When he picked up the phone that fateful day in April 2002, Al Jazeera TV presenter Yosri Fouda would never have predicted who was on the other end of the line. The caller said he was with Al-Qaeda, and that the terrorist organization was offering him an exclusive interview with the masterminds behind the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the United States. Fouda’s answer, of course, was “Yes,” leading to one of the most famous episodes in the 10-year run of his Al Jazeera investigative show Serry lel Ghayah (Top Secret), and making him one of the most famous investigative journalists in the Arab world, and quite possibly the globe.

Yet he views that story as only one small chapter in a storied career, and not even the best chapter at that. For 10 years, Fouda went looking for the truth in the far corners of the globe, living on the brink of danger. Now that he has left Al Jazeera TV channel and Serry lel Ghayah has ended, Fouda is back in Egypt, presenting a more relaxed political show for the channel ON TV, and he is willing to talk more about what went on behind the scenes in his life.

Born in the village of Mansha’aet Ganzour, near Tanta, Yosri was the oldest of his siblings and the recipient of the special treatment traditionally showered on the first-born son. His father was the village physician, and as Fouda remembers, probably the first educated individual there, which made the whole family the center of attention among villagers.

Musing on his happy childhood, Fouda describes his family as middle class: “It is the kind of family that would have been unfortunate before, if Nasser had not come [to power]. We weren’t rich or poor. But with each generation, the family became better.”

Though his childhood was not lavish, it was active. Fouda was in an acting troupe at school and the captain of the football team. In preparatory school, his straight-A grades marked him as the best student in the governorate and he was chosen to present President Anwar Sadat with a necklace of flowers during the president’s visit to his hometown, a few kilometers away from Fouda’s village.

From an early age, Fouda worked hard to earn the respect of his father, who remains his idol. His father nurtured his eldest son, raising him to be a physician as well, but Fouda’s passions pushed him toward a different path.

Greg Semendinger Fouda thinks if he turned down the interview with theplanners of the September 11 terror attacks, Al-Qaeda would have just found someone else.

It started during preparatory school, when Fouda’s father went to work in Saudi Arabia; Fouda refused to go with him because the boy couldn’t imagine leaving his beloved village and friends. He also stopped taking extra science and math classes in favor of geography, history and literature.

One day, the school principal summoned young Fouda to his office. The boy’s father in Saudi Arabia had written to the principal, asking him to convince Fouda to go back to science. Rather than blindly siding with the father, however, the principal listened to what Fouda had to say. Then he told the boy he should do what he loves, as long as he earned his father’s respect.

Fouda has lived the ‘do what you love’ mantra ever since. “Find first in yourself what it is that you enjoy,” he says with passion. “Take it from me: If you go for what you enjoy, even if what you enjoy is stripping in the middle of the street, do it, but try to get paid for it. That is the best of both worlds. You will get paid and you will enjoy.”

It took a while for Fouda to discover what he liked. He enrolled in Cairo University’s Faculty of Media Studies only because it was an elite program with many job opportunities. His first memories in the capital, however, were frustrating. As a top student, Fouda expected the road to his new hometown would be strewn with roses. He had earned a free room in the Cairo University dorms, but when he arrived, it wasn’t available — he needed to know the right people to get the room. It was his first lesson in wasta (nepotism).

“My first impression was that it is an unfair city. It is not enough that you are good enough,” Fouda recalls, saying that the incident made him question his values. “It made me feel that if it is not enough that you are the best, then what is?”

But Fouda did have wasta. His father stepped in and called a relative at Cairo University to help his son get the room he was supposed to have. After that Fouda focused on being the best student in his class. During his senior year he chose to specialize in TV; by the end of the year he accepted the university’s offer to stay on as a teaching assistant and start working on research that would lead to a professorship.

But Fouda soon found that academia at Cairo University offered no opportunities for creativity or challenge. When a joint studies program opened allowing him to do research at the American University in Cairo (AUC), Fouda jumped at the opportunity. He eventually got his masters from AUC and, inspired to travel after a study-abroad experience, went on to Glasgow, Scotland, for his PhD in comparative documentary.

It was in the United Kingdom where Fouda found his career. One day, his Norwegian roommate came in waving The Guardian and yelling, “Yosri, this is perfect for you.” The British Broadcast Company (BBC) had a large ad announcing the launch of a new Arabic news TV channel, calling people from all specialties. Fouda, however, brushed aside the idea and went back to his research.

However, the idea would not rest, and 10 days later he was in London for an interview. “I was really excited,” Fouda says, his face lighting up. “After all my memories listening to those deep voices from the Arabic service of BBC radio while I was out grilling corn in the fields of my village, suddenly I was there, meeting those people who are idols for me, who I grew up listening to.”

Fouda joined the BBC in 1994 and became a London-based roving reporter, dashing off to Gaza, Sarajevo or wherever else the story may be. Quite unexpectedly, Fouda found himself the new face of Arabic news.

At the time, the BBC’s Arabic channel was an initiative funded by the Saudi government, which wanted the Arabic audience to have access to professional news coverage in their own tongue. However, conflicts between the patron and the presenters arose when BBC reporting stepped on the toes of Saudi sensibilities. Amid what reports describe as editorial disagreements, funding dried up and in 1996 the channel shut down.

As BBC’s Arabic TV channel was shutting down, another was opening up. The then-unknown Al Jazeera posted a newspaper ad calling for applicants.

“My colleagues and I were in shock: ‘What? An Arab news TV station? Based in Qatar? Where is Qatar?” Fouda recalls. Once past the initial shock that Arabs were entering the news business, Fouda and his former BBC colleagues joined Al Jazeera, and Fouda became the head of Al Jazeera’s London bureau.

A fan of Panorama, BBC’s flagship show for investigative journalism, Fouda asked the channel director to let him do something similar. Rebuffed at first, he continued to push the issue until they finally let him do a pilot with zero budget and limited use of a camera crew.

Fouda’s first investigation, about anthrax as a terrorist weapon, wowed his Al Jazeera superiors and the viewers. Amid positive viewer feedback, the channel aired the pilot three times and the show won an award at the 1998 pan-Arab Cairo Radio and TV Production Festival. Fouda received the green light to continue the investigative journalism series, Serry lel Ghayah.

“From that moment, I became the victim of my own success,” he recalls. Every idea Fouda had for a new program was met with rejection. The management, he says, wanted to keep Serry lel Ghayah going because of its high viewership and advertising revenue pouring into the station.

The show continued to break ground with its bold approach and unmatched attention to detail. Among other topics, Fouda investigated how mujahideen (holy war fighters) are smuggled into Iraq to fight US and UK troops there, and in 2006 the 1980 assassination of Egyptian nuclear scientist Yehia El-Mashadd. The presenter had become a star, recognized by people on the street. The channel even allowed Fouda to take three months to produce one 45-minute episode, and appear only four times a year on the screen.

His biggest moment came several months after September 11, 2002, when Al-Qaeda contacted him for the interview. Thinking his next show would coincide with the one-year anniversary of the attacks, they wanted him to come to Pakistan and meet with key figures behind what Al-Qaeda called “Holy Tuesday” operations.

With a detective’s sense, Fouda felt that something was different. Until that time, Al-Qaeda had not claimed credit for the attacks, but they were being heavily bombarded in Afghanistan and Pakistan by the US military. The journalist realized they wanted to make an announcement and to make it loud.

Fouda went to Pakistan that April, where a driver blindfolded him to take him on a circuitous, multi-vehicle ride to meet the alleged masterminds of the September 11 attacks. Up to that point, very few people had ever heard of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Bin Al-Shibh.

Inside a safe house in Karachi, Fouda asked that now-famous question: “Did you do it?” According to Fouda, Mohammed responded by identifying himself and his colleague, “I am the head of the Al-Qaeda military committee,” he began, “and Ramzi is the coordinator of the Holy Tuesday operation. And yes, we did it.”

Fouda spent 48 hours in the safe house with the most dangerous men in the world. When it was time to leave, they hugged him, and as Fouda recounts, Mohammed joked, “You would make the perfect terrorist. I mean, look at yourself! You are young, intelligent, highly educated, well organized, you speak good English, you live in London, and you are single.”

The episode “Top Secret: The Road to September 11,” which was broadcast in 2002, ignited controversy. After Bin Al-Shibh and Mohammed were arrested and turned over to US forces in late 2002 and early 2003 respectively, some in the media and others from Al-Qaeda accused Fouda of revealing his sources’ locations to authorities. Still denying the accusations, Fouda recalls fearing that Al-Qaeda operatives might take revenge and kill him.

While the interview with the self-professed masterminds of the September 11 terror attacks is considered one of his biggest achievements, Fouda himself doesn’t consider this episode of Serry lel Ghayah among his best efforts. “I was lucky. If I turned them down, they would have found someone else to do it. Yet I made the right decision to go.”

Working with English writer Nick Fielding, Fouda gave a more comprehensive version of the truth behind the devastating attacks in their book, Masterminds of Terror. Even before his Al-Qaeda interview, as Al Jazeera’s star was rising, Fouda started witnessing what he calls a disturbing shift in its culture. The environment that started as secular, liberal and professional started to be more influenced by the Qatari government, which funds the whole media venture. No one was interfering with Serry lel Ghayah, however, so Fouda kept quiet.

Over time, Fouda says, Al Jazeera became a place where he no longer wanted to work. He claims its editorial policy became more driven by Qatar’s political agenda, rather than by the needs and expectations of its audience. In 2003, he tried to resign, but Qatar’s emir refused to let him go. Meanwhile, he says, the channel’s ceiling of editorial freedom continued to drop. In 2007, Fouda took a two-year sabbatical, ending it with his resignation in May 2009.

In a 2003 column in the independent weekly Al-Youm Al-Sabea, Fouda summed up his decision to leave Al Jazeera: “The experience of freedom is in one way like the experience of death. You can visit death but you can’t come back from it.”

Back in Egypt, in the fall of 2009, Fouda joined Naguib Sawiris’ newsy channel ON TV to present Akher Kalam (Last Word), a weekly program addressing the social and political issues of the day. Compared to his globetrotting days with BBC and Al Jazeera, Fouda admits he is taking it easy for a year or two. He seems happy working in his home country, saying he wants to be part of the media scene during the parliamentary and presidential elections at this pivotal point in Egypt’s history.

Being part of the media scene nowadays means a lot of interviews with opposition figures, protestors and other people dissatisfied with the current political climate. Fouda, like many of his colleagues in the local press, has come under fire from officials who claim the media is stoking public anger by reflecting only the dark side of the truth. The veteran journalist is inclined to believe otherwise: “If [we] reflected a bad reality in a good way, then [we] are wrong.” et