The Terrorist Next Door (13 page)

Ultimately, thirteen men were convicted in connection with the Virginia case. One of them was a white convert to Islam named Randall Todd “Ismail” Royer, a former employee of both the Council on American-Islamic
Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim American Society (MAS)—two groups that, as we'll see, have been embraced by successive U.S. administrations despite their radical connections and pro-terrorist track records. Royer and several of his fellow cell members worshipped, it should be noted, at the Dar al-Arqam Islamic Center in Falls Church, Virginia, just miles from the White House. No reason to be concerned or anything, though. Again, just a merry band of isolated Taliban wannabes who just so happened to be fanatical, well-trained, and within spitting distance of the Pentagon and Capitol Hill.

The Fort Dix Five were another recent, homegrown Islamic terror cell that trained for jihad by playing paintball in a secluded area, this time in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains. The five young Muslim men (anyone sensing a pattern here?) were convicted in 2009 of plotting to storm New Jersey's Fort Dix and massacre U.S. soldiers.

No region in America, however, presents the perfect storm of gun culture, rural expanse, and growing Muslim populations quite like the South. In that sense, the strange case of a jihadist named Daniel Boyd may be a harbinger of things to come.

Willow Springs isn't Mayberry—but it's close. This sleepy North Carolina hamlet, population 11,576, is nestled in the rolling countryside outside of Raleigh, just a stone's throw from North Carolina State University. A drive past the well-kept cul de sacs and freshly mowed lawns that dot rural Willow Springs reveals scenes from a simpler time. Old folks stroll hand in hand while young children ride bikes together in the streets. Churches are filled on Sundays and neighbors look out for one another.

Clad regularly in fundamentalist Muslim garb, Daniel Patrick Boyd and his family were not your typical Willow Springers. Boyd wore a long, Islamic-style beard and his wife was often seen wearing an all-encompassing, black burqa that left only her eyes visible. If this were a
liberal Hollywood production, frothing fundamentalist Christian neighbors would have ridden the Boyds out of town on a rail, hanging their cat from a tree for good measure. But reality has a way of shattering liberal stereotypes. I found that Boyd and his family were not only accepted by their Christian neighbors, they were wholeheartedly embraced. Strangely enough, Daniel Boyd, despite his present jihadist beliefs, actually had an all-American upbringing familiar to many folks in Willow Springs.

Raised Episcopalian in suburban Washington, D.C., the fairhaired Boyd played defensive line for his state champion high school football team and was reared by a Marine father who earned four Purple Hearts. Engaged to his high school sweetheart in a region brimming with job opportunities, Daniel Boyd had a bright future. But his life took an unlikely turn in 1988, when the 17-year-old made a fateful decision that would lead to his eventual arrest on terrorism charges two decades later. Daniel Boyd converted to Islam.

Boyd's parents had divorced when he was a teen. His mother soon remarried a devout Muslim lawyer named William Saddler, who made a profound impact on Daniel and his brother. Both young men embraced Islam with a fervor that led them to the notorious tribal regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan shortly after high school graduation. And the two white, suburban teens certainly didn't travel halfway around the world to a godforsaken backwater for the scenery. Once they arrived in Afghanistan, the Boyds linked up with Islamic “mujahedeen” fighters who were battling Soviet occupying forces. Years later, Boyd would boast to fellow worshippers at his Raleigh Islamic Center about his days spent waging jihad against Soviet infidels in the mountains of Afghanistan. He was building the “street cred” that would enable him to assemble an eight-man Islamic terrorist cell in the Raleigh area that sought to attack U.S. military installations.

Boyd first captured U.S. media attention years earlier, in 1991, when he and his brother were arrested in Peshawar, Pakistan, after allegedly
robbing a bank. Boyd was convicted by an Islamic court and sentenced to have his right hand and left foot amputated according to Islamic sharia law. (This is the same type of legal “verdict,” by the way, that U.S.-based Islamists would like to see enforced here via sharia.) The U.S. State Department got involved in Boyd's case, and a Pakistani appeals panel eventually tossed out the verdict against him and his brother. Boyd soon returned to the United States and settled in Willow Springs with his wife, Sabrina—his high school girlfriend who had since converted to Islam and followed Daniel to the wilds of Afghanistan.

It's no surprise that Boyd found it difficult to suppress his hunger for jihad upon returning to the United States. After spending years fighting in a foreign terrorist hotbed alongside battle-hardened jihadists, it wasn't like Boyd could easily transition into a 9-to-5 gig at the local gas station. A Muslim friend of the Boyd family told me Daniel had an insatiable appetite for jihad and talked about it all the time. He found the American South to be the perfect place to pursue his “hobby.”

And why not? Land is plentiful in Old Dixie, including lots of remote, potential training grounds allowing for plenty of cover to fire weapons, conduct drills, and plot. And in most rural southern areas, guys owning several guns, God love 'em, just go with the territory. Another reason the South is attractive for jihadists (and which may stun the deans of the mainstream media) is that the people are, well, downright tolerant—perhaps self-consciously so, given the region's checkered history of race relations. As anyone who has recently spent even a few days in places like Arkansas and Tennessee can tell you, this is not your granddaddy's South—yet old stereotypes and outdated media narratives die hard. The Klan is now a decrepit, vanishing punch line, and I can say from firsthand experience that blacks and whites co-exist more harmoniously down South than in Philadelphia, New York City, or Washington, D.C., the three “enlightened” liberal cities in which I have spent my entire life.

In the case of Daniel Boyd, the devout, friendly people of the South welcomed him and his Muslim family. In fact, I found that Boyd's
overwhelmingly Christian neighbors adored him. He was seen as a leader, a pillar of his quiet suburban subdivision, where a lake resting behind his well-kept single home added to the tranquility. I spent some time in Willow Springs interviewing Boyd's neighbors shortly after he and two of his sons were arrested on terrorism charges in July 2009. One close neighbor, a woman in her late thirties, told me the Boyds formed “the biggest welcoming party in the neighborhood” when she moved in, and that they were full of “kindness” and “empathy.” She nervously fingered a cross around her neck and shot glances at her young daughter as she described how Sabrina Boyd had “helped her through a tough time” in her life. A practicing Christian, she had engaged in some friendly religious debates with the Boyds, but said they never tried to press their Islamic beliefs upon her. She also said she found the terrorism charges against Boyd and his boys hard to believe. As for the huge weapons cache that authorities found hidden beneath Boyd's home, she had no idea.

Across the street, a grungy young guy with a ponytail took time from working on a car in his driveway to adamantly declare Daniel Boyd's innocence. He said that young people like him considered Boyd the neighborhood “advice-giver,” a father figure in whom they could confide. He added that Boyd helped steer him back on the right path after he ran away from home. Like the other neighbor, this young guy, who looked like he just strolled out of a Marilyn Manson concert, maintained that Boyd never tried to impress his Islamic beliefs upon anyone. Yet it was obvious that he deeply admired Boyd, and he may not have been completely forthcoming with me.

Indeed, as I conducted more interviews in and around Willow Springs, a fuller and much less flattering portrait began to emerge of Daniel Boyd than the one presented by his trusting neighbors. In the course of my investigation, I learned that Boyd took the Koranic justification for lying to non-believers and the Islamic doctrine of “taqiyya,” or deception, quite literally.

On my first day in Raleigh, I visited a strip mall in nearby Garner, North Carolina, where Boyd had owned an Islamic store that also served as a gathering place for local Muslims. The store—which sold Muslim garb and halal meats—was unsuccessful, and Boyd closed it down after less than a year. It was replaced by a thrift shop whose owner, Ramona McWhorter, told me she believes Boyd stole several storage shelves from the property months after he had vacated it.

According to McWhorter—and corroborated by an independent witness—Boyd entered the property illegally through the back entrance one day shortly before his arrest in July 2009, probably using a spare key he had kept. He casually loaded several storage shelves into his truck and drove away. One wonders if the shelves helped store the weapons cache in the ditch he had dug out beneath his home.

Boyd's Pied Piper act with local youths was most effective at the Raleigh Islamic Center, which he attended for a time. Before leaving the mosque, apparently because it was not extreme enough, he was able to recruit an eight-man crew of impressionable young Muslim men—including his two sons—whom he would later lead in weapons training in the remote countryside of Caswell County, North Carolina. Their ultimate goal, according to the federal indictment against them: attack a U.S. military facility in Quantico, Virginia, and kill as many U.S. soldiers as possible. The indictment stated that Boyd had also traveled to the Gaza Strip with one of his sons in 2006 in order to link up with Palestinian jihadists. He was denied entry by Israeli authorities upon a return visit in 2007 and detained for two days.

As more details emerged, it became obvious that the Boyd cell wasn't just some hackneyed, country-bumpkin affair. Almost one year after Boyd's July 2009 arrest on terrorism charges, authorities uncovered an overseas connection to his jihadist cell, revealing that it had international clout and backing.
¹⁶
The link comprised a co-conspirator in Kosovo who was providing funding and working on grander plots outside his country along with Boyd and the other defendants. The damage Boyd's cell
eventually intended to inflict was global, to be done in cooperation with the jihadist movement in Kosovo.
¹⁷

So what, if anything, did Boyd's fellow mosque-goers at the Raleigh Islamic Center know about his activities, and when did they know it? Did the Muslim community in Raleigh realize that Boyd was consulting with international jihadists, planning terrorist attacks, and recruiting followers? The pro-jihad worldview of Daniel Boyd could not have been a secret to them. Some would say he wore his intentions on his sleeve. One man who frequented the Raleigh Islamic Center told me he voiced concerns about Boyd but was ignored. I also spoke to a regular at the mosque who said it was “hard to argue with anything that is in the indictment” against Boyd and the other cell members, noting that Boyd spoke “openly” and often among fellow Muslims about the need to wage violent jihad. The source described Boyd's views about U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan and about the Israel-Palestinian conflict as “very strong.” Much like the grungy neighbor, young Muslims from dysfunctional backgrounds at the mosque gravitated to Boyd and looked up to him, enthralled by his tales of fighting alongside the Afghan mujahedeen.

According to my source, not all Muslims at the Raleigh Islamic Center agreed with Boyd's viewpoints, and there were some arguments. But he noted that American Muslim communities in Raleigh and elsewhere are fiercely insular and often enforce a “code of silence” when it comes to fellow believers. This trend toward self-segregation is exactly the blueprint that Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood encourage for Western Muslims, as we saw in chapter one.

At least one local Muslim apparently assisted the FBI in bringing down Boyd's southern-fried terror cell, and that is encouraging news. But the fact remains that Boyd, who is now awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to conspiracy charges, was able to build an eight-member team—right under the noses of Raleigh's Muslims—that was allegedly training for attacks both overseas and on U.S soil.

The Boyd case shows that the U.S. government should consider any American Muslims who fought in Afghanistan during the 1980s and
early '90s—alongside men who would later form the vanguard of al-Qaeda—not as washed-up adventurers, but as serious security risks. It is unclear when exactly Daniel Boyd entered federal authorities' radar screen. What is clear is that for Boyd, jihad was not a passing fancy that could be discarded in favor of the NASCAR-and-BBQ culture of rural North Carolina. As increasing numbers of young American Muslims return to the South and elsewhere from time spent in terrorist training camps overseas, U.S. officials would do well to consider Daniel Boyd a cautionary tale.