by J. M. Berger
He said that any true believing Muslim, it was the duty of any true believing Muslim to drive out the US from the Saudi Peninsula because the Koran had reserved the Saudi peninsula only for Muslims. He also said that the US government unfairly supported Israel, and by that he described his statement by saying that the US was quick to come to the aid of Israel if something happened to it but that if Israel did something illegal that the US was slow to act.
And then he also said that Israel was expanding to take control of the entire Middle East. And finally in response to that questioning, he said that many people wanted to make the world live according to the Koran, but that they don’t have the resources, but Bin Laden has the resources to make the world live according to the Koran.46
A few days later, FBI agents searched the California home of Ali Mohamed. They discovered a shocking collection of documents that showed just how sophisticated al Qaeda was: manuals describing surveillance techniques and tactics used by government intelligence agencies, instructions for creating improvised explosives, codebooks, coded letters, al Qaeda intelligence reports (including one written by Wadih El Hage), and reports on the activities of U.S. law enforcement.47
Mohamed was dragged before a grand jury investigating the embassy bombings, and he lied again. This time, he could feel the walls closing in, although the prosecutors had not yet decided whether he was connected to the bombings. FBI agents accompanied him under guard back to his hotel. Mohamed excused himself to go to the bathroom and, with the door closed, began ripping pages out of his personal address book and flushing them down the toilet. When he came out of the room, he was arrested. Later Mohamed admitted that if he hadn’t been arrested, he would have been on the next flight to Afghanistan.48
Days later El Hage was arrested. Khalid Abu El Dahab, Mohamed’s California crony, was captured in Egypt. Ihab Ali, Mohamed’s trainee and the would-be pilot, was picked up in 1999.49 Loay Bayazid, the Kansas City mujahid who had helped found al Qaeda, retired from the group and stayed in Sudan.50
The FBI had rounded up some of the most dangerous and experienced al Qaeda members in the United States, albeit belatedly. Unfortunately, there would be more where they came from. Some had already started their journey to al Qaeda.
7
The Rise of Anwar Awlaki
Las Cruces, New Mexico, is an old pioneer town turned small city, where the sun shines 350 days out of the year. It began life as an armed encampment to protect settlers from Apache raids. Legend holds that the town was named after the cross-shaped grave markers littering the valley in the wake of those attacks.1
In more recent times, the city was home to Dr. Nasser Al Awlaki, an agronomist studying at New Mexico State University. In 1971 his wife gave birth to a son, Anwar Nasser Awlaki.2
The Awlakis lived in the United States until young Anwar was seven, when they returned to their homeland, Yemen. The family was influential, and the elder Awlaki became the country’s agriculture minister during Anwar’s formative years.3
His son was raised on a diet of tales from the front lines in Afghanistan. “There was constant talk of the heroes who were leaving Yemen to join the fight and become martyrs and go to paradise,” one of his Yemeni neighbors remembered. Around the neighborhood, mujahideen videotapes were treated like a cross between family entertainment and the evening news.4
Awlaki was an intelligent boy, speaking flawless, unaccented English with an equally impressive command of Arabic. He consumed American popular culture voraciously and returned to the United States in 1991 to study engineering at Colorado State University—on a U.S. government scholarship awarded to foreign students. He lied about his citizenship in order to qualify.5
In 1993 Awlaki took a trip to Afghanistan, but documentation is sparse. At the time the country was being ripped apart by an internecine war among factions that had managed to unite only long enough to drive the Soviets out. A college friend said in 2010 that Awlaki had spent one summer training with the mujahideen in Afghanistan, but there is no other information about the trip.6
When Awlaki returned to Colorado, he was no longer interested in engineering. Instead he started to volunteer as a lecturer at the Denver Islamic Society. During the 1990s Awlaki immersed himself in Islamic studies through correspondence courses and by studying with various mentors. One of the more notable figures who tutored Awlaki in the ways of Islam was Hassan Al Ahdal, a Yemeni sheikh who spent several years writing and editing for the Muslim World League’s English-language magazine. Al Ahdal’s writings tended toward militancy and anti-Semitism.7
Awlaki’s facility with the English language, combined with his encyclopedic religious knowledge and credible Arabic, made for a powerful cocktail of skills. He was remembered as a gifted speaker who was capable of moving men to action. He soon moved from volunteer status to a paid position.
“He could talk to people directly—looking them in the eye. He had this magic,” one member of the mosque remembered.8
Even at this early stage in his career, he was a study in contradictions. To some who heard him speak, he was the voice of moderation, representing the most uplifting elements of Islam. Yet others perceived a dark side.
Awlaki consistently preached that Muslims around the world were under constant attack and that these attacks justified an armed response, themes that would continue throughout his career. He was so persuasive that he convinced one Saudi student attending college in the area to abandon his studies and join the jihad in Bosnia. The student was later killed while fighting in Chechnya.9
Awlaki soon moved on to bigger things, landing in the San Diego area, where he became the imam of the Ar-Ribat Al-Islami mosque in La Mesa. Ribat was a modest building in a residential neighborhood, flanked by palm trees. It looked more like a Presbyterian church than a mosque. Awlaki lived in a house on the property. He enjoyed going fishing and would sometimes share his day’s catch with the neighbors.10
Yet the affable imam’s dark side was never far from the surface. Even as religious devotion became the defining characteristic of his career, Awlaki’s personal choices reflected an inner conflict—he was twice arrested for soliciting prostitutes and once for “hanging around a school.”11
A rare recording from Awlaki’s San Diego period discusses the practice of takfir: declaring Muslims with whom one disagrees to be apostates or infidels, outcasts from Islam who may be killed under Islamic law. During a Friday khutba (sermon), Awlaki told listeners that the practice was dangerous and wrong, basing his argument on a story from the hadith (non-Koranic traditions about the sayings and actions of Mohammed) in which the Prophet showed mercy to a Muslim who was suspected of insincerity.
[If] you tell your brother that he is [an apostate], if he is not, it will come back on you. [ … ] We do not know what is in the hearts of people. [If we think] this man is saying with his tongue what he doesn’t mean in his heart, [the hadith] tells us we are not ordered to open up and seek what is in the hearts of people. He is not ordered clearly [ … ] I am not told by Allah to seek what’s in the hearts of people. Meaning that we call people to Islam, but we are not judges over them. We do not judge the people. We leave the judgment to Allah, [glory to him].12
At the same time, however, Awlaki rattled off a number of occasions under which takfir was acceptable—if someone publicly says he or she is not a Muslim or clearly states belief in something that is incompatible with belief in Allah. Other qualifying offenses include “giving the attributes of Allah to a human being” (an offense known as shirk) or insulting the prophets of Islam.13
Another lecture made some time during his residence in the United States showed an early interest in the concept of jihad.
And if you look at the wars, not only the fights between individuals, but even wars between nations and states, most of the time, it’s over wealth. It’s over dunya [earthly or material concerns]. What are they fighting for? Over oil, over land, over natural resources. That is why wars happen.
The
refore, the only justified war, the only justified war is jihad. Because that is the only fight that is happening for the sake of Allah [the glorious]. Everything else is happening for the sake of dunya [the material world]. They attack jihad in Islam, as if their wars are justified. What are they fighting for?14
Awlaki had a remarkable ability to bridge the American experience with the tenets of Islam. His speeches were peppered with humor and references to American popular culture.
Isaac Asimov, in an interview with him, a few months before he died, he was asked the question, “What do you think will happen to you after you die?” This is one of the most prominent science fiction writers that the world has seen. He said, “Nothing. Nothing. Nothing will happen to me after I die. I will turn into dirt.” His knowledge, and the books that he wrote, and all of that intelligence, and all of that fame and wealth doesn’t make him any different from the most ignorant and illiterate non-believer in Mecca 1400 years ago the ones who rejected resurrection.15
Thomas Friedman, he is a famous writer in the U.S., he writes for the New York Times. He says the hidden hand of the market cannot survive without the hidden fist. McDonald’s will never flourish without McDonnell Douglas—the designer of F15s. In other words, we are not really dealing with a global culture that is benign or compassionate. This is a culture that gives you no choice. Either accept McDonald’s, otherwise McDonnell Douglas will send their F15s above your head.16
In 1998 the Yemeni-American imam took a job as vice president of a Yemeni charity called the Charitable Society of Social Welfare (CSSW). The charity was controlled by a Yemeni sheikh named Abdel Majid Al Zindani, under whom Awlaki also claimed to have studied Islam.17 (Zindani has denied that Awlaki was his student.)18
Zindani was linked to both the Muslim Brotherhood and the MWL.19 He was renowned as a scholar and a warrior, having cut his teeth in battle alongside Osama bin Laden during the Afghan jihad and in the Afghan civil war that followed. In the postwar era, he became known as a recruiter for the war in Bosnia and later for al Qaeda. His nephew, Abdul Wali Zindani, ran the Al Kifah Center in Brooklyn after the murder of Mustafa Shalabi during the 1990s.20
If Awlaki was looking for a mentor in extremism, he couldn’t have found a better man. The Charitable Society for Social Welfare was Zindani’s vehicle in the United States during the 1990s, with offices in several locations, including Brooklyn and San Diego.21
CSSW was the subject of an al Qaeda financing investigation code-named “Black Bear,” but the charity was never formally designated a terrorist financier. Although it subsequently shuttered its American operations, the charity nevertheless received millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars as recently as 2010 as part of a partnership to fight child labor overseas.22
Around the same time, Awlaki was approached by an al Qaeda facilitator named Ziyad Khaleel. Khaleel was, in the words of one acquaintance, “obnoxious.” He had been vice president of Awlaki’s Denver Islamic Society some years earlier, when the men probably first met. Now he was a fund-raiser for the Islamic American Relief Agency, which was linked to CSSW. IARA was later named by the U.S. government as an al Qaeda financing vehicle. In his spare time, Khaleel helped acquire and maintain a satellite phone account for Osama bin Laden.23
In light of these suspicious connections, the FBI opened a file on Awlaki. The investigation began some months after he took the job with CSSW and ended in March 2000. The agent who closed the case wrote that Awlaki had been “fully identified and does not meet the criterion for [further] investigation.”24 It was an evaluation he or she would live to regret.
At the mosque Awlaki was beginning to attract devotees. His followers numbered roughly two hundred to three hundred and were—according to Awlaki— “very religious and simple.”25
Omar Al Bayoumi, a Saudi national who had moved to the United States in 1994 to learn English and attend college, was one of Awlaki’s admirers. Bayoumi earned an MBA in 1997 and went on to study accounting in graduate school, but the subject bored him, and he dropped out.26 His education was financed by his employer, a Saudi government agency responsible for overseeing aviation in the kingdom. Despite his employer’s generosity—his salary topped out at more than $6,000 per month—he performed no clearly identifiable work related to aviation during his time in America.
When he wasn’t attending his children’s football games, Bayoumi was very involved with local mosques, including a Kurdish mosque in the San Diego area, where he helped arrange financing to acquire a building. Although he claimed that he held no formal position with the mosque, Bayoumi maintained an office on the premises and helped settle disputes.27
Bayoumi enjoyed talking about religion, and one of his discussion partners was Anwar Awlaki. Beyond their direct contacts, Bayoumi befriended some of Awlaki’s most fervent disciples. Among them was a young Saudi named Omer Bakarbashat, who lived in an apartment complex in a cul-de-sac around the corner from the Ribat mosque and worked at a local Texaco station that had become a hangout for Arabic-speaking Muslims in the neighborhood.
Bakarbashat was shy but not too shy to pursue one of his female coworkers, even proposing marriage to her at one point. (She declined.) He viewed Awlaki as “almost a god.”28 According to Bayoumi, Bakarbashat was fat and delusional, allegedly believing himself to be possessed by demons.29
One day in 2000 Bakarbashat met two Saudis, friends of Bayoumi who had come to Ar-Ribat to attend one of Awlaki’s services. Their names were Nawaf Al Hazmi and Khalid Al Mihdhar. Both men were members of al Qaeda—and both would take part in the hijacking of American Airlines Flight 77 and its subsequent crash into the Pentagon on September 11. Bakarbashat tutored Hazmi in English. Mihdhar also asked for lessons but quickly lost interest.30
In early 2000 Bayoumi and an American friend had driven to the Saudi consulate in L.A. They met the pair in a restaurant, and Hazmi and Mihdhar later showed up in San Diego looking for Bayoumi. They asked for help finding a place to stay in the area. Bayoumi set them up in the San Diego apartment building where he lived. He helped them open bank accounts and paid for various expenses. Hazmi told an acquaintance that he considered Awlaki to be “a great man” and the pair’s “spiritual leader.”31
The web of associations grew thicker. Another member of Awlaki’s flock at Ribat—and a friend of Bayoumi’s—was Mohdar Abdullah, a Yemeni college student who was, like Awlaki, fluent in both English and Arabic.32
Abdullah was charismatic and well liked, although the FBI considered him a slick liar. He lived in an apartment complex around the corner from Awlaki’s mosque, in the same building as Bakarbashat. Abdullah’s computer was stuffed with anti-American sentiments, including e-mails proposing extravagant terrorist plots and references to martyrs and grenade launchers.33
In the late spring or early summer of 2000, Omar Bayoumi introduced Abdullah to Hazmi and Mihdhar. Abdullah became friends with the two hijackers, acting as both a translator and a chauffeur, driving them around the area and even to Los Angeles. He helped them get driver’s licenses—and fill out applications to flight schools.34
A third man, Jordanian immigrant Osama Awadallah, for a time shared an apartment with Bakarbashat at the complex around the corner from Ar-Ribat.35 Awadallah’s home was filled with photographs, videotapes, and news articles featuring Osama bin Laden, as well as flyers containing bin Laden’s fatwas.
Hazmi had a piece of paper with Adawallah’s phone number in the car he used to drive to the Washington Dulles International Airport on September 11. Four days after the attack, Adawallah, a student, scribbled in one of his notebooks, “One of the quietest people I have met is Nawaf. Another one, his name is Khalid.”36
Awadallah and Mohdar Abdullah both worked at the same gas station as Bakarbashat. In time, so would Hazmi. The al Qaeda man told his coworkers that he would be famous some day. Shortly before the two hijackers left San Diego for good in late 2000, Hazmi brought a third hijacker, Hani Hanjour, to meet his coworkers. Before they drove off, Hazmi
told his San Diego friends that they were going to take flying lessons.37
Awlaki’s followers were not the only ones going out of their way to offer hospitality to the future September 11 killers. Awlaki himself knew both of the hijackers and Bayoumi. The 9/11 Commission speculated that he may have met them as soon as their first day in San Diego—nearly two months before the FBI closed its investigation of the imam.38 Four calls were made to Awlaki using Bayoumi’s cell phone during February 2000, the same month the hijackers arrived in the area. One FBI agent later said he was “98 percent certain” that the calls were made by the hijackers.39
Awlaki met with Hazmi several times, often behind closed doors. Like Awadallah, Awlaki found the al Qaeda operative to be soft spoken and slow to open up. Hazmi didn’t come off as particularly religious; he didn’t wear a beard and didn’t pray five times a day. Or at least that was what Awlaki told the FBI later.40
In late summer of 2000, Awlaki stepped down from his position at Ar-Ribat and embarked on travel overseas to what he would describe to reporters only as “various countries.” Awlaki told a neighbor that he was going to Yemen. Mihdhar had left San Diego for Yemen just weeks before to visit his pregnant wife. During the period that Awlaki was out of the United States, Ramzi Binalshibh, an al Qaeda facilitator supervising a different team of hijackers, also traveled to Yemen in an effort to obtain a U.S. visa. 41
By now, word was beginning to spread about Awlaki’s oratorical skills. He was a much-sought-after commodity in Muslim religious circles—knowledgeable and fluent in English, with a flair for captivating young audiences. Recordings of his lectures on CD became brisk sellers, including a series on the Prophets of Islam and another on the Companions of the Prophet.
One American Muslim told me he was especially moved by Awlaki’s fifteen-hour series on Abu Bakr Al Siddiq, a companion of Mohammed and the first caliph of the Muslim world. Awlaki, quoting hadith (traditional stories about the Prophet Muhammad’s life), described Abu Bakr as the most devout and pure of the Prophet’s companions.