American ISIS Offers a Firsthand Look Inside the Caliphate

The Intercept Briefing

The Intercept

Politics, Unknown, Daily News, History, News

4.8 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 21 July 2021

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For more than six months, The Intercept’s Trevor Aaronson communicated with Russell Dennison, an American man who traveled to Syria and joined the Islamic State. This week on Intercepted: Aaronson, an investigative reporter, discusses American ISIS, the newest Audible Original podcast documentary from The Intercept and Topic Studios, in which he chronicles the story of Russell Dennison, one of the first American citizens to join ISIS and fight with the group in Syria. Almost daily, Dennison communicated with Aaronson, sending him hours of audio chronicling his conversion to Islam, his turn to extremism, and his journey to Syria. Aaronson talks with Intercept reporter Murtaza Hussain about his reporting and what he learned from Dennison.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is intercepted.
0:30.0	I'm Mertaz Ossane, a reporter at the intercept.
0:40.0	It's been nearly 20 years since the 9-11 terrorist attacks, and the US military continues
0:44.5	to be present in them at least.
0:47.1	We have seen conflict after conflictness and loss war, with one of the most recent episodes
0:51.8	being the campaign against ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
0:58.7	ISIS, a militant jihad group, grew in advance in 2014 after declared itself a global caliphate.
1:09.4	People from around the world flew into join the group, among them an American named Russell
1:14.1	Denison.
1:15.1	I would go on this blown up destroyed police building, it was like four stories tall, and
1:20.4	I would just watch them from the window to make sure they don't try to come inside from
1:26.2	my side.
1:27.6	And I would shoot on them like every single night.
1:30.4	I would shoot at least like three, four or five bullets just so they know, don't try to
1:36.0	enter the city from this side.
1:38.7	It was like kind of like Rambo, you know, I was doing my own thing.
1:42.4	I was like alone, spending hours at night watching the enemy shooting on them.
1:48.8	These kufar, they knew they could not enter.
1:51.7	And I shot on them many times.
1:59.7	Russell Denison was a white American, raised Catholic in Pennsylvania, who joined ISIS and
2:04.4	fought with the organization.
2:06.4	And now, a new audible original podcast documentary from the intercept and topic studios chronicles
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Intercept, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Intercept and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.