The Terrorist Next Door?

Adam Yahiye Gadahn, A.K.A. Abu Suhayb, could be just the kind of prospective terrorist that intelligence analysts in Washington are most concerned about these days — a personification of what Attorney General John Ashcroft calls the changing face of al-Qaeda. Gadahn, 25, is an American through and through, born and bred in California, a speaker of unaccented English, intimate with the country's habits and thus able to move about without arousing suspicion. Brought up and homeschooled on his parents' goat farm, Gadahn was an introspective teenager who went looking for meaning and found it in Islam. Eventually, he also found his way to Pakistan and, according to U.S. authorities, Afghanistan, where they claim he attended al-Qaeda training camps and has acted as a translator for the group.

The FBI's announcement last week that it was seeking Gadahn for questioning conjured memories of John Walker Lindh, the young Californian convert to Islam who in 2002 was sentenced to 20 years in prison for serving in the Taliban army. But it also called to mind the cautionary tale of Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield, another American convert, who just a week before had been released from jail after U.S. officials mistakenly tied him to the March bombings in Madrid. Had al-Qaeda found a gateway through an American recruit, or were authorities again overreaching?

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Americans could be forgiven for wondering, given the confused, conflicting signals the government sent with its latest terrorism alert. Besides asking citizens to be on the lookout for Gadahn and six other alleged al-Qaeda associates, Ashcroft repeated the claim of an al-Qaeda — related group that preparations for a massive attack inside the U.S. were "90%" done, although he acknowledged that officials had not picked up any specifics about a plot. Intelligence officials questioned the credibility of the group but insisted there was ample support for Ashcroft's warning. The same day that Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller were making their case, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge was on TV declaring that the intelligence was "not the most disturbing that I have personally seen during the past couple of years."

Some officials at the Department of Homeland Security said they felt blindsided by Ashcroft's dire warning, though a senior Administration official says Ridge "was in the room when the decision was made" to deliver the announcement. But they were so upset with what they viewed as the alarmist tone of the information — which had leaked out in an Associated Press story the night before — that they got the White House to call and complain to the Justice Department. "There was a concern within the intelligence community about the characterization of the information," says a federal official involved in the discussions. "If you don't know who, what, where and when, how do you get to 90%?" FBI and intelligence officials defended the warning, saying there has been a striking repetition from many diverse sources — some of them better and more insistent than ever — that something big is imminent. In an effort to regain the appearance of unity, Ashcroft and Ridge issued a public statement saying "We are working together." That terrorism is a relentless threat was driven home the next day when gunmen attacked a business complex and two residential compounds of expatriate oil workers in the Saudi city of Khobar, killing at least a dozen foreigners and Saudis and taking many hostages.