Jihad Joe

by J. M. Berger

  The Sarajevo office’s greatest intelligence coup, however, was the cultivation of a high-level mole in the Bosnian government who funneled hundreds of pages of classified documents to al Qaeda through the Benevolence staff. It was a devastating counterintelligence success, collecting detailed logs of phone conversations intercepted by the Bosnian government, reports on the activities of the mujahideen, and even highly classified CIA cables.

  One such cable was particularly sensitive: a request from the CIA to Bosnian intelligence for the detention of Anwar Shaban, the commander of the foreign mujahideen who was a senior leader in Omar Abdel Rahman’s Islamic Group and had extensive ties to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. Shortly after the request was sent, Shaban was mysteriously assassinated.53

  The Benevolence network was part of the fabric of the American jihadist movement. The CARE International office in Boston used Benevolence to distribute its funds in many cases, along with another Chicago-based charity called the Global Relief Foundation. And both CARE and Benevolence were intertwined with Mohammed Zaki’s American Islamic Group.54

  Zaki’s second-in-command was an influential jihadist propagandist named Kifah Jayyousi, a Jordanian of Palestinian descent with an unfortunate tendency to giggle at inappropriate moments. Jayyousi immigrated to the United States in 1979 and became a naturalized American citizen.55

  Through Jayyousi, the American Islamic Group maintained close ties with CARE in Boston. CARE’s directors sponsored speaking tours by Jayyousi to raise funds and recruit fighters for Bosnia and Chechnya. During speeches at Boston University and MIT in 1996, Jayyousi regaled audiences with tales of Russian atrocities against Muslims and showed videotaped battles of the Chechen mujahideen. Tapes of Jayyousi’s lectures were also distributed by Muslim Students Association branches around the country.56

  Like CARE, AIG focused on recruitment and fund-raising for mujahideen overseas. Jayyousi personally recruited fighters in addition to leveraging his speeches, taped lectures, and AIG publications in the service of jihad. The cell also moved thousands of dollars among various other charities that supported the mujahideen, including a Hamas front known as the Holy Land Foundation and mujahideen support organizations functioning in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Azerbaijan, Libya, Egypt, and Somalia.

  Pretty much any front was all right, one member of the organization commented during a meeting with Zaki and Jayyousi. “As long as there is slaughtering, we’re with them. If there’s no slaughtering, [ … ] that’s it, buzz off.”57

  This bloodthirstiness was typical of AIG, especially after Zaki’s death. Unlike CARE, which was more narrowly focused on the guerrilla combat of military jihad, AIG was at times unabashedly supportive of terrorism. Jayyousi published a newsletter known as the Islam Report, which was initially filled with details of the terrorism trial of Omar Abdel Rahman. Jayyousi also helped Rahman—now in prison—stay in contact with members of his Egyptian jihadist network overseas. One issue of Islam Report described convicted World Trade Center bomber Mahmud Abouhalima as “A Good Citizen and a Muslim Hero.”58

  At one point, Jayyousi reached out to CARE officer Samir Al Monla to ask for financial help to move Abouhalima’s family out of the United States. Al Monla, suspicious that his calls were under surveillance, asked Jayyousi to use a false name when referring to Abouhalima, which prompted one of Jayyousi’s trademark nervous giggles. Al Monla finally agreed to provide $1,000 toward airfare for Abouhalima’s wife and four children and to try to raise funds for the remainder. However, he added, they should tell people that the money was “for helping the poor, or the needy or an orphan [ … ] without mentioning any names at all.”59

  One of Jayyousi’s top deputies was an outspoken Palestinian activist named Adham Hassoun. A computer programmer who had moved to the United States in 1989 and illegally overstayed a student visa, Hassoun headed up an early office of the Benevolence Foundation. Soon after, he began to work closely with both CARE in Boston and AIG in San Diego from his home base in the South Florida town of Sunrise.60

  Hassoun was a prolific jihadist recruiter, constantly working the phones and roaming the community in search of bodies and dollars to support the cause. Like Jayyousi, his definition of jihad was widely inclusive of terrorism and the killing of civilians. When talking to Jayyousi and other members of his jihadist network, Hassoun used simple codes to communicate, assuming (correctly, as it turned out) that the FBI might be listening in. “Terrorism” became “tourism,” and military jihad became “football” or “soccer.”61

  Hassoun and Jayyousi helped move thousands of dollars and perhaps dozens of men to jihad fronts in Bosnia and Chechnya. They also worked to establish and financially support an active cell of jihadists in Somalia and neighboring Ethiopia.62

  Some of their recruits ended up in al Qaeda, which was gearing up to begin its assault against the United States in earnest. The terror network was actively seeking U.S. citizens who were willing to go beyond the concept of defensive jihad and embrace an all-out war against a much broader array of enemies.

  JOSE PADILLA

  Born Roman Catholic, Jose Padilla grew up on tough streets in Chicago. As a young teenager of Puerto Rican descent, he became involved with a gang known as the Latin Disciples and soon wound up in prison after the kids he was running with pulled off a brutal murder. Worried about his downward trajectory, Padilla’s family moved to the Fort Lauderdale area to get away from the gangs, but Padilla’s temperament continued to sour, culminating in a 1991 incident in which he pulled a gun on a cop during a routine traffic stop.63

  That got him ten months in a Florida prison, where he was impressed with Muslim prisoners who were serving time at the same facility. One prisoner in particular, a member of the Nation of Islam, debated with Padilla about Islam. Padilla later described this as the “turning point” of his life. After being put in solitary confinement for fighting, Padilla said he had a vision of himself floating in the air, wearing a black hood and a blue robe. The vision inspired him to learn more about Islam.64

  After his release, he voraciously pursued information about Islam while working at a Taco Bell in Davie, Florida, near Fort Lauderdale. His inquiries led him to Adham Hassoun.

  Padilla soon converted and eventually changed his name to Abdullah Al Muhajir. Although by no means a bright student, he applied himself industriously to studying Islam and learning Arabic. He married a Jamaican immigrant, who also converted, and it seemed—all too briefly—that he had turned his life around. But Padilla embraced his new religion with a passion that frightened those closest to him. His mother told a neighbor that she feared he had joined a cult.65

  Padilla began to adopt Arab garb and a conservative posture, which stood out as unusual even at the Koran studies classes he took in 1995 and 1996. Going deeper still into his religion, he decided that he wanted to become an imam and arranged to travel to Egypt for further study. The trip was encouraged and financially sponsored by Adham Hassoun, who also helped “psychologically prepare” Padilla for the journey he was about to undertake. Not the journey into Egypt— but the journey to al Qaeda.66

  Padilla spent a couple of years in Egypt, supposedly honing his language skills but finding time to run errands as a cash courier for Hassoun. While there, he married a second wife, after abandoning his first but before divorcing her.

  He soon left his now-pregnant second wife as well. In 2000 he made the hajj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, where he met a Yemeni al Qaeda recruiter and was invited to take the history-laden path first to Pakistan, from there into Afghanistan, and finally into the heart of darkness. On July 24, 2000, he filled out an application form to join al Qaeda’s Al Farooq training camp in Afghanistan, where he studied religion, surveillance, improvised explosives, and communications.67

  Padilla and others were assigned to come up with a terrorist attack on U.S. soil by al Qaeda’s military commander Mohammed Atef. Padilla approached the job with zeal, discussing various improvised explosive schemes and pie-
in-the-sky ideas like spraying cyanide on people at nightclubs.68

  His enthusiasm often outstripped his ability. At one point, Padilla approached Mohammed with instructions on how to build a nuclear bomb, which he had found on the Internet. The webside was a parody, but Padilla had taken it seriously. Undeterred, he returned to his computer and soon came back with an idea for building a dirty bomb: a conventional bomb combined with radioactive material designed to contaminate the target area.69

  Finally, in June 2001 Atef decided on a mission. Padilla and his team would rent apartments in high-rises that used natural gas for heat. They would breach the building’s gas lines and ignite the fumes to bring the buildings down. Padilla’s partner in this assignment was another American al Qaeda member—someone Padilla already knew.70

  ADNAN SHUKRIJUMAH

  Adnan Shukrijumah was born in Saudi Arabia in 1975 and moved to the United States with his family during the 1990s. The clan landed in Brooklyn. His father, Gulshair Shukrijumah, was a Saudi-sponsored imam who spent time at the Al Fa-rook Mosque on Atlantic Avenue, which had been attached to the Al Kifah Center.71

  The elder Shukrijumah served as a translator for the blind sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman, and was friends with Abdullah Rashid, the African American mujahid who had lost his leg in Afghanistan. Shukrijumah testified on Rashid’s behalf as a character witness.72

  Padilla had blundered through his American life, cutting a broad swathe for journalists and investigators to navigate. Adnan Shukrijumah was more circumspect, leaving few clues in his wake. The family moved from New York to the suburbs of Fort Lauderdale in 1995.

  Working as a used car salesman, Shukrijumah paid his way through Broward Community College, majoring in computer science and chemistry. Although he left little trace of his views, Shukrijumah’s mother said he became disgusted by American society, including the use of drugs and alcohol and what he saw as sexual promiscuity, all the while growing angry over U.S. foreign policy in the Muslim world.73

  Toward the end of the 1990s, while watching events in Bosnia and Chechnya, he became obsessed with the idea that he should be taking part in jihad. He became known at local mosques as a radical. At one point, a local immigrant with more ambition than ability tried to assemble a terrorist cell of area Muslims, inspired by Osama bin Laden. Shukrijumah appears to have been unimpressed with the poser. Instead of signing up for the local scheme (which had already been infiltrated by the FBI), Shukrijumah left in search of the real deal. Investigators later concluded that he had sniffed out the informant.74

  He made his way to Afghanistan and the training camps of al Qaeda, where he started as a dishwasher, worked his way up the ranks, and eventually received advanced training in weapons, battle tactics, camouflage, and surveillance. He was gifted and was soon given more responsibility. Shukrijumah traveled around the world on still-mysterious al Qaeda business, with sightings in the Middle East, Trinidad, South America, and other locations.

  In 2001 Shukrijumah returned to the United States for the last time and took a cross-country trip by train. For an ordinary young American man, such a trip might have been a coming-of-age story. For Shukrijumah, it was reconnaissance.75

  6

  War on America

  In 1991, Special Agent John Zent of the FBI’s San Francisco field office had what is known in intelligence circles as a walk-in: an area Muslim was volunteering his services as an informant. The field office was interested in investigating a radical Palestinian mosque in nearby Santa Clara, and Zent thought the man might be useful.

  He was wrong. The informant instead alerted the subjects of the investigation that the FBI was interested in them. Nevertheless, Zent kept the channel open.1

  During one conversation in 1993, the would-be informant began to talk more freely. He knew a man named Osama bin Laden, who was building an army under the aegis of an organization called al Qaeda. From his home base in Sudan, bin Laden was thinking about mounting a revolution in Saudi Arabia. The informant said that he had worked for al Qaeda, training Osama bin Laden’s men in intelligence tactics and “anti” hijacking techniques.2

  John Zent had just joined a very exclusive club—American government employees who knew what al Qaeda was, courtesy of Ali Mohamed, Osama bin Laden’s master spy, who had recently finished his assignment as a U.S. soldier serving at Fort Bragg. Mohamed had picked the San Francisco field office as the target for his latest effort to infiltrate the FBI. Mohamed’s modus operandi was to play both sides of the field, offering real intelligence value in exchange for access. It was a risky play.

  A handful of people in the military had heard the phrase “al Qaeda” as early as 1991.3 The CIA had picked up the name in 1993 in connection with a hotel bombing in Aden, Yemen.4 But no one was putting the information together yet, and no one would for some years to come.

  Al Qaeda, however, had already set its sights on America. Starting in 1991, Osama bin Laden had begun to preach against the United States at the camps in Afghanistan. After the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. military had established a small permanent base in Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden and his deputies started saying that the United States should get out of the Persian Gulf altogether.5

  Bin Laden said the United States was “the head of the snake,” which had to be cut off. Fatwas were issued toward the end of 1992, and the wheels of war were set into motion. The first World Trade Center bombing was arguably the opening shot.

  Mohamed was the advance scout. In 1989 he had trained the men who would bomb the World Trade Center. In 1991 he had helped al Qaeda relocate its base of operations from Afghanistan to Sudan. Mohamed had trained al Qaeda’s operatives in Afghanistan, and he continued training them in Sudan, overseeing a specialized course for Osama bin Laden’s bodyguards.6

  He wasn’t done yet. Mohamed and Wadih El Hage, the American Muslim from Tucson, were the senior American Al Qaeda members with an ongoing presence in the country. Together, they managed a loose network of al Qaeda members and the occasional freelance employee in the United States.

  Now based in Sudan, al Qaeda was enjoying the best operating conditions it would ever know. Al Qaeda in the mid-1990s was a corporation. It owned subsidiaries, occupied an office building, and maintained a regular payroll with benefits for its employees.7

  El Hage served as the company’s paymaster and as Osama bin Laden’s executive assistant on a day-to-day basis. Al Qaeda owned a number of semi-legitimate businesses in Sudan and elsewhere, including a honey farm, a tannery, and construction and shipping companies.

  El Hage managed some of these companies. Traveling around Africa and Europe using his U.S. passport, he also helped al Qaeda members with transportation and lodging, procuring forged passports and providing other assistance. Working with Ali Mohamed, El Hage helped convert some of al Qaeda’s assets into diamonds and other precious stones. He also recruited other Americans for a transaction that was particularly important to bin Laden—the purchase of an airplane.8

  Essam Al Ridi was an Egyptian national who became a U.S. citizen in 1994 after more than a decade of living in the United States. In the early 1980s, he was one of the first Americans to follow Abdullah Azzam’s call, fighting in Afghanistan and later working in Pakistan. He met bin Laden and El Hage in Peshawar.

  After the war against the Soviets ended, Al Ridi was dismayed by the influx of young Muslims spoiling for a fight—any fight—and decided to leave. When he heard that Azzam had been killed, he recalled, “the Afghan chapter and jihad were closed for me.”

  Al Ridi didn’t join al Qaeda but remained friendly with El Hage, who called him in 1992 with a business proposition. Bin Laden wanted to buy a large jet that could carry cargo, in order to transport Stinger missiles from his armory in Afghanistan to his new base in Sudan.9

  Al Ridi, who had trained as a pilot, found a U.S. military surplus plane in Arizona for about $200,000 and agreed to fly it to Khartoum. A few years later, bin Laden asked him to move the plane, but the brakes failed on landing. Al
Ridi expertly crashed it into a sand dune, avoiding any injuries, but the plane was a total loss.10

  Al Ridi’s copilot on the doomed flight was Ihab Ali, another naturalized American citizen who had moved to Orlando, Florida, with his family as a teenager. Ali did not assimilate well, and during the 1980s, he heard Azzam’s siren call. Ali worked for the Muslim World League in Peshawar during Azzam’s tenure there, then joined al Qaeda soon after its founding.11

  He was trained in terrorist techniques by Ali Mohamed, who kept tabs on him back in the United States, where Ihab Ali studied flying at an obscure institution called the Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma. A few short years later, 9/11 hijackers Mohammed Atta and Marwan Al Shehhi would visit the Airman school seeking flight lessons. Al Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui would attend the same flight school in 2001.12

  Mohamed himself was constantly on the move but returned frequently to California, where his partner, Khalid Abu El Dahab, was running a communications hub on behalf of al Qaeda. Among other responsibilities, Dahab would patch calls from Egypt to Afghanistan and Sudan, in order to foil intelligence surveillance.

  Dahab and Mohamed were also responsible for recruiting Americans into al Qaeda, under orders from bin Laden himself. According to Dahab, they found ten naturalized Americans from the Middle East who were willing to join. To support all of these efforts, Dahab worked as a car salesman, but it was difficult to hold down both professions at once, and he soon dropped the more mundane job.13

  Ali Mohamed was prolific during these years, balancing multiple assignments and overseeing projects on three continents. In the United States, he smuggled al Qaeda operatives into the country, on one occasion even using his FBI contacts to get one of his trainees released after he was detained by Canadian customs. At bin Laden’s behest, he set up meetings and joint training sessions between al Qaeda and Hezbollah. And in Africa, he played a key role training bin Laden’s men and advancing bin Laden’s secret war on America.14