The Terrorist Next Door (11 page)

We'll discuss some other Chip Away attacks in later chapters, notably the November 2010 attempted Christmas tree bombing in Oregon. But we can't end our discussion without awarding to the Obama administration a dishonorable mention for “Worst Government Reaction to a Chip Away Attack,” for its handling of the “Underwear Bomber,” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, on Christmas Day 2009. Before attempting to ignite explosives hidden in his pants aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253, Abdulmutallab, who was on a no-fly list, paid $2,381 in cash for a one-way ticket.
⁴⁹
Despite those red flags and his own father's warning to the CIA that his son was a terrorist threat,
⁵⁰
Abdulmutallab was permitted to board the Detroit-bound flight, where he proceeded to set fire to his pants in hopes of setting off an explosion that would have brought down the plane and killed everyone on board. Fortunately, as he tried to detonate his explosives, he was seized and restrained by other passengers.

True to form, President Obama waited three days until commenting on the failed attack—and when he did, he branded the Underwear Bomber “an isolated extremist.”
⁵¹
What kind of “extremist,” Mr. President? Hindu? Buddhist? Mormon? That question was never answered. Worse still, at the time of his statement, President Obama had to know
that Abdulmutallab had trained with al-Qaeda in Yemen and been mentored by—you guessed it—Anwar al-Awlaki.
⁵²
Yet Obama's modus operandi remained defiantly in check:
Move along folks, nothing to see here. Just an isolated case, a random wacko. No larger, more pervasive threat associated with any particular religion.
And if you're worried about Abdulmutallab's breach of our national security, don't be: according to our fearless Homeland Security director, Janet Napolitano, despite the near-downing of Flight 253, “The system worked.”
⁵³

If “the system” consists of a terrorist bringing explosives onto a plane, setting fire to his clothes and to a wall of the plane, and then being tackled by civilian passengers, then yes, the system worked to perfection.

The fact that we have not seen more successful Chip Away attacks on U.S. soil can be attributed mainly to superior work by federal and local law enforcement, coupled with great intelligence and a healthy dose of luck. On that last point, there have been several near-misses. One particularly nasty plot in 2005 involved a group of jihadists using firearms and explosives to attack military and Jewish sites in Los Angeles on the four-year anniversary of 9/11. The scheme, hatched by a group of Muslim inmates inside California's New Folsom State Prison, may well have succeeded had one of the participants not dropped a cell phone during a gas station robbery, leading investigators to uncover the larger plan for jihad in L.A.
⁵⁴

In the future, we may not be so fortunate. Other than random screening and bag searches in a handful of cities, mainly New York City and Washington, D.C., security on America's railways is almost nonexistent. About 15 million unscreened passengers board trains and subways each day across the United States.
⁵⁵
What's to stop a terrorist who has managed to slip under the radar of law enforcement (Faisal Shahzad, anyone?) from donning a backpack full of explosives, boarding a train,
and blowing himself up? Ditto for other soft targets, like schools, stadiums, and shopping malls. If attacks came against such venues in waves, how would we stop them?

“Chip Away” has not succeeded in Israel, where Palestinian jihadists spent decades refining the strategy, culminating in the second intifada of 2000–2002. The Israelis, always innovators in the security and counterterrorism fields, have successfully adapted their approach to deal with the Chip Away threat. More important, the Israelis have proven time and again that they are a gutsy, proud, and resilient people who refuse to succumb to terrorism. For that same reason, it's a safe bet the Chip Away tactic would not succeed in the United States in the long term. In addition to our own penchant for adaption and innovation, Americans are still, at our core, a tough, resilient, patriotic people who place God and country first. We are also a people who possess the right to own firearms and will fight to defend what is ours, in spite of the weakness shown by our current leadership.

But could today's post-Christian, coddled Western Europe—with its lack of cultural confidence and large Muslim populations—withstand an onslaught of Chip Away terrorism without turning to draconian counter-measures, particularly in these shaky economic times? We almost had our answer in the fall of 2010, when details emerged of a major al-Qaeda plot to carry out Mumbai-style attacks in Western Europe. A trusted intelligence source told me there were at least twelve teams of well-trained jihadists in place, ready to carry out commando-style raids in multiple European cities.
⁵⁶
Authorities hoped to foil the plot by publicly exposing it, and thankfully, no attacks have materialized as of this writing, though it is unclear whether the terrorists are still in place.

What is clear is that al-Qaeda has, out of necessity, changed the game, at least for the short term, and moved to smaller scale operations focusing more on economic and psychological terror rather than widespread destruction. If Obama administration officials refuse to admit that this shift in tactics is more than just a string of isolated cases, or to acknowledge
the religious-ideological motivations of the Muslim attackers, Americans may have to learn about Chip Away the hard way.

CHAPTER THREE

“I
don't have any cell phone reception out here. How about you?”

“No. Looks like we're on our own. Except for this guy.”

My friend and colleague, terrorism expert Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, tapped his foot against the skeleton of what used to be a mid-sized animal, sprawled out on the ground beneath us.

For the next thirty seconds or so, as we stretched out and breathed in some fresh air, my eyes never left the animal's lifeless skull, which stared back at me from a bed of tangled weeds. Amid a palpable strain in the air, we piled back into our minivan along with our cameraman and pushed on down a deserted country road into one of the most rural areas that I—an admitted city slicker—had ever been in my lifetime.

We had left the offices of CBN's Washington, D.C. bureau that morning to investigate an Islamic compound that—according to sources—lay smack dab in the middle of nowhere. They weren't lying. Red House is a no-stoplight town located deep in southern Virginia—Charlotte County to be exact—about ninety-five miles southwest of Richmond and not far from the North Carolina border. It had been a four-hour car ride from
D.C., and by this point we had rehearsed our game plan backward and forward. Nevertheless, as we prepared to enter the town of Red House, we touched base with each other one last time.

For starters, we knew the group that owned and occupied the compound, a radical Islamic sect called Muslims of America (MOA), had a long history of violence on U.S. soil. During the 1980s, MOA members firebombed Hindu and Hare Krishna temples and assassinated two rival Muslim leaders. Federal raids on the group's Colorado compound in the early '90s turned up bombs, automatic weapons, and plans for terrorist attacks, and additional MOA members have been arrested since 9/11 on weapons charges.
¹
Many in the group are hardened ex-convicts and, according to local sources in Red House, are known to train with firearms at the compound. In fact, I had been told by locals prior to our trip that an armed guard manned a tower at the entrance of the community at all times. I had even seen footage of another investigative team being threatened by MOA members and then having their car attacked with blunt objects as they sped away from the property.

MOA consists overwhelmingly of African-American converts to Islam. I had been informed that members were none too fond of whites—particularly nosy white journalists like the three of us, who turned up on their property asking questions. Add our affiliation with an “infidel” Christian TV network into the equation, and you had a recipe for serious danger.

But our cameraman—who we'll call Mike—didn't perceive any danger. As we sat parked on the side of the road about a half-mile from the compound, he laughed off my warnings to exercise extreme caution on the shoot. “C'mon, they're not gonna do anything,” he said with a wave of the hand. “You're being paranoid. We'll just walk into the compound and tell them we're journalists. They'll talk to us, trust me.”

I tried to hide my aggravation with Mike, who was a great guy and a superb cameraman, but a novice in covering terrorism. “Let me put it this way, Mike,” I answered. “We're in the middle of nowhere, unarmed, with
no cell phone reception. We're not black and we're not Muslims. Every grown man in the compound probably owns at least two guns. And if they want to, they can just shoot us and bury us out in the woods somewhere.”

My thoughts turned for a moment to our encounter with the animal skeleton. “If we go up there and they tell us to leave, then we leave, no questions asked,” I said. “Who knows, we might not even get past the guard. Our trip may have been a waste of time.”

I planned to put together an investigative report about MOA for CBN's flagship program,
The 700 Club
. I knew all along we might embark on the eight-hour round trip excursion to Red House only to come back empty-handed. But as someone who covers Islamic terrorism and jihad for a living, I had to at least
try
to see the place for myself.

Muslims of America, according to a 2006 Department of Justice report, has some 3,000 members nationwide and owns and operates up to thirty-five such compounds in rural areas across nineteen states, including Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.
²
The group's compound in upstate New York, located at the foot of the Catskill Mountains, is called, aptly enough, “Islamberg.” Covering seventy acres of land, the compound is reportedly MOA's largest. But since the Red House locale was the closest to my D.C. home base and had quite a dubious reputation of its own, we decided it would be our best bet. Now Mike and I needed to get on the same page—fast.

“I think you're both going overboard,” offered Daveed, as always, a cool head and voice of reason. “Erick, this group knows it's being monitored by law enforcement, and the last thing it wants is the kind of attention three missing journalists would bring. People know we're here.”

Indeed, we had informed local authorities that we would be visiting the compound.

“All that said,” he continued, turning to Mike, “these guys are not the Boy Scouts, and they're armed. We can't just walk in there with a video camera and start asking questions. We need to be careful and have some tact.”

Daveed, a former Islamist who, in his Muslim days, had interacted closely with al-Qaeda-linked jihadists, serves as a counterterrorism consultant for law enforcement and the U.S. military. His firsthand knowledge of the subject matter has made him a welcome collaborator on several of my homegrown jihad stories, and MOA was undoubtedly one of our most intriguing investigations to date.

Our drive into Red House revealed a dusty, dilapidated little town whose better days were far behind it. Except for the occasional passing pickup truck or suspicious granny peering at us from a front porch, the place seemed abandoned. A few shack-like houses were scattered along the main road into town, where we stumbled upon the MOA compound.

Based on the phone conversations I'd had with locals before my trip, I was anticipating something like a scaled-down al-Qaeda training camp, complete with obstacle courses and shooting ranges in plain view.

Instead, there were rows of run-down trailers separated by laundryfilled clotheslines. A small group of women and children milled about outside; all of them, including the kids, wore ultra-conservative Islamic garb that covered most of their bodies. For the moment, there was not a man in sight. But there was indeed a guard tower at the compound's entrance, albeit empty and only a few feet above ground level. A large, green “Muslims of America” sign stood below the tower, and several “No Trespassing” signs hung from fencing that enclosed the sprawling, 40-acre community. To my amusement, there was also an American flag hanging from a pole planted in front of the compound. It was added, according to a local source, after 9/11, when many Islamist groups in the United States were donning a patriotic veneer to deflect newfound attention from the authorities. Located at the compound's entrance was perhaps the most telling symbol of MOA's purpose, showing why the group's ownership of an abundance of land across rural America had so aroused my alarm. It was a street sign that looked much like any other except for one major difference: this one bore the name of a man with longstanding ties to global Islamic terrorism.