It defies preconceptions, but on a per capita basis, Arizona may have hosted more al Qaeda members than any other state in America.
Tucson residents included some of Osama bin Laden’s closest associates, such as early al Qaeda financier Wael Julaidan, the American citizen jihadist Wadih El Hage, and the American citizen Loay Bayazid, who was present at the founding of al Qaeda (see chapter 2).1 An Islamic newspaper based in Tucson issued an ID card to World Trade Center bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef in 1992.2
A branch of the Al Kifah Center was located in the city during the 1980s, recruiting Americans to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.3 There was so much jihadist activity, over so many years, that U.S. intelligence officially labeled Arizona a “long term nexus for Islamic extremists.”4
Then there were the pilots. Essam Al Ridi, Osama bin Laden’s personal pilot, traveled to Arizona during the 1990s. Suspected Islamic extremists from all over the world—Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Jordan, and Pakistan—were spotted by the FBI at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona, a few hours away. One of them flat-out told FBI agents that the United States was a “legitimate military target” for Muslims and that al Qaeda’s murderous attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were justified.
In July 2001 the FBI’s Phoenix field office proposed a full-scale investigation to headquarters, citing its belief that the would-be pilots were linked to Osama bin Laden, but its plea fell on deaf ears, and the investigation foundered.5
Hani Hanjour had first visited Tucson some ten years prior. A devout Muslim and an experienced jihadist who fought in Afghanistan, he came as a student to learn English, left, then returned to the United States in 1996 to train as a pilot. First, he qualified for a private pilot’s license. Later, he succeeded in being certified as a commercial pilot.6
Hanjour spent about five years in the United States, much of it of Arizona, often in the company of al Qaeda–linked extremists who had been noticed by the FBI.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, Hanjour was seated in the cockpit of a commercial jet, American Airlines Flight 77, just as he had trained for in the heat of an American desert. Under his steady hand, the plane screamed down out of the sky and slammed into the side of the Pentagon, disintegrating in a fiery explosion and killing 189 people, including himself.7
On the morning of September 11, Anwar Awlaki was also sitting in an airplane bound for Washington.
The Yemeni-American imam was returning home from a conference in San Diego, the city where he had first befriended two of the men who were even now helping Hanjour complete his suicide mission. A third hijacker on Flight 77 had also met Awlaki, later, at the Dar Al Hijrah Mosque near Washington, where the imam now worked.
Awlaki was landing at Reagan National Airport around the time that the hijackers were boarding their flight at the nearby Washington Dulles International Airport. The timing was extraordinarily tight. Awlaki heard news of the hijackings during his cab ride home.
Awlaki rushed to the mosque. After a consultation, the facility’s leaders decided to close the facility for the rest of the day, citing security concerns, and issued a press release condemning the attacks. That night, they called the police after someone drove up to the mosque and started shouting at the people huddled inside.
The African American mujahid from Brooklyn was a long way from his glory days in Afghanistan. For the last eight years, Abdullah Rashid had been living in a series of prisons. Since 1999 his home had been the federal penitentiary at Terre Haute, Indiana.8
Not long after the planes hit, Rashid was taken out of his cell and moved to death row.
“They said it was the safest point in the prison,” his wife, Alia, recalled. “I said, ‘That’s bull.’”
Alia believed that they wanted to “get him outta their face. [ … ] He was gettin’ on their nerves real bad, and they fixed him.”9
Rashid remained on death row for more than a year. After that, it was on to another prison.
On a morning when the rest of America was waking up to the reality of war, John Walker Lindh was already there—in a foxhole in Afghanistan, fighting on behalf of the Taliban.
It had been a long, unlikely path that brought him to this point. He had spent his adolescence in Marin County, the heart of American liberalism. Lindh had been named after John Lennon. He was called quiet and sweet, a sickly child, homeschooled for a time, then educated at a progressive California school.10
Lindh had converted to Islam as a teenager, drawn to the religion after watching Spike Lee’s film about Malcolm X. One year later he traveled to Yemen to study the Arabic language. He landed at the Al Iman University in Sanaa, headed by Abdel Majid Al Zindani, a close ally of al Qaeda and mentor to Anwar Awlaki.11
From Yemen, he went to Pakistan, where he enrolled in a madrassa with the intention of memorizing the Koran. There he was exposed to the Taliban, and in the spring of 2001, he traveled to Afghanistan to fight on their behalf against the Northern Alliance, an anti-Taliban militia and an enemy of al Qaeda.12
In June 2001 he trained for combat at al Qaeda’s Al Farooq camp, where he heard rumors about suicide attacks in the works against the United States. He even met Osama bin Laden, who thanked him for taking part in jihad.13
Lindh was fighting with a foreign fighter unit on behalf of the Taliban on September 11. News of the attack traveled quickly, even in this remote, rugged terrain. Word came down that al Qaeda personnel were being deployed to face the inevitable U.S. response. Lindh stayed with his unit.
In November Lindh’s unit was captured by the Northern Alliance, which was now fighting the Taliban and allied with the United States. The detainees staged an escape, during which a CIA agent was killed.
Lindh was quickly recaptured. He was hiding in a tunnel with other Taliban when it was flooded by U.S. forces. He emerged, muddy and tattered. Photos of his capture would be splashed over every newspaper and television broadcast in the world under the words “American Taliban.”14
From Pakistan, near the border, Adnan Shukrijumah called his mother in Florida.
“Did you hear what happened?” he asked her. “They’re putting it on the Muslims.”
She told him not to come home. They were arresting all of the Muslims, she said.
“‘No, I didn’t do nothing,” he replied. “I will come, don’t worry about this.”
But he never came.15
He had fought and trained as a jihadist in Bosnia and Kashmir, and now Ismail Royer was the civil rights coordinator for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Royer had arrived at his office just before 9 a.m. when he heard coworkers calling from the conference room. They were huddled around the TV, staring at the gaping hole in the first tower of the World Trade Center.
“I hope Muslims didn’t do this,” he said.
Within hours of the hijackings, Royer had written and issued a press release condemning the attack and urging Muslims to report harassment. The phones were now ringing off the hooks, and it was his job to answer them. Many of the calls were reporting hate crimes and harassment.16
Yet after he left the office—near midnight—Ismail Royer’s mind was elsewhere. A message had been passed through his circle of friends, half a dozen men he had spent hours training with outside the office. Everyone in the group who owned a gun was to assemble for a meeting.17
That meeting took place four days after September 11, at the behest of an American-born cleric, Ali Al Timimi. Timimi told Royer and the other gathered jihadists that the Muslims of Afghanistan now needed their help, far more than the Kashmiri Muslims on whose plight the group had previously focused. The Muslims of Afghanistan had a new enemy, and that enemy was the United States.
Armageddon was at hand, Timimi told his rapt audience. September 11 was a sign of the impending apocalypse, and everyone in the room had a part to play.18
Al Qaeda’s most accomplished spy, the American citizen Ali Mohamed, had been living in the witness protection wing of a federal prison for the past few months. Mohamed had cut a plea deal and agreed to provide information about al Qaeda in the hope of winning a reduced sentence.
That hope went out the window on the morning of September 11, when he was abruptly hustled out of his cell and moved to solitary confinement. No contact with other prisoners and especially no news of the world—no television, radio, or newspapers.
A few days later, the questions began. “How did they do it?”
Calmly, Mohamed laid it all out. This is where you sit to hijack a plane; this is how you get a blade through security. He had taught these tricks to his fellows at al Qaeda. Mohamed had obtained a copy of the FAA’s security procedures manual and given it to al Qaeda. One of his trainees, Ihab Ali, had attended the Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma, which Mohammad Atta had contacted to ask about flight training.19
Ali Mohamed may not have known that the September 11 attack specifically was in the works, but he knew an awful lot about how it could be done.
Mohamed must have known that day that he would not be receiving a reduced sentence. In fact, he would never be sentenced at all. While other prisoners would become hot topics among civil libertarians, Mohamed just faded away without a fuss. After September 11, his plea deal was little more than a joke. Ali Mohamed was too dangerous to ever walk the streets again.