SUNDAY, AUGUST 1, 2010
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Politics & The Nation Arrest of Va. man spotlights al-Qaeda’s new American recruiters by Spencer S. Hsu The arrest of a young Fairfax
County man on charges of sup- porting Somali terrorists spot- lights an operational shift by al- Qaeda and its affiliates, which in- creasingly are relying on a new generation of American recruit- ers to radicalize other Americans, counterterrorism officials said. Zachary Adam Chesser, 20, of
Oakton sought to follow the path of at least four other U.S. citizens with extensive knowledge of American culture who have risen to prominent roles in al-Qaeda’s network overseas, according to court documents. Chesser’s most direct role mod- els appear to be Anwar al-Aulaqi, 39, a New Mexico-born Muslim cleric based in Yemen, with whom Chesser was in e-mail contact, and Omar Hammami, 26, an Ala- bama native who has become a senior commander in Somalia and who starred in a rap recruit- ing video that created an Internet stir as he led an armed group of fighters to a musical beat. “What these guys obviously
have in common and represent is a terrorist who really under- stands and comes out of Amer- ican society and culture, and that is obviously an advantage for them . . . both in terms of opera- tional activity and planning and in terms of recruitment,” said Da- vid Kris, assistant attorney gener- al for national security. He was re- ferring to Hammami and Aulaqi and two other Americans over- seas in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area, Adnan G. El Shukri- jumah, 34, a naturalized citizen indicted recently on charges that he helped plan September’s failed al-Qaeda bomb plot against New York City’s subway system, and Adam Gadahn, 31, an al-Qaeda spokesman raised in California who was charged with treason in 2006.
“Can you imagine Zawahiri or
bin Laden doing a rap video? That is something that people without the same connection to America or the West would have a harder time pulling off,” said Kris, re- ferring to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Egyp- tian cleric Ayman al-Zawahiri. U.S. officials said the ability to speak in the American vernacular and tailor a message to a peer au- dience of people in their teens to early 30s is a significant step for al-Qaeda, even as U.S. officials say half of its members have been eliminated. Meanwhile, attack plots against the United States have proliferated and grown more di- verse. Over the past 18 months, the federal government has charged 34 U.S. citizens with di- rect involvement in terrorism. The Fort Hood, Tex., shootings in November, the May 1 Times Square car bombing attempt, and last year’s New York subway plot were each allegedly carried out by Americans inspired from or trained abroad. The killing of many of al-Qae-
da’s senior operatives has weak- ened the group, but the growing role of Americans may reflect the inability of its core leaders to mount more effective operations, authorities said. Still, even less so- phisticated attacks can be deadly. “The threat is complicated and diverse and in many ways more difficult for us to figure out,” a senior U.S. intelligence official said, speaking on condition of anonymity so he could freely dis- cuss counterterrorism analysis. “The training is quicker and toler- ance [for less spectacular and suc- cessful plots] are much greater . . . but the likelihood of a mass 9/11- style attack is a lot smaller.” Chesser was both a prolific con- sumer and propagator of extrem- ist propaganda, court papers and U.S. officials allege. At 20, the U.S.-born, George
Mason University dropout creat- ed multiple Facebook profiles and Twitter accounts and deluged the discussion boards of hardcore al- Qaeda forums and mainstream Islam chat rooms with comments, videos and re-posted texts to spread extremist ideology, U.S. authorities said.
Best known for wishing death over the Internet upon the cre- ators of the “South Park” ani- mated satire in April, Chesser was arrested July 21 after being placed on the no-fly list and stopped from traveling to Somalia. He al- legedly told FBI agents that he planned to join al-Shabab, an Is- lamist insurgency linked to al- Qaeda that has committed nu- merous attacks and bombings as it seeks to topple the Somali gov- ernment. Chesser has not been indicted.
Michael Nachmanoff, a lawyer for Chesser, declined comment. Chesser “was positioning him- self as a stand-alone al-Qaeda propaganda machine in the Unit- ed States,” Jarret Brachman, a counterterrorism analyst at North Dakota State University who monitors jihadi Web sites,
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wrote last week in Foreign Pol- icy’s online magazine. The FBI said Chesser avidly re- posted the work of al-Aulaqi, who has forged close ties with al-Qae- da planners since leaving the United States in 2002, and who e- mailed Chesser at least twice. U.S. authorities in July said
that al-Aulaqi played a direct role in the attempted bombing of the Detroit-bound airliner on Christ- mas Day by connecting accused
bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmu- tallab with trainers from al-Qae- da in the Arabian Peninsula. Chesser also emulated and named himself after Hammami. Raised as a Southern Baptist, Hammami has become an influ- ential al-Shabab commander known as Abu Mansoor al-Am- riki, or “the American.” Author- ities say he helped plan the first U.S. citizen suicide bombing, which took place near Mogadishu
in 2008.
Since joining al-Shabab in 2006, Hammami is credited with establishing an image of “jihadi cool,” making Somalia a leading destination for dozens of U.S. Muslim youths seeking to enlist as foreign fighters. In a 31-minute YouTube video this spring, Ham- mami appeared running in slow motion with a band of fighters, explaining that recruits have left their families, the cities, “you
know — ice, candy bars, all these other things” to fight their en- emies. Chesser re-posted that video and imitated it with his own U.S. versions — urging mothers to read their children bedtime sto- ries about waging jihad and mak- ing tinfoil swords for them to play with, said Alix Levine, an analyst with the Anti-Defamation League who has reported on Chesser’s online activities.
Chesser was as sophisticated as
they come “in trying to use our own words against us, to think of and innovate new strategies. He was very clever,” Brachman said in an interview. “That’s the scary thing: You
have a fairly smart kid who gets the ideology but can put out the propaganda and then wants to get street credibility in the real world,” Brachman said.
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