This interview was originally published on Audible.com.
Note: Text has been edited and does not match audio exactly.
Kat Johnson: Hi there. I'm Audible Editor Kat Johnson, and today I am speaking with award-winning journalist Trevor Aaronson about his new Audible Original, Pulse: The Untold Story, which gives a surprising new angle on a story so many of us are familiar with, the tragic mass shooting in an LGBTQIA+ nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in 2016. Welcome, Trevor.
Trevor Aaronson: Thanks, Kat. Thanks for having me.
KJ: Thank you so much for joining us. And as we sit here today, it is June 12, which is the eighth anniversary of the tragedy when a gunman entered the Pulse nightclub in Orlando and killed 49 people, many from the queer and Latino communities, and wounded 53 more. I wonder if you could tell me what was your first exposure to this story, and then when did it become something that interested you professionally?
TA: I think like a lot of Americans, I first heard about the shooting from the news. I remember waking up the morning of June 12, the shooting happened shortly after midnight, and I remember waking up that morning and just seeing on the news this horrific mass shooting. It wasn't something that I really anticipated covering at the time. I think I experienced it the way that a lot of Americans did in that same way and just kind of the shock that you have when something like that occurs. But I did follow it. I live in St. Petersburg, Florida, about two hours outside of Orlando, so it wasn't exactly a local story for me, but it was close enough that it felt very close, the proximity felt close, I should say.
And as the years went by, there ended up being charges against Noor Salman, the widow of the shooter. I followed that trial, and I remember being shocked at the time to learn that Omar Mateen's father, it was revealed at trial, was an FBI informant. That's an area that's been a long area of research for me. I wrote a book about FBI informants and counterterrorism practices. So, it was at that point that I realized that there was a lot more to the story than we'd previously known. After Noor Salman's acquittal, I met her attorneys at a gathering, and they're the ones that told me, "You know, you should really look more into this case. This case isn't what was portrayed in the media. This wasn't a situation where Omar Mateen was a homophobe and was secretly gay and targeted the club because it was a gay club," as had been the prevailing narrative. But, instead, it was a question of whether he even knew the club was a gay club at all and whether this was maybe much more of an FBI accountability story.
So, from that point, you know, that meeting happened during the pandemic or shortly before the pandemic, and so as we were locked in during the pandemic, I started looking more into this case and pulling the case files and also looking at what the FBI was investigating around the time, that it wasn't investigating Omar Mateen prior to the shooting. That's when I began to piece together that there really was this untold story about Pulse and that most of what Americans knew about the shooting and why it happened was in fact not true. And I wanted to try to tell that story in its entirety.
KJ: Yeah. I mean, it wasn't so long ago, but I remember so vividly the coverage of this event. Unfortunately, now we're kind of desensitized to mass shootings, but this is one of the really sticky ones because of how many victims there were and the fact that it was perpetrated on an LGBTQ nightclub by this shooter who claimed he had jihadist allegiance. It felt like a terror attack and a hate crime from the very beginning. But that is not quite what you found. Can you share some of the surprising revelations for people like me who thought they knew this case pretty well?
TA: So, the explanation that originally came out about the Pulse nightclub shooting was something that I think was easily accepted because it was kind of the most simple explanation, that Omar Mateen was radicalized by ISIS propaganda and that by attacking Pulse he was committing this terrorist act, but also this hate crime. This idea being that, obviously, religious extremists, Islamist extremists, dislike gay people. It certainly made sense that that might be his target. And so that became the prevailing narrative.
Then what also came out during that time, stories that end up being false, but there were claims that Omar Mateen was maybe secretly gay himself. There were several men who came forward to the news media and said they'd seen him at the club in the weeks prior to the shooting. And there was even one man who had claimed that he had a sexual relationship with Omar prior to the shooting. So, these reports early on really kind of established this narrative that it was both a hate crime and an act of terrorism, as the US government portrayed it as well.
But what I was able to reveal in the series was that Omar Mateen had been investigated twice as a security threat prior to the Pulse nightclub shooting by the FBI. There were concerns that he was potentially dangerous because he had spoken about having a relationship with the Boston Marathon bombers, which ended up being true, and was just him being a loudmouth. And then he had also been investigated after a man from Florida had gone to Syria and became the first suicide bomber during the Syrian Civil War. As a result of that, the FBI started investigating anyone he had known in the United States, and Omar Mateen had been friendly with him, and the FBI launched a second investigation.
"The greater question here, and the one we try to get out in this series is, what happened in those prior investigations and why did the FBI drop them?"
In both of those occasions, Omar's father, Seddique, who was secretly working for the FBI, was able to persuade federal agents not to investigate his son. He kept telling federal agents that, you know, "Don't worry. My son isn't dangerous." And because there was this long relationship between the father and the FBI—he had been an informant for 11 years—the FBI basically took his word. So, one of the questions that we raise is whether the FBI could have prevented the shooting. Had the FBI maybe done a more fulsome investigation of Omar Mateen during one of those two investigations, perhaps he would've been charged with something.
Then one of the interesting things that we found was that we really tried to dissect how this narrative took root, the narrative that Omar Mateen was secretly gay and he targeted Pulse because it was a gay club. And what we found was that if you look back through the news footage, the first person to make a statement about Omar Mateen being potentially homophobic was in fact his father, Seddique, who at the time no one knew was working for the FBI. So, in the immediate hours after the shooting, a local news reporter goes to Seddique Mateen's home in South Florida and Seddique Mateen says that the reason Omar Mateen committed the crime, the reason he targeted an LGBTQ+ club, was because he'd previously been angered after seeing two men kiss in Miami. And that was in response to that.
So that basically seeded this narrative that then other news reporters followed. Then men came forward and said they'd seen Omar Mateen at the club, and their accounts could not be verified. So there was a lot of very kind of irresponsible reporting happening in the aftermath, which is not necessarily uncommon following these kind of big news events, that there's kind of a scurrying for information. And because there were reports circulating about Omar possibly being gay or homophobic, one news organization's report seemed to corroborate another. And so as a result, you had a series of reports all kind of very speciously sourced, but together kind of made this narrative seem concrete.
As a result of that narrative, in part, the FBI charged Noor Salman, his widow with providing material support for the crime, and an FBI agent wrote out a confession that she signed. And part of that confession claims that Noor knew Omar was going to attack Pulse, that they had surveilled Pulse Nightclub previously, and that before the shooting, he told her that it was going to be Latin Night, and even came to her as he was going to be dressed and said, "Do I look Spanish?" It turns out that none of that was true. What happened once defense lawyers for Noor Salman were able to get the evidence of what was revealed at trial, was that cell phone data very clearly showed that Omar Mateen had first gone to Disney Springs, sometimes known as downtown Disney, and he anticipated doing the shooting there. In fact, he had purchased this baby stroller that had this large compartment that would've hidden his rifle. It's believed that he was planning to use the baby stroller as cover to walk into Disney Springs, pull out the rifle. But surveillance video of that night shows that he walked around, he sees that there's a ton of cops and security guards, and he seems to get cold feet and he leaves.
Then the cell phone data also reveals that he then searches downtown Orlando nightclubs. So, he appears to be panicking. He's looking for a new target. The first result he gets is this club called Eve in downtown Orlando. It's a straight club. The cell phone data shows that he drove by Eve, but then ultimately didn't stop. Most likely the reason for that is that he realized that Eve is a downtown club with a parking garage around the corner. Walking downtown at night with a baby stroller would be very odd, and then certainly kind of huffing it from the parking garage with your assault rifle is even more conspicuous. And so it was a very difficult target.
So then he continues on to the next result, which is Pulse, south of downtown. And he realizes there's a dark parking lot nearby, and it's an easy target. When he gets to the club, he asks the security guard, "Where the girls at?" because when he gets there, he mostly sees men. And just common sense being that if you're asking where the girls are, you probably don't realize that you're going into a club that's predominantly attended by gay men. So he leaves, he comes back with a gun and commits the shooting. And for the next few hours, he's then barricaded in the bathroom. He calls 911, talks to a hostage negotiator. Those tapes provide a large part of the series and kind of bringing you into the moment of the shooting.
But what's really remarkable is that during roughly 20-some minutes in total of talk time between 911 and a hostage negotiator, he never says anything to suggest that he knew he was targeting a gay club. So, you'd think if your target was a gay club, you might mention that to the hostage negotiator, and he never does. And the reason that this is important is not just to kind of say, you know, "Look, this story you knew about isn't true." The real reason this is important is that the FBI was able to use this narrative, this idea that it was a hate crime, was specifically targeted because it was a gay club, to avoid accountability. The greater question here, and the one we try to get out in this series is, what happened in those prior investigations and why did the FBI drop them? Was it because his father was an FBI informant?
I think the larger issue, too, is that the FBI's number one priority since 911 is to stop attacks like this. And if there was a failure, there should be some transparency about what went wrong so the FBI and America can learn from it and figure out how to do these things better. But even to this day, the FBI's file on Omar Mateen is blocked from public release. We requested it through FOIA and it came back as part of an ongoing investigation. So there's so many questions left about the FBI's failures and its opportunities to prevent the shooting that we tried to use this series to examine them and to examine what's likely to be found in the FBI's file were it ever to be released.
KJ: Yeah, I have a lot to respond to, but you have been reporting on the FBI's counterterrorism measures critically for a while. I know your TED Talk on the subject is almost 10 years old now. Have you gotten any pushback from the FBI on your reporting?
TA: With any story, we go to them with a list of questions, and any time we are alleging misdeeds or kind of accountability problems, we're always very transparent in asking them and also laying out for the FBI what the facts are that we have. And even if the FBI doesn't want to comment, we always give them the opportunity, off the record, to tell us what we might have gotten wrong, and we'll certainly report any of that. As in Pulse and other reporting, the FBI did not comment, did not participate in any meaningful way, but at the same time, has not alleged that any of our reporting or any of the facts in the Pulse series or in any of my other previous reporting has been incorrect.
"The FBI's number one priority since 911 is to stop attacks like this. And if there was a failure, there should be some transparency about what went wrong."
KJ: And as you said, the evidence that you found overwhelmingly shows that the location was not pre-planned. Mateen might not have ever known that he was at a gay club when he walked in. So, although this resulted in the biggest anti-gay terror attack in America to date, the evidence suggests this was not the intention, though it effectively was in the execution. So, how did you grapple with that nuance in the storytelling? Because it feels like a really important but difficult distinction to draw.
TA: This was probably the most difficult aspect of the storytelling, and it was for a couple of reasons. So, one reason is that I don't want the fact that this wasn't intended to be the worst attack on an LGBTQ+ community in America as any kind of evidence that there isn't a concern about anti-gay violence, because obviously there is. Just a couple of years ago there was the Colorado Springs club, Club Q, that was targeted by a neo-Nazi in a mass shooting. And the reason it was targeted was because it was a gay club. So just because the circumstances of this case did not match the narrative that ultimately came up around it, I wanted to be very careful in making it clear that that doesn't mean anti-gay violence isn't a real problem in the United States. Obviously, it clearly is.
Secondly, the other challenge was that many of the survivors want to believe the false narrative, and they do believe the false narrative. They want to believe that the club was targeted because it was a gay club and because they were gay and that this was a hate crime. And even when I would talk to them about the circumstances, there was this real unwillingness to accept it. I understand that, and we tried to address that in the series. Surviving something like that is just unimaginable, right? So, you can only think about the trauma that one person would feel surviving that. You can also imagine that you'd probably want to believe that the reason that happened to you wasn't just random, which in this case it was. Omar Mateen quite literally drove around Orlando looking for a soft target and he found Pulse at the last minute, according to the evidence. And so that means that the reason this happened was just random. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Omar Mateen made a decision that at the last minute affected your life in horrible ways.
So, as a result, I think a lot of survivors really want to believe that there was this kind of greater meaning to what happened, and part of that greater meaning is believing that this was a hate crime. The challenge is that I don't want to take that away from anyone. You survive this and you believe this, and maybe no matter what I'll say you're not going to believe it. And that's okay. And so I think in both the storytelling and the interviewing with the survivors, we tried to be as respectful and sensitive to that as possible.
At the same time, we feel that this is a very important public interest story and kind of making it clear what the real narrative was and the circumstances of the case has a huge accountability purpose for the FBI and the public. And in that way, it felt like it was a very important story to correct and report out thoroughly. At the same time, in telling that story, we tried to be as sensitive as possible to those implications, particularly to the survivors wanting to kind of cling to what they believe is the reason that this happened.
KJ: I mean, we're humans, right? We search for meaning, and these mass shootings are so senseless. That's very difficult to grapple with, I think. And there were a lot of chance happenings in this scenario. One of them, I think, was the fact that when the shooter arrived at Pulse, the security officer happened to be away chasing an underage person, so he arrived after [Mateen] was already inside. And that's a really sad part of the story as well. That's Adam Gruler, who you spoke with for the documentary as well. I'm just curious, who were some of the people who you spoke to that you thought were really powerful to talk to?
TA: Yeah, Adam Gruler was definitely one. He was an off-duty Orlando police officer who had worked details at Pulse for some time and knew the club really well. As you mentioned, he was chasing away an underage drinker. He comes back to the club just as the shooting starts. I think in many ways Adam was a hero. He wasn't credited as such. You know, he confronted Omar in the immediate minutes after the shooting. Omar had a high-capacity assault rifle, Adam just had his department-issued handgun. So, he was clearly outgunned, and yet Adam exchanged fire with Omar trying to stop him.
In the end, both Omar missed Adam and Adam missed Omar, but it was a tremendous act of bravery to confront the shooter. I mean, we've seen other cases, Uvalde probably being the most well-known, where police have hesitated and not wanted to confront the shooter. And there was issues with that later on in Pulse, but certainly in that moment, Adam confronted Omar. And then ultimately Adam's life was turned upside down. In addition to the trauma and the guilt of experiencing what happened, he was blamed. There was a lawsuit filed against him and the City of Orlando Police alleging that there was a dereliction of duty. Adam turned to alcohol and attempted suicide in the aftermath and really just had his life turned upside down. So I think Adam was certainly one that we interviewed to show that certainly the people in the club who were killed and survived, I mean, they are the ones who felt this the most. But there were also other victims in a sense, and Adam was one. His life was turned upside down by the shooting.
"I don't want the fact that this wasn't intended to be the worst attack on an LGBTQ+ community in America as any kind of evidence that there isn't a concern about anti-gay violence, because obviously there is."
We also talked to a number of people who knew Omar in the past, and one of the things that we tried to do was show that Omar, interestingly, had this desire early on in his life to be a police officer, and that this was this kind of failed path for him in life. There was also kind of a long history of domestic abuse of both his first wife, Sitora Yusufiy, who we interviewed as well, and Noor Salman, his second wife. So, what we tried to do is find as many people in the story, some of whom had talked and some of whom had never talked, to try to create a full telling of not only the shooting itself and the people involved and what went wrong, but also the people who were around Omar who would've been the ones who could have clued the FBI in to the fact that he might've been dangerous.
You know, as just one example, we interviewed a man named Daniel Gilroy who had worked with Omar Mateen as a security guard. And Daniel had complained to the private security company that they both worked for that Omar Mateen had talked about mass shootings. And he had said things like, "If I ever did something like that," referring to the Sandy Hook mass shooting, "I'd get the largest body count." And so there were definitely warnings very early on. And what we tried to do is kind of interview people who could also reveal that as well, reveal not only who Omar was, but reveal that for police agencies who might've been looking at whether Omar was a possible security threat, there were plenty of breadcrumbs that they could have followed.
KJ: I'm curious, given his history and the things that you found out, I think you said in the documentary that the FBI's files on him are still open. So, there's things that you can't find out there, but would you care to speculate on what you think his motive really was?
TA: I tend to believe, and one of the things that we document thoroughly is that Omar had a very tumultuous relationship with his father, Seddique Mateen. And for context, it's important to note that Seddique had come to the United States from Afghanistan and that he, as I mentioned earlier, had been an FBI informant for 11 years. But he also had this seemingly delusional belief that he was the president in waiting of Afghanistan. He would post these videos, and to this day, he still posts these videos on his Facebook page where he is addressing constituents in Afghanistan as if he is the rightful leader of the nation. Meanwhile, this is all from his Florida home. It’s all very bizarre.
And from the people we'd interviewed, everyone described how there was this very tumultuous relationship between Omar and his father, that Omar's father would criticize him for not being as successful as he had desired him to be. My theory as to why this happened, and I should note that supporting this theory is that when Omar Mateen is barricaded in the bathroom at Pulse, he calls the 911 operator and he mentions two terrorists. He mentions the Boston Marathon bombers, and he mentions the young man who committed a suicide bombing in Syria. And these were both kind of very different ideologies of terrorists. At the same time, he also claims that he was doing this attack for ISIS. And so what's striking is that ISIS and the guy who committed the suicide bombing were from two different groups. ISIS and al-Nusra Front, where this guy was aligned, were at war with each other. So he basically goes in and describes these two kind of warring groups as if he's supporting both, which to me showed a really kind of naive understanding of Islamist extremism. So, if you're really an Islamist extremist, you would probably know that.
"At the very least, I do hope that if we can draw attention to the series and the story, we can create some public pressure on the FBI to provide some accountability."
So that, based on the kind of tumultuous relationship he had with his father, leads me to believe that the explanation that I find the most convincing is that Omar Mateen was looking to harm his father. And if you are an FBI counterterrorism informant, how much worse could you be harmed than your own son becomes a terrorist himself?
There's also a number of things that we mention in the series that we just don't have explanations for. Omar Mateen's father, Seddique, was sending money to groups in Pakistan that became part of a later FBI investigation that was never explained. Omar Mateen had searched things such as “father son ISIS,” and none of that has been explained. And so there are a number of clues that point to Omar Mateen's relationship with his father being central to the explanation of what happened at Pulse. We try to get as close to explaining that in its entirety as we can. But ultimately there are some questions that are left unanswered that we are transparent about, that hopefully one day when the file is released we'll have a better understanding of.
KJ: Yeah, you're asking us to hold a lot of thoughts in our heads at once, and I think we can do that. I think this is a great format for you to do that and I think it's done really well in the documentary, so I think people are really going to be interested in it. You mentioned that there are a lot of unanswered questions that you still have. How hopeful are you that we'll get more information, and what do you kind of hope the impact of this release will be in that story?
TA: So, at the very least, I do hope that if we can draw attention to the series and the story, we can create some public pressure on the FBI to provide some accountability. It's not just about the Pulse nightclub case itself, but this deal that we made with the federal law enforcement authorities, including the FBI, post-911, which is that we gave up a fair amount of freedom, right? We are okay with the FBI spying on us. You know, the number of informants used by the FBI is unprecedented. The government's ability to spy on citizens through digital communications is at an all-time high. And a part of that deal, you know, is to say, "We need to do this to keep you safer." And so then the question becomes, is it working? Are they keeping us safer? And I think the Pulse nightclub shooting is a way to question that, to say, "This was one of those cases that you had an opportunity to stop and you didn't, and the tools that you say you need, such as a vast network of informants, were clearly at play, that Seddique Mateen the father was an informant.”
And I say that not to say that I condone a kind of surveillance state, but I say that to say it's the explanation the government has when it's called on to ask questions about the level of surveillance that we are under. I think this case is a way of kind of questioning whether these tactics are really effective.
KJ: I mean, a lot of this stuff does take decades to come out, so I really appreciate that you are pushing on this in real time and especially in a case like this that is still so raw and has so many emotions for people. I think it's important work that you're doing to make sure that the truth does come out. So, thank you for that.
TA: Thanks.
KJ: I would love to know before we sign off what you're working on next, because I love your projects and I'm sure our listeners would be interested to know what you have coming up.
TA: I'm happy to say I'm working on another Audible project that will be released in 2025. I don't think I can say too much about it yet, but it really is kind of a window into conspiracy cultures and how they take root. It does also involve the FBI to some extent, and conspiracy theories involving the FBI even. So, I'm really excited about it because I think it's a narrative project. It's an investigation, but it's also a window into trying to explain kind of the crazy world we're living in where these conspiracy theories take root and how they take root. And by examining this one case, I think we're able to kind of draw some larger patterns and conclusions that I hope, you know, I think listeners will find interesting.
KJ: Cool. That's right up my alley. I'll look forward to that. Thank you so much for joining us today. It was such a pleasure to talk to you.
TA: Thanks Kat. I really appreciate it.
KJ: Thank you. And listeners, Pulse: The Untold Story by Trevor Aaronson is available on Audible now.
