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Pulse: The Untold Story
Pulse: The Untold Story, an Audible Original from journalist Trevor Aaronson and Western Sound, investigates the Pulse nightclub shooting and raises startling questions about the FBI’s culpability.
In a gay nightclub in Orlando on June 12, 2016, the shooter, Omar Mateen, murdered 49 people and wounded 53 others. The attack was the deadliest act of violence against the LGBTQ+ community in US history and the deadliest terrorist attack in the United States since 9/11.
But there’s a story you haven’t heard. The FBI had a secret history with the shooter and his father. To obscure that history, the FBI pushed a false story that the media dutifully carried—that the attacker was a secretly gay Islamist extremist who had chosen to target Pulse and planned the attack for weeks.
Through a relentless and thorough investigation, Aaronson uncovers the volatile relationship between the shooter and his father and how their troubled interactions with the FBI lead to a disturbing final question: Could the FBI have prevented the massacre?
Pulse: The Untold Story is a documentary like no other. It will leave you wondering if anything you’ve heard about this case is true.
Warning: This program contains descriptions of violence and death and includes recordings from 911 calls and police body cameras from the night of the shooting. Listener discretion is advised.
In a gay nightclub in Orlando on June 12, 2016, the shooter, Omar Mateen, murdered 49 people and wounded 53 others. The attack was the deadliest act of violence against the LGBTQ+ community in US history and the deadliest terrorist attack in the United States since 9/11.
But there’s a story you haven’t heard. The FBI had a secret history with the shooter and his father. To obscure that history, the FBI pushed a false story that the media dutifully carried—that the attacker was a secretly gay Islamist extremist who had chosen to target Pulse and planned the attack for weeks.
Through a relentless and thorough investigation, Aaronson uncovers the volatile relationship between the shooter and his father and how their troubled interactions with the FBI lead to a disturbing final question: Could the FBI have prevented the massacre?
Pulse: The Untold Story is a documentary like no other. It will leave you wondering if anything you’ve heard about this case is true.
Warning: This program contains descriptions of violence and death and includes recordings from 911 calls and police body cameras from the night of the shooting. Listener discretion is advised.
Audiobook
Published July 11, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 28, 2024
Spoilers ahead.
I can't believe I'm the first person to write a review of an audiobook that gives a minute-by-minute account of the Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016. If you have an Audible Plus subscription, it's basically free.
But . . . spoilers ahead . . .
Don't listen to it if you're sensitive to detailed accounts of spousal abuse and don't want to listen to authentic recordings of people screaming in fear as the mass shooter stalks from restroom to restroom kicking open bathroom stalls to murder his victims, although thankfully, the recordings don't include the actual gunshots. But eyewitnesses to this event describe what happened in horrifying detail.
One man claims that when he entered the men's room handicap stall, he found thirty people already crammed into it, and after the gunman opened fire, another man had to wait a long time before he climbs out from under bloodied gunshot victims before crawling over a wall onto a sink. The recording also includes frantic 911 calls from victims hiding in each restroom during the mass shooting.
Surprisingly, there was an armed guard standing outside the club before he chased away an underage boy sprinting through the parking lot when the gunman took advantage of the distraction. As people ran screaming from the exits, the gunman followed them outside when he encountered the armed guard where both men opened fire on each other . . . with both missing their intended targets.
The most infuriating issue describes the tragic misinformation running rampant throughout and after the event, even from the victims themselves who claimed to recognize the shooter as a regular to the club while cellphone tower records tracing his movements over months confirmed that never happened, and ironically, the shooter previously scouted Walt Disney World (which he discovered was overwhelmed with security guards), and actually drove to another separate nightclub that same night, only to bypass it because the distance from the parking garage to the club was too far for someone to carry a huge semiautomatic assault rifle.
The response from law enforcement, including the FBI, to the tragedy was especially exasperating because although an army of police entered the club within sixteen minutes after the first shot, it took three hours to finally confront the gunman while many bled to death, only due to fabricated stories. And the worst mistake was for the U.S. Justice department to falsely accuse the shooter's spouse of being an accomplice when she was yet another victim. The shooter's father told so many outright lies that he unintentionally blamed the victims themselves. And members of a local mosque in Miami were victimized as well.
I can't believe I'm the first person to write a review of an audiobook that gives a minute-by-minute account of the Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016. If you have an Audible Plus subscription, it's basically free.
But . . . spoilers ahead . . .
Don't listen to it if you're sensitive to detailed accounts of spousal abuse and don't want to listen to authentic recordings of people screaming in fear as the mass shooter stalks from restroom to restroom kicking open bathroom stalls to murder his victims, although thankfully, the recordings don't include the actual gunshots. But eyewitnesses to this event describe what happened in horrifying detail.
One man claims that when he entered the men's room handicap stall, he found thirty people already crammed into it, and after the gunman opened fire, another man had to wait a long time before he climbs out from under bloodied gunshot victims before crawling over a wall onto a sink. The recording also includes frantic 911 calls from victims hiding in each restroom during the mass shooting.
Surprisingly, there was an armed guard standing outside the club before he chased away an underage boy sprinting through the parking lot when the gunman took advantage of the distraction. As people ran screaming from the exits, the gunman followed them outside when he encountered the armed guard where both men opened fire on each other . . . with both missing their intended targets.
The most infuriating issue describes the tragic misinformation running rampant throughout and after the event, even from the victims themselves who claimed to recognize the shooter as a regular to the club while cellphone tower records tracing his movements over months confirmed that never happened, and ironically, the shooter previously scouted Walt Disney World (which he discovered was overwhelmed with security guards), and actually drove to another separate nightclub that same night, only to bypass it because the distance from the parking garage to the club was too far for someone to carry a huge semiautomatic assault rifle.
The response from law enforcement, including the FBI, to the tragedy was especially exasperating because although an army of police entered the club within sixteen minutes after the first shot, it took three hours to finally confront the gunman while many bled to death, only due to fabricated stories. And the worst mistake was for the U.S. Justice department to falsely accuse the shooter's spouse of being an accomplice when she was yet another victim. The shooter's father told so many outright lies that he unintentionally blamed the victims themselves. And members of a local mosque in Miami were victimized as well.
September 3, 2024
Interesting read, but really felt like an outlet for the defense team for the shooter's widow. There's a lot too it, but the author sort of blithely tells us that all the sightings of the shooter at the site before the shooting were wrong and that the widow's confession was a false confession without really supporting those assertions. There's a lot in it criticizing the media and law enforcement for latching on to a false narrative, but the author is 'all in' on this position to the point where it feels like they have a stake in proving that it wasn't a targeted hate crime and didn't have anything to do with international terrorism.
May 7, 2025
This seemed like there were a lot of holes in the investigative journalism.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews