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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