote to Wuhayshi. ‘He requested me to find brothers in Europe to come to Yemen for training with the intention of returning to their countries to become martyrs.’
I was always apprehensive before going on missions, but more so this time. I was now effectively a freelance, without the backing of the big boys. That meant a further layer of danger — no one watching my back. I was also at extra risk of doing something stupid in my desperation to prove the CIA wrong about me.
Nonetheless, I flew into Yemen and eventually made contact with Wuhayshi’s people. I made the trip into bandit territory, the remote town of Jaar where the black banners of Al Qaeda fluttered everywhere and mujahideen fighters milled around the streets.
It was here that I had to swear an oath of allegiance to Al Qaeda (as I described in the first part of this series). To say no would have raised suspicion.
Storm’s double life came to an end when he realised he was in double danger. Not only might Al Qaeda catch him but he ‘got a whispered warning that there was an unpleasant edge to the CIA’s insistence’
I hardly slept that night — death might be around any corner. I even feared I might talk in my sleep and reveal myself to my ‘brothers’.
In the morning, there was a new horror. I realised that I had left my backpack in the car that had brought me here. Inside was a USB stick with incriminating evidence on it. I’d forgotten about it.
Game over, I thought. I pictured my wife and children back in Europe and wondered how they would take the news of my death. They might never even get to know which side I was really on and what I had done.
But then the bag was returned to me with a cheery: ‘You left this in the car.’ When I was alone, I looked inside, and there was the USB stick. I could have screamed with relief. But was this a sign? Was it time to get out before it was too late?
I finally met Wuhayshi, and he was anxious for me to continue my work bringing him recruits from Europe. So, too, were my Danish handlers when I got back home.
Wuhayshi had requested supplies, which could easily be fitted with hidden trackers and transmitters. I said I was willing to return to Yemen with them. Suddenly the CIA were back on the scene, with a hit list and promises of cash again.
There would be a million dollars if I could lead them to Wuhayshi, and similar rewards for other terrorists (including one who was working with the most wanted woman in the world — Samantha Lewthwaite, mother of four and the widow of a 7/7 London bomber, who was on the run in East Africa).
But I was understandably suspicious. ‘What guarantee do I have they won’t screw me over again?’ I asked. ‘You don’t,’ I was told. Nor could I get any guarantees that my family would be looked after if I was killed.
I considered my options. I was back on first-name terms with one of Al Qaeda’s most important men, with every chance of getting to plant an electronic tag on him. But still I was getting little support from my handlers. And the situation in Yemen was getting more treacherous by the day.
I did go back — to what I soon realised was now a double danger. Not only might Al Qaeda catch me out, but I also got a whispered warning that there was an unpleasant edge to the CIA’s insistence that I had to see Wuhayshi personally in his hideout to deliver the supplies he’d asked for.
The suggestion I heard from a source was that they planned to take him out while I was with him.
‘They’ll kill you, too, and tell the world you were a terrorist like the others,’ I was told. It seems I had become expendable and could well be heading into a trap.
So there and then I called it a day. ‘I’m not going,’ I told my handlers — and in that moment in May 2012 the curtain dropped on my life as a double agent.
It was an anti-climactic way to end more than five years on the espionage frontline. Yet it was the Americans who would suffer most. Through me, they had had the opportunity to remove Wuhayshi and other key Al Qaeda personnel in the War on Terror.
At a level of risk bordering on the insane, I had tracked him down but Western intelligence had dropped the ball. They would come to regret this. Wuhayshi went on to mastermind many terrorist atrocities, was promoted to Al Qaeda’s second in command worldwide, and is still at large.
As for my future, at first I hoped to become a backroom boy, one of the analysts trying to divine the intentions of terrorists from behind a desk. But that never happened.
He said ever since ‘coming out’ as an undercover agent, he knows he will always be ‘in hiding’. He added: ‘I always need to be looking over my shoulder. But, then, in this world beset by terrorism, so do we all’
There were more broken promises. My request of Danish permanent residence for my wife, Fadia, mysteriously became more complicated. I was offered just six months’ severance pay for all the risk I had been through and all the success I’d had.
I decided it was time to go public with my story. After receiving the whispered warning that the CIA had the intention to kill me while I was with the terrorists, I had become fearful for my life and it was the best insurance policy I could think of.
Before this happened, I told Fadia everything. The strain of my lifestyle had long affected our marriage, and it wasn’t going to get any better. I warned her that once my story was out, plenty of people would want me dead. Our world would shrink; we would always be on our guard.
She was traumatised. ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Could you not trust me? Five years of endless lies. And have you any idea how lonely I was? You were hardly ever there, and when you were, your mind was always somewhere else.’
I tried to explain that I wanted to protect her, that it was better she knew nothing. ‘But I’m your wife,’ she said, looking at me through eyes swollen with tears.
Meanwhile, the threat I had tried to counter goes on as Al Qaeda’s black banners continue to flutter defiantly all over the world.
For Britain, my retirement also meant that Western intelligence lost a resource in one of its most arduous challenges — detecting small-scale ‘lone-wolf’ attacks such as the butchering of British soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich last year.
As for me, ever since ‘coming out’, I know that although I am in hiding, I always need to be looking over my shoulder. But, then, in this world beset by terrorism, so do we all.
