Jihad Joe_ Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam - J. M. Berger [61]
Mohamed returned to California to face the music. In December 1994 he sat down with FBI special agent Harlan Bell and Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy, who was preparing to prosecute Omar Abdel Rahman and his followers for the Landmarks bomb plot. McCarthy described the meeting in his 2008 book, Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad:
[Mohamed] had been pitched to me as an engaging friendly by his handlers: FBI agents in Northern California with whom he was purportedly cooperating, though it quickly became clear who was picking whose pocket. By the time I got to that conference room, though, I already knew better. And if I’d needed any confirmation, it was right there in the steady glare of eyes that didn’t smile as he finessed his best cordial greeting, extending a hand that, when I shook it, coolly conveyed his taut, wiry strength. Ali Mohamed was a committed, highly capable, dyed-in-the wool Islamic terrorist. I couldn’t prove it yet. But I was sure it was true, and in that moment, I understood that he knew I knew.23
The full contents of that meeting remain unknown. McCarthy declined to discuss most of it in his book, citing national security classifications. A 1998 court document revealed that Mohamed claimed he had been working in the scuba-diving business in Kenya.
But he did talk about bin Laden, telling the men that he had helped move the Saudi from Afghanistan to Sudan in 1991 at the request of Mustafa Shalabi, the head of the Al Kifah Center in Brooklyn, not long before Shalabi was murdered. McCarthy added that Mohamed talked about El Sayyid Nosair and his belief that Islam would “triumph” (McCarthy’s word) over the world. Whatever else was said remains under the seal of government secrecy.24
Mohamed dutifully reported the incident to al Qaeda, but it only reinforced the opinions of those who distrusted him. Over the course of the next year, al Qaeda began to freeze Mohamed out of its inner circle. His overseas travel ground to a near complete halt, and his assistance on the East African embassy bombings plot was no longer required.25
The mistrust was not complete or universal. Significantly, al Qaeda did not change its target in North Africa, which it would have if bin Laden suspected that Mohamed had gone over to the enemy. It’s more likely that the al Qaeda leader was influenced to shut Mohamed out by those who genuinely mistrusted him, combined with the obvious fact that the former soldier was now a potential target for U.S. intelligence coverage.
Shunned but not totally out of the loop, Mohamed returned to his efforts to ingratiate himself into U.S. intelligence at various levels, applying for a job as an FBI translator at one point and trying to get work as a security guard for private contractors doing classified work for the government. He stayed in touch by phone and mail with other American al Qaeda members, including Wadih El Hage and Ihab Ali, who were also in contact with each other. In late 1995 El Hage even visited Mohamed in California.26
The FBI was slowly closing in on al Qaeda’s American cell. In 1996 Jamal Al Fadl walked into a U.S. embassy in Eritrea and surrendered. The United States hadn’t been looking for him, but he surrendered anyway. Al Fadl had been caught stealing more than $100,000 from al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden directly confronted him about the theft, seeming more hurt than angry, as Al Fadl remembered it:
I don’t care about the money, [bin Laden said,] but I care about you, because you have been with us from the beginning. You worked hard in Afghanistan; you are one of the best people in al Qaeda. We want to know … we give you a