 Welcome, and thank you for joining the New America Fellows Program for this webinar discussion of Trevor Aronson's new podcast, American Isis. He'll be joined by Candice Rando, who is director of our frontlines program at New America. I'm Avisu U, director of the Fellows Program. For more than 20 years, New America supported hundreds of fellows who've gone on to publish books, produce documentary films, and other deeply reported projects. American Isis marks a unique milestone for the program, as this is our first podcast project. We're delighted to support Trevor in this endeavor and look forward to supporting additional podcast projects in the future. We are grateful to be able to host this conversation with you today in partnership with the International Security Program, ASU Center on the Future of War, the Intercept, and Topic Studio. Before we start, a few housekeeping notes. If you have questions during the event, please submit them to the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. If you need closed captioning, Zoom now provides that function. Just click the CC button at the bottom of your screen to access that feature. And we encourage you to sign up for our newsletter and events list so you can receive more invitations like this. You can do that by following the link newamerica.org slash fellows. Now let me introduce our speakers. Trevor Aronson is a contributing writer for the Intercept and a 2020 ASU Future Security Fellow at New America. He's also executive director of the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting and author of The Terror Factory, inside the FBI's manufactured war on terrorism. American ISIS is its first podcast. Candace Rondo directs Future Frontlines, a public intelligence service for next generation security and democratic resilience. Before joining New America, Candace served as a senior program officer with the USIP where she launched the Resolve Network, a global research consortium on conflict and violent extremism. She has documented and analyzed political violence in South Asia and around the world for the Washington Post and the International Crisis Group. Before I turn the conversation over to Candace, we'll listen to a one minute trailer for American ISIS. I'm not speaking on behalf of the Islamic State or speaking for them, but I'm speaking about my life. And I would like to record. Russell Denison was an American who joined the Islamic State or ISIS as a fighter in Syria. But if this information was to be released while I'm alive, it could potentially make a very dangerous situation for me with the security forces. I'm Trevor Aronson. For months, Russell secretly communicated with me, telling me about his conversion to Islam, his life in the United States, and his journey to the Middle East, and ultimately, to the world's most feared terrorist organization. So as soon as we were walking across the border, you could hear the bombs, the missiles, the bullets, everything, the tanks. So I thought to myself, Allah Akbar, where am I going? And there is no turning back. Russell's recordings provide an astonishing firsthand account of what it was like for an American in the Islamic State. From the Intercept and Topic Studios, this is American ISIS, an audible original. Hi, and thanks, Alwista, for the great introduction. I mean, that podcast trailer opening is just a thriller on its own. Trevor, thank you for joining us to talk to you, to talk to us about your podcast, American ISIS. As Alwista said, I spent a lot of time reporting on and documenting political violence around the world, and particularly in the Middle East. Although I've never traveled to Syria, for me, listening to your podcast, Trevor, was actually a revelation on a number of fronts. And I just wonder, I mean, that was a short kind of opener there. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about the podcast overall. Yeah, so the podcast is the story of Russell Denison, who was a white American born and raised in Pennsylvania, and who grew up Catholic. And eventually, in his late 20s, converts to Islam. And the story is really a two-track one. The one track is about his life in the United States and his journey ultimately to Syria, and the way he got there. I mean, it's important to point out, I think that a lot of people think of people joining terrorist groups like ISIS having a very straight line from the United States to join one of these groups. And that isn't always the case, and it certainly wasn't the case with Russell. It was a very kind of circuitous route that he took in joining ISIS, and a rather extraordinary story. And then the second part of the story was the day-to-day. What's interesting about the time period that I communicated with Russell from the summer of 2018 through the beginning of 2019 was that Raqqa had fallen, ISIS was very much on the decline, and the ISIS fighters that remained, including Russell, were in a part of Eastern Syria called Derazor that was ultimately facing a bombing campaign by the US-led coalition, intended to kind of dislodge them from control of that area. And so it was this window into ISIS as it was effectively collapsing, this kind of live report every day that I was receiving. And so the story that I ultimately try to tell in American ISIS is Russell's story and how he got to ISIS and what life was like inside ISIS and my attempts to authenticate and corroborate that story. And then secondly, the final collapse of ISIS and the bombing campaign ultimately that Russell lived through. So I mean, what's so interesting about Russell's story is something that actually, weirdly all three of us have in common. We've all lived at some point or another in the Tampa Bay, St. Pete area. And if I understand correctly from listening to the podcast, that's kind of where your part of the story begins. Tell us about that. Yeah, so in 2014, my wife and I actually just moved to the St. Pete area where I'm originally from and I'd become interested in this FBI sting operation here. I'd spent years researching FBI sting operations in the FBI's counter-terrorism program really looking at whether at times the FBI is crossing the line in making crimes or acts of terrorism possible through these very aggressive informants or agent-led sting operations where the FBI provides sometimes the plan, oftentimes the weapons that are needed. And in this particular case in Tampa, the FBI had targeted this man named Sammy Osmokosh. His plot, which was kind of engineered by the FBI to bomb a bar in Tampa as well as take hostages and ultimately shoot up a casino. As in other sting cases, the FBI provided everything, including the weapons and the transportation and the money needed. And in researching this particular case, Sammy's family, particularly his brother, had told me that I really needed to look at this guy named Russell Dennison, who was this red-bearded white American who had really in Sammy's family's view radicalized Sammy and pushed him ultimately toward the plot that he participated in. And it was the family's view that Russell Dennison was actually an FBI informant. And there were a number of pieces of evidence that suggested Russell may have been an FBI informant, including the fact that Sammy was not the only one caught up in a sting operation who had connections to Russell. And what was also interesting is, within a week of Sammy's arrest, this Russell Dennison guy leaves the area and he had acted in many ways, like we know FBI informants act, where he would espouse radical beliefs. Russell had a YouTube channel where he would kind of attract others of like mind. And so in many ways, I kind of questioned whether he was an FBI informant. At the same time, through a source, I was able to get some emails that he had apparently sent that were describing how he was fighting in Syria at the beginning of the Civil War there. And so in 2014, I had this conflicting story of like, was he possibly an FBI informant or was he someone who had joined Syria, joined as a fighter in Syria? And I had an email address for him and I emailed him back in 2014 when I was researching Sammy Asmikash's story and never heard back from him and published the story. In the story, I talk about mystery of Russell Dennison and then, you know, fast forward to 2018 about four years later, I suddenly get this anonymous email asking me to reach out on WhatsApp. Then when I did and I said, hi, this is Trevor Aronson responding to your message. You know, the first question that the person asked me was, do you remember Sammy Asmikash? And you know, it was at that point that I knew I was talking to Russell Dennison because he was the only person who I could possibly think of who would ask me such a question. And then from there our kind of conversation and questions began and it became clear to me very quickly that my suspicions about his being an informant were wrong. You know, in the podcast I described, you know, how the evidence ended up, you know, how I misread the evidence initially and I explained kind of what the reasons why there were appearances that he was an informant, including the fact that, you know, the FBI was essentially using him as a bug light, investigating anyone who he was in contact with. So he was kind of unwittingly providing leads to the FBI. But so at that point, you know, in the summer of 2018, you know, Raqqa had collapsed, Isis was on the decline and suddenly I get this contact from this guy, Russell Dennison who lived not far from where I was sitting at the time and where I'm sitting now and basically saying he wanted to tell a story. So I mean, I'm remembering this phrase, dry snitching from the podcast that you refer to where, you know, essentially somebody is kind of inadvertently, you know, detailing his or her criminal acts, unbeknownst to them, right, that they're being sort of listened to and I think it's so interesting actually. And you know, but of course the story isn't complete if we don't talk a little bit about Dennison's background. In fact, like one of the things that's most striking about the podcast, I think, is here is this, you know, youngish guy in his late 30s who is on the front lines of America's war against the Islamic State at the peak really of this bombing campaign. And you can kind of hear all this in the background and he's recounting his story via WhatsApp and a lot of people probably don't know that on WhatsApp you can sort of leave these very elaborate long voice notes. So I would talk a little bit about the mechanics of that but also kind of what it was that kind of drew you two together. What were their common factors or you know, things that you had shared? I mean, you guys are roughly the same age. Yeah, so Russell, the primary reason Russell reached out to me was that I had made an effort to contact him in 2014. And I think at that moment, he was looking to talk to a journalist and you know, I was the one he knew of because I'd previously written about Sammy Asmokosha's case and tried to reach out to him. At that time, Russell didn't know what my age was. He didn't know my background and he also didn't know that I was living in the St. Petersburg, Florida area. You know, Russell had assumed that I like a lot of journalists in the United States was living in New York or Washington. And so he initially reaches out to me and you know, part of our initial conversation was getting to know each other and he had some questions about me and what we discovered, which we both found particularly fascinating was that we were roughly the same age. You know, we both lived in the St. Petersburg area and we both kind of came of age at the same time, right? Like we were children of the 80s watching Saturday morning cartoons. And the reason that was interesting to me was that, you know, in many ways I felt that Russell had a very similar kind of cultural background and childhood as I did. And yet he made these drastically different choices that, you know, put him in a position where, you know, he was an ISIS fighter kind of creating an example for me that, you know, someone just like me could become an ISIS fighter like this. And then for Russell, I think, you know, he had described how, you know, when he joins ISIS and it's important to remember that what's partially extraordinary about his story is that, you know, he wasn't one of these guys or fighters that came to ISIS at the end. You know, he crossed into Syria in 2012 and was with ISIS from its very beginning as an insurgent force group in Syria and then through its kind of taking of Raqqa and as the establishment of it as a de facto capital. And what he had described to me was this frustration where when you would meet other foreign fighters, including from Europe and the United States, you know, these were people who were 10, 12 years younger than he is and they did not have the kind of same cultural foundation. They weren't watching the same cartoons as children. And so I think part of what maybe elicited some of the kind of confessional qualities in Russell's recordings, you know, was feeling like he was talking to a contemporary. And in many ways we work in temporaries, we just made very different choices in our lives. And as for the logistics of how we communicated, you know, it was Russell's suggestion that we use WhatsApp and what you can do on WhatsApp in addition, as many people probably know, in addition to sending regular text messages as you can send voice memos where you record them. And Russell and I had devised a kind of plan, you know, he didn't have regular access to the internet. When he would be home, he didn't have access to the internet. So we would have to go to these hotspots that would go down some days and come up others and be moved. And so, you know, our interactions were based largely on his recordings to me that he would make at night when he was offline, and then I would receive them and then send back texts, usually questions in text because, you know, the internet being a challenge, we tried to kind of limit bandwidth however we could. And so he would send back recordings and I would usually send, you know, questions back in text. And, you know, the way that this is kind of a 21st century story in a sense is that this probably couldn't have happened at any other time for, you know, were it not for the technology that was available, not just the fact that we were using WhatsApp and you could record these messages to me in these recordings, but that, you know, even cheap phones these days have, you know, microphones and are able to record audio at a level of quality that is really quite good. And so the, you know, the recordings that you hear are, the quality-wise are really good. And so that was part of, you know, kind of what made this possible as a podcast was that, you know, you are not only hearing kind of high quality audio from Russell, recording at night as bombs are falling behind him at times, but that, you know, he was able to kind of tell his story in his own voice. And, you know, Russell, for all his faults, you know, one of the things that he was in radio, they described people like this as, you know, he's a good talker, right? Like he had a very compelling way of telling his story and, you know, it just made it engaging. And I also think, you know, the reason I think this works really well as in a podcast form is that, you know, in many ways I think we live in this time and maybe we've always lived in times like this where, you know, we're very quick to dehumanize our enemies and see them as different from us. And I think what Russell's story, the reason it was partially so compelling to me was this idea that like, you know, this is the enemy. This is an ISIS fighter. And yet like through these recordings, you begin to see kind of the humanity of the enemy and, you know, not, and I don't present this in the podcast as a way to excuse or, you know, apologize for any of, you know, ISIS's heinousness or brutality. I mean, that's front and center of the podcast, but really it's a, you know, a way of showing kind of that, you know, even in, you know, ISIS fighters, there's this humanity that you can see and the struggles that they go through. And I think, you know, that's why it works so well in this particular format. Yeah, I mean, it's so interesting actually when you think about how war correspondents used to cover, for instance, World War II, you know, the story was always kind of this very, you know, apple pie Americanism from the front lines where the dough boys were fighting. And it was oftentimes a very one-sided story. You kind of understood, you know, roughly the motivations of the soldiers for instance in Storm of the Beach Normandy in the frame, you know, that was given to you by the U.S. government primarily, right? And what's so interesting about the 21st century, you know, in particularly this kind of, you know, web 2.0, you know, mobile phones everywhere phase of the 21st century, we kind of hear these unfiltered voices coming from, you know, America's various forever wars in the Middle East. And that's sort of interesting actually also that you kind of raise the point that you have this kind of common, you know, kind of throughline or parallel in your lives because you're at the same age roughly and you would have seen and witnessed a lot of the same things that, you know, people in their 30s, you know, in 2012, 13, 14 would have seen, right? For you and Russell, you know, the experience of 9-11 was kind of this probably relatively remote phenomenon that's something that happened on TV, right? And you didn't necessarily, you weren't old enough to go to Afghanistan or something like that. For me, right? I mean, I experienced all that stuff up front, up close in New York. I have a completely different view on kind of that trajectory. And so this kind of, this very small but, you know, subtle generational shift between people in their late 30s and people older than that and their view on, you know, Islamist political violence in that context. But one of the things that stands out is that, you know, Denison, as he tells it himself as you convey, he's this kind of white kid from a Catholic family comes from a middle class background. In many ways, all of the things that he does and the kind of the persona that he progressively adopts is the complete antithesis of where he comes from, right? He ends up, there are lots of spoiler alerts here just for everybody's awareness, but you're not missing anything. You should listen to the podcast because it's super rich with detail. It's an excellent narrative. But we have one of the things, of course, that comes out is that, you know, Denison has this period of rebellion. He's kind of lost and aimless and he winds up in prison, right? And then from there, what happens? Yeah, so he ends up getting arrested for selling a very small amount of marijuana. He was a low level drug dealer on the side to make extra money. And, you know, the cops, you know, set it up in such a way that they threw the book at him in that they lured him into a school zone to sell the drugs so that they were able to get him for a stiffer penalty. He ends up meeting, you know, after his arrest but before his incarceration, meets this black Muslim man who's kind of calm demeanor, had always impressed him. And he asked him about Islam. And Russell at that point had been raised Catholic but really, you know, never took to the religion and really also felt lost. I mean, I think Russell, you know, it doesn't say that's exactly, but, you know, he really was looking for the kind of an identity. And, you know, he is introduced to Islam through this man who gives him a Quran. And, you know, he never ends up seeing this man again, but he reads this Quran, you know, voraciously and basically, you know, is basically reads it and says I'm Muslim, you know, even though he doesn't know any other Muslims and just kind of identifies immediately with the book. I mean, you know, as you'll hear in the podcast, there's even a bit of religious zealotry where he talks about seeing light coming from the book and, you know, describing, you know, almost this kind of angelic way that he was pulled into the religion. He then goes to prison for the marijuana bust, identifies as a Muslim, and then as a result kind of gets grouped together with the other Muslims there. In prison, he takes Shahada and learns about Islam, you know, mainly through the other prisoners who were there. He ends up spending less than two years in prison and at that point upon his release, his family has moved to Florida where they run a flower shop and he gets permission to do his parole in Florida. And here in Florida is where you kind of begin to see a drift toward extremism. You know, he constantly feels like the Muslims he's meeting are not, you know, the Muslims who thinks the Quran describes. He ends up running into a religious, he finds a religious mentor who's a Salafi and, you know, Salafi Islam is a harder line ideology where, you know, the dress is more conservative, the behavior is largely more conservative. You know, there's issues with kind of, you know, participation in democratic functions and Russell really clung to this idea that, you know, he was a Muslim, but not just a Muslim, he was a Salafi Muslim and he was kind of a harder line Muslim. But at the same time, I think, you know, and this is something that I think people born into the religion talk about sometimes where, you know, there is a feeling, and one of the people in the podcast describes this, you know, there is a feeling sometimes or a question whether, you know, sometimes these white converts are doing this to be contrary, right? Like, yeah, they accept Islam as a religion, but there's this part of it in them that they're rebelling, right, they're rebelling against society, they're rebelling against their parents. And I think part of that, at least in the beginning of Russell's kind of religious formation was true, that, you know, when you listen to his YouTube videos and it's important to point out that Russell, you know, wasn't immediately like, let's take up guns and fight. I mean, there was like a slow, you know, evolution to his ideology, but, you know, his YouTube videos in the United States, which were hard-lined but did not promote violence, you know, were very much questioning, you know, the way other people lived, you know, criticizing Jews and Christians and people who did not practice religions. And it was very much like, I have the right path, you know, I know the way to God and to the afterlife and you are all wrong, you need to listen to me. And, you know, it was that, and you begin to see this kind of religious fervor develop from there. And I think, you know, and obviously what we talked about in the podcast is like, you know, I don't know that Russell was necessarily destined to go to ISIS. I think, you know, it was a kind of long journey, both kind of religious and physical for him to get there. And there were plenty of places along the way where he was either pushed or could have been pulled back. And one of the things he describes as a factor of really pushing him is the fact that the, you know, the FBI took an interest in him as a result of his videos, you know, not because he was committing crimes, but because he was espousing, you know, what they viewed as hardline beliefs. And then they were using, you know, the people he got in contact with to start investigations elsewhere. And Russell really felt like he couldn't be the Muslim he wanted to be in the United States. He also felt that the FBI's behavior, you know, justified his belief that the US government was at war with Islam. And, you know, there are a number of kind of progressive things that happened that really ended up pushing him, you know, into ISIS. And so it wasn't one of these examples where Russell woke up one day and said, I'm Muslim and I'm gonna join ISIS in Syria. It really was a, you know, it was a, you know, kind of a long journey that could have been, you know, whose trajectory could have changed at any one moment, but just didn't. And also I think that's what makes the story so extraordinary is like the detail of how we got there and the route he ended up taking. Yeah, I mean, there's sort of an interesting parallel. I mean, in a way, like his experience replicates that of so many, you know, Arab Islamists that we know who have famously kind of run up against the authorities for their political views, you know, which are, you know, openly espoused. And then, you know, they're somewhat persecuted on some level, they're kind of ostracized, they're watched, they're surveilled. And even, you know, some travels to Egypt, which are, I'm not even gonna get into that because I think that's one of the most compelling parts of the story, but of course, Egypt is so huge in the story of political Islam historically, right? And so it's interesting that he goes there to kind of seek that out and then finds himself exactly in the same kind of confrontations that many people, you know, who are kind of, I think considered the Godfathers, right, of this Islamist movement like Said Qutb, who of course is the Egyptian scholar who first traveled to America as a scholarship kid, basically, and became disenchanted with the promise of the West and disgusted with it and became somewhat radicalized upon his return in part because he couldn't really fit in very well with, you know, the culture of the time, which is of course, 1950s, 1960s, very difficult for anybody, a person of color or with a non-Christian beliefs to fit in into American society during that time. And so of course Qutb has this kind of revelation and really authors, probably one of the most pivotal cornerstone books of what we know today as, you know, violent Islamist extremism and, you know, inspired a generation of jihadists like Osama bin Laden, Abdullah Azan, his mentor and so forth and so on. But Traver doesn't seem to know about any of that. Like he seems weirdly naive or kind of unmolded by these much more formative kind of influences in the movement itself. He doesn't seem to understand even necessarily that this movement has, you know, well over a century of sort of historical foundations stemming from even the colonial times. He just sort of wanders, almost like falls into, stumbles into his radicalism in some ways. Yes, he's pushed, but he also makes a lot of claims that seem a little bit credulous, you know, a little bit sort of surprising about like what he didn't know when he was traveling to the front lines of Lebanon and Syria. What did you make of that? Yeah, that was one of the really fascinating parts about Russell, which is that he would, you know, study very indefinitely the things that he wanted to study. So reading the Quran and the Hadith as an example, but then he knew very little about the Arab world, right? And so, you know, an example of that was, you know, he threw his travels, you know, prior to going into Syria, he goes to Beirut. And instead of, you know, knowing what Beirut is, right, like a religiously diverse cosmopolitan city, you know, he's expecting the city of very pious and conservative Muslims. And he's shocked to see, you know, women in mini skirts and bars on the streets. And so he had this way of just very, being very kind of like ignorant about the world, you know, in the same way, when he first goes to Egypt, he's expecting this Islamic paradise. And he soon discovers that, you know, it's a developing country with a brutal security state. And, you know, it's only then later, he learns about, you know, Said Kutab and his teachings. And so, you know, the producer on this project and I, you know, this isn't a perfect analogy, but we sometimes joke that there was this aspect of Brussels that was like the forest gump of jihadism, right? Like that he had so many blind spots, but then had this extraordinary ability to like put himself in, you know, in a position where he ends up, you know, being an ISIS fighter, reporting to this guy, Abu Yahya al-Araqi, who was one of like the senior commanders in this group. And so, you know, despite these blind spots, he ended up kind of stumbling through, you know, into this kind of extraordinary position. But that was, you know, that is the kind of the hard thing that is to understand or describe fully about Russell is that, you know, he could be so voracious in studying a particular thing, but then be so ignorant about the world in general. Like even, you know, prior to going to Syria, he travels from Beirut to Tripoli because he'd heard that's where the more conservative Sunni Muslims were, you know, he wasn't reading the news, he wasn't watching the news. And so when he arrives, he's shocked that like the civil war has spilled into that part of Lebanon. And at night, there's people with RPGs and AK-47s and, you know, you hear on the taper, he's just like, I didn't know that. I didn't know that was going on. And so, you know, it is interesting that he could have, he could live in a world with such blinders, right? But I also think that contributed to his, you know, his religious elitry that he would just kind of wrapped himself in the ideas and the facts that he wanted and that supported his worldview. And then, you know, really didn't kind of expand beyond that. I mean, at times I do think, you know, he was well aware, like for example, I think he began to really understand the, you know, the malignant force that the United States can sometimes be in the world. And cause he saw some of that firsthand. But, you know, it's not like he studied any of that prior to going. It's just that he found himself in this world where, you know, US force was being exerted and, you know, he fell victim to it in various ways. So, but on some level, it also has to be kind of confirming some of the narratives and kind of the rhetoric that he would have experienced in his short time in prison. You know, this is something that you would hear, I think, especially amongst black Muslims who are of the nation of Islam strain, who might be a little bit more critical, for instance, of the United States and its policies of foreign policy abroad, which is of course, a long time history behind that. But also, I mean, you know, what's interesting also is that Denison kind of progresses in his revelations, but there's more and more brutality, right? There's more and more exposure to violence, sort of senseless and violence, visited on his fellow Americans, right? That he talks about, you know, some, you know, readers or listeners might think like, well, why didn't he just walk away, right? I mean, but that also presents you with a dilemma, I think. I can imagine it presents you with a few dilemmas. One, you're talking to this guy, he's, you know, you're in a conversation with somebody who's still alive, has, you know, professed to be allegiance to this organization that has been sanctioned by the United States, that the United States is fighting a war against, so technically, right, legally, there's a risk there, isn't there? I mean, in terms of just your exposure legally and ethically, how did you deal with that? Yeah, so I should say upfront that, you know, when I started this project in communicating with Russell, and, you know, obviously when I started, I didn't know that it would become a podcast and it would become anything. But, you know, when I realized that he was a source for some sort of journalism, I was wary of becoming any sort of vehicle that would, you know, apologize for, or make excuses for ISIS in any way. And so had Russell come to me with, you know, basically, I want to tell you how we're all wrong and ISIS is a great thing and you need to write about that, you know, that wouldn't have been, you know, something I would have participated in. But what was remarkable to me about Russell's story was not only that he offered this firsthand view into how an American gets to ISIS and then what life is like within ISIS during its, you know, kind of height of power, including its eventual collapse, but that he was also quite critical of the organization, that, you know, he wasn't a true believer, though that was his term. And that he was so concerned about, you know, his safety that he wanted our communications to be, you know, private and confidential. And he was concerned not only about, you know, the United States, you know, potentially targeting him if he was, you know, if I provided information while he was still alive, but he was perhaps even more concerned about ISIS's security service, discovering that he was communicating with an American journalist, which ISIS security service probably would have viewed as treasonous and acting as a spy, and he would have likely faced torture and death in that particular instance. And so, you know, really this was kind of a life and death situation as Russell saw it. And, you know, that put me in the position as a journalist where I'm offering source protection to someone like this who's an ISIS fighter. And, you know, this is a dilemma, right? Like I am providing this kind of protection to a man who is, you know, part of a designated terrorist organization. So ethically that's challenging. I think it, I was able, you know, when I think about how and why journalists provide protection to sources, you know, I think there is this always, you know, this, you know, the people you're providing protection to aren't always, you know, the most benevolent, right? They're not always the best people, but the argument or the calculus that I think you have to make is like, is the story that this person is providing of significant public interest that it makes it, you know, justifiable to provide protection to this person. And to me, I felt Russell passed that bar. You know, fortunately, he'd never put me in a situation that provided additional ethical challenges. You know, for example, by the time I talked to Russell, ISIS was on the run. He was under attack. It's not like he had information about attacks in the United States or Western Europe that he had given me and it put me in a position of like, do I tell the authorities to save lives? Fortunately, I was never having to grapple with that kind of, you know, situation. At the same time, you know, it's also important to recognize that, you know, for me, there are also risks that, you know, the US government and the Justice Department have a history of using very expansive anti-terrorism laws, including material support to prosecute people, you know, providing even kind of the smallest amount of support in some way. And this is a very expansive view, that, you know, helping an ISIS fighter, you know, get in contact with someone, for example, or passing a number, you know, that's enough to get you prosecuted under the material support law. And so, you know, for us going in early on, we were consulting with lawyers to kind of understand, you know, where that line was. You know, the problem was that obviously I'm not gonna willfully cross the line and violate an anti-terrorism law, but there's a possibility that I may unwittingly do it or accidentally do it. And so we had to be very careful in what we were doing. And so throughout this process, you know, I had to make sure that my communications with Russell, like he was providing information to me, but I was never providing information to him that, you know, could be construed as benefiting him or ISIS in any way. You know, at one point I'd asked Russell to, you know, give me names of people that I could contact, you know, for my reporting in the event of his death. And in one particular case, he was asked me if I would go talk to someone, you know, before, and I had to tell him, I was like, look, I can't like facilitate any sort of communications, you know, that's just not allowed. And so, you know, it creates, you know, not only kind of an ethically challenging situation, but a legally challenging one too. And, you know, and I think, you know, that's a result not just of like the situation as it was, but the fact that the U.S. government, you know, has a history of being very liberal in its policy of applying these laws. And certainly, you know, this was the Trump administration at the time I was doing this reporting. You know, although journalists had never been prosecuted under anti-terrorism laws that I'm aware of, I did not seem outside the realm of possibility that if I messed up in some way that they would prosecute me. And so, you know, for that reason, we had to be, you know, doubly careful that we were, you know, working not only ethically and talking to Russell, but also legally as well. Yeah, those risks I think a lot of folks who don't know about the mechanics of journalism and kind of make a lot of assumptions, I think it's easy to kind of cast aspersions, but actually journalists act as shields for their sources in many ways. And they put themselves, I think, in harm's way more often than many people might imagine. And, you know, which actually raises another question, and I wanna just remind the audience, we're gonna get to Q and A here shortly. And so that we can hear from you about what you're curious about about the podcast. But let me, I mean, this is another challenge, I think that you encountered, we talked about this a little bit offline, you know, while you're kind of doing this reporting and you're beginning to produce the podcast, something else happens, right? That is super challenging, that it kind of offers a window onto the challenges that journalists face when they deal with these kinds of really sensitive topics like, you know, an American who joins a terrorist outfit. You know, at the time, The New York Times was running a series of corrections about a pretty popular podcast by one of their reporters called Caliphate, which documented the kind of, you know, one-on-one interactions between their reporter and an avowed ISIS member from Canada. And it turned out, in that instance, unfortunately that the person in question, a Canadian who claimed to be a member of ISIS and kind of, we told these kind of ghoulish stories, in fact, was just faking his account. And it was sort of an embarrassing moment for the Times because of course, the podcast was hugely popular. It was kind of the first window onto, you know, a look inside ISIS. So, and all that's unfolding while you're kind of capping off, I guess, production on this and sort of wrapping up some of your last conversations with Russell. What did you think about that? Yeah, so I knew about that time that this was going to be a podcast project. And I knew that obviously there would be comparisons between the two because they're both, you know, podcasts about an ISIS fighter. And it was prior to, you know, the revelation that The New York Times subject had, you know, perpetrated a hoax essentially. And, you know, I knew early on that separate from what happened in The New York Times podcast that a challenge of this project is how do we know that Russell Dennis, that the person I'm talking to is in fact Russell Denison and that he is in fact an ISIS fighter and that the information he provides to me is legitimate. And so, you know, what happened in The New York Times case is that, you know, it ended up being whether that the person wasn't legitimate. I mean, you know, they just, you know, people can read about the information that The Times had and kind of raised the question for themselves whether The New York Times should have gone forward with that given the information that we had. But I think, you know, that they had, but that said, you know, the collapse of Caliphate like really reminded me of like how embarrassing and what could go wrong if I did not do the work that was necessary in authenticating Russell and making sure that he was who he says he was. And the other thing that's, you know, always possible in kind of these shadowy stories like this is that you tend to have a circular or it's possible that you can have sourcing that is circular. So you have one source who says, you know, the sky is blue and they tell someone else and they tell someone else. And then you think you have three people telling you the sky is blue, but in fact it all leads back to one person whose information might be faulty. And so, you know, in running down Russell's story that was a big part of what we wanted to find, right? We wanted to find, you know, sources who could corroborate Russell's story but also sources that were fully independent of each other. So we weren't running into situations where we were kind of having circular sourcing. And so ultimately, you know, we lay out kind of the laundry list in the first episode of how we authenticated Russell. And then throughout the podcast, I put forward kind of evidence, you know, every time he moved to a different place, I was tracking down people who knew him at the time or I talked about them and kind of reinforced that story. But, you know, in addition to, you know, getting him to, you know, describe, you know, contents of his FBI file that very few people had seen that documented his interviews with the FBI, you know, in addition to sending me like photographs from the ground, including his ISIS ID and others, you know, I also had the experience of communicating with Russell over six months during the bombing campaign. And, you know, one of the things that I had done in 2019 was report on the US led bombing campaign in Derazor and questions of, you know, civilian harm and civilian casualties at the time. And one of my sources at that time who was not named but I can name now was Russell and he was providing me with pictures from the ground and information about what was targeted, including a hospital in one of these small towns and that this was all information that later, you know, the Department of Defense confirmed for me and this was information that only someone on the ground with ISIS could have obtained. And so, you know, we had multiple sources kind of confirming, you know, Russell was who he was and was who he said he was throughout. And so, you know, I think, you know, we never really, we got to a point where we never really questioned, you know, is Russell who he is? We know for certain that he is. And I think anyone who listens to the podcast can kind of clearly see, you know, the links that we went to to kind of verify information. And then also, you know, as in any story like this, there are instances where we just couldn't verify, right? Like things would happen that Russell would describe a particular conflict in a moment. And, you know, there's just no way to verify that beyond what Russell had said. And so in the podcast, I try to be very transparent about, you know, those instances, but also kind of transparent about the kind of more holistic analysis of what Russell provided to me and when I found him lying, I never found him to lie or when I found him kind of withholding information, there were a couple of those instances for his own reason that I talk about that he wasn't as forthcoming as I would have liked. And so, you know, I feel like, you know, any story like this, the hardest part is kind of getting over that hurdle that you can say definitively this person in this very extraordinary position is who he says he is. And we felt very confident that we were there. And then certainly the collapse of Caliphate, you know, just made us work extra hard to make sure that we wouldn't suffer a kind of similar embarrassment. So that, I mean, well, we'll get into it. So with the remaining 15 minutes or so that we have, let's get into the Q and A. But, you know, I want to flag here that one of the key sources of course in this story is his mother. And we'll get to that in a second. But let me take a question from the audience. Our colleague Mia Bloom asked, so based on your experiences with Russell, how would other naturally born Muslims feel about his hubris of not really knowing the faith? Like not knowing the Hadith, for instance, but simultaneously insisting that these other Muslims are, you know, are not real. They're not steadfast or radical or devoted enough. How would you kind of, you know, characterize kind of the way other Muslims kind of reacted if you talk to them to Russell's rather naive and almost offensive kind of claims about the devotion to Islam? Yeah, so particularly in the Tampa area when he was known as, you know, to go to frequent the mosque here, you know, he was known very much as a firebrand who would kind of, you know, spout this rhetoric and he would get challenged on it. And, you know, he would argue. And but the one thing that I found about Russell, according to people I had interviewed here was that he tended to be kind of a coward in person, you know, when he was arguing with, you know, a natural born Muslim or someone who knew the faith better than he did, he would kind of back down and then he would kind of take it out on them in his YouTube videos where he had kind of, you know, an unchallenged audience or an unchallenged platform to speak his mind, you know, and an example that we, you know, I interview a local political activist here who describes how like he would kind of question Russell, like, you know, why are you wearing what you're wearing, you know, because he would dress in a very conservative, you know, Middle Eastern style, though, and he would criticize Russell would, you know, Muslims who dressed it in more Western style. And I think, you know, Russell, you know, Russell was quick to criticize Muslims that he felt had kind of lost the way, you know, Muslims who were, you know, straddling the two cultures, straddling American culture and straddling, you know, the Muslim faith. And, you know, I think Russell is very much one of these people who would read one or two books and be like, I know it, you know, I'm an expert on this, right? And then when he would confront someone who was much better read and read a far more diverse kind of number of Muslim scholars, he, you know, would kind of, you know, shirk back and not engage. And so, you know, I mean, one of the things that I think Russell felt here in Florida was that he wasn't fitting into, you know, the mosque here and the Muslim culture here, right? And I think it's kind of a matter of perspective. Like Russell saw this as, you know, these aren't the true Muslims, they're just, you know, they're, you know, I'm the true Muslim, they're not, they're the fake Muslims, rather than kind of being kind of reflective enough to think, well, maybe I don't know the religion as well as I do. And I think that contributed certainly to his zealotry, that Russell was just, you know, committed to this idea that he was right and would really kind of only absorb the information that he felt, you know, supported the narrative that he wanted, the religious kind of ideology that he wanted. Yeah, that's a lot of nuance. And actually one of our listeners here in the audience asked this question. So the podcast offers an incredibly nuanced look at Russell's life and ISIS. And at times it kind of provokes this sympathy for Russell, I think we talked a little bit about that. Was this something you really intended to do when crafting the podcast? So I think when you spend six months communicating with anyone and you write, you know, do a big project on them, it's impossible not to find the places that, you know, you have empathy or sympathy. So there were definitely like times in Russell's story where I was, you know, incredibly empathetic. You know, for example, you know, even as the caliphate is collapsing and the bombing campaign is getting worse and worse, you know, he decides he needs to get his wife and children out of the area. And, you know, that was something I, you know, could empathize with. I mean, I've certainly never been in anything like that, but I can imagine being in a situation where, you know, it's a life and death situation and you need to figure out how to get your family out. And so there were kind of parts of Russell's story that I felt were just incredibly human. And, you know, I don't kind of provide them to, you know, excuse in any way Russell's decision to join ISIS or anything about the group. But what I found kind of, what I found thought provoking was the, you know, the way that we got to see the war against ISIS from the other side, you know, and the civilian harm that also came from it and Russell offered us this view into that. And also, you know, I think because of the ISIS propaganda that was just so over the top and gruesome and horrific, you know, I think there was this tendency among analysts and the media to view ISIS fairly monolithically as just a group of psychopaths that'll just, you know, cut people's head off with a toxible knife. And I think what Russell's story shows is that, you know, that wasn't quite the case, right? Like that there, you know, it wasn't a monolithic organization. Russell disagreed with many of the things that happened with it. And that, you know, ultimately, you know, someone like Russell who makes, you know, a terrible and inexcusable decision to join ISIS is ultimately someone who's a person and is a father and has these children. And I think, you know, that's what made the story really interesting to me. Like he wasn't like a black and white bad guy, right? Like it wasn't clear. Like he certainly was a bad guy. He joined ISIS, but there was a, it was kind of a far more nuanced portrait of him. And I think that's really what interested me and what I tried to convey in this podcast was the, you know, the complicated story that he presents, you know, because of his, you know, because of the story and the life that he was living. So, but he's also not, he's not just a father, he's a son. And I think one of our audience members here asks a question that I'm also very curious about. So in one of the podcast episodes, you take on the extremely difficult task of informing Russell's mother, oh, sorry, spoiler alert everybody of his death. So what was that experience like for you? Yeah, so that was definitely one of those experiences where it's kind of hard to, you know, put on your reporter hat and pretend you're not human, right? Cause like I've never been in a position where I've had to tell a family member that a child was dead. And I think, you know, I listened to the recording now and you can kind of hear my voice tremble a little bit at times. And it's, you know, a reflection of my nervousness that I'm like, you know, about to surprise this woman, you know, and tell her that her son is dead. And, you know, my hope was that, you know, I felt this obligation as a human to tell her that. But then at the same time as a journalist, I felt that my goal was to try to get her to talk to me because I felt, you know, she offered this obviously very unique window into Russell's world as his mother. And, you know, and I remember going in, really wrestling with what to do about this because, you know, what is the right way to tell someone that their child is dead? And I decided, you know, because I did not live far from where she was, it made sense to go in person. And, you know, it also was a situation where I just felt like it would be inappropriate for me just to show up and say, hi, I'm Trevor Aronson. I've been communicating with your son and he's dead. You know, and I felt like there was this need, this kind of, this human need to like, you know, talk to her a little bit and kind of ease her into this, you know, ease her into what I was about to tell her. And I think, you know, you know, other journalists may say, you know, in listening to the recording, you know, I should have done this or I should have done that. I don't think I acted in any way unethical. I think what I was, you know, juggling in that. And we included the recording to show the kind of transparency of the recording to show you, you know, what I did. But I was really juggling this, you know, the kind of human, you know, obligation to tell this person that her son was dead with also this, you know, kind of more professional obligation to try to get her to tell me about Russell's life. You know, as you discover, if you listen to the podcast and listen to another spoiler alert, I guess, is that ultimately they do not cooperate with me. I interview her briefly at her business and then ultimately they chose not to cooperate with me. I did have, as I mentioned in the podcast, I did have background sources from his family that helped confirm a lot of the information, but, you know, his parents in particular chose not to participate. So, I mean, always one of the difficulties in reporting, you know, particularly on violence and sort of violent movements and is this kind of the balance that you have to have empathy for the victims, empathy for perpetrators' families, because you have to be able to tell that story in a way that's kind of straightforward. But to do that, you kind of feel the people that you're talking to on some level, right? And I think that's one of the challenges that I think comes through really clearly in the podcast. So, a couple other questions here, well, we have a couple of minutes left, you know, in our time together. One, you know, I think you've begun to answer that, you know, which is sort of how are you able to gain Russell's trust, which I think you talk a little bit about, but I think the one for me that's kind of interesting also coming from the audience here is how did the reporting process for the podcast compare to your long-form writing process? That's a good question. It's very similar. I mean, I think, you know, the thing about podcast versus writing is that, you know, like say with documentary work, you know, someone could tell you something, and unless it's on camera, unless it's on a recording, it doesn't do you any good, really. Whereas if you're writing a long-form written piece, someone telling you something is a quote you can use. And so there's a kind of logistical challenge that exists with this kind of work that doesn't exist in the same way with writing long-form pieces. That said, though, I think, you know, there is, you know, one way I think I tried to, one advantage of the podcast as a medium, I think, was that it offered a level of transparency about the reporting that I think often doesn't exist in long-form written pieces because, you know, in a way, you know, many podcasts, including this one, are structured where you're kind of along with the journalist as he's figuring out what's happened. And, you know, intentionally, you know, included as many kind of interviews with people or recorded interviews with people as I was kind of figuring things out rather than interviewing them after I'd already figured it out. So that the listener could go along for the ride and understanding how I got there. I think that it serves two purposes, right? Like, one, from a narrative standpoint, you know, it's always more engaging to kind of be along on the detective story and figure out what happens. On the other side, though, or the other purpose I think it serves is that it provides a level of transparency to reporting that I think is, you know, really helpful, especially in a time of kind of disinformation and questions and especially for this one, right? Because, you know, we were coming off of a situation where, you know, the New York Times podcast had collapsed. This was a subject that was inherently like, how do we know this is real and how is this corroborated? And I really felt like the podcast, in a way, allowed me to be transparent about the reporting in a way that wouldn't have been, you know, if you wrote a story with kind of the transparent explanation of the reporting, it seems kind of obtuse. And, you know, in a podcast, I think it kind of becomes more seamless. Yeah, so interesting. I mean, I think that the form of the podcast, in some ways, it also helps you with structure, something I always struggle with is just sort of, how do I string this all together in a way that's gonna make sense? And, you know, people just don't read books anymore. That's the truth. We have to admit that. You know, long form writing sometimes has a kind of limited audience. In some ways, you can kind of deliver more of a punch with this kind of new format where you're in conversation with your subjects in a very live and engaging way, which brings me to, I think, what will probably be our last question, because we only have a couple more minutes left here. And this is, again, from our colleague, Mia Bloom. You may have heard of the podcast, I'm Not A Monster by Josh Baker at the BBC. What do you think about that compared with sort of what your experience and kind of what you produced? And then maybe even, you know, obviously, Caliphate is kind of a weird touch point, but talk a little bit about your reference point on I Am Not A Monster. So I watched the Frontline doc and I know they made the podcast version of it, but I'm afraid I did not listen to the podcast, I'm afraid to say. So I'm speaking a little bit from, you know, assuming like what it took on. I mean, I think, you know, it's, that project, I assumed, you know, took on a kind of a same challenge minded in the sense that, you know, you have this person who joined ISIS, but then you also have the very kind of human story of what drove them there. You know, in this particular case, I mean, what I think made this one very different was that, you know, this was a story that I pretty much knew the ending before I really, before it happened. Like I knew Brussels was in all likelihood going to die. And, you know, I think that kind of informed, you know, the way we talked, the kind of urgency that we talked with sometimes. And, you know, it made, it required me, I think, and Russell to really be devoted to kind of like being, you know, just, you know, being as kind of, as kind of targeted as we could in like using our time wisely because we knew there wasn't, you know, ultimately a lot of time for him. And then ultimately it was then, you know, a matter of kind of deconstructing him after and, you know, and figuring out like what he had said. And so, you know, it was weird in the sense that like Russell in many ways became this person who, you know, communicated me with me for so many hours and then ends up being a ghost, right? Because then he's dead. And there were times I think that, you know, I wish I could go back to him and ask questions. I mean, I think, you know, for the 30 hours of recordings that he'd sent me, it elicited this very, you know, compelling and comprehensive story of his life. But then there were interviews that I did after that were about details that, you know, didn't change the structure or the, you know, the story itself or in any significant way, but were details that like, I really would have liked to have gotten Russell's take on that, like someone else described the situation. And I didn't know to describe that to Russell because I hadn't talked to that person yet. And so, you know, in that way, it kind of created a reporting challenge that, you know, you have this subject that you have, you know, exhaustive access to then he's gone and then you have this second level where you're, you know, reporting around him. And that's also something that, you know, I dealt with, you know, I think I dealt with transparently in the podcast I described, you know, in one instance, there was one thing I would have liked to have asked him and I didn't get a chance. And so I think that, you know, but I think, you know, the answer to kind of come back to the question itself. I mean, I think what's interesting to me about stories like this is this idea that, you know, we begin to see like who the enemy is, you know, as we define it, as we define enemies, obviously Isis is, you know, considered a U.S. enemy. And then, but like what drives them? And, you know, I think at this time when we're so quick to kind of dehumanize the other side, you know, I think it's good to kind of understand what drove them, you know. And I think what I tried to do in this podcast is reveal Isis for the organization it was through the eyes of this American, but then, you know, also not make excuses for it and also try to like help people understand why someone like Russell would do what he did. I mean, ultimately I think Russell left behind a host of victims, right? Like he helped tear apart a country. I consider his parents here in the U.S. victims of his choices, you know, certainly his family left behind in Syria are victims of his. And so, you know, to me, ultimately it's a sad story, but it's one that I think kind of helps inform us about like what pushes people to groups like Isis and the things that push people to groups like Isis are not that different from the forces that push them to right-wing extremism and other types of extremism. And, you know, in this moment, I think that's a good thing for us to be paying attention to. Yeah, well, obviously a hard legacy for a hard-lived life for a very, very hard war. Trevor Aronson, I think we're gonna have to leave it there, but I wanna thank you for joining us and talking about your podcast, American Isis. For listeners out there and our audience, please do check it out. And thank you very much for joining us.