Jihad Joe (26 page)

The newly converted Gadahn was drawn to this group and particularly to two members: Hisham Diab and Khalil Deek, the heads of an organization called
Charity Without Borders. Both men were believed to be mujahideen veterans of the Bosnia war.
¹⁴

The older men drilled the impressionable teenager with religious ideology, pushing him to dress in Arab style and grow a beard. They warned him of the dangers of associating with
kaffirs
(infidels) and angrily condemned people at the mosque who took part in interfaith outreach. Their condemnations of the Islamic Society's chairman inspired Gadahn to assault the man.
¹⁵
In 1997 Gadahn left the United States for Pakistan, his trip paid for by Charity Without Borders. Except for a brief visit home in 1998, he was finished with America.

Deek moved to Pakistan soon after, and the two men lived in Peshawar.
¹⁶
Reports on Gadahn's early involvement with al Qaeda are sketchy. He worked for a while on low-level tasks, handling communications and translations for al Qaeda and other militant groups in the Pakistani city. At some point, he crossed over into Afghanistan and became a part of al Qaeda. For a few years, he labored in obscurity.
¹⁷

Gadahn resurfaced in dramatic style in 2004, when he starred in an al Qaeda videotape. He appeared with his face covered, identified only as “Azzam the American.” In an interview with an unnamed questioner, Azzam answered a series of short questions with a series of lengthy diatribes, outlining al Qaeda's case against the United States.

Although he delved into Islamic history and ideology, the core of his anger was reserved for his home country. Speaking in English with an affected or acquired Arabic accent, Azzam the American blasted both the United States and the Muslims who live there peacefully:

My country of origin, like many extinct, forgotten nations before it, is at war with the truth and wants to replace the genuine teachings of Islam, the genuine teachings of the religion, with a tame, nonthreatening version of Islam, made up somewhere in the greater Washington, D.C., area. My country of origin is making war on Muslims, killing and displacing thousands of them, occupying their homelands and holy places, and plundering and depleting their resources. My country of origin is spreading immorality, economic instability, environmental destruction, and many other afflictions throughout the Muslim world. Throughout the entire world, in fact.
¹⁸

In 2005 Azzam's role became clearer. On the anniversary of September 11, he appeared in a second video, threatening new attacks in the United States (specifically in Los Angeles, a threat that was never realized). A few days later, al Qaeda released a video filmed in the style of a Western news program and titled
Voice of the Caliphate
.
¹⁹
Gadahn's voice was clearly recognizable in the video, speaking in Arabic.

It became increasingly clear that Gadahn was not only the front man on these productions; he was involved in their production. al Qaeda's video production unit during the 1990s had been truly professional, producing slick, polished propaganda such as
The State of Ummah
, a two-hour documentary featuring iconic images of al Qaeda's training camps and a long critique of U.S. policies toward the Muslim world.
²⁰

After 9/11 the media operation had descended into chaos, although audio and video communiqués from top Al Qaeda leaders continued to trickle out. Starting in 2005, that changed. A stream of new productions was released by al Qaeda's media branch, As-Sahab (meaning “the clouds”). Gadahn was believed to be heavily involved in the production of these videos, narrating an English-language Al Qaeda documentary on the September 11 attacks, among other contributions.
²¹

He also began to issue more formal communiqués in the style of Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri.
An Invitation to Islam
professed to offer Americans a chance to avoid certain destruction by converting. The video was introduced by Zawahiri, firmly establishing Gadahn's credentials. Subsequent videos warned again and again about imminent and devastating attacks that never seemed to happen.
²²

Over time Gadahn ceased to be a novelty, and his messages became less effective with American audiences, due to a combination of increasing U.S. and Pakistani military pressure on his position and his growing immersion in the culture of al Qaeda.

He was, in many ways, an object lesson in the limitations of American jihadists in communications and more generally. Many of al Qaeda's American recruits become enamored of Arab and Muslim culture early in the radicalization process. They eventually stop talking like Americans and start talking like Arabs. Often, the longer they are involved with terrorism, the less effective they are at reaching U.S. audiences.

Nevertheless, “Azzam the American” continued to be a significant figure in al Qaeda's stream of propaganda communication. In 2009 he appeared in a video titled
The Mujahideen Don't Target Muslims
, which tried to refute the growing (and accurate) perception that al Qaeda's terrorist attacks were killing far more Muslims than “Crusaders,” particularly in Pakistan. Gadahn argued that the media had wrongly attributed recent attacks to al Qaeda, part of a frame-up by the governments of Pakistan and the United States.
²³

As of this writing, Gadahn is believed to be in hiding, somewhere along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda has often exploited its Western members for communications and publicity, but the original goal of recruiting Americans was always to use their passports and their ability to blend in while preparing terrorist attacks. That strategy became front-page headlines when jihadist Jose Padilla returned at long last to U.S. soil.

Padilla had spent September 2001 at the house of al Qaeda's military commander, Mohammed Atef. When an American air strike killed Atef in November, it narrowly missed taking out Padilla as well. The Latino American had been training in explosives when the strike took place. He returned to find the house in ruins and helped dig Atef's body out of the wreckage.
²⁴

Padilla and Adnan Shukrijumah, his compatriot from Florida, had been ordered to blow up apartment buildings back in the United States, but the two could not get along. Shukrijumah, ruthlessly competent and pragmatic, was intellectually a cut above Padilla, whose ambitions outstripped his ability by a wide margin. Shukrijumah bailed out of the apartments plot, and Padilla was assigned another partner, an Ethiopian named Binyamin Mohamed.

The two men went to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed—al Qaeda's chief of terrorist operations and the mastermind of 9/11—to discuss the plan. Padilla continued to lobby for some kind of nuclear attack, but Mohammed was skeptical. Exasperated, he finally sent the two men to America with money in their pockets and a promise that instructions would follow.

Padilla was arrested the moment he stepped off the plane in Chicago. Binyamin didn't even make it out of Pakistan before getting nabbed by authorities there.
²⁵

Attorney General John Ashcroft announced Padilla's arrest in dramatic fashion, hyping the dirty bomb threat and labeling him an enemy combatant, which
led to the al Qaeda member being incarcerated in a military prison without due process for more than three years. Finally, Padilla was moved back into the legal system, amid questions about whether he was ever all that dangerous and whether an American detained on U.S. soil could be denied his right to a lawyer and a trial.

The surviving leaders of the American Islamic Group—including Adham Hassoun and Kifah Al Jayyousi—had also been arrested and were facing indictment in Florida. Because Padilla had first been radicalized and sent overseas by Hassoun, they were tried together. All were convicted of conspiracy to murder, maim, and kidnap people abroad and sentenced to life in prison.
²⁶

Things were going better for al Qaeda's other Floridian. Far from being cannon fodder, Adnan Shukrijumah was rising through the ranks.

Starting in 2003 U.S. authorities began to issue a series of increasingly frantic-sounding alerts about Shukrijumah but offered few details about why he was so important. Sightings poured in from around the world: Guyana, Canada, Trinidad, and Tampa, Florida. He had even purportedly cased the Panama Canal for a possible al Qaeda attack.
²⁷

Some of the leads were solid, but most were sketchy, and the intelligence never included a clear explanation of what Shukrijumah was doing.
²⁸
Rumor had it that his nickname was “Jaffar the Pilot” and that he was training to be the next Mohammed Atta, but no conclusive evidence ever surfaced suggesting that Shukrijumah knew how to fly.
²⁹

But more credible traces of his activities eventually emerged. In 2009 the FBI broke up a small cell of U.S. citizens and immigrants led by Najibullah Zazi, a naturalized American citizen born in Afghanistan who had moved to Queens as a teenager. Zazi was, as one relative put it, “a dumb kid.” He worked a coffee stand in Manhattan before moving to Denver and driving a shuttle bus. In 2006 Zazi flew to Pakistan to find a wife. He married a nineteen-year-old cousin who stayed in Pakistan while he returned to the United States. During his time away, Zazi had become more religious. He grew a beard and started to give a cold shoulder to the non-Muslims he encountered on the job.
³⁰

In 2008 Zazi went to Afghanistan and visited an al Qaeda training camp, where he received training in weapons and improvised explosives.
³¹
Drawing on the latter, he returned to the United States with a grocery list of bomb ingredients. He began shopping.

After the invasion of Afghanistan, al Qaeda's training apparatus had been rendered into a permanent state of chaos. During the 1990s the training experience was thorough, long term, and rigorous. Post-9/11, the training regimen for most recruits became haphazard and much shorter, sometimes cramming months' worth of information into just a few days. Like many of al Qaeda's new brigade of volunteers, the “dumb kid” didn't learn his lessons very well. When he was arrested shortly before the anniversary of September 11, he was in a panic, having just called overseas for advice on how to complete the job.
³²

When the FBI questioned Zazi and his accomplices, they discovered that the man who had ordered the former coffee vendor to bomb his adopted home was none other than Adnan Shukrijumah.
³³

In August 2010 the FBI issued yet another alarming alert with precious few details attached. The new media blitz claimed that Shukrijumah had taken over the job of his old boss, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and was now the head of al Qaeda's external operations.
³⁴

The ramifications of this development were unclear, as was the source. The FBI refused to discuss Shukrijumah for this book.

Clearly, an American would theoretically be well equipped to plan attacks on the United States, but being the “new” Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was a very different thing in 2010 than being the “old” KSM.

In 2001 Mohammed had the ability to travel with relative freedom, stable facilities to work from, a significant budget to work with, and a small army of professional operatives to make his plans a reality. Shukrijumah, in contrast, had a fraction of the money, no stable geographical base, and a small brigade of enthusiastic but inept amateurs such as Zazi and his friends.

Faisal Shahzad was born in Pakistan and moved to the United States as a college student, where he majored in computer science and engineering at the University of Bridgeport, Connecticut. For more than a decade, he lived in the United States without attracting much notice. Shahzad made a good living in the United States and seemed to be comfortable in his new home, if not fully at ease.

He maintained strong ties in Pakistan, even after marrying an American Muslim from the Denver area. His wife covered her hair, and he often dressed in
Pakistani-style clothing, but they didn't stand out as being unassimilated. Firmly ensconced in the upper middle class, the Shahzads were, by most accounts, relaxed and unremarkable. He became an American citizen in 2009.
³⁵

Yet behind closed doors, Faisal Shahzad was discontented, and that discontent was growing. In the years following September 11, he became enamored of jihadist propaganda and began to segregate himself from non-Muslims, at least internally.
³⁶

In many ways, it was a classic jihadist turn, focused on the victimization of Muslims abroad, especially the rape of Muslim women. Unlike earlier American-born converts, however, Shahzad steeped himself in theological arguments before turning toward action.
³⁷

After the U.S. invasion of Iraq, he began to believe that America was working to harm Muslims. That perception was reinforced by the words of English-language jihadist ideologues such as Abdullah Al Faisal and Anwar Awlaki. He began posting to jihadist message boards and railing to his friends about U.S. foreign policy.
³⁸
In 2006 he wrote to a friend,

We all know that most of our
Ummah
is ignorant of Islam or illiterate of Koran and
Sunnah
[practices of the Prophet Mohammed]. Koran and
Sunnah
is our very base and purpose of creation in this world. Most of us get confused with current wars when we try to make logic with our worldly knowledge. Have you every try to look at [it] with Allah's prospective [sic], do you try to read and understand Koran? Except for just clinging to one excuse that Islam does not allow innocent killings? Not saying that it is right, but we are not sure of who does that either? It might be U.S.A fighter who gives his life to Allah can never disobey His commands. [ … ] We don't know the realities on ground as to what the Mujahideen goes through but you would have to agree to the fact that there is a force out there that is fighting the west and is defeating them.
³⁹