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I swear to God, bro. Enough of this punk shit. It’s that everyone has to be ruthless to—with these people. We’ll start doing killing here, if I can’t do it over there. I’m gonna get locked up in the airport? Then you’re gonna die here, then. That’s how it is. Freaking Major-Nidal-shaved-face-Palestiniancrazy guy, he’s not better than me. I’ll do twice what he did.24

The FBI recorded hours of such scintillating conversation, placing an informant near the two and arresting them before they could do any damage. People become involved with jihadism for many reasons, among them a simple predisposition toward violence. Alessa and Almonte may not have been the most sophisticated followers of Revolution Muslim and the Islamic Thinkers Society, but others would surpass them.

BRYANT VINAS

Bryant Vinas was a Latino American from Long Island. He was raised Catholic, but his life was thrown into chaos when his parents divorced shortly before he entered high school. He became so unruly that his exasperated mother sent him to live with his father. When he left high school, he enrolled in the military but washed out of boot camp. A friend’s brother introduced him to Islam.

During the next couple of years, Vinas drifted into the orbit of the Islamic Thinkers Society and met Revolution Muslim cofounder Yousef Al Khattab on several occasions.

In Afghanistan during the 1980s and later in Bosnia, many jihadists were drawn in by specific acts of aggression. Vinas was attracted by the paradigm that had been spreading like wildfire since the September 11 attacks—that America was at war with Islam. Vinas went further still, believing that America was behind the September 11 attacks and that FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) was building concentration camps for Muslims.25

But Vinas was not like Alessa. He was smart and engaged with ideology, eventually coming to define himself as a Salafi, part of a strict movement that seeks to emulate the early days of Islam.26 Many jihadists call themselves Salafis, but not all Salafis are jihadists.

Friends said his anger simmered and finally began to dominate his personality.27 He explored the jihadist Internet, increasingly frustrated with the ITS, which he believed was all talk. With assistance from a friend at ITS, Vinas decided to act. He went to Lahore and met with Pakistani militants in the porous border region with Afghanistan.28 Vinas later said that someone in New York helped arrange an introduction.29

Vinas volunteered to be a suicide bomber. He was trained, but he washed out when his handlers decided that he wasn’t up to the task and recommended additional religious training. There is only one case of an American suicide bomber in the public record, possibly due to cultural predispositions, but also because U.S. citizens—and their passports—are extremely valuable to terrorist networks.

Disappointed with his progress, Vinas decided to separate from the Pakistani group and seek out al Qaeda by wandering the wild, lawless region of Pakistan along the border with Afghanistan, where the terrorist group’s top leaders are believed to be hiding.

It is a testament to both his determination and his capabilities that he succeeded in this task without getting killed. In early 2008 Vinas was inducted into al Qaeda as a formal member, swearing bayat, the Islamic oath of allegiance.30

Housed with other Western recruits, he lobbied to fight U.S. forces on the front lines in Afghanistan and was sent on a few unsuccessful missions during which he fired rockets at American troops. Yet despite his failure to destroy the target, he had proved his commitment, and it was time for the next phase. Under the watchful eye of senior al Qaeda leaders—including Mustafa Abu Al Yazid, one of the group’s founders—Vinas was taught assassination techniques and how to build bombs, including suicide belts.31

Vinas briefed his supervisors on the Long Island Rail Road, which he had ridden as a young man, and an operation to bomb the commuter hub was initiated, although it remained in the