Inside Al-Qaeda's Decade-Long Nuclear Weapons Hunt

In the late 90s, Osama bin Laden, he wanted to do something that would have mass casualties, nuclear weapon or radiological weapon. Al-Qaeda also had to find somebody who could ship these explosives into the United States through the ports. They really thought that this nuclear plot was happening. It was happening, but the question was, where are the nuclear weapons? How far did it get? Some think that there might be some kind of explosive still sitting somewhere They were joined by Mike Lebovitz, a former army officer, war crimes prosecutor, and national security expert. From capturing terrorists in military operations to prosecuting some of Al-Qaeda's most senior figures at Guantanamo Bay, Mike has spent decades confronting some of the nation's most complex security challenges. Now he's telling a story the opposed 9-11 Al-Qaeda plot to smuggle nuclear materials into American ports. In this conversation, we explore the story behind the book, the evolving terrorism threat, and the real dangers hiding in plain sight. This is Bay Area Innovators, and I'm your host, Stephen Scott. Mike, welcome to Bay Area Innovators. Thank you so much for having me, appreciate it. Appreciate you being here from Washington DC. So you've recently wrote a book, it's about to come out, it's called The Second Wave, and it describes what I would be surprised if many Americans know about this plan, but it seems like there was a plan by Al-Qaeda to smuggle nuclear materials and for creating a nuclear bomb inside the United States, and of course, use it in some way. I don't know how many people are familiar with this, but they should be. Now you had the manuscript read in 2019, and the book is just being published now. Can you give us a sense of why did it take so long to get this ready for publication? Yeah, so I wrote the manuscript. In the government, when you obtain information through government service or something like that, you need to go through what's called pre-publication review. It's where the government has a chance to review it for classified information and other things, and the government sat on it for a really long time, and initially they had banned it. They said this cannot be published in any form, and then they had to go fight them on it, and that brought us into 2025. The reasons were because they were worried that this story has never been out there before. It was so sensational, and it touched on so many facets of the intelligence community, espionage, Al-Qaeda's operations, Guantanamo Bay, and this whole nuclear plot that Al-Qaeda was going through. It just touched on so many facets of government stuff, including the CIA torture program, and they were just like, we don't even know where to start with this. This is just way out there, and they tried to make it go away. I was a little persistent on that, and I convinced them otherwise, and finally they just kind of gave up and said, okay, well, nothing's classified, so go ahead and you can publish it. Now, you have a pretty unique background. You're a combat veteran with the elite army force, and you're also a prosecutor. Can you tell us, how did that come about? How did you go into the military, and then how did you end up being a prosecutor? Yeah, that's a great question. So, I started my career actually as a journalist. I lived in Cleveland, then I was a journalist at the Jerusalem Post in Israel, and I had a law degree, and law school is really expensive, so I decided to join the army because I believed that it was a more noble way to pay off my law school loans through the army service than going to a big law firm or something like that. So, I joined, and I tried out for it, and I got accepted into an army Pathfinder unit, which is kind of like a SWAT team for the infantry. It's a paratrooper unit, and I deployed with them and got a lot of on-the-ground counterterrorism experience. I was in task forces, going after some of the highest level terrorists in Iraq, insurgent leaders, and things like that, and then when I came back from Iraq, I joined the reserves, and I found my way into connections through the people who were prosecuting cases at Guantanamo Bay. And I had this kind of background because I was a combat veteran, I had the combat badge, which is really unique for a war crimes prosecutor to actually have been on the ground with a rifle in a war. And so, I went in there, and I started working on cases, and I guess I did a good job because then they asked me to join the 9-11 case, which is the Guantanamo prosecution of the five men accused of plotting and facilitating the attacks, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was the mastermind of 9-11, and worked on that. They made me a special counsel where I was on the USS Cole case, a case against another guy named Hadi al-Iraqi, who was an al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan. And just from there, it just, you know, kind of spiraled into this kind of niche where I've been a combat veteran war crimes prosecutor for many, many years. So, how did prosecuting those high-level cases of terrorists change your view about justice and about intelligence work during your years when you work on this at Guantanamo Bay and other places? I think the biggest part about that was in the 9-11 case and USS Cole case, there were victim family members. There were people that I would speak with traveling in New York or Florida or, you know, in D.C. to talk to family members of people who were killed on 9-11 or from USS Cole. And there's nothing quite like it, speaking to people in that position and celebrating their life and things like that. And it really put, I think, it really grounded what I was working on because I think it's really easy when you work on a case like that, where it's so complex, there's all these national security equities, it's high profile. I think it's really easy to get kind of stuck in the fight, right, and dealing with the defense council and the legal component and really look at it almost like from an academic point of view. But when you have real people involved and real family members, it really puts things into perspective. And it really helps shape your outlook of dealing with terrorism and national security because it shows that there are real people involved and it just means something for people. So that really shaped my views of moving forward, of handling the Guantanamo cases. It shaped how I handled future cases when I worked in the Eastern District of Virginia as a prosecutor, just like keeping, making sure that terrorists are faced justice and are in jail and, you know, and they can't get out and do something worse. So I think that combined with my combat veteran experience of, again, seeing combat on the ground and seeing kind of death and destruction all over the place, that really gave me a perspective that I think most lawyers don't have. They certainly don't teach this in law school. Yes, yes. Now let's go back to your book, Second Wave, and try to understand more what actually happened. So first of all, is the book mainly based on real case experiences or is there anything that you have added to it? Oh, I did not add anything. And the book is impeccably sourced. There's a whole section on there where I have everything is sourced. And if it's not, if it's not sourced in there, it's from personal observations or interviews that I conducted over the years. And I interviewed terrorists, FBI attorneys for the defense and everything like that. So the book is a 100% true crime story. And in some of the cases in the book, I think the, you know, truth is stranger than fiction, right? I mean, you had a guy working for the highest levels of al-Qaeda, including Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed bin Laden, business partner. So, you know, everything in there is totally true. And it's scary because it's so true. But al-Qaeda's plot to groom somebody who had connection to obtain nuclear weapons and the individual that al-Qaeda was working with, he was connected directly with the father of Pakistan's nuclear program. He was connected directly to nuclear proliferators from Pakistan. And he was connected to terrorist sympathizers in Pakistan, including former head of Pakistan's intelligence services. And this is all true stuff. And then the manhunt itself, when the FBI, the CIA, the military, the White House, they were all trying to figure out how to capture this guy. That's something that's all based on never reported information, documents that they allowed me to, finally allowed me to talk about. And so it kind of goes in there. But what makes the book, I think, even more unique, and what's relevant, I think, to your question is that the book doesn't just discuss a snapshot in time, this historical aspect of it. It takes the reader into the room of these, you know, interrogations and things like that. It takes the reader into an actual rendition or kidnapping of a lawful permanent residence. But it takes us all the way to 2026. And it really gets into analyzing what happened during that time frame to show how we got to where we are now. Right now, when it comes to counterterrorism. Can you walk us a bit through the plot of the book without spoiling it too much? Just what actually happens? What is not the intent, but what are the steps that Al-Qaeda is taking to plot this event they're trying to do? Yeah, so in the late 90s, Osama bin Laden had the whole idea of creating an American Hiroshima, where he wanted to do something that would have mass casualties, a nuclear weapon, a radiological weapon. And that was one of his big dreams. And he had this idea as the Mellon Baines operation, as they called it, was being plotted and beginning to be facilitated. So Al-Qaeda was always looking for somebody, mostly in Pakistan, because in 1998, Pakistan became nuclear power to the surprise of the world. And Pakistan has this kind of known proliferation. They have some terrorist sympathies embedded within the government. So it was a very dangerous time. And Bill Clinton at the time was very worried about this. And the book talks about that. The book kind of starts with Bill Clinton's reaction to that. And so what happens is, in 2000, as Al-Qaeda is trying to find out somebody who can really help them get these weapons, Al-Qaeda also had to find somebody who could ship these explosives into the United States through the ports. And Al-Qaeda was many things, but they were not experts at maritime trade and smuggling weapons of mass destruction or any type of explosives through the ports. So what they needed was somebody who had connections to help them obtain a weapon of And they also had to find somebody who knew the shipping and had kind of a means, a legitimate business, to smuggle these through the ports into New York. And in 2000, there was a charity event in Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden grants an audience to a man who was a green card holder. He had a business in New York that was an import-export business. He had the Orthodox Jewish business partner. He was a very likable, legitimate businessman. He was a millionaire, very gregarious. And he knew how to ship things. And he was connected to all sorts of people high up in the Pakistani government, including the father of Pakistan's nuclear program. So he made good profit, meets bin Laden, he hands bin Laden his business card. And then in the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed shows up at Paratja's office in Pakistan. And that's where the web really starts to be tangled. KSM is the acronym for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He starts asking Paratja to do things for him. Paratja starts holding like $500,000 in cash, which is al-Qaeda money. And the big issue with Paratja was that he got in over his head with a real estate deal. And KSM said, hey, al-Qaeda can help you with this because Paratja was about $200,000 in debt. He needed that much money to get his business really going. And al-Qaeda just managed to come up with $200,000. And hey, we'll help you out, guy. And so Paratja made helping al-Qaeda his number one priority because he really wanted to save his business. And so then over the years, in 2002, we found this through a raid in Pakistan that netted some top al-Qaeda people, including Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who was supposed to be one of the hijackers. He became one of the main 9-11 plotters, as well as the guy named Abu Zubaydah, another raid. And what they found in there were emails and business cards, all demonstrating that Paratja was helping al-Qaeda set up a shell company, like a fictitious company, for shipping something, textiles, into the United States. And then the web gets even deeper when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed finally gets arrested or detained by the CIA. And he starts talking about Paratja. He starts talking about, he knows a guy who is willing and able to help obtain nuclear weapons. And then the manhunt went almost into a hysteria because port security became a huge issue. This guy who was a green card holder, an American green card holder with a business in New York, his son was named the CEO of a New York company. And all of a sudden, all these lines were connecting to this one really rich, legitimate businessman who lived in America for a long time. And they really thought that this nuclear plot was happening. It was happening, but the question was, where are the nuclear weapons? How far did it get before everybody started getting captured? So the book really takes you into, okay, the main players are getting arrested or detained through the CIA and stuff like that. The FBI got somebody in New York, but the main Paratja, the father, Saifullah Paratja, he was safely tucked away in Pakistan. Because he was so high up in Pakistan society, Pakistan would not give him up. Wow. And what happened after that? How far did the plot go along? So that's still kind of a mystery. So what happened to nuclear weapons or what happened to, how far did Saifullah Paratja take it? What we do know is that when Saifullah was eventually captured in a really, I would say, creative manner, it was a manner where the FBI, the military, and the CIA had to come to an accord. And the CIA was not happy about it because the CIA wanted to torture a green card, a lawful permanent resident, because they said this was so serious. They wanted to break all the rules and do that. And the FBI said, no. And that's why they had to come up with this idea. So there was a real big hysteria about that. So what we do know, as I was saying, was that when Paratja was captured, he had this kind of old 1999, 2000 personal organizer, like a pocket organizer. And he had so many names on it. Like I said, the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, leaders within the Pakistani government, known proliferators, but it also had something else, something that no legitimate businessman should have. It had formulas for nerve gas, chemical weapons, radiological information, a lot of things that should not be for a legitimate businessman. And those are all in that. But the pocket organizer had its own story. And the book really gets into that because the thing with Paratja was he was addicted to power and knowing people. He loved the fact that he was so connected because he came from nothing. One FBI agent in an interview said that he's a force of nature. He did something that was almost impossible where he grew up in 1948. His house, obviously many siblings, they had a dirt floor. And he actually went to New York, got educated, started his own businesses and became a multimillionaire on his own devices. And it was a sight to see. So he had an organizer. The connections was his big thing. He was like, really wanted everyone to know about that. So there's a lot of information, the business cards, that really point that this plot was being undertaken to some degree. Now, whether they actually got to the point of obtaining and building nuclear and radiological weapons, it's still unclear. Paratja, at the end of the book, he kind of offers a theory of why he could never admit in detail to the plot. And so, which is kind of a unique thing that's never been reported as well. And it made sense to me. So, yeah, it's still kind of a mystery, but some think that there might be some kind of explosives still sitting somewhere mysteriously that nobody knows about. What would you say is the biggest takeaway from the book, in your opinion? What should readers stay with after they go through it? So the biggest takeaway of Second Wave is, besides the fact that there's this really good true crime story with lots of twists and turns, but it's the analysis of how we got from 2003, when everybody was getting arrested and things were going on, and the government really changed how it did things, including things like torture program and stuff like that, and how we get to now. Because what the book talks about is what's going on in the government. It talks about what's going on with the FBI, the CIA, while they're investigating and conducting this manhunt for the Paratja nuclear plot. And so what you get is that after 9-11, in the intervening years, the FBI, the 9-11 Commission, all these organizations and entities came up with these recommendations to make it so that we can never again have to experience something as awful as 9-11, really tying up and solidifying intelligence sharing and making sure that the FBI is resourced in the right ways for counterterrorism. And so the book takes you to 2016 with the Obama administration, where it really starts to analyze where that's probably when funding started to be cut in certain things. You know, like, we probably don't need to fund this certain counterterrorism thing or something like that. And so the takeaway is, in 2026, is that a lot of the recommendations and processes that were implemented, you know, because of or after 9-11 and partially because of the second wave plot, a lot of those have been backslid. And we're kind of getting into a pre 9-11 posture just over the course of time. But a lot of those recommendations from post 9-11 are directly related to the second wave plot. Can you tell us your thoughts about the torture program that the CIA had in place? And we don't know if they still do, but do you think there's any reason to use it if it can save American lives? First of all, does it work? So you're explaining the ticking time bomb scenario where, you know, if there's a bomb about to go off, what will we do? And the book talks about that. The book has quotes and interviews from people that had to make those decisions. But to your original question, I would say that the juice isn't worth the squeeze, as people say, because I think most often, more times than not, it's unreliable. Then you have to second guess whether the information you get is reliable. And the book actually handles this objectively. And I think the important part to say is that the FBI, obviously, they did not do any torture. They weren't part of the program. And the book takes you through interviews, whether it's the CIA conducting interviews through the torture program and the FBI conducting their own interviews on the same topics, the second wave plot. And, you know, it shows their different tactics. And I would say that, at least through the second wave plotting, the FBI's tactics were much better. I think they're much more reliable and much more lawful. I think people are going to less try and arguing that because, you know, you can use some of the tactics the FBI used in court, where the torture stuff, you can't use that in court. That's never going to be admissible in court. But the CIA, their whole point was they don't care about law enforcement. That's not their job. Their job is intelligence. Their job is to stop that ticking time bomb. And I think that's what they were going with, but it wasn't really reliable. And there's one story that the book talks about when a guy named Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, he was working in the second wave plot. He was a 9-11 plotter as well. He was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's nephew. And he initially got detained by Pakistani authorities. And he had a really good rapport. There was no torture going on. He had a great rapport with a Pakistani investigator. And I think if, and the book talks about this, if he would have stayed talking to that investigator, I think the information would have come out without the use of torture, which happened to Ali. But what the CIA did was, and the book talks about this, is that they didn't think the information was going fast enough. And this was really related to the second wave plot. They needed to know about Karacha, the nuclear program, and all these explosives being shipped to the ports. They needed to know it, and they needed to know it now. And sometimes rapport takes time. So the CIA kind of took Ali into their own custody, into a black site, where the torture happened. And Ali really kind of clammed up and he became really unreliable. You briefly mentioned before, but I want to go over this again. What do you think specifically made the book too sensitive to be published until now? Were the methods being used, or what else do you feel you exposed that, I guess, did not pass the test for whoever controls the publishing of the book? That's a great question. So this book really is an insider look into the plot and the investigation, the manhunt, and the court cases. You're not going to find another book with so much firsthand experience in a plot like this that you can talk about. Because in some parts of the book, I was the observer, and I make that clear in there, because there's two chapters where I appear in the book as we're trying to prosecute Saifullah Paracha in a military case down in Guantanamo Bay. And I had such inside access. I did interview people on the job to really get at the nuances of the case. And I did have access to every document involved in this one. The 9-11 case, working on that, the Paracha name was like everywhere and nowhere all at the same time. And I think the Pentagon and the intelligence community was really uncomfortable with such insider take on such a very sensitive topic that involved a CIA torture program. It involved FBI manhunts. It involved interrogations. It involved Guantanamo Bay. This book really gets firsthand information on the inner proceedings of Guantanamo Bay and how they decided to choose cases and how they didn't decide to choose cases. And I think the government was, they had never seen anything like it. And I think they just decided that it's easier just to shut the whole thing down than to try to work with it. And of course, I worked with them, and then we came to an accord, and they let me get away with this. I will say that a lot of people come up to me and they say, I can't believe the government lets you get away with publishing this book. And when my publisher first got the book, the first thing they asked, they loved the book, they said, can you approve it? Can you send me the document that says the government approved it? So I sent that to them, and they were super happy about that. But I think that's the biggest thing, is this book really is an insider take, because a lot of books on terrorism and al-Qaeda, a lot of it's journalists, and they do a good job of interviews. But a lot of the people in those interviews might have biased or might have an ax to grind, or it might be one-sided. This book actually talks to the terrorists. This book is very objective, and it is based, again, on insider first-hand experience, and that's unique. Now, God forbid the scenario that they would have succeeded with detonating a potential nuclear bomb in the United States. What do you think the response would have been from the US government in that case? Well, I mean, just look at what the United States response was to 9-11 without a nuclear weapon. We set up a whole military system to prosecute people involved in that with al-Qaeda. The United States decided that we're going to do this rendition and detention program, RDI program, which included torture, right? And the book talks about that to some degree, what we did after 9-11, which is relevant to your question, because what the government did was it totally cast aside our law enforcement toolbox and taking it away from the FBI and the courts and evidence gathering and stuff like that, and really put it within the purview of the intelligence community and the military. So if you have a nuclear weapon going on, one, I mean, just a military doctrine says that if somebody uses a nuclear weapon against us, that justifies us as using a nuclear weapon against them. And if you look at the level of our reaction to 9-11, I mean, you don't get much higher than that unless you're talking about us responding in kind. Because look, I mean, our US doctrine is deterrence, right? We always say that if someone uses a nuclear weapon against us, we will use it against them. But if you get a terrorist group, what does that mean? Who is harboring them? Does it mean we nuke Kandahar and just destroy that? I think under US doctrine, I think that's something that probably would have to be considered. Now, obviously, I really hope this never comes to this and we never have to even consider that, because these are the most horrible scenarios you can talk about. And I'm glad that we're just talking academically. But yeah, I think it would be horrible what our response would be. Now, let's talk a bit about how easy is it to actually smuggle in the United States either radioactive material or materials that would be made to use for a nuclear bomb or chemical weapons, for that matter. The borders, you know, there's both borders, Canada and Mexico, where obviously there's things going in and out all the time. Tell us about how easy it is to get materials in the US. Yeah, so that's a great question. It's not easy. You know, there are detectors at the ports that would, you know, kind of sniff these things out in theory. And the northern and southern borders, there's also detectors. And they can make, you know, have vehicles that might, you know, come up green on something or red on something. It might be more of a look at it. But the book has a chapter where it talks about an undercover investigation through the land borders, both through Canada and Mexico, taking into account, you know, radiological materials being smuggled in. These were investigators that were working for Congress. And what they actually did was they created fake companies. And they obtained through these fake companies, radiological markers, you know, that would theoretically trigger an alert at the borders. And then they drove through the borders. They got kind of identified as suspicious through the Border Patrol. But because they had these documents from the fake companies that they had, Border Patrol let them in both the northern and southern borders. So the takeaway there is that because sometimes legitimate companies, whether it's medical companies or something like that, and has a need for some kind of radiological material for something legitimate. But the part that was really eye opening through my analysis into the book's part was that how easy it was for these undercover investigators to obtain fraudulent documentation to make it look legitimate and how easy it was for that fraudulent documentation to be accepted by the Border Patrols. So that's something that I don't think is really talked about enough when we're talking about border security or port security or something like that. Can you share with us what concerns you the most today about terrorist activities? What is the most dangerous thing that that you can think of? So I think there's two kind of lines of thinking of my concern that kind of go kind of go together. One is my expectations from a foreign entity, whether it's a terrorist group or a state actor. And what they're doing, I know they do this, but what they might be doing is trying to get domestic actors, like people in America, online and cite them. And the people in America might not even realize they're talking to a foreign actor. They might think they're talking to another anti-government individual who's of like mind. I suspect this might be something that happened a few weeks ago with the UFC plot. President Trump had a UFC event at the White House, and then there was a plot that was uncovered where people got together online, and they're going to have a drone attack, and one guy actually was procuring explosives. And that plot got stopped when one of the parents of one of the plotters actually ratted them out. This is concerning because this is kind of the ISIS playbook of inciting people domestically to commit attacks on your behalf or in a state actor's purview to get someone to commit an attack through whatever they online want them to commit, right? So that's the first part of it. That's kind of getting a domestic person to attack. The second one, and this is the one that really scares me because of, I think, where we're at with counterintelligence and counterterrorism right now, the kind of backsliding I was talking about through resourcing of the FBI and stuff like that, is there are international terrorist groups. I think there are like 48 really established ones in the world right now. And I think the biggest threat right now is in Africa. For example, there is a group called JNIM. It's an al-Qaeda offshoot in Western Africa. They're literally on the march. They're in several countries, Mali, Burkina Faso, places like that, where, just like al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, they are gaining experience fighting Russian mercenaries. And it's also kind of under the radar because the U.S. government talks about funding governments to fight them. But the big issue is that JNIM, for example, is consolidating so much territory, just like ISIS did, but they're so under the radar that they're gaining this territory. Bipartisan groups, whether it's Republicans, Democrats, military personnel, they've all said the African threat is the real threat that no one's talking about because what they have is they're gaining the space to consolidate territory and conduct training and conduct their plotting. So in talking about JNIM, if they're consolidating their space and conducting their plotting, and bipartisan groups, military personnel are all in agreement that if they want the capability to attack the United States directly, they will get that capability. And at the same time, so they seem like they're getting more vicious leadership. And that's the scariest part. If they get vicious leadership with the space to facilitate these attacks, that's where the real threat from a more traditional terrorist attack that's multifaceted could come into play. So let's change gears and talk about quantum computing. You've led some initiatives with the government to look at quantum computing and if the technology gets into the wrong hands, how it can be, you know, pretty crippling or used with ill intent, can be damaging. Can you talk to us about that? What have you done and what are your thoughts about it? Yeah, so quantum computing is one of those things that's really under the radar. It kind of gets overshadowed by AI as kind of like the big next thing. But quantum computing will really everything because it'll make whoever, I'll say it this way, there's a race right now, an international race of the United States, Europe, China. China has invested billions of dollars on this one, you know, and their whole goal is to get there first. And what it's called is Q day. It means whoever gets the quantum internet first, because what it means is that those quantum computers will be able to crack any encryption for a classical network, which is the normal internet we know today, in seconds. If it's a computer that might take many years to do something or de-encrypt something, a quantum computer can do that in seconds. And if you have that, then that's game over for everything for intelligence. Whoever has a quantum network will have dominance over everything. Logistics, corporations, you can't hide anything because they'll be able to hack into it and get it really easily because no classical encryption will be able to stop it. So I've worked on, I've written leading articles on quantum computing and how it pertains to national security. Because the issue is, is that the United States, we're always behind, whether it's legally or policy, you know, dealing with something or adapting to emerging technologies. So when we get to something like quantum computing, how are we going to be able to not only defend our own cybersecurity, but how, and that of universities and research and corporations and things like that, how are we going to be able to do our own lawful electronic surveillance? Because if you're dealing with somebody else who has quantum computing, then it might be, it kind of kills our ability to protect it. So I think it's really focused on the United States being ready for quantum, both in defending it and getting there first, because if we can get there first, we can, you know, resources to defend against that, because this is a huge deal. It will change everything, both how we operate, you know, I think phone networks are going to be like 6G and quantum, everything's going to be quicker, and encryption, data storage, everything you can think of relating to information and anything connected to any kind of network will be susceptible and it'll, it's going to be huge. And another issue that I've really raised is sometimes people like, oh, quantum technology is so far off, we'll not deal with it now, let's deal with it later. Some people say that by 2030, the first quantum system is going to be out there. Some people say, oh, maybe 2050. I personally have dealt with law enforcement intelligence community people that have said, oh, you know, we don't really take this seriously, it's technologies matter, it happened in the physics of it. I disagree. I think there's things called quantum teleportation that gets around some of the more technical issues, really making quantum still in the, you know, kind of conceptual phase. So I think we really need to get away from some of the biases, get the United States ahead from the United States perspective. Mike, thank you so much for your time. I have one more question. And that is what ethical dilemmas have you dealt with in your work as a prosecutor, whether it was classified information, interrogations, dealing with intelligence? No, that's a great question. And so ethics are always at the top of mind, working on prosecuting cases, whether it's national security or not. And I think the biggest thing I had to deal with was not so much at least the Guantanamo cases was we held ourselves to a high ethical standard because as a United States prosecutor, I mean, that's what you hang your hat on. That's what holds the whole system together. That's how you talk to judges, because if the judge loses their trust with the prosecutors, then things don't go well. You see that kind of now with the grand juries being way more skeptical of the prosecutors. And so that's something that you need to deal with. And the prosecutors in Guantanamo, although there's a lot of noise and questions about the system, I mean, myself and other prosecutors really work to make sure we're up to the highest ethical standard. The problem with Guantanamo was that the system was set up, in my book, we refer to that one person who refers to it as a candy store for defense lawyers, because the defense lawyers did a lot of things that I think in a normal court, they would never try to do. And it will but it was totally not how the process would work. I would say ethically dubious. These are things where they never asked me to go in and get that information back. And I had to work within the ethical constraints, which means that I had to make sure that I was not infringing on the attorney-client privilege and that I wasn't messing with defense lawyers' ability to defend their clients, even though the defense lawyers were the ones who were kind of being a little ethically nebulous, I will say. So those are things I had to deal with. You know, same thing with dealing with, I worked on a practice in front of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. And, you know, that's something where we always had to have a cautionary tale in the court. And even if something didn't look good for the government, we always had, and I definitely did this, always had to tell the judges that, hey, look, you know, this is how it really is, whether it was good for us or bad. That's just how it works. Candor for the court is kind of like the number one thing as a prosecutor you need to do, whether you're in front of the FISA court or in front of the Guantanamo or just a regular federal or state court. Mike, we thank you so much for your time. Appreciate it. Your book again is coming out very soon. It's going to be on Amazon. Tell us, is it in August that's going to come out? So it is on pre-sale now everywhere and August 11th, it comes out on bookshelves everywhere. Fantastic. Thank you again for your time. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you for watching another episode of Bay Area Innovators. If you enjoyed this episode and you know someone who should be on our show, please send us an email at sfbay at epochtimes.com. We would love to hear from you. Thank you and see you next week.