Dirty Wars (9 page)

Listening to Anwar's sermons from this era, there is no hint that he had any affinity for al Qaeda. In 2000, Anwar began
recording CDs
of his sermons and selling them as box sets. The sermons were
extremely popular
among Muslims in the United States and elsewhere in the English-speaking world. He recorded
more than a hundred CDs
in all, most of them consisting of lectures on the lives of the Prophet Muhammad, and on Jesus and Moses, as well as theories about the “Hereafter.” As the
New York Times
put it, “The recordings appear
free of obvious radicalism
.” Invitations began streaming in, inviting Awlaki to speak to mosques and Islamic centers across the United States and around the globe. “I was
very pleased
with him,” said Abu Muntasir, a founding member of a UK group called JIMAS, which hosted Awlaki several times. “He filled a gap for western Muslims who were seeking expressions of their religion which differed from the Islam of their parents' generation, to which they found it difficult to relate.”

Despite the nonpolitical nature of his preaching, Anwar later alleged that US intelligence agents had
sent “moles
” into his San Diego mosque to gather information on its activities. “There was nothing happening at the mosque that would fall under the loose category of what we today refer to as terrorism but nevertheless, it is my firm belief that the government, for some reason, was actively trying to plant moles inside the mosque,” he charged.

There is another strange mystery regarding Anwar's early run-ins with the FBI, one that will likely never be solved. While he was an imam in San Diego, Anwar was
busted twice
on charges of soliciting prostitutes. In the first case, he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and paid a $400 fine and in the other, he was fined $240, given three years' probation and sentenced to two weeks of community service. The arrests would later be used to paint Anwar as a hypocrite, but the preacher offered up a different explanation:
the US government was trying to blackmail him into becoming an informant. In 1996, Anwar claimed, he was in his minivan at a stoplight waiting for it to turn green when his vehicle was approached by a middle-aged woman who knocked on the passenger-seat window. “By the time I rolled down the window and before even myself or the woman uttering a word
I was surrounded by police officers
who had me come out of my vehicle only to be handcuffed,” he recalled. “I was accused of soliciting a prostitute and then released. They made it a point to make me know in no uncertain terms that the woman was an undercover cop. I didn't know what to make of the incident.” Then, Anwar said, a few days later he was visited by two men he said identified themselves as federal agents, who told him they wanted his “cooperation.” Anwar said they wanted him to “liaise with them concerning the Muslim community of San Diego. I was greatly irritated by such an offer and made it clear to them that they should never expect such cooperation from myself. I never heard back from them again until” a year later. That was his second bust for soliciting. “This time I was told that this is a sting operation and you would not be able to get out of it,” Anwar recalled.

Perhaps he really was soliciting prostitutes, and his self-projection as a pious man was an elaborate deception. But there would be other indications later that Anwar Awlaki may not have been regarded by US intelligence simply as a target of investigation, but also as a potential collaborator.

Anwar was unsettled by his run-ins with the law in California. “I believed that if the issue in San Diego was with local government I should be safe from it if I
move somewhere else
,” he recalled. Nasser arranged for him to get a
partial scholarship
at George Washington University in Washington, DC, to pursue a PhD. By that point, Anwar's wife had given birth to their second child and he needed to find employment. So, he lined up work as a
chaplain
for the university's interreligious council and landed a job as an imam at a popular mosque in Virginia, Dar al Hijrah. “Our community needed an imam who could speak English...someone who could convey [a modern narrative about Islam] with the
full force of faith
,” said Johari Abdul Malik, the outreach director at Dar al Hijrah. The mosque wanted someone who could present the messages of the Koran to an audience of American Muslims. Awlaki, Malik said, “was that person. And he delivered that message dutifully.” The family settled into suburban Virginia in January 2001. Although Anwar's reflections years later indicate that his rage against the United States was building in the years preceding 9/11, if that was true, he did a great job of masking it with his public profile as a highly respected figure in the mainstream Muslim community.

ON THE MORNING OF SEPTEMBER
11, 2001, Anwar Awlaki was sitting in the
backseat of a taxi
. He had just arrived at Reagan National Airport in DC and was heading home after catching a red-eye back from a conference in Irvine, California. He heard the news of the attacks in the taxi and told the driver to head straight for his mosque. Awlaki and his colleagues were immediately concerned that the mosque could be targeted in the rage that was brewing. That night, police were called to Anwar's mosque after a man pulled his car up in front of the building and
screamed threats
at those inside for thirty minutes straight. The mosque
closed for three days
as a result and issued a press release condemning the attacks. “Most of the questions are, ‘
How should we react
?'” Awlaki said to the
Washington Post
, explaining the leadership's reasons for shuttering the mosque. “Our answers are, especially for our sisters who are more visible because of the dress: Stay home until things calm down.” When the mosque reopened, a Muslim-owned
security firm
was hired to search cars and handbags and pat down people entering the building.
Local churches
offered support to Dar al Hijrah, including escorts for Muslim women afraid to venture out to mosque. This was a fact that Anwar lauded publicly to his congregation and to reporters, but he also kept worshippers informed about anti-Muslim prejudice and hate crimes—such as one incident in which a Muslim woman stumbled into the mosque on September 12 after being attacked by a man with a
baseball bat
. In his first sermon after the reopening of the mosque, Anwar condemned the attacks as “
heinous
.” “Our hearts bleed for the attacks that targeted the World Trade Center as well as other institutions in the United States, despite our strong opposition to the American biased policy towards Israel,” he said, reading a condemnation of the attacks from Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi, the famous, controversial Egyptian theologian. “We came here to build, not to destroy.... We are the bridge between America and 1 billion Muslims worldwide,” Awlaki added.

When 9/11 happened, Awlaki didn't own a television. “I used to get my news through the Internet,” he said days after the attacks. “But since this happened, I rushed to
Best Buy
and got a TV set. And we were glued to our TV sets. For Muslims, I think it was a very complicated issue because we suffer twice,” he asserted. “We're suffering as Muslims and as human beings because of the tragic loss for everyone. And then in addition, we suffer the consequences of what will happen to us as an American Muslim community since the perpetrators are, so far, identified as Arabs or Muslims. I would also add that we have been pushed to the forefront because of these events. There has been huge media attention towards us, in addition to FBI scrutiny.”

While Anwar huddled with other Muslim leaders to determine how
they would respond to the 9/11 attacks, he once again popped onto the US government radar. “September 11 was a Tuesday,” Anwar later recalled. “By Thursday the FBI were
knocking on my door
.” US agents began questioning Awlaki about his dealings with two of the suspected hijackers. The agents
showed him pictures
of the hijackers—including the two who had attended his San Diego mosque as well as Hani Hanjour, who also had spent time in San Diego and, along with Hazmi,
attended an Awlaki sermon
in Falls Church, Virginia, in 2001. Awlaki “said he
did not recognize
Hazmi's name but did identify his picture. Although Awlaki admitted meeting with Hazmi several times, he claimed not to remember any specifics of what they discussed,” according to the 9/11 Commission.
Awlaki also said
that he had not had any contact with Hazmi in Virginia, only in San Diego, and said he had never met Hanjour. Awlaki, according to the commission, “
described Hazmi
as a soft-spoken Saudi student who used to appear at the mosque with a companion but who did not have a large circle of friends.” According to declassified FBI files on Awlaki's meetings with federal agents after 9/11, Awlaki described Hazmi as “
a loner
,” adding that he was “a very calm and extremely nice person.” Awlaki, according to the FBI, did not view Hazmi “as a
very religious person
, based on the fact that [Hazmi] never wore a beard and neglected to attend all five daily prayer sessions.” Soon after that meeting, the FBI returned again and asked Awlaki to work with them in their investigation. The next time they visited, Awlaki
got a lawyer
. An FBI file after the meeting stated: “
Investigation continues
at WFO [the FBI's Washington Field Office] into the association between Anwar Aulaqi and persons connected to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.” [Awlaki's name is alternately spelled Aulaqi.]

According to subsequent FBI testimonies to the 9/11 Commission, Awlaki had a
series of phone conversations
in 2000 with Saudi Omar al Bayoumi, who helped Hazmi and Mihdhar find apartments in San Diego. An FBI investigator told the commission that he believed that the men were using Bayoumi's phone at the time, implying that Awlaki had had direct contact with the hijackers. Yet, based on those early interviews, the investigators concluded that Awlaki's interactions with the three hijackers were inconclusive. The 9/11 Commission asserted that the future hijackers “respected Awlaki as a religious figure and developed a close relationship with him” but added that “the
evidence is thin
as to specific motivations.”

While the FBI dug into Awlaki's relationship with the hijackers, hundreds of people would pack Dar al Hijrah mosque to hear Awlaki preach on Fridays. He counseled families and helped new immigrants find apartments or employment. Among those who came to him for help was a Palestinian
couple who attended all of his Friday sermons. They were having trouble with their son, who was a US military psychiatrist. The couple was concerned that their son was not taking interest in their religion. Nasser recalled Anwar telling him that they said, “Why don't you talk with [our son], so he will come with us to the mosque?” Awlaki agreed to help. Their son was named
Nidal Malik Hasan
, the man who, more than a decade later, would commit one of the
worst massacres
on a US military base in history. Just as his relationship with some of the 9/11 hijackers would result in government scrutiny of his life, Awlaki's interactions with Hasan would later be used to raise suspicions about Awlaki's role in other terror plots.

Undoubtedly, Awlaki's mosques seemed to attract an array of characters who would go on to become terrorists. But the extent of Awlaki's knowledge of who they were or what they were plotting is difficult to determine. In examining Awlaki's experiences and statements from this period, the mystery only deepens. What unfolded between Awlaki and the US government behind closed doors in the months after 9/11 and what played out publicly between Awlaki and the US media at the same time is a bizarre tale, filled with contradictions. It was as though Anwar Awlaki were living a double life.

In the weeks after 9/11, while Anwar dealt with the FBI agents in private, in public he became a media star, called upon by scores of media outlets to represent a “moderate” Muslim view of the 9/11 attacks. TV crews followed him around. National radio programs interviewed him. Newspapers quoted him frequently. Awlaki encouraged his followers to participate in blood drives for 9/11 victims, to donate money for the families. The leadership at the mosque described him as a man known for his “interfaith outreach, civic engagement, and
tolerance
,” and the Associated Press reported that, among those who attended his sermons, “Most said they did not find him to be
overtly political or radical
.” Although Awlaki at times delivered stinging indictments of US foreign policy, he also condemned the attacks in strong terms. Initially, he even indicated that the United States would be justified in waging an “armed struggle” against those responsible for the attacks. “Absolutely,” Awlaki told PBS. “We have stated our position that...there must be a way for the people who did this, they have to pay the price for what they have done. And every nation on the face of the earth has a
right to defend itself
.”

Awlaki was “a
go-to Muslim cleric
for reporters scrambling to explain Islam. He condemned the mass murder, invited television crews to follow him around and patiently explained the rituals of his religion,” according to the
New York Times.
In a separate article, the paper reported that
Awlaki “is held up as a new generation of Muslim leader capable of
merging East and West
.” Awlaki said in late September 2001, “I even feel that it's unfortunate that we have to state this position because no religion would condone this, so it should be common knowledge. But we were in a position where we had to say that Islam does not approve of this. There is no way that the people who did this could be Muslim, and if they claim to be Muslim, then they have
perverted their religion
.” The
Washington Post
consulted Awlaki several times after 9/11, even commissioning him to star in a
webcast
about Ramadan. “
Our position needs to be reiterated
and needs to be very clear,” Awlaki said during a sermon, televised nationally in the United States by PBS, a few weeks after the attacks. “The fact that the US has administered the death and homicide of...civilians in Iraq, the fact that the US is supporting the deaths and killing of thousands of Palestinians does not justify the killing of one US civilian in New York City or Washington, DC, and the deaths of [thousands of] civilians in New York and Washington, DC, does not justify the death of one civilian in Afghanistan. And that is the difference between right and wrong, evil and good, that everybody's claiming to talk about.”