Zazi, Homegrown Terrorists, and the American Mosque
Was the Colorado terror suspect radicalized in an American mosque?
It’s been a busy month for the FBI. All 50 field offices have been involved in the ongoing investigating of what may turn out to be the biggest terrorist plot in the United States since 9/11. The man at its center is Najibullah Zazi, 24, an Afghan immigrant with a green card — which makes him the FBI’s worst nightmare of a threat.
“I want to talk today about the changing shape of terrorism and, in particular, the threat of homegrown terrorism,” FBI Director Robert Mueller declared in an executive speech in June 2006. When the FBI calls someone a homegrown terrorist, they mean the person gets radicalized while living on American soil. The homegrown terrorist speaks English, is familiar with American customs, and is able to blend in. The privilege of U.S. travel documents allows the homegrown terrorist remarkable freedom of movement around the globe. Najibullah Zazi, for example, was able to travel from New York to Switzerland to Qatar to Pakistan, where he stayed for approximately five months before returning to the land he calls home.
“To detect homegrown terrorists,” Robert Mueller pointed out, is difficult. “They operate under the radar. And that makes their detection that much more difficult for all of us.”
Zazi, it appears, is such a case. “He was a nice guy,” one of his co-workers at Big Sky Shuttle in Lakewood, Colorado, told me on Friday afternoon (the co-worker chose not to be named). That’s where Zazi got a job working as an airport van driver beginning in February 2009. When I asked the man if he ever expected his co-worker to be at the center of an international terrorist plot, he replied: “No way, it’s so weird.”
At first even Najibullah Zazi himself tried to play the innocent card with the public through the press. “I’m just normal,” he told the Denver Post’s Kirk Mitchell on September 15. “I pray five times a day. I observe Ramadan,” he said. Dressed in a button-down shirt and blue jeans, Zazi certainly looked the part of the “normal citizen” he claimed to be. That was before he, his father Mohammed, and a Brooklyn cleric with a penchant for expensive cars named Ahmad Wais Afzali were arrested on plotting a terrorist attack inside the United States using weapons of mass destruction.
That was before the material evidence came to light. There was the bomb-making instructions allegedly written in Zazi’s hand and the eerie video of him pushing a cart down a Denver beauty store aisle, purchasing enough potential bomb-making material to blow up several subway cars, stadium stands, or buses. Who can imagine what public venue the homegrown terrorists had in mind to destroy? When Zazi was asked by the beauty store clerk why he needed so much of a particular beauty supply product, the “normal citizen” responded: “I have a lot of girlfriends.” How American of him.
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Annie Jacobsen writes about aviation and intelligence. She blogs at TheAviationNation.com and is working on a new book for Little Brown and Company.
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16 Comments
1. Hyper:So, what is the purpose or bottom line of this article? Simply to ask a question like, “Was the Colorado terror suspect radicalized in an American mosque?”
Who cares? Black Liberation Theology teaches hatred that advocates the overthrow and punishment of America, white people and Jews that is just as intense and extreme as what goes on in any American mosque.
Those people in the mosques have just as much right to do whatever they want to as anyone else does. Want proof?
Check out the main occupants at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC. Then dial up the FBI and see what happens if you suggest that they investigate Barrack Hussein Obama.
Sep 29, 2009 - 4:19 am 2. Chuck Pelto:TO: Annie Jacobsen
RE: Exqueeze Me?
Tell US where Zazi got his hands on nuclear weapons? Or how did he weaponized anthrax? Maybe you can tell US what he used to make poison gas or contact nerve agent?
THESE are WMDs. Not homemade bombs, better known as Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs).
If such IEDs as can be made with peroxide and nail polish remover constitute WMDs EVERY beauty parlor in the country is a stock-pile for making WMDs.
Every beauty conscious woman in America has the components for making WMDs.
Try NOT to be such a fool as to foment undue fear by terrorizing the language.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Social terrorism is the bane of a free society.]
P.S. And using the language in an undue fashionto scare people is part and parcel of that bane….
Sep 29, 2009 - 6:08 am 3. Andrew Ian Dodge:They may not be weapons of mass destruction (IEDS), but you put them in the right place (like on a plane or train) and they can kill lots of people. Have we forgotten Lockerbie already?
Sep 29, 2009 - 8:59 am 4. biblio44:#1. Hyper: “Check out the main occupants at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC. Then dial up the FBI and see what happens if you suggest that they investigate Barrack Hussein Obama.”
What usually happens when you make a crank call, Hyper?
Sep 29, 2009 - 12:42 pm 5. Chuck Pelto:TO: Andrew Ian Dodge
RE: Try….
….not to be a total ‘fool’, Andrew.
Twenty-seven years in the infantry, starting in 1970 and trained a combat engineer.
I KNOW what bombs can do.
And an IED is STILL NOT a WMD.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
P.S. Sh—t. I can make bombs out of Bisquick. Something I picked up at the behest of our rich Uncle Sam. Does that make my—and every other kitchen in America—a ‘bomb factory’? On a par with a nuke?
Get real…..
Sep 29, 2009 - 1:21 pm 6. Leatherneck:As posted on a web site called Dr. Bulldog, and Ronin; First follow Mohammed, second, wage Jehad.
That is all you need to know about the religion of peace. Can I have the 50 million bucks? I told you the answer to the question.
ROPMA!
Sep 29, 2009 - 1:31 pm 7. Gernot:Facts are funny things. I admit all Muslims are not terrorists, but I also know all recent terrorists have been Muslims. Not all Germans were Nazis either, less than 10%.
Sep 29, 2009 - 3:20 pm 8. SenatorMark4:So…is anyone surprised? The religion of peace has a pretty fair number of believers in all kinds of things. I guess we’ll just have to learn to live with the debris of their acts because nobody, not the FBI, not your good praying neighbors, not the President, care enough to make a clear statement about this activity. We MUST send more money! Or did we already send too much? WTF.
Sep 29, 2009 - 7:07 pm 9. Leatherneck:I have to be careful of the clear statements I make of the religion of peace, or my post will be deleted.
ROPMA!
Sep 29, 2009 - 7:29 pm 10. Chuck Pelto:TO: Leatherneck
RE: Heh
Try changing the religion to Christianity and see if you get the same results.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
Sep 29, 2009 - 8:43 pm 11. ralph pipkin:[Where there is no TRUE religion, hypocrisy becomes good taste.]
Are we out of our mine? Islam is not a religion as much as it is a form of government whose purpose is to overthrow our gov. That was and still is against the law in this country and if for no other reason they should be removed from this country along with their book of lies. Every time I see one with their head wrapped in a sheet I get angry because we have our finest young people fighting these very people and religin in otherparts of the world.
Sep 30, 2009 - 11:34 am 12. Leatherneck:Will do Chuck.
Over.
Sep 30, 2009 - 2:03 pm 13. Federale:I don’t think Rubin contribues anything here to the relevant question: Was he radicalized here or in Afghanistan? I think few Muslim immigrantsa are radicalized here, most come radical and are supported in their radicalism here. Converts here are obviously radicalized, but we imported this problem for the most part.
Sep 30, 2009 - 2:12 pm 14. john from cinncinatti:they hate our modern world and want to live in the 7th century, why are they here and not in Fubaristan? it seems to me that the political wing of this religion of peace wants to be in the lap of luxury and have their virgins too.
Oct 1, 2009 - 5:45 am 15. tanstaafl:The homegrown terrorist speaks English, is familiar with American customs, and is able to blend in.
A couple of those recruited (e.g., Quantico plot ?) are native Americans, light haired, blue eyed norte americano sorts.
This is intentional, as such guys blend in and are much less apt to raise any red flags at all.
If such IEDs as can be made with peroxide and nail polish remover constitute WMDs EVERY beauty parlor in the country is a stock-pile for making WMDs.
im McVeigh got his bomb making material from a supplier of fertilizer.
And how about the guys in Britain who were going to mix something with their water once they boarded the transatlantic flights ? And the “butt bomber” in Saudi Arabia who just tried to kill the prince, I’d call him a weapon of mass destruction, now AQ seems to be proud of the near success of such a device. Truly remarkably sick individuals.
There is some other chemical available at Beauty Supply places (the one that drives the chemical process in coloring the hair ?) that is highly volatile, even though there is something very mundane about a potential mass murderer buying supplies at a beauty supply store.
Oct 1, 2009 - 7:17 am 16. tanstaafl:…it seems to me that the political wing of this religion of peace wants to be in the lap of luxury and have their virgins too.
Always ironic. And the supposed FBI informant at the Brooklyn mosque who supposedly tipped off Zazi, Ahmad Wais Afzali, the article states, had a penchant for expensive cars.
Also ironic, the old geezers seem focused on brainwashing the young & impressionable into undertaking “terrorism”, (particularly disgusting practices of late in the Pakistan territories) while said old geezers hide and preserve their own sorry backsides.
You’d think the UN and such spokespersons for “the children” would be hurling balls of fury at terrorists who destroy children’s lives and, then, destroy the children themselves.
The all around hypocrisy reminds me of holier than thou “anti-capitalists” like Michael Moore, whose filmmaking lifestyle, travel, everything is only enabled by what is produced under capitalism.
Oct 1, 2009 - 8:14 am