Morten Storm converted to Islam in his native Denmark, after a life of petty crime left him feeling hollow, he writes in a new book, Agent Storm: My Life Inside al Qaeda and the CIA. His extreme personality and adrenaline-seeking led him to embrace Islamist jihad. And being denied a chance to fight for al Qaeda in Somalia led him to question his decisions and his faith, which vanished with a little internet research.
On Tuesday night, CNN aired an interview with Storm, one of his book's co-authors, Paul Cruickshank, and CNN senior international correspondent Nic Robertson. Storm says in his book that he contacted the Danish intelligence service to offer to become a double agent, and his work with them led to spying on al Qaeda for the CIA. He fell out with the CIA, he says, after the agency refused to pay him $5 million he thought he deserved for information on where to find (and kill) American-born al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
North Carolina Supreme Court risks undermining its legitimacyUnder the radar A contentious legal battle over whether to seat one of its own members threatens not only the future of the court's ideological balance, but its role in the public sphere
-
Codeword: January 14, 2025The Week's daily codeword puzzle
-
Sudoku hard: January 14, 2025The Week's daily hard sudoku puzzle
-
Death toll rises in LA fires as wind lull allows progressSpeed Read At least 24 people have died and 100,000 people are under mandatory evacuation orders
-
Biden cancels Italy trip as raging LA fires spreadSpeed Read The majority of the fires remain 0% contained
-
Fast-spreading Los Angeles wildfires spark panicSpeed Read About 30,000 people were under an evacuation order as the inferno spread
-
Hundreds feared dead in French Mayotte cycloneSpeed Read Cyclone Chido slammed into Mayotte, a French territory in the Indian Ocean
-
Thirteen missing after Red Sea tourist boat sinksSpeed Read The vessel sank near the Egyptian coastal town of Marsa Alam
-
Global plastics summit starts as COP29 endsSpeed Read Negotiators gathering in South Korea seek an end to the world's plastic pollution crisis, though Trump's election may muddle the deal
-
Biden visits Amazon, says climate legacy irreversibleSpeed Read Nobody can reverse America's 'clean energy revolution,' said the president, despite the incoming Trump administration's promises to dismantle climate policies
-
At least 95 dead in Spain flash floodsSpeed Read Torrential rainfall caused the country's worst flooding since 1996
