'Pulse: The Untold Story' Premieres Today
My new eight-episode documentary series on Audible reveals startling information about the FBI's failure to stop the Orlando nightclub shooting.
My new Audible original documentary podcast, “Pulse: The Untold Story,” premieres today. The eight-episode series investigates the events leading up to the nightclub shooting in 2016 and the FBI’s secret history with shooter Omar Mateen and his father, who was a confidential informant.
Here are the details, including how subscribers can listen for free:
Announcement
A captivating new Audible Original documentary podcast examines what led up to the June 12, 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, and reveals new, shocking information about the FBI’s multiple failures to prevent the massacre.
Reported, written, and hosted by investigative journalist Trevor Aaronson, “Pulse: The Untold Story” investigates the FBI’s relationships with the Pulse nightclub shooter, Omar Mateen, and his father Seddique Mateen.
As the show describes in exacting detail, Seddique Mateen had been an FBI informant for over a decade before the Pulse nightclub shooting. The FBI had investigated his son Omar twice as a possible security threat before the mass shooting, but the elder Mateen encouraged federal agents to drop the investigations of his son. Had the FBI followed through with those probes, the Pulse shooting may have been prevented.
Now eight years after the shooting, the Justice Department refuses to release Omar Mateen’s FBI file, claiming its contents are related to an ongoing investigation. “Pulse: The Untold Story” is a deeply reported documentary podcast that reveals what is likely to be found in the FBI’s secret files about Omar Mateen.
Drawing from dozens of interviews and hundreds of hours of previously unheard FBI and local police recordings, “Pulse: The Untold Story” also shows how the FBI callously allowed homophobic and Islamophobic narratives to flourish in order to cover up the Bureau’s failures which may have prevented the horrific mass shooting.
After the Pulse nightclub shooting, then-FBI Director James Comey told the American public that the FBI would review “in an open and honest way” whether the Bureau made mistakes. But that hasn’t happened yet. “Pulse: The Untold Story” provides important accountability, revealing how the FBI exploited a Florida gay community’s pain and grief to hide behind a false story about the shooting.
“The FBI’s failures to prevent the Pulse shooting reveal systemic problems with the bureau’s informant program and the methods agents employ to investigate potential terrorists,” Aaronson said. “Omar Mateen took 49 lives on June 12, 2016. As we document in this Audible Original, the FBI had at least two opportunities to stop him before the attack.”
How to Listen
Audible subscribers can listen to all eight episodes on the series page or the Audible app starting today. You can also listen to the first episode on the “Alphabet Boys” series feed.
How to Listen (For Free!)
Don’t have an Audible subscription? As a subscriber to this newsletter, you can receive a code to listen to “Pulse: The Untold Story” for free. Please fill out this form to request a listener code. You will receive a code as soon as it becomes available from Audible.