Fort Dix tipster shrugs off ‘hero’ title June 7, 2007
Posted by Scarecrow in 05/29/07 CNN.trackback
Fort Dix tipster shrugs off ‘hero’ title
POSTED: 2:01 p.m. EDT, May 29, 2007
Story Highlights
• Brian Morgenstern says he paid more attention after he saw “disturbing” images
• Tape brought to Circuit City last year featured men speaking Arabic, shooting guns
• Clerk says store “very supportive” after he disclosed what he saw
• Morgenstern says real heroes are investigators, U.S. troops overseas
NEW YORK (CNN) — The tipster responsible for helping authorities thwart a possible terrorist attack on a U.S. military base said Tuesday he experienced a “moral dilemma” over whether to report what he had seen.
Brian Morgenstern, a 26-year-old clerk at a Circuit City in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, was given the 8 mm tape January 31, 2006, by two men, whom he described as “normal people.” They asked him to convert it to DVD format.
Authorities said the tape showed 10 young men shooting at a practice range and shouting in Arabic, “Allahu Akbar” — “God is great.”
Morgenstern said the video showed the men with hand guns and rifles that appeared to be “fully automatic weapons.” (Watch Morgenstern explain why the video troubled him 
)
“I saw some stuff on the film that was disturbing and it kind of gained my attention that way,” he told CNN’s “American Morning.”
“I started paying more attention to it,” he said.
The tape’s contents worried him. “I thought about whether or not it should be reported. I actually waited that night and weighed out my decisions, and I went home and talked to my family about it.”
The next day, Morgenstern returned to work and told his manager about the tape and his decision to alert the police. He described Circuit City as being “very supportive” regarding the situation.
“The police came over, they took a look at the film,” he said. “They came over and they looked at the video, and they stopped it at one point and said, ‘OK, this is serious, we need a copy.’ “
His decision prompted a 15-month investigation into six men, four from Yugoslavia, one from Jordan and one from Turkey, who live in Philadelphia’s southern New Jersey suburbs.
Five of the men are charged with conspiring to kill military personnel and, if found guilty, could face life in prison. The sixth faces up to 10 years in prison if he is convicted of weapons charges.
Authorities have lauded the clerk as an “unsung hero,” a title he rejects.
“I don’t feel like a hero,” he said. “I feel like I did the right thing.”
Although the ordeal, which included questioning by the FBI, felt “like something out of a movie,” Morgenstern said the “real heroes” were those who conducted the investigation and our “men and women overseas.”
CNN’s Aurore Ankarcrona contributed to this story.
