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Much of al Qaeda’s infrastructure in the United States remained intact on September 12, 2001. The most significant operation was the Benevolence International Foundation in Chicago, which had financed al Qaeda, as well as jihadists in Chechnya and Bosnia. The deceptive charity was shut down and its director, Enaam Arnaout, arrested. He eventually pleaded guilty to defrauding donors by spending Benevolence funds to support mujahideen fighters in Bosnia and Chechnya.4

The directors of CARE International—the former Al Kifah office in Boston— were arrested, tried, and convicted of tax fraud for redirecting charitable contributions to jihad.5 The Holy Land Foundation, a Hamas financier in Texas, was also shuttered and its directors convicted.6

A few small cells with direct links to al Qaeda were uncovered. In Lackawanna, New York, six American citizens of Yemeni descent were arrested for having trained at an al Qaeda camp prior to September 11. A seventh American member of the cell was killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen. Although all were Americans, they lived in a highly insular, ethnic Yemeni community.7

Abdurrahman Alamoudi, the head of the mainstream American Muslim Council, was arrested in 2003 for helping Libya try to assassinate Saudi crown prince Abdullah.8

In Portland a group of seven Americans who had been training for jihad prior to September 11 made a series of attempts to reach Afghanistan and fight in the service of al Qaeda and the Taliban. Four were arrested in Portland, another in Dearborn, Michigan. A sixth was captured in Malaysia, and the last succeeded in reaching al Qaeda and was killed in battle.9

American-born Muslim convert James Ujaama, a Seattle resident, tried to set up a terrorist training camp in rural Bly, Oregon, under the guidance of radical London-based cleric Abu Hamza Al Masri. Ujaama was arrested as a material witness and later charged with offering material support to the Taliban. He cut a plea, skipped out on his parole, and eventually ended up back in prison.10

There were more—many more. Between September 11, 2001, and August 2010, scores of U.S. citizens were indicted for terrorism-related offenses. A relative few were arrested for assisting Hezbollah and Hamas. Most of these were financing and weapons cases; the vast majority of violent offenders—or would-be violent offenders—were connected to al Qaeda and an increasingly diffuse group of related Sunni terrorist organizations outside of Israel.

AL QAEDA

In the post–September 11 area, Adam Gadahn emerged as one of al Qaeda’s most important American recruits. He started life on a goat farm in rural Winchester, California, a little more than an hour’s drive north of San Diego. His father, a Christian convert of Jewish descent, sold halal meat (the Islamic equivalent of kosher) to the local Arab community.

Although Gadahn was raised in an informally Christian environment, he found the concept of the Christian trinity illogical (a rift cited by many Muslim converts) and turned away from the religion. He went through a typically difficult teenage phase, listening to heavy metal music and fighting with his parents. One night he was listening to a fiery, radical Christian radio preacher rant about the “Islamic threat.” The rebellious teen figured that if this guy hated Islam, there must be something to it, and he began to investigate the religion through discussions with Muslims in online chatrooms.11

I discovered that the beliefs and practices of this religion fit my personal theology and intellect as well as basic human logic. Islam presents God not as an anthropomorphic being but as an entity beyond human comprehension, transcendent of man, independant [sic] and undivided. Islam has a holy book that is comprehensible to a layman, and there is no papacy or priesthood that is considered infallible in matters of interpretation: all Muslims are free to reflect and interpret the book given a sufficient education.

This idea that understanding Islam is an individual prerogative