Jihad Joe_ Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam - J. M. Berger [70]
As in San Diego, a handful of people from Awlaki’s flock stepped forward to help the hijackers accomplish small tasks on the road to September 11. Jordanian Eyad al Rababah offered to help Hazmi and Hanjour find an apartment and ended up helping them get driver’s licenses (illegally) before escorting them around the East Coast on a trip he described as “sightseeing.” The apartment he eventually found for them was in New Jersey. As in San Diego, FBI agents suspected, Awlaki had tasked Rababah to assist the hijackers. In early 2001 Rababah had asked Awlaki for help finding a job; he started to assist the hijackers immediately thereafter.49
The relationships among Awlaki, Omar Bayoumi, and the hijackers and the helpers remain ambiguous to this day, even among those who were in a position to know. FBI agents working the case wanted badly to arrest Awlaki but couldn’t come up with the hard evidence.
The 9/11 Commission left its section on Awlaki open-ended but clearly opinionated; the final report found Awlaki’s role suspicious enough to explicitly mention but said the commission was “unable to learn enough about Awlaki’s relationship with Hazmi and Mihdhar to reach a conclusion.”50
On the topic of Omar Bayoumi, the commission was similarly conflicted. The final report of the commission described him as “devout,” “obliging,” and “gregarious,” and investigators “find him to be an unlikely candidate for clandestine involvement with Islamist extremists.” On the other hand, the commission conceded that it could not be sure whether Bayoumi’s initial “chance meeting” with the hijackers “occurred by chance or design.”51
The nature of Bayoumi’s job is extremely unclear. He was known in the local community as someone who actively sought out new Muslims in town and helped them get settled. Many people assumed he performed this role on behalf of the Saudi government, which tends to be very activist about taking care of its citizens abroad. Although his interactions with the hijackers may simply have fallen within that mandate, questions linger.52
The placement of the hijackers within Awlaki’s social circle raises significant questions. Bayoumi first met the hijackers in L.A., where he had connections with both the Saudi embassy and the Saudi-financed King Fahd Mosque. In San Diego he held a position of some importance at a Kurdish mosque not far from Alwaki’s Ar-Ribat mosque, where he could easily have arranged assistance with housing, transportation, and English lessons. Perhaps he felt the Saudis would be more comfortable at Ribat, which had a strong Saudi-Salafist orientation.53
Or perhaps there is another explanation. In the immediate wake of September 11, many journalists probed into Bayoumi’s role with the hijackers without success. Questions were raised but never answered about the possibility that Bayoumi might have been a “handler” for the hijackers, working on behalf of someone in Saudi Arabia. A congressional probe into 9/11 found that Bayoumi had “tasked” San Diego Muslims to assist the hijackers.54
Yet after Bayoumi’s initial contact with Hazmi and Mihdhar, most of the people who provided assistance to the hijackers were as close to Awlaki as they were to Bayoumi, if not closer. An FBI agent, whose name was redacted from released records, told the 9/11 Commission that “if anyone had knowledge of the plot, it was Awlaki.”55
For most of the helpers, Awlaki was not only a friend or an acquaintance but an authority figure who inspired fervent devotion. Yet perhaps the most damning indicator of Awlaki’s involvement with the hijackers came several months after San Diego—when Awlaki’s followers performed the same helper function on the opposite coast, a social transaction with no apparent link to Bayoumi.
Finally, there is Awlaki’s connection to Ramzi Binalshibh, the al Qaeda facilitator who provided logistical assistance to several of the September 11 hijackers— but not Hazmi