ISIS Exposed: Beheadings, Slavery, and the Hellish Reality of Radical Islam (15 page)

To recap: America’s top general, four congressmen, and the popular governor of a border state all warn that ISIS operatives have infiltrated, or may be planning to infiltrate, the U.S.-Mexico border. And why wouldn’t they? Report after report has documented how murderers, gang members, drug smugglers, rapists, and every other criminal element have already done so, along with members of various terrorist groups, including the likes of Hezbollah.
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Another not-so-fun fact: close to 167,000 illegal immigrants have been convicted of crimes and are scheduled to be deported, yet they remain at large inside the United States.
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Most of them undoubtedly entered the U.S. through its southern border. Yet that same border continues to be virtually ignored by the Obama administration, recklessly and brazenly putting American lives at risk.

How dangerous is the “borderless” game the Obama team is playing? When I asked Brian Fairchild, a former career CIA case officer who ran clandestine operations in seven CIA stations around the world, which kinds of possible attacks on the U.S. homeland concerned him most, he laid out the following scenario:

          
What I’m concerned about is that whatever spectacular approach [ISIS leader Abu Bakr] al Baghdadi decides on might include Weapons of Mass Destruction. It is a fact that he controls munitions from Iraq’s Muthanna chemical weapons complex that contain Sarin, VX, and mustard gas, and, in addition to that, we know that his fighters seized approximately 90 pounds of uranium compounds from a university in Mosul that can be used to construct a dirty bomb. And, of course, there is always the possibility that biological weapons could be employed against us, so I’m afraid that whatever spectacular attack he imagines might well include the use of these WMDs.

                
This is where the vulnerabilities of our southern border come into play. While many foreign fighters can enter the U.S. via American airports with U.S. or Western European passports and then find weapons or the materials to construct bombs after their arrival, it is highly unlikely that they would be able to smuggle chemical weapons or radioactive elements in this way.

                
The U.S. border with Mexico, however, is a huge sieve through which people and drugs are smuggled into the country on a daily basis, so it is likely that a dedicated team of terrorists could smuggle WMDs, RPGs, MANPADs, or other weapons into the country.
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[emphasis added]

Fairchild’s clandestine work for the CIA saw him operate under both official and non-official cover—including a stint as chief of base in a hostile “denied area”—that is, territory under enemy control. He’s a serious, razor-sharp guy with loads of experience working in the shadows in some of the most dangerous places on earth. When he tells me America’s southern border is a disaster waiting to happen, I take his word for it. As for ISIS and chemical arms, the Islamic State reportedly has already used such
weapons against Kurds in Syria.
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In addition, an August 2014
Foreign Policy
piece detailed the alarming contents of a laptop captured from a Tunisian jihadist named “Muhammed S.” who had studied chemistry and physics before joining ISIS in Syria. On his laptop was a nineteen-page Arabic document detailing “how to develop biological weapons and how to weaponize the bubonic plague from infected animals”:

          
“The advantage of biological weapons is that they do not cost a lot of money, while the human casualties can be huge,” the document states.

                
The document includes instructions for how to test the weaponized disease safely, before it is used in a terrorist attack. “When the microbe is injected in small mice, the symptoms of the disease should start to appear within 24 hours,” the document says.

Also on the same laptop was a twenty-six-page fatwa from Nasir al-Fahd, an Islamic cleric currently imprisoned in Saudi Arabia, justifying the use of WMDs: “‘If Muslims cannot defeat the kafir [unbelievers] in a different way, it is permissible to use weapons of mass destruction. . . . Even if it kills all of them and wipes them and their descendants off the face of the Earth.’”

As
Foreign Policy
noted, “The fear now is that men like Muhammed [S.] could be quietly working behind the front lines—for instance, in the Islamic State–controlled University of Mosul or in some laboratory in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the group’s de facto capital—to develop chemical or biological weapons.” The possibilities are chilling: “‘Use small grenades with the virus, and throw them in closed areas like metros, soccer stadiums, or entertainment centers,’ the 19-page document on biological weapons advises. ‘Best to do it next to the air-conditioning. It also can be used during suicide operations.’”
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As Fairchild pointed out, why try to smuggle these kinds of weapons into the United States on an airplane when you can waltz across the Rio Grande undetected?

Although America’s southern border is surely enticing, it isn’t the only means by which ISIS jihadists and their sympathizers can penetrate the United States and carry out attacks. As we’ve seen, from beheading grandmothers to attacking police officers with hatchets in broad daylight, Islamic State barbarians are not just at the gates. They’re already inside them.

CHAPTER FOUR

HEARTLAND HORROR: THE AMERICAN RECRUITS

FROM THE MOMENT I STEPPED INSIDE FAITH BIBLE CHAPEL IN
Arvada, Colorado, it felt like a homecoming.

I was in town to speak at the church’s thirty-sixth annual Israel Awareness Day, a vibrant interfaith event designed to show unwavering support for Israel and the Jewish people in the face of world hostility.

For this four thousand five hundred–member congregation located just outside Denver, Israel Awareness Day, which is capped by a “Night to Honor Israel” celebration featuring high-profile speakers, music, and worship, presents an opportunity to show both Christian and non-Christian alike what they are all about.

Pastor George Morrison and his team are kind and welcoming. They love Jesus. They love Israel. They preach the Gospel boldly and without apology.

And Shannon Conley hated them for it.

At the time of my visit in October 2014, it had been nearly one year since Conley, a nineteen-year-old ISIS sympathizer and aspiring jihadist,
had stalked the Faith Bible campus on Sundays carrying a large backpack and dressed in Islamic garb. I spoke to a member of the church’s security team who described how Conley took notes as she wandered around various areas of the church, testing doors, recording sanctuary activities, and documenting the location of security cameras. She was also seen pacing near Sunday School areas filled with children. When security and church staff asked to review her notes, Conley refused to let them.

In the church parking lot, a member of the Faith Bible security team observed a camouflage U.S. Army jacket draped over the passenger seat of Conley’s car—bearing a patch showing the Saudi flag (which features the Islamic
shahada,
or creed, along with a sword). When a staffer asked Conley if she was coming to church because she was interested in converting to Christianity, she answered in the negative, saying she was devoted to Islam.

Naturally, this kind of alarming behavior by a devoutly Muslim woman at an evangelical Christian church raised eyebrows. Particularly at Faith Bible, where a 2007 shooting spree by a deranged man at a missionary training center had left two people dead (the shooter went on to kill two more people at a church in Colorado Springs that same day).

Given that tragic history and Conley’s erratic displays and lack of cooperation with security, church leaders eventually had no choice but to ask her to leave Faith Bible Chapel. They alerted the Arvada Police Department about Conley’s behavior, and the investigation was then turned over to the Colorado branch of the FBI. In April 2014, a few months after the church stalkings, federal agents arrested Conley at Denver International Airport. She was on her way to Syria, via Turkey, to marry an ISIS fighter she had met online. Conley, a certified nurse’s aide, told agents she hoped to be “a housewife and the camp nurse” and help treat wounded ISIS fighters. She was also willing to engage in armed jihad if called upon.
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As for Faith Bible Chapel, Conley told the FBI that she detested the church’s pro-Israel stand, stating, flatly, “I hate those people.” She added,
“If they think I’m a terrorist, I’ll give them something to think I am.” Mission accomplished. Shannon Conley—raised in a comfortable, middle-class suburb of Denver—had become a committed, and unlikely, Islamic radical. According to a
Los Angeles Times
profile,

          
Conley had been “among the brightest kids” at Arvada West High School, said principal Rob Bishop, adding that she was the daughter of a professor at a Catholic university, was enrolled in honors courses and presented no discipline problems.

                
Sometime during her junior year, Bishop said, Conley had begun to wear traditional Muslim dress. Several girls complained that she was kneeling on the bathroom floor three times a day for her prayers.
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Conley eventually took the Arabic name Halima, describing herself on her Facebook page as a “slave to Allah.” Her rapid conversion surprised her family and neighbors. One neighbor recalled sometimes seeing her, “sitting alone in a neighborhood park, drifting silently on the playground swing” and looking “kind of lost.”
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It’s likely that Conley discovered fundamentalist Islam where so many radicalized converts do, on the Web. She began corresponding online with a Tunisian ISIS jihadist and agreed to relocate to Syria and marry him.

Following her arrest, Conley was generally portrayed in the mainstream media as a bungling sad sack who was a threat to no one but herself. Yet in preparation for her new life abroad as a jihadi bride, Conley managed to receive military training at a Texas camp run by the U.S. Army Explorers.
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During a search of her Arvada home, agents found jihadist videos, including sermons by notorious al Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki (who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2011). They also discovered shooting targets marked with the distance and number of rounds that had been fired.

If Conley had made it to Syria and taken up arms, she wouldn’t have been the first woman to participate in violent jihad. According to one
estimate, as of August 2013, at least “46 women [had] turned themselves into suicide bombs in Russia, committing 26 terrorist attacks (some attacks involved multiple women). Most of the bombers were from Chechnya and Dagestan.”
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These Chechen and Dagestani “Black Widows” typically have lost husbands or sons in the ongoing Islamic insurgency against Russian forces in the Caucasus region. The Widows conduct suicide bombings against Russian civilians in a sick form of revenge for their deceased loved ones.

Conley had no such personal motivation for joining with ISIS, but she was fanatically committed to its cause nonetheless. FBI agents met with her, face to face, eight times between November 2013 and April 2014 and met six times with her parents during that same span. The agents tried repeatedly to dissuade Conley from traveling to Syria and warned that what she was planning was illegal, but to no avail.
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“Halima” was hell-bent on traveling to Syria, marrying a jihadist, and helping ISIS. While the mainstream media was busy dismissing Conley as a harmless wannabe, they ignored the obvious question: Had she not chosen to wage jihad in Syria, what’s to say that this increasingly fervent ISIS sympathizer wouldn’t have turned her sights on local targets like Faith Bible Chapel instead?

In September 2014, Conley pleaded guilty in a Denver District Court to “providing material support to al-Qaeda and affiliates, including ISIS.” In January 2015, she was sentenced to four years in federal prison for her attempts to travel overseas and join ISIS.
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According to the
Denver Post,
“As part of a plea agreement, prosecutors agreed not to file additional charges, and [Conley] promised to divulge information about co-conspirators and possibly testify in court.”
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Perhaps one day Conley will share insights into why so many young Western women like her from middle class backgrounds are gravitating toward the most misogynistic, undemocratic, and depraved society on the planet. The growing list of female Islamic State recruits includes three teenage girls who lived not far from Conley in Aurora, Colorado, outside Denver.

The trio—two sisters of Somali descent aged seventeen and fifteen and their friend, a sixteen-year-old girl of Sudanese descent—were taken into custody at Germany’s Frankfurt Airport in October 2014 as they prepared to board a flight to Turkey with plans to travel to Syria and join ISIS. They were encouraged in their mission by an “online predator,” or recruiter, who enticed them into traveling to the Islamic State.
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The two sisters stole passports and $2,000 from their parents’ home before heading out with their friend on a quest, not just to be jihadi brides, but “to join the fight” alongside ISIS.
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And they are not alone in that quest.

As of November 2014, at least four Somali-American women had reportedly left Minneapolis and St. Paul and made their way to the Islamic State.
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The Twin Cities’ Somali community has been a virtual conveyor belt for foreign terrorist organizations over the past several years. Bob Fletcher, who served as sheriff of Ramsey County, which includes St. Paul, for sixteen years, told me that young Somali women in the Twin Cities are being recruited online. “They are constantly getting messages,” he said. “Especially from the women [of ISIS]. These young women [in the Islamic State] . . . are feeding these other women propaganda, if you will, to come.”
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