The Terrorist Next Door (19 page)

In conversations secretly recorded by an undercover New York police officer, the pair discussed killing U.S. troops and beheading non-Muslims.
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“I wanna, like, be the world's known terrorist,” Alessa boasted in one conversation, saying of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan, “I'll do
twice what he did.” It was not idle talk. Alessa and Almonte simulated firefights by playing paintball, practiced hand-to-hand combat, and bought military gear. They also joined a gym to lift weights because, Alessa reasoned, “Stronger muscles means bigger muscles which means killing more non-Muslims.”
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Almonte and Alessa supplemented their physical training by downloading the sermons of al-Qaeda leaders—especially Awlaki—and watching jihadist videos over the Internet.

The pair, born and bred in the North Jersey suburbs, initially seemed more likely to become involved in a street gang than in international terrorism. Almonte, raised Catholic in a Dominican family, began to find trouble during his senior year in high school. He was arrested three times in less than four months for, variously, taking a knife to campus, punching someone in a supermarket parking lot, and drinking beer in a park. In short, Almonte appeared destined for the life of a common street punk—until he heard someone preaching about Islam at a New Jersey shopping mall. Intrigued, he began frequenting local mosques and eventually became a Muslim. He met Mohamed Alessa in 2005 while hanging with a group of troubled young Arabs in North Jersey who called themselves the “Arabian Knights.” The two quickly became inseparable.
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Alessa's lifelong history of anti-social behavior makes Almonte's look tame by comparison. The son of a Palestinian father and Jordanian mother, Alessa had such an explosive temper and acid tongue that he was seeing a psychiatrist and was placed on medication by the age of six. Over the years, his proclivity for fighting and verbal threats forced him to change schools at least ten times, yet he refused the advice of his parents and friends to go back to therapy.
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He entered the Department of Homeland Security's radar screen around 2006 after threatening to blow up two public high schools that he attended and menacing students and staff.
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Alessa, raised Muslim, was not very religious when he met Almonte, but that quickly changed. The two grew matching Islamic-style beards and seemed to feed off each other. In 2007, they traveled together to Jordan in a failed attempt to link up with al-Qaeda and enter Iraq. Their
inability to join the jihad early on seems only to have upped their motivation. By the time of their arrests in 2010, Alessa and Almonte knew exactly what they wanted to do with their lives—and it didn't involve car theft, vandalism, or drug dealing. The two former hoodlums had found the ultimate
thug life
in the form of Islamic terrorism.

Adam Gadahn, Michael Finton, and the Jersey jihadis were all social misfits who converted to Islam and used the Internet to further their crash course in jihad. Terrorist recruiters overseas are having a field day connecting with similar outcasts through social networking websites and video sharing sites like YouTube. They've taken to the Web, in part, because mosques, where potential recruits would normally be sought out, are now under increased scrutiny by federal and local law enforcement. U.S. counterterrorism officials are well aware of the online trend, but their tracking abilities are at times hampered by privacy laws and constitutional concerns.
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Navigating the massive scope of the Internet is another obvious hurdle.

As a result, the online push is proving a big winner for the jihadist movement. According to a September 2010 study conducted by the Bipartisan Policy Center's National Security Preparedness Group, “[I]n 2009 at least 43 American citizens or residents were charged or convicted of terrorism crimes in the U.S. or elsewhere, the highest number in any year since 9/11.”
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No fewer than eleven major Islamic terrorist plots were hatched in 2009 alone on U.S. soil. Two were successful: the jihadi rampage at Fort Hood and the murder of U.S. military recruiter Private William Long in Little Rock, Arkansas. The rapidly increasing pace of homegrown jihad continued in 2010, with at least twenty-four convictions or arrests of U.S. citizens and residents for terrorism crimes.

A review of the various indictments and complaints against the defendants in each of these cases reveals the central role of the Internet,
both in the radicalization process and in establishing contact with jihadists abroad.

A prime example was the case of five young American Muslims who left their homes in the Washington, D.C. suburbs in November 2009 and headed to Pakistan to wage jihad against U.S. troops. One was a Howard University dental student; all were seemingly well-adjusted American citizens. Yet they made contact with a Taliban recruiter via YouTube, exchange coded e-mail messages with him over a period of months, and journeyed overseas intending to kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.
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The five were then arrested by Pakistani authorities and sentenced to ten years in prison each, to be served in Pakistan.
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The ease with which these Americans established a relationship with a terrorist recruiter through the Web shows, once again, why this method has become such an attractive option for al-Qaeda and its ilk.

The five would-be jihadists apparently met at an Alexandria, Virginia mosque run by the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), a Muslim Brotherhood-connected group that peddles Islamic supremacist materials.
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Notably, Alexandria is just a short drive from Falls Church, Virginia, the former stomping ground of none other than Anwar al-Awlaki. From January 2001 until March 2002, Awlaki served as imam of the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, just outside the nation's capital, where he mentored two of the 9/11 hijackers.

Before we delve any further into the world of homegrown jihadi geekdom, we should examine Awlaki's life and times in order to better understand the charismatic cleric whose sermons and writings have galvanized everyone from freaks and geeks to honors students into joining the global jihad.

Although Awlaki is now based in Yemen, where he helps lead al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, he is, in fact, a New Mexico-born U.S.
citizen who attended Colorado State University. His fluent English and grasp of U.S. culture and norms are a major reason why he is so appealing to young, Western Muslims—particularly recent converts—who don't speak Arabic and have never been overseas. And unlike Adam Gadahn, al-Qaeda's other English-speaking mouthpiece, the 40-year-old Awlaki is an imam who teaches at length from the Koran and the Sunnah and is viewed by Islamists as a major religious authority.

A veteran al-Qaeda-linked terrorist named Saad al-Faqih spoke to me of the much younger Awlaki in reverent tones. “I highly recommend that you read him in English,” al-Faqih gushed. “He is a jewel for you. He is very impressive and sophisticated, very linguistic. He is very powerful. His message is that America must change its entire foreign policy.” He paused for a second and added, “You cannot defeat him.”

Al-Faqih's accolades are common among Islamists; Awlaki has been dubbed the “Bin Laden of the Internet,”
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and due in large part to his massive online presence, U.S. intelligence officials tell me they now consider him the world's must influential jihadist, surpassing even bin Laden himself. As described in chapter two, al-Faqih was in direct contact with both Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan and the Underwear Bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, in the run-up to their respective terrorist acts. He's also served as inspiration for Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad and a host of other recent, homegrown Islamic terrorists. For his troubles, in 2010, Awlaki became the first U.S. citizen to be placed on the CIA's target-for-assassination list.
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It was a stunning turn of events, considering that just eight years prior Awlaki had been an honored guest at U.S. government functions. In 2002, Awlaki conducted a prayer service at the U.S. Capitol for the Congressional Muslim Staffers Association.
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If it unnerves you that an al-Qaeda terrorist with 9/11 links led prayers inside the U.S. Capitol just months after the attacks, consider this: Awlaki was also a guest at a Pentagon luncheon, again, just a few months after 9/11.
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The fact that Awlaki had been interviewed by federal agents four times in the eight days following the 9/11 attacks apparently didn't raise any red flags among our military
brass.
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After all, Anwar al-Awlaki was a well-known local moderate and decidedly
mainstream
—at least, according to his resume.

However, by the time Awlaki was being feted around Washington in 2002, he had already blamed the 9/11 attacks on Israel, endorsed Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians, defended the Taliban, and referred to the 9/11 hijackers as “victims.”
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All this was public information, but conducting a quick Google search is apparently beyond the capabilities of Congress or the Pentagon.

Awlaki's facilitation of Islamic terrorism on U.S. soil stretches back at least to 2000. It was then, while serving as imam of a San Diego mosque, that he acted as “spiritual adviser” to two of the 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, and held lengthy, closed-door meetings with the pair. Awlaki was also in contact with a third hijacker, Hani Hanjour, who visited al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar frequently in San Diego. Unsurprisingly, members of the FBI and the 9/11 Commission, as well as participants in a Congressional inquiry, believe that Awlaki played a significant role in the 9/11 attacks.
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When Awlaki left San Diego for northern Virginia in 2001 to take over as imam of Dar al-Hijrah, al-Hazmi and Hanjour followed. The men rented an apartment not far from Falls Church and attended Awlaki's sermons at Dar al-Hijrah.
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But not to worry: the mosque's Muslim Brotherhood-connected leaders to this day insist they had no idea back then about their popular young imam's terror ties or his fervent desire to destroy America.
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Although Awlaki left Falls Church in 2002, spending the obligatory (for jihadis) two years in London before settling in Yemen, he is still quite popular among northern Virginia's Muslim community—and not just over the Internet. I discovered this firsthand when I paid a visit to the largest Islamic supermarket in the Washington, D.C. area. That store, Halalco, is also located in Falls Church, about a mile from the Dar al-Hijrah
mosque. But Halalco is much more than a supermarket. In addition to
halal
meat and various delicacies from the Middle East and South Asia, the store carries a large selection of Islamic books, recordings, and clothing. I received a tip from a federal law enforcement source in 2009 that among Halalco's titles were a litany of Muslim Brotherhood, anti-Semitic, and pro-jihad works. Sure enough, I found exactly that in multiple visits to the store over a period of months.