Jihad Joe_ Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam - J. M. Berger [71]
If Awlaki was helping the hijackers, the final question then becomes this: what did he know?
Did he know they were extremists? Terrorists? Al Qaeda? Did he know they were planning to kill on U.S. soil? Did he know exactly what they were going to do? Awlaki has notably declined to address these questions. Even after he fully committed to terrorism (see chapter 9), he never raised the issue of September 11.
Unless Awlaki is arrested and charged in a U.S. courtroom, these questions may never be answered. But Awlaki’s neighbor in San Diego, Lincoln Higgie, remembered an ominous pronouncement the imam made when he left San Diego for Virginia:
He said, “I’m going back to Virginia, and shortly after that, I’ll be going to Yemen.” And I said, “Well, I do hope you’ll be coming back to San Diego soon.” And he says, “No, I won’t be coming back. And in a little while, you’ll understand why.”57
Whatever Awlaki knew or didn’t know before September 11, his meetings with the hijackers were not destined to be his last contact with al Qaeda.
8
Scenes from September 11
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
ANWAR AWLAKI
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