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Introducing Pulse: The Untold Story

July 11, 2024·39 min·3 clips

The FBI had a secret history with the Pulse shooter and his father, pushing a false story to obscure it.

The episode opens with recordings of Omar Mateen's 9-1-1 call during the attack, in which he pledges allegiance to the Islamic State and demands the United States stop bombing Syria. Journalist Trevor Aronson introduces himself as a Florida-based reporter who has spent 15 years critically covering the FBI's counterterrorism operations. He describes the immediate media framing of the shooting as an act of both terrorism and a hate crime targeting gay people, with multiple news organizations citing anonymous sources claiming Omar had been to Pulse before and was secretly gay. Attorney General Loretta Lynch endorsed the narrative that Pulse was targeted because it was a gay club. Aronson argues that this narrative was false and originated with Omar's father, Sadiq Mateen, in interviews hours after the shooting. Sadiq was a paid FBI confidential informant for over a decade, and the FBI had previously investigated Omar twice based on security concerns. Aronson argues that Sadiq created the 'secretly gay' narrative to protect his own position as an informant by deflecting questions about why the FBI had missed his son. Noor Salman, Omar's widow, was charged with aiding the attack and providing misleading statements. Her supposed confession claimed she and Omar had surveilled Pulse in advance and that she knew about his plans. But defense attorney Charlie Swift used cell phone tower data to prove that the tower nearest to Pulse had never communicated with either Omar's or Noor's phone before the night of the shooting, and that Omar drove to the club at random. A federal jury acquitted Noor in 2018. Aronson met Noor at a Muslim Legal Fund conference in Chicago in February 2020 and observed her nervousness before her first public speech since acquittal, while her son played Fortnite nearby. He reflects on his own initial judgmental reaction toward her. Aronson then explains the FBI's post-9-11 counterterrorism approach: broad assessment powers that allow investigation of anyone for almost any reason, and a reliance on over 15,000 paid informants. He describes how more than 350 people have been charged in FBI terrorism stings since 9-11, targeting largely isolated individuals with no actual terrorist connections. He argues this strategy distracts from genuine threats, citing the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting, where FBI ignored a specific tip, and the Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs, where the FBI closed an investigation of the gunman a month after his family reported him, while running sting operations against racial justice activists. An FBI agent in Colorado Springs was recorded telling an activist that the Bureau's failures become news only 'when something went boom or there was a mass shooting.' Aronson concludes by promising to lay out, over the remaining seven episodes, how a false narrative was built around Pulse and why the FBI still refuses to release files from its investigation of Omar Mateen.

As heard by us

An eight episode investigation of Pulse and the FBI history around the case.

Pulse: The Untold Story follows Trevor Aronson's eight episode look at the Pulse nightclub shooting, and it keeps coming back to the hidden relationship between the FBI, the shooter, and his father.

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Why you'd press play

If you want the FBI story behind Pulse, this is the version to hear.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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