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In Pakistan the former paintballers trained in light and heavy weaponry. Royer sent his family to Bosnia, his wife’s homeland, and in December 2001 he took a second group of recruits to join LeT.54

Several of the LeT trainees, including Royer, eventually made their way back to the United States. Although no evidence was found of a specific terrorist plot in the works, the FBI swept in and arrested most of the group in June 2003. A dozen men were indicted, including Ali Timimi. Three were believed to be at large somewhere abroad.55 Two of the men cut pleas; the rest were convicted of conspiracy and material support for terrorism. Timimi was sentenced to life in prison for inciting terrorism.56

Royer wrote a long letter to the judge before his sentencing, pleading a combination of good intentions, bad judgment, and a level of obliviousness that is difficult to credit in someone of such obvious intelligence.

I am not bitter about my arrest. I realize that the government has a legitimate interest in protecting the public from terrorism, and that in this post–9/11 environment, it must take all reasonable precautions. I have repeated this often to law enforcement, and I said as much to the FBI agents who arrested me. As I wrote in March of 2003, in these times, “law enforcement should at least keep tabs on those suspected of being responsible for violence overseas.” It is also quite clear to me now that I crossed the line and, in my ignorance and phenomenally poor judgment, broke the law. I will live with regret for my actions and their consequences for the rest of my life. Had I known that my conduct—at the core of my plea agreement—was illegal, I would have done many things differently.57

Media coverage of the case often focused on contentious discussions around the paintball exercises, which the defendants had sought to portray as innocent fun. Relatively little attention was given to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba. As a participant in a complicated local conflict abroad, the organization seemed as if it presented little threat outside its corner of the world. But another American recruit would soon show how deadly LeT could be.

Daood Syed Gilani was born in Washington, D.C., in 1960. His father was a Pakistani diplomat and a devout Muslim, conservative but with an affinity for music. Gilani spent his first ten years living with the family in Pakistan, then his mother—Serrill Headley, thoroughly American and a feminist—rebelled and returned to her native Philadelphia and her secular roots, leaving him behind with his father. She opened a bar called the Khyber Pass, which she liked to tell people was haunted.58

When Gilani turned seventeen, he joined his mother in Philadelphia to attend a local college. He assimilated into his new life with some difficulty. The contrast between his upbringing in Pakistan and his mother’s Western ways was stark. Gilani never left Islam, but he became erratic in its practice—avoiding pork but indulging growing weaknesses for drink, drugs, and women. Gilani’s prowess in the latter arena was the stuff of local legend. “Girls fell on their faces for him,” said one woman who used to tend bar with him.59

Gilani’s life seemed to swing on a pendulum. He worked first at his mother’s bar, which she turned over to him with disastrous results. They sold the bar and started a video store called FliksVideo, which Gilani eventually expanded to several branches in New York City, making a decent living.60 Yet the darker side of American life drew him in, and he became involved in heroin trafficking through a Pakistani drug ring in New York City, where he eventually developed a drug habit himself.

His uncle William Headley captured the contradictions perfectly in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “I have this image of him. He would have the Koran under one arm and a bottle of Dom Pérignon under the other.”61

Starting in the late 1980s, Gilani’s extralegal activities began to catch up with him. He was arrested