The Blood of Lambs: A Former Terrorist's Memoir of Death and Redemption (27 page)

As Abu Fox had predicted, the Soviets blazed out of the valley in a hasty retreat. At that sight, my mind and body soared to a place I had never been in my life. It was the highest point of ecstasy, as though I had entered paradise.

7

After we struck the Soviets in Afghanistan, my team withdrew through Pakistan. Sheikh Fahim connected with a powerful sheikh in Kandahar who applied pressure to General Hafiz, the Pakistani general with whom we had left the remaining SAMs, to ensure that the missiles were distributed to the Afghan
mujahadeen.
Sheikh Fahim also sent a private boat to pick us up in Pakistan and carry us back to Iraq, where I caught a flight to London, then to the U.A.E.

During that journey, I had much time to think about what Abu Fox had said. That there was a life in America for someone like me. Many of the
fedayeen
, as well as fighters from other factions, fantasized about going there to wage what we called “cultural
jihad
”: converting infidels to Islam while slowly, incrementally changing the institutions of American society—its schools, its laws, the government itself. A lot of university students were already there to begin this
jihad,
but they were not strong or well organized, Sheikh Fahim said. They were not jihadists. Also, they had begun to get soft, taking the Saudi money and buying Mercedeses, women, even their educations. A well-placed gift with this professor or that one, and they had an A in every class. Sheikh Fahim felt I might be able to renew their fire, put them back to work.

I was anxious for the assignment. A lot of jihadists like me, if we did not attach ourselves firmly to a Gaddafi or a Hussein or an Arafat, would likely wind up dead. Sooner or later one of the groups would turn on us like a black widow. To be assassinated was a real possibility. So with the blessing of Sheikh Fahim and other Saudis, I decided to go to America as Abu Fox had suggested—but not to work for her.

Instead, I was going to infiltrate, to poison, to destroy.

In February, Zak, Walid, and I were scheduled to speak at a conference on terrorism at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. A week long, the event featured many speakers, as well as guests from universities and think tanks around the world. The conference was supposed to result in a report to Congress recommending next steps in the war on terror.

Two days before the conference, my phone rang. It was Keith, our manager. “Have you heard from Zak?” he said.

“No, not yet. Is he supposed to be back from Finland?”

“On his way. He should have called me from Heathrow, in London.”

Since our first meeting, Zak and I had become fast friends. We spoke at least once a week, with my calling him at his home in Canada. My heart had been whispering to my brain to call him, but I had been so busy. Now I called his cell. He was probably still en route from Finland. No answer. Next I called his home. No answer.

I tried each number several times. It was not like Zak not to check in.

That same day, a newspaper called
The Gazette
ran the following headline: “Factious choice in speakers.” The article itself began by calling us liars:

I was stunned. “Former terrorists”? In quotes? And who among us had fabricated our stories?

The writer went on to quote a member of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation who, very simply, lied: “‘Despite the speakers’ self-described knowledge of radical Islam, the goal of the seminar isn’t to enlighten cadets to other belief systems,’ said David Antoon, a 1970 academy graduate and a member of a group that has accused the academy of encouraging Christian proselytizing.”

In fact, we were going to the Air Force Academy
specifically
to “enlighten cadets to other belief systems”—the belief systems that had resulted in the bombing of the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, the World Trade Center bombing, the attack on the USS
Cole
in Yemen, 9/11, and more recently, suicide bombings and the daily slaughter of civilian women and children around the world.

We
knew
. We had fought on that side. Now this man, Antoon, sitting in his “safe” country, where since 9/11 federal agencies had halted at least fourteen domestic attacks, pretended to know better than us?

I was incensed. These people did not interview me. They did not interview Zak or Walid. I had seen fairer reporting from
al-Jazeera
.

The next morning, early, Keith called me again. “Have you heard from Zak?”

“No. Not a word.”

Now my heart was troubled. Could something have happened to him? I thought of his frailty, his diabetes, his heart. Could illness have struck him in Finland? Then a worse thought: What if he had encountered hostility to his message in Europe, where radical Islam is strong?

Again, I tried each number several times, then called Keith. “He could be dead in a hotel room somewhere,” Keith said, real concern lac
ing his voice. Then he echoed my earlier thoughts: “Or someone could have gotten to him.”

Keith decided to call Zak’s church in Canada. “I’ll have them go to his home and check to see if he’s there. If he doesn’t show up by this afternoon, I’ll tell them to call the police and have them break down the door.”

The next day, another media attack, this one from the
New York Times
:

The Council on Islamic American Relations (CAIR) has been linked with terrorists—both by their own words and by federal prosecutors—for years. And the
New York Times
, a respected nationally read newspaper, quotes their spokesman on
our
credibility?

As CAIR noted in its 1996 report, “The Price of Ignorance,” the group considers it “hate” when U.S. law enforcement agencies arrest top terrorist officials. CAIR founders Nihad Awad and Omar Ahmad in 1993 reportedly attended a three-day conference aimed at derailing the Olso Peace Accords because of fear the accords would isolate the Islamist Hamas movement.
¹⁶
The following year, Nihad Awad declared, “I am in support of the Hamas movement.”

In 2007, CAIR was named an “unindicted co-conspirator” in a case that linked the Holy Land Foundation, an Islamic charity, with terror groups. The case ended in a mistrial. But in a federal court filing, prosecutors described CAIR as “having conspired with other affiliates of the
Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists.” To top it off, four CAIR officials have either been convicted of terrorism-related offenses or deported because of terrorist ties.

So when I read in the
New York Times
that CAIR’s Ibrahim Hooper accused Zak, Walid, and me of “hate speech,” I did not know whether to laugh or run the newspaper through my shredder. Maybe both.

1

How can a terrorist penetrate America? What does it take? The answer is simple: it takes a rope from the outside and a rope from the inside. Money and documents are the outside rope. America’s own institutions, particularly our universities, are the rope within.

In the 1970s, a new kind of bad guy burst into view: the international terrorist. Wielding a machine gun, his face was sheathed in a black
balaclava
, meant both to conceal his identity and inspire fear. The radical Muslim began to show himself all over the world on a regular basis: Entebbe, Mogadishu, Germany. But in those days, no one thought radical Muslims would come to the United States. It happened while America slept. And it continues today. Muslims crossed the Canadian border, forming a network all the way through the United States. I was one of them. We became termites in the wall of the Great Satan. The wall looked sound from the outside. But inside the wall, funded by the Muslim Brotherhood, the Saudis, and the United Arab Emirates, we ate away at the foundations of this country.

I was twenty-three years old when I arrived here in 1981, bearing a temporary visa I obtained in Abu Dhabi and thirty-five thousand dollars in my bank account, given to me by an Islamist sheikh whom I had introduced to three very accommodating French girls. I remained wired into the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups wielding heavy
sticks. I first set up in Wassau, Wisconsin, where I freelanced as I had in Europe, speaking in poor neighborhoods and on university campuses about the virtues of Islam. I also networked quickly with Muslim student groups already established in America, such as the Muslim Students Association (MSA) and the Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA). I attended their conferences to hear Islamist speakers exercise their first-amendment right to hate America and the rest of the evil West.

Less than a year later, I moved to a major southern city for one reason only: it was smack in the middle of the Bible belt, the center of Christianity in the United States. If I was going to target America, I thought, I might as well aim at her heart.

The city where I settled already harbored a significant group of young Muslim radicals, already hard at work in an apartment mosque. Several men concentrated on collecting information. Some specialized in “mapping.” Where do the Jews live? Put it on a map. Which city officials are Jews? Put them on a map. These brothers also mapped the Muslim community, which was much smaller then than it is today. Another brother worked for the city and was able to get us blueprints of key buildings. We made copies and mailed them to associates in Saudi Arabia and New York.

One of the brothers, Hamza, worked at the DMV and was able to procure names and addresses. He carefully catalogued which Muslims were peaceful and who, therefore, could not be trusted.

Another brother, Hamer, a Saudi from a high family in Riyadh, was a professional student who used his father’s money to keep himself constantly enrolled at the city’s major state university. Introducing himself around campus as Marco, he affected the image of a friendly, wide-eyed foreigner who found America charming. But behind Hamer’s smile lay a calculating mind as sharp as a razor. While I knew him, he finished two degrees, all the while using oil money to buy small grocery stores and gas stations, which we used to launder money made selling illegal cigarettes.

All over the city, then linking up with other cities around the south, we established small sleeper cells in apartment mosques. In addition to the Koran and other religious literature, we kept radical pamphlets pub
lished by the Arab student groups, books on
jihad,
and a series of crude VHS tapes that were like a mini video boot camp: lessons on hand-to-hand combat, mixing chemicals, and the proper use and care of the AK–47.

As in Europe, my job was recruitment. When I was not preaching Islam, I affected a Parisian accent, passing myself off as a light-skinned, blue-eyed Frenchman. But while evangelizing, I revealed my Middle Eastern background as I canvassed neighborhoods ripe for a message of power, discipline, and success. I spent my days opening the eyes of many to the glory of Allah and opening the eyes of a select few to the teaching of
jihad
.

It was very easy: all I had to do was knock on doors.

“Hello, I am Kamal Saleem,” I would say. “I am just in your neighborhood looking to see who is hungry or has need of financial help.”

You would not believe how many people in these Bible belt neighborhoods simply wanted something to eat. Whenever I found such a family, I went to a grocery store and bought big sacks of beans, rice, flour, and canned goods. Then I delivered the food, saying, “This is a gift from Allah. Allah sent me here as a messenger.” Most people, especially grateful mothers on welfare and food stamps, thanked me. Some raised a skeptical eyebrow, and some choked back tears. But none of them turned away the food.

I simply blessed them and went on my way. No pressure. But I would visit again.

I knew very well that a mother was the key to a house. The next week, I would show up at her front door with a paper sack brimming with more groceries. Only this time, I tucked in a package of meat. When I put meat in the grocery bags, the American poor loved me.

“A gift from Allah,” I explained. “He sent me to bless you.”

On the third visit, I would bring a half gallon of milk. Meat and milk, these are the expensive things. And the next time I came, many mothers would welcome me in. These women were not only the key to their own homes, but to whole neighborhoods. By this time, I had served them. I had shown them kindness. And now they wanted to know why.

I remember one woman, Maria. I met her on a day when her baby
had had no milk or formula for three days because she had no money to buy any. I rushed to a grocery store nearby and quickly returned with a gallon of milk.

“God bless you!” she said, standing in the doorway, holding her baby girl, a tiny smudge of a child with thick lashes fringing wide, dark eyes. Maria was a tiny Hispanic woman in her twenties with dark hair she wore swept back into a loose ponytail. The baby burrowed and sniffled at her neck. “I have been praying and praying that God would send someone to help us.”

“He has sent me to help you,” I said.

Behind her I saw a bare floor and a worn sofa. A toddler played on the floor with some kind of wooden dog with wheels instead of legs. “I am a Muslim. Like you, a person of the Book, the Scriptures.”

Most of the Hispanics I visited were Catholics, and, I had learned, many of the African Americans came from the Christian denomination called Baptist. My line was, “The Jews and the Christians and the Muslims are all people of the Book. You practice Christianity. I practice Islam.”

I knew it wasn’t true. I knew Jesus Christ had been a Muslim. All the true prophets were Muslims, but the Christians and Jews, down through history, had perverted the truth on this point. Still, I was practicing
al-toqiah
. It was okay to lie as long as I was lying in order to serve Allah.

Maria invited me in. I sat on the sofa while she stood on the other side of a small counter that formed a tiny eat-in kitchen, pouring some of the fresh milk into a baby bottle.

“What is Islam?” she said.

“It means peace. To come to peace with God.” Another lie. “Islam” means “submission.”

“You know, we serve the same God,” I continued. “It is just that Muslims call him Allah.”

Her toddler, a boy of about two, abandoned his toy dog and pulled himself up on my knee. “What does your husband do?” I asked Maria.

“He is a janitor,” she said. “He works at the elementary school.”

“Ah, a hardworking man,” I said. “You would make the perfect Muslim family.”

She laughed and emerged from the kitchen holding the bottle in her right hand. In her left arm, the baby whined and reached for it. “Why? Why would we make a good Muslim family?”

“Islam is a religion of discipline,” I said. “Already, your husband is working hard to provide for you. Muslim families band together to help each other. For the Muslim, God empowers and makes positive changes in your life. And it’s a proven statistic that Muslim children stay out of trouble and do better in school.”

I knew no such statistic, but I made it up right on the spot. I was selling Maria what I sold in every house: hope. I sold them a future they could dream about. And I did not tell Maria that if she and her husband converted to Islam, if he so chose, she would become his doormat.

2

Some of the most fruitful neighborhoods were inhabited by poor African Americans. In the South, prejudice was still very much alive. Many of the men were unemployed, living on welfare and food stamps, and they were angry. They felt downtrodden and exploited.

Perfect.

One day in 1983, I drove down to a fringy ghetto neighborhood on the northeastern edge of the city. A mix of businesses and homes lined cracked, narrow streets, with tiny clapboard houses jammed between shabby office buildings and liquor stores offering to cash your government check. Cruising the streets slowly, I saw such a store on a corner, its windows shielded with metal bars. Next to a newspaper stand that was chained to the ground, a black man in his early twenties leaned against the wall, wearing a black stretch cap and trying to smoke a cigarette.

I parked on the street and walked up as if to buy something in the store. The young man attempted a tough stare. Inside, I laughed.
Would he stare that way if he knew who I was?

I smiled at him and nodded toward the bars on the store windows. “This place looks like a fortress. Are they afraid?”

The tough stare dissolved immediately, replaced by a war-weary look I had often seen among Lebanese civilians. “Yeah. Couple people ’round here like to hit the place when they run short on money.”

I looked at the boy’s jeans, not washed in a week. Adidas tennis shoes, worn and out of date: Nike was the cool brand now. Only his shirt, a plain yellow T, seemed new. From his clothes and his manner, I suspected this boy was not a criminal, just jobless and lonely.

I took a few steps closer, extending my hand. “My name is Kamal Saleem. It is nice to see a friendly face here.”

“Antonio,” he said, shaking my hand. “That’s some kinda name. Where you from?”

I had perfected the art of finding something in common with those I hoped to convert: poverty, family breakup, illiteracy. I became like a fortune teller, gauging reactions, playing with feelings, finding the “tell” and moving in.

“The Middle East,” I said. “From a neighborhood like this one.”

In my country, I told him, there were Bedouin tribes who lived in the desert and were even poorer than the people in Antonio’s and my neighborhoods.

“The Bedouins have nothing,” I said, leaving out the part about the wealthy sheikhs. “But there was one Bedouin boy who rose to become very famous. His mother died, then his father. After that, his grandfather raised him. Then his grandfather died and the boy went to live with his uncle, who had no idea what to do with the boy, who did not even know how to read.”

Antonio took a pull on his cigarette. “Yeah, there’s a lot of that around here.”

“Those aren’t really good for you, you know,” I said, gesturing toward his smoke.

Antonio looked at me with mild surprise. “Why should you care?”

“This boy I told you about, he grew into a man who cared for a lot of people. After he left his uncle’s tent, he lived in a cave and God sent an angel to visit him—Gabriel, the greatest of all angels. And this man, whom no one cared about, God made him a prophet.”

I checked Antonio’s face. He was listening. A story will do that—hook a person’s interest in a way even the best argument cannot.

“Much slavery was taking place in that country,” I went on. “The light-skinned people were the wealthy ones, and the dark-skinned people were made slaves. This prophet reached out to people and told them that slavery was wrong.”

Another lie. Muhammad himself had slaves.

“As a matter of fact, this prophet’s right-hand man was a former slave, a black man named Belal, with a voice so beautiful that the prophet used his own money to free him.”

“You keep sayin’ ‘prophet,’” Antonio said. “This prophet got a name?”

“He was a Muslim prophet and as Muslims, we refer to him as Muhammad. Like Christians and Jews, we are people of the Book. We all worship the same God.”

“Then how come I ain’t never hearda no Muhammad?”

I allowed my eyes to light up. “Ah, because God is so
wise!
First, he gave us Judaism. You’ve heard of Moses, right?”

Antonio nodded.

“Then he gave us Christianity. Jesus was the most important prophet.”

Antonio dropped his cigarette and ground it out with his shoe. “Yeah, my grandmama try all the time to tell me about Jesus.
Jesus
this and
Jesus
that and
praise Jesus!
” He chuckled and shook his head.

Instantly, I noted that he was not a Christian. This was good. I went for the bullseye: “But when the Christians started killing people all over the world, God got fed up with them. Then he brought Islam, the final religion.”

“So what about the Jews and the Christians?” Antonio asked. I sensed he wanted to add, “and my grandma?” but he didn’t.

“Allah will have to judge them about what he told them to do. Listen, I am thirsty. Are you?”

I went inside the store and returned with two Pepsis in glass bottles. Antonio and I sat down on the curb side by side, drinking and talking. Now he was asking all kinds of questions, and I knew the hook was in his mouth.

In the days that followed, I gave Antonio “the treatment” I gave every convert. I introduced him to the brothers at the apartment mosque, discreetly slipping in the term
al-mani
, our code for someone who is still on the “other side.” No matter how much Jew-mapping and combat tape watching might have been going on in the apartment
before
I walked through the door, this introduction prompted an outpouring of kindness sweet enough to rot teeth.