Advance Praise for The Blood of Lambs
“Kamal Saleem is a courageous man. In The Blood of Lambs, he chronicles his incredible life as an Islamic terrorist and gives readers an inside look at the cruel world of terrorism and the threat it poses to democracy. Kamal’s riveting story is a must read. Thanks, Kamal, for telling the world the truth about terrorism and your new life of faith.”
—LTG (Ret.) William G. Boykin, Former Commander of U.S. Army Special Forces and Founding Member of Delta
“Many Americans are oblivious to the threat that exists within our own borders from radical jihadists. By highlighting some of the motivations and tactics used by our enemies, this book will serve as a clarion call for the great struggle that America will face for many years to come.”
—Major General Bentley Rayburn, USAF (Ret.), former Commandant of the Air War College
“The Blood of Lambs is a book that all Americans who love truth and freedom should read. Using guile, patience, intimidation, and violence, Islamic fundamentalists are trying to replace the U.S. Constitution with Sharia Islamic law. Kamal is one of the few brave former terrorists telling the truths that most wish to close their eyes and ears to. I commend Kamal in his work to wake up America.”
—Walid Shoebat, Former Islamic terrorist, speaker and author of Why I Left Jihad and Why We Want to Kill You
“Kamal Saleem was a highly trained, efficient killer—a dedicated Islamic terrorist who wanted to see America and Israel destroyed. But today, he is risking his life by telling his secrets and laying his life bare. Kamal is now a professed Christian, trying to live a normal, American life. He has grown to love his adopted country and wants to see it protected from radical Islam. You have never read a book like The Blood of Lambs. Kamal is one of the boldest and most courageous men that I have ever met. He has a message that you need to hear.”
—James Fitzgerald, Jr., Producer, ColdWater Media, Inc.
THE BLOOD OF LAMBS
A Former Terrorist’s Memoir of Death and Redemption
KAMAL SALEEM
WITH LYNN VINCENT
Our purpose at Howard Books is to:
• Increase faith in the hearts of growing Christians
• Inspire holiness in the lives of believers
• Instill hope in the hearts of struggling people everywhere
Because He’s coming again!
Published by Howard Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.howardpublishing.com
The Blood of Lambs © 2009 Arise Enterprises, LLC
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Howard Subsidiary Rights Department,
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc.,
7680 Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920,
www.alivecommunications.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4391-5928-6
ISBN-10: 1-4391-5928-9
HOWARD and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Many names have been changed in an effort to protect the privacy and/or ensure the safety of individuals included in these memoirs.
Visit us on the World Wide Web:
http://www.SimonSays.com
You once said to me,
“God has something special planned for your future.”
That something special was you, my dear wife.
When I was thirsty, you gave me drink.
When I was hungry, you fed me—
not lies
not hate
not cruelty
just love.
Your love has brought healing to that young boy who cried out
on the rooftop, in his secret place, and on the sea cliffs.
The boy who learned to love hate and dream murder is no longer.
Victoria, you are my new dreaming window.
And the boy in the man still looks out and dreams,
but now only of loving you.
Nothing can separate us.
Contents
Map of the Middle East
Chino, California 2007
Beirut, Lebanon 1963
Aspen, Colorado 2007
Beirut, Lebanon 1964
Beirut, Lebanon 1965
Ann Arbor, Michigan 2007
Beirut, Lebanon 1965
Houston, Texas 2007
Beirut, Lebanon 1965
Atlanta, Georgia 2007
Beirut, Lebanon 1965
Southwestern United States 2007
Beirut, Lebanon 1966–1971
Beirut, Lebanon, and the Libyan Desert 1972–1974
Southwestern United States 2007
Beirut, Lebanon 1975–1976
Southwestern United States 2007
Saudi Arabia 1977–1978
Chino, California, January 2008
Afghanistan 1978–1979
Southwestern United States 2005
America 1981–1985
Colorado Springs 2008
America 1985
Colorado Springs 2008
America 1985–1991
Lebanon 1991
Southwestern United States 1991–2004
Colorado Springs 2008
Appendixes
People
Places
Groups
Events
Foreign Words and Weapons
Notes
Acknowledgments
I came to have this new power, the “power of two”—the Koran in one hand and the gun in the other. One equipped me spiritually and one physically. One spoke into my life, and one spoke into the lives of others.
Kamal Saleem
Chino, California
2007
1
Leaving the auditorium, we rolled through Southern California sunshine in a pair of black Yukons. Zakariah in the rear vehicle, me in the lead, and six 9 mm handguns between the two. People born in this country might not think weapons are necessary when returning from a speaking engagement. I know differently. When I was with the PLO, our special unit assassinated a grand imam on his way home from leading evening prayer.
Five minutes to the hotel. The security men riding with us were off-duty law enforcement and antiterrorist agents—six locals, each with a Sig Sauer or Glock concealed beneath his plain shirt or jacket. Back at the venue, Jack, our host, had introduced these men only by first name.
“Kamal, this is John,” Jack said to me as we stood in a huge empty auditorium built on an oasis campus of palm and trickling fountains that reminded me of a safe house villa where I had once hidden in Spain. “He’ll be heading up security for you this afternoon.”
About three dozen men in plainclothes gathered loosely around me, Zakariah, and our friend Walid, waiting to be assigned their posts. Four plainclothes policemen stood in the background. An unusual amount of armed security for three civilians, but certain jihadists were growing tired of our little road show. Already Walid had been threatened dozens of times. Zak had been severely beaten twice and once almost beheaded. He had moved six times in six years—once out of the country—to protect his family from those who wished to silence him.
Blond and blue-eyed, John shook my hand with a firm grip and looked me in the eye. “While you’re speaking, I’ll be standing right beside you,” he s
aid, his muscled frame squaring the shoulders of his sport jacket. I guessed him to be off-duty SWAT. “If anything happens, run straight toward me. I’ll get you out.”
I believed him.
Now, three minutes from the hotel, John sat beside me in the Yukon’s leather backseat, talking quietly over the headrest with a dark-haired agent whose large head nearly scraped the roof over the passenger seat. Outside the window to my right, I saw planned communities and business districts skating by. I wondered how Zak liked the scenery in California and whether Walid had made his plane on time. When the driver stopped at a traffic light, John’s low murmuring also stopped as each agent scanned the area. But the only movement was to our left, in a small, pine-shaded park with kids on swings. Two women watched them from a park bench, laughing.
Sleeping, I thought. Sleeping through an invasion that is already underway.
Zak, Walid, and I had delivered our message to an audience of three thousand. People filled the overflow rooms and even sat outside on the stamped-concrete terraces, listening on loudspeakers. Zak, a Koran scholar who had once assassinated a man by flinging him from a Lebanese rooftop, explained the theology of jihad. Walid, a Bethlehem-born, former terrorist who was now a U.S. citizen, discussed Islamic-Jewish hatred. I told the audience how I had been recruited into the Muslim Brotherhood at age seven and how at age twenty-three I had crossed the Atlantic, on a mission to destroy America from the inside out.
All three of us had abandoned jihad, each for a different reason and by a different road. When we finished telling our stories, the audience rose and showered us with waterfalls of applause. For a moment, my heart was glad. But I also knew most would drive off and discuss the “3 Ex-Terrorists” over lunch or Starbucks. Then they would rejoin the national slumber, the comfortable sleep of prosperity.
They would not remember what I had told them about Al-Anfâl—Koran, Sura 8, “The Spoils of War”—in which Allah counsels his warriors to be patient. Or that I had told them the invaders had already breached America’s borders and were spreading. Silently. Lethally. Like a cancer.
In the Yukon, we rolled again. After several blocks, the driver turned in at a hotel where Zak and I had checked in the day before. As the driver glided past the glassed lobby, I froze.
Two men standing on the sidewalk locked eyes with me. One was Middle Eastern. The other looked Pakistani. Both carried canvas tote bags—not luggage. Both men bolted through the sliding glass doors into the lobby. Inside, a half-dozen more men rose from their seats.
Instantly, my muscles tensed for battle, heart thumping, hands tingling.
The men with tote bags nodded in our direction.
John spotted them. “Code Red,” he said. “That’s a Code Red!”
The driver braked to a halt. On a handheld radio, John relayed the alert to the rear Yukon. I saw the two men striding rapidly out of the lobby and toward the hotel interior. Toward my room.
It had been more than twenty years since my last armed mission, but my right hand now screamed for the familiar, comforting weight of a gun.
John turned sharply to me: “Stay here. Do not leave this vehicle.” Then, to the agent up front: “Let’s move.”
Weapons already drawn, each man chambered a 9 mm round, kicked open his door, and jumped to the pavement. Glancing behind me, I saw two more agents spill from Zak’s vehicle. John and a man from the rear vehicle jogged into the lobby, holding their weapons beside their legs.
Hotel guests backed away with wide, frightened eyes. John and the other agent scanned the room and in four long strides reached the lobby desk. I could see a young woman behind it talking with him and pointing.
The other agents fanned out in the parking lot, feeling the hoods of cars, checking for recent arrivals. I watched as they read license plate numbers into their radios.
I did not like my exposed position. Looking up, I could see row after row of hotel windows with direct lines of sight to the Yukon roofs. The men had dispersed into, not out of, the hotel. I flashed back to Lebanon. How many times had I fired an RPG from elevation and watched a vehicle below erupt into shrapnel and flame?
This could be it.
When somebody runs from you in a war, it does not mean they are afraid of you. What preparations are they running toward? What button are they running to push? Who is lying in wait? In urban warfare, if you cannot take cover, sometimes the smartest move is aggression. I itched to burst out of the Yukon and join the hunt.
Head swiveling, I scanned the windows, the parking lot, the lobby. My mind whirled and I tensed, half expecting the searing whine of an incoming RPG, something that had not been seen in the streets of America. Yet.
But then, until 2001, America—my adopted country—had not seen jets used as missiles. Until 2001, she had never seen skyscrapers dissolve into avalanches. She had never seen thousands of innocent civilians murdered at once. Yet even with the horrific impact of 9/11, America did not understand what I knew: that the invasion was on. The enemy already lurked inside her walls, the cancer of jihad seething through her inner cities, her prisons, her small, sleepy towns. And while the cancer ate and ate, metastasizing in the intellectual centers, the elite stood on the ramparts screaming, “Peace! Peace!” They closed their eyes, willfully blind, accomplices in the rape of their own nation.
I knew because I had helped to cause it. I had planned it. I came here, funded by Islamists in the Arab countries, willing to die for this glorious invasion. To someday see blood running in American streets.
2
Twenty minutes passed before John and his agents returned to the Yukon outside the Holiday Inn. John opened the rear door, and I saw he had holstered his weapon.
“We checked the hotel, the public areas, the parking lots. No sign of them,” he said. “No Middle Eastern names on the hotel register. They probably checked in under western names. We notified Chino PD, SWAT, and the FBI SAIC of suspicious activity.”
SAIC. Special Agent in Charge. I knew the term well from staying off the FBI’s radar in my former life.
“I called Jack,” John said. “He thinks we should move you and Zak to another hotel.”
I was tired from traveling, but unwilling to take chances. “Good idea.”
John shut the Yukon door and walked back to the lobby to wait while the agent driving the Yukon pulled under the portico. Walking in the center of a knot of six agents, I passed through the lobby and down the first-floor corridor that ran off to the left. Now three agents moved ahead of me and three fell back.
We passed the open door of a travelers’ business center on the left. Empty.
Then past a sitting room and a small gym with a glass door on the right. No one.
My room was next, on the left.
“It’s open,” one of the agents said, a tense whisper. “The door is open!”
Adrenaline surged through me. Sounds of cycling steel as all six agents drew their weapons and one man pushed me against the far wall. Two agents flattened themselves against the wall on each side of the door. John knelt before the door, gun raised. I felt naked and wished again for a weapon.
Hand and eye signals passed between the men. On a silent count, John rose up and kicked the door wide open.
Two agents knelt in the door frame, sweeping their weapons in a room-clearing arc. Two agents stood above.
Empty.
John crossed the carpet and checked the bathroom. He turned to us and shook his head. Nothing.
I was not so sure. My mind whirred, flipping back through what I would have done in the same situation. Rig the lamp switch with explosives? Lace the toothbrush with poison? Put a tank mine under a couch cushion?
“Touch nothing,” I said.
3
John and his men listened as I quietly explained that in Fatah and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, when we missed our mark, we did not give up. Instead, we resorted to booby traps. As the security team looked on, I threw away all my toiletries, checked under m
y luggage for wires, stuffed in my robe and slippers, latched it, and walked out of the room.
An hour later, Zak and I were traveling across the city. The agents deposited us in a nameless hotel on the other side of Chino. Satisfied that we had not been followed, the security team swept the room and left. Now, sitting in an overstuffed chair facing the bolted door, I had time to think. I wondered if there was a Kamal, another me, among those Middle Easterners at the Holiday Inn. A man with a heart like I used to have, who would stop at nothing to fulfill his mission for Allah. A zealot whose very heart was a wick on which the flame of jihad burned.
If so, would I still be alive in the morning?
I stared at the back of the hotel-room door. How many had I seen since I came out from the shadows, since I revealed to my American wife my secret past, since I started speaking out against radical Islam?
Nearly thirty years before, empowered by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), I had come to America. From the Koranic teaching of my youth, I knew that by infiltrating the American education system, overrunning its universities and jails, and swarming its poor neighborhoods, my jihadist brothers and I could usher in Umma—one world under Islam. It would be, as Americans like to say, “a piece of cake.”
I had worked odd jobs as cover only, since I was being well paid by Middle Eastern sheikhs. While on the jihadist side, I came to realize that the strength of the American people and infrastructure is also its weakness. An open society with constitutionally protected freedom of speech and religion, which prides itself on its embrace of foreign cultures, was the perfect place to teach a message of hatred in broad daylight. I was a master at reaching the poor and those who perceived themselves oppressed. I taught them that Allah cared for them. I found them jobs, mentored them, and invited them to fellowship with my jihadist brothers, who all the while never mentioned jihad. Once the converts were hooked, we turned them over to the imams at small “apartment mosques” to be radicalized.
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