Original subtitles

Target number Hotel-November-5-2-0-9er.

Request splash-out.

Splash out now.

There are ominous clouds gathering in your horizon.

- 3-0-1 ready to go. - Radio 3-0-1.

You have two choices -- either hijra...

Radio 3-0-1-0-0 in and out.

3-0-9.

...or jihad.

- This is Starter 2. - Roger that.

You either leave or you fight.

I, for one, was born in the U.S.

and lived in the U.S. for 21 years.

I was a preacher of Islam,

involved in nonviolent Islamic activism.

However, with the American invasion of Iraq,

I could not reconcile between living in the U.S.

and being a Muslim.

I came to the conclusion that jihad against America

is binding upon myself,

just as it is binding on every other able Muslim.

When I first started watching those videos,

I thought I was the only one.

I specifically invite the youth to either fight in the West

or join their brothers in the fronts of jihad.

You guys need to come here. This is the place to be.

That video -- it was really shocking to me.

I can't comprehend him being violent.

We did not know that he had been fully radicalized,

loaded up as a bomb himself.

These weren't outsiders.

We were members of the same community.

So it's even more confusing and harder to understand.

I was messaging him through an app,

and he told me that he was in a training camp.

I remember him telling me,

"I'm having the time of my life."

I invite them to join us in our new front, Yemen.

Anwar al-Awlaki's rise from American-born cleric

to key terror plotter

had put him atop the U.S. terror hit list.

The Justice Department wrote a secret memo

authorizing the killing of Awlaki.

I got good range, good limits on him.

Declare fire. Declare fire.

U.S. intelligence says Awlaki was on the hit list,

although he wasn't killed.

We cannot stand idly in the face of such aggression.

And we will fight back

and incite others to do the same.

Would you fight back?

My ancestry dates all the way back to the Mayflower.

We will fight you and destroy you if we have to.

By that time, I was firmly committed,

and I was inserting the rhetoric of al-Qaeda

into the American arena.

We're not calling for your death and destruction,

unless, of course, you continue to fight us.

I was still radical.

I was in prison.

And one day, I'm sitting there in the bunk,

and, all of a sudden, I see Anwar al-Awlaki on TV.

I didn't know what was going on.

I figured that he had ordered an operation.

Early Friday, a CIA drone found its target.

He was killed by a drone attack.

Everybody figured he was invincible -- everybody.

Awlaki was the leader of external operations

for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

The loss of Awlaki is another major blow to al-Qaeda,

coming just five months after the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Osama bin Laden was dead.

Now the primary ideologue in the English language,

Awlaki, was dead.

I was like, "Wow, they really just won the war."

Everybody get off of the street!

But the war was not over.

Even in death, Awlaki's message

continued to capture the hearts and minds of Americans.

♪♪

Um...

I'm more New York-ish.

But, uh, it's better than not having access

to a city at all, you know?

My kids are in a great public-school system,

so I'm very happy for that.

Sure. Yeah, yeah, sure.

In September 2016,

five years after the deaths

of Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki,

another in a series of attacks occurred on U.S. soil.

Following a three-day manhunt,

the suspect in the bombings,

28-year-old Ahmad Khan Rahami,

a naturalized U.S. citizen,

was was captured after a gun battle with police.

They found a notebook today,

heavily influenced by Anwar al-Awlaki's musings.

I invite them to join us in our new front, Yemen.

So maybe homegrown, maybe foreign-plotted.

The way that he laid it in the Dumpster, I don't know.

Not -- Doesn't seem like a trained operative,

from that standpoint.

Just when you think like it's going to go away

for a while, you know?

It's not like you can move away from this.

You can't run.

Like, you can't ignore what you've done.

This revival, ya Muslimin, requires that you rise up,

that you make dua for the mujahideen...

...that you defend them when they're assaulted

by the moderates and by the enemies of Islam.

Throughout our history, we had individuals

who were mainstream members of society

turn against their societies for various reasons.

This is something that has always happened.

So the phenomenon of people joining ISIS,

joining al-Qaeda, is nothing new.

I think we think of terrorism

as a foreign thing because, on 9/11,

we were attacked by 19 foreign-born Arab terrorists.

But, in fact, it is a very homegrown thing.

I've looked at 300-plus cases of jihadi terrorism since 9/11,

and they're overwhelmingly Americans

who are radicalizing online.

There have been Americans associated with al-Qaeda

for a long time.

Anwar al-Awlaki was born in New Mexico.

America as a whole has turned into a nation of evil.

What we're seeing is the Americanization of jihadism.

And we have to try and understand

why this is happening.

Why is it that we're not able to sell our values

and our system to our own people?

Why is it that the joining of groups

like ISIS and al-Qaeda

is a more attractive option for people?

♪♪

We lovingly call that the "Beautiful Mind" board

when it comes to jihadist recruits.

Very rudimentary, kind of reminds me, again,

of the old-school Mafia days

of which dots connected to that one.

I was at the Senate Homeland Security Committee,

and homegrown terrorism was just kind of starting to bubble up.

The average age of a guy that was drawn to this was 26.

I was 26. They kind of threw the cases on me and said,

you know, "Figure out this niche."

Why people join terrorist organizations is complex.

Radicalization isn't a linear process.

Just not how it works.

There is no single type of person

who gets drawn into this ideology.

They're rich, they're poor, you know,

they're college graduates and high-school dropouts.

It runs a spectrum.

In 90 % of the cases, they're male.

They tend to be younger.

What is your name? What is your name?

- Muhammad. - Muhammad what?

Younus Abdullah Muhammad.

That's my name. - Who do you represent?

I represent Islam.

Younus Abdullah Muhammad

was born in Pennsylvania as Jesse Morton.

Jesse's story is interesting in terms of radicalization.

But it's more interesting to me in terms of de-radicalization.

How does an individual like that,

a prominent player on the scene, able to get out,

and what does that lesson tell us?

My birth was in Pennsylvania.

And my ancestry dates

all the way back to the Mayflower

and the Sons and Daughters

of the American Revolution.

I went through severe abuse in the early stages of my life.

That led me to run away

at the age of 16 to flee the abuse.

I started selling drugs to survive,

and wound up in jail.

While in prison, Jesse discovered the Qur'an.

Picked it up, read the second chapter.

And it say, "This is a book wherein there is no doubt."

You know, I was overcome with emotions, started to cry,

started to want to change my life,

and decided right then and there

that I wanted to become a Muslim.

I was practicing Islam,

and it established stability in my life.

Jesse Morton.

I graduated from Columbia,

and immediately,

my dream was to go to the Muslim world

and to become a teacher.

From there, things got more complicated,

and I eased myself into the jihadist world.

The Internet was full of preachers

that were very radical,

and I would just listen to their lectures constantly.

That's how I started participating

in the Islamic Thinkers Society.

Espousing radical ideology was an outlet for my rage,

my frustration.

Here Allah, azza wa jal, says, "Jihad is ordained for you."

Well, I was born and raised in Saint Louis,

and I was raised a Catholic because my mother was a nun.

She left the convent, but she was still very grounded

in her Catholic faith.

And so that's how I received my moral foundation

and the empathy that I was raised with to have for others.

I became Muslim in '92

when this echo of the war in Afghanistan was still there.

At that time, it was still sort of a memory among the Muslims

about the noble jihad of the Afghan mujahideen

fighting against the Russians.

When I heard that word "mujahideen",

something about that word kind of captured me.

In the early '90s, '92, the war in Bosnia started.

♪♪

I became outraged by all this violence

that was being directed at these innocent people.

And I immediately started to think,

"Maybe I could go there and join them,

just like the people who had gone to Afghanistan."

I figured it out from there.

I got my way to an Arab brigade

and was with them until the end of the war.

During war, you feel this adrenaline,

you feel this honor in being a soldier

for a good cause,

that's thrilling, adventurous, meaningful.

The Arabs that I was with --

these were not people who were out committing suicide bombings.

We were actually just soldiers.

I never heard the word "al-Qaeda" then.

I never heard the name Osama bin Laden.

The term "jihad" has a lot of different connotations

for religious people.

Since the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan,

it has come to mean either "you pick up and you go

to another country to defend your religion"

or "terrorism."

Guys like Awlaki were very heavily involved

in legitimizing that form of terrorism.

Jihad has actually nothing to do with terrorism,

but he transferred the meaning to "jihad."

It's embedded in his lectures.

I listened to those, several times --

online, like many others.

Whenever you see the word "terrorist",

replace it with the word...

"Mujahid," which is the Arabic word

for someone who wages jihad.

Whenever you see the word "terrorism",

replace it with the word "jihad."

Totally transferred its understanding

to equate going out onto the street,

outside of your house,

and just killing a random civilian

as if you were waging holy war.

We have chosen the path of war

in order to defend ourselves from your oppression.

The legacy that he left is in the message.

God willing...

When I first started watching those videos,

the way he would talk,

it was almost like he was talking to you

and like you're the chosen one.

Yesterday morning, FBI agents arrested six men

charged by criminal complaint with conspiring

and attempting to provide material support to ISIL.

To be clear, we have a terror-recruiting problem

in Minnesota.

My -- My goal was my son never be in a gang.

I have seen a lot of Somali youth get killed

because of gang members.

Zak Warsame was brought to America

as a refugee at 10 months old.

His family settled in Minnesota,

where nearly one-third

of the American Somali population resides.

Zak grew up in Minneapolis,

often referred to as Little Mogadishu.

If you're the new-generation Somali,

living in Minnesota,

you have all these different identities.

You know, you're Somali, you're Muslim,

and you're American,

and so it's kind of confusing.

I felt, at that time, that something was missing for me.

I wanted him to learn, you know,

his religion and practice it.

Because he learned the religion,

I thought that, completely, my son,

he's in the right path.

I never thought that he's learning extremist Islam

or jihadist or those kind of stuff.

He was normal Zak.

The mosques, they would preach in Somali.

And I really didn't know how to speak Somali fluently.

I became more eager to learn about the religion.

One important aspect of Islam is the prophets.

I wanted to know more about their stories,

and so, when I searched on YouTube

"stories of the prophets," a video came up.

Yunus, alaihis salam,

was stuck in the stomach of the whale

under three levels of darkness.

Allah, azza wa jalla, delivered him to safety.

I felt like I was actually learning something,

because he was speaking in English

and I understood him, you know, more than I understood

some of the imams at the local mosques.

He would talk about prophecies

and how the end of the world was coming

and how a group would emerge from Syria and Iraq.

The reckoning of people is near.

And so, when the civil war happened,

I saw it as this prophecy coming true.

The more I listened, the more I had respect for him,

the more I became wrapped in this ideology.

Everyone wants to raise their iman,

everyone wants to be a good Muslim.

As you're watching these videos, you're saying,

"This guy seems to understand me as an American.

He seems to understand me as a Muslim.

He seems to want to help me become a better person."

We want to be better than we are.

But we fall short.

And then he makes a turn.

And this turn, you know, happens all of a sudden.

So now let's talk about

what the commitment that comes with that is.

This needs sacrifice.

It needs willingness to give for Allah's order.

When I wasn't at school or doing my homework

or out with my family, I was watching those videos.

Most of the videos would talk about how,

if you would engage in jihad,

you would be doing not only yourself,

but your family, a favor

and that you'd be saving their lives

from eternal hellfire.

You were created for eternity.

Whether it is in Jannah or it is in hellfire,

it is eternity.

Awlaki and others played on people's emotions.

They used the Qur'anic verses and so forth

to interpret it in a way that they think can recruit

these young people to them, to their cult.

The only war that is justified is jihad,

because that is for done for the sake

of Allah, azza wa jalla.

Awlaki has given them a simplified, bite-sized,

dumbed-down version of the ideology,

that the majority of Muslims

don't see as a legitimate version of their religion.

You're not doing Islam a favor by modifying Islam

to fit into what they want to hear.

He knew Islam very, very well, so he had the authority,

he had a legitimacy as a preacher,

and that meant that his audience were taking his word for it.

All that they want is to deceive you from your religion.

They told them, "All of you good Muslims,

you have to listen to these particular scholars,

you have to learn these particular books,

and by the way, you need to also think

about the suffering of Muslims around the world."

There are Muslim brothers who are in jail.

Every sinister method of interrogation

is used against them.

"You're an American, and you're a Muslim,

but, primarily, you're a Muslim.

And you look around the world,

there's this war on Islam taking place.

They are oppressing your brothers and sisters.

They are killing your brothers and sisters.

And you're sitting in America doing what? Nothing."

Maybe Allah, azza wa jalla,

will unify us and end the bloodshed

that is happening among us, through you.

All those lectures would talk about

how this is a time for action.

And so we decided we should bring about some action.

Zak was arrested along with several others,

charged with conspiracy

to provide material support for terrorism.

It's not only this group.

A lot of people,

all over the world, are watching this guy.

I'm the imam of ADAMS Center,

which is a mosque in Virginia.

Very diverse.

"On my honor, I will try..."

I'm an imam wearing many hats.

Aah!

The same guy, with the same hat,

go to the hospital and deal with a person who's dying.

And then, in the evening, I officiate a marriage.

Your brother-in-law?

Imam role in America -- very complicated.

Of the 1.5 billion Muslims in the world,

3.3 million live in America.

Of those, less than 300 have attempted to join ISIS.

As an imam, I have to answer for all of that.

I have to answer for 1.5 billion people every day,

what they do,

as if I'm the spokesman of all of them.

I counsel 25 families

who their children have joined Daesh.

Two of them have been killed already now.

We did workshop here for the parents --

how to protect your children online.

Daesh -- they have 24-hours connection with young people

because they are with him in his bedroom.

I am not.

No person just decides, "I'm going to wake up tomorrow,

and I'm going to think about killing people."

We know that the average time, right now,

seems to be about 10 months for them to be indoctrinated.

People who are trying to pull young people

in towards extremist groups,

they spend a lot of time online building new relationships.

In Europe, you have face-to-face recruitment.

In the United States, the situation

is a little bit different.

The threat has mostly been through the Internet,

through social media.

They have the understanding of how to use Twitter,

how to use Telegram, how to use Facebook,

and in many ways, they're able to recruit that way even easier.

Brothers and sisters, we are on the verge

of an Islamic revival.

There are more and more Muslims

who are coming to the conclusion

that jihad must be part of our program of revival

and change in the Muslim world.

Al-Awlaki's ability to speak English,

to communicate to Western audience in a way

that no one else from the extremist movement can,

made him a popular figure for al-Qaeda

and now even ISIS.

But al-Awlaki himself, what made him an extremist?

Awlaki was born in New Mexico in 1971.

When he was 7, he moved to Yemen with his family.

The son of a prominent Yemeni government official,

he grew up in a conservative Muslim society.

He returned to the U.S. to attend Colorado State University

in Fort Collins,

where he served as imam at the local mosque.

Around this time, he began a series of trips

to London to attend Islamic conferences.

It was in London where Awlaki was exposed

to the ultraconservative strain of Islam

known as Salafi jihadism.

Salafi jihadism is a fusion

between fundamentalist interpretation of Islam

and politicized Islamism.

Essentially, this says, "It is not only a desire

for us to change the planet and create an Islamic state,

which will eventually encompass the globe,

it's a duty upon all Muslims

to fight in order to achieve this."

These were guys who did not begin with the intention

of creating a terrorist movement in the West.

Salafi jihadism came to the West

after the ousting of the Soviets from Afghanistan.

A number of those people who fought in that jihad

dispersed around the globe.

Some of them went back

to their home countries in the Middle East

and then were kicked out of these countries

by secular dictatorships as exiles,

and many of them went to Europe.

Many of them actually went to London.

My dear Muslims, when you speak

to the Muslims today, and say to them,

"We need to establish the domination of Islam."

It essentially created a milieu of Salafis

and Salafi jihadis who were working together,

helping spread this interpretation of the religion.

Imam Anwar al-Awlaki.

Awlaki was certainly a member of that milieu,

and he was among those who helped take it

over to the United States.

There are millions of Muslims

who lack the basic understanding of the foundations of Islam.

Guys like Awlaki were able to take Salafi jihadism,

take its key tenets, and westernize them.

So, for example,

one of the key teachings in Salafi jihadism

is that there is a war on Islam taking place.

The Palestinian issue should be something

that we are concerned about day and night...

For an American Muslim, on the face of it, that's a hard sell.

...and let them know that the American Muslims are with you.

Awlaki had to figure out a way

to sell this war on Islam to his followers.

And we're seeing them bleeding to death.

What are we doing for them?

He was very good at connecting with an audience.

He had, you know, storytelling skills

and kind of an emotional depth

to what he said that really distinguished himself.

The key to the solution is right here,

in our hearts.

Awlaki's reputation for preaching

earned him an invitation to be the head imam

at the Al-Ribat Al-Islami mosque in San Diego.

As human beings, we're limited by our frames of reference.

On the one hand, he was known

as being kind of a firebrand of a preacher.

At the same time,

he's got this other secret life,

where he's visiting underage prostitutes

and engaged in, like, a lot of behavior

that none of his other audiences

would have appreciated.

Guys like Awlaki, they talk about being pious,

but, actually, in reality, they are not.

They are narcissists,

and they only care about themselves.

He did not lead the life that he was preaching.

And he was arrested a few times

because of prostitution.

But Awlaki managed to keep his arrest record under wraps.

His growing popularity landed him the coveted position of imam

at the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Virginia.

We always hear that there is hatred

against the United States.

That's not true.

There is anger and resentment, but not hatred.

He knew his power over an audience,

and that's one of the reasons Dar Al-Hijrah

hired him in the first place.

They wanted somebody who could bring in

younger Muslims to their mosque.

He had gained some prominence in the local media

as being sort of this articulate voice

for good relations with the community.

The Muslim world does not understand the U.S.,

and the U.S. does not understand the Muslim world.

I first met Anwar al-Awlaki

when he was appointed the imam of Dar Al-Hijrah.

What is the role American Muslims have played?

There was nothing particularly odd

about his sermons that, you know,

would have raised a red flag.

As a matter of fact, he was promoting harmonious relations

between Muslims and non-Muslims.

The American Muslim population are the bridge

between America and the Muslim world.

But always there was that undercurrent

of "us versus them,"

you know, sort of attitude, that was there.

What you're looking at is the current scene

at this moment at the World Trade Center.

ABC's John Miller is with us --

John, who's one of our leading reporters on crime.

Usually, during these things, there's a basic calm

over the police radios among emergency workers.

Um, I can hear them screaming.

Everybody who lived through 9/11

remembers how that froze our world,

made us question our ability to be safe at home,

of our government's ability to protect us.

After September 11th,

all of the feelings of the American Muslims

were feelings of sympathy for the victims

and a sense of that,

"Whoever did this needs to be brought to justice."

When the Joint Congressional Committee

began investigating 9/11,

they discovered that Awlaki had connections

to three of the hijackers.

Awlaki, by coincidence,

happened to be in the same mosque

attended by some of the hijackers.

And by coincidence, he moved to the East Coast

and happened to be in the same mosque

that is also attended by some of the hijackers.

When you look at the timeline,

how these guys traveled, how they interacted,

how they met with him behind closed doors,

and the help he gave them in each location,

there's an awful lot of smoke for there not to be any fire.

A number of us in the press

became very interested in Awlaki in 2002,

because the Congressional inquiry spotlighted Awlaki.

There were portions of that report,

28 pages,

which were redacted in their entirety.

As a reporter, that made this ever more intriguing.

Come to find out that this was the time period

where he was soliciting prostitutes in Washington.

He found out the FBI knew about it,

and he may have been concerned that was going to come out.

He realizes that he's not going to be able

to live in the United States anymore

because of the scrutiny he's under from the FBI.

He goes to London.

They are plotting to kill this religion.

He becomes progressively more radical,

and it starts to become a hostile environment

for him there, too.

So he returned to Yemen.

I'm speaking to you from Yemen at the moment.

In Yemen, that's when we see

that he really becomes openly radical

in the things he's talking about.

So, I want to talk to you about something that people

don't like to talk about, and this is jihad.

At the time, Awlaki's threats of jihad

from Yemen paled by comparison to the threat

posed by bin Laden, who was still at large.

After a show of military force in Afghanistan,

the U.S. quickly declared victory

over the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

And FBI special agent Ali Soufan

was tracking bin Laden's operatives.

Al-Qaeda, after the loss in Afghanistan,

after bin Laden is in hiding,

they shifted from being chief operators

to being chief motivators.

And with that shift,

the threat from al-Qaeda became the ideology --

the narrative of the organization.

That narrative found new roots in Iraq

when the United States turned its attention

to toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein.

In the minds of many,

this Western invasion of yet another Muslim country

was a call to arms.

Thousands of foreign fighters

flooded to Iraq in defense of Islam.

In the years following 9/11,

the gaping hole in Lower Manhattan

was a constant reminder of the threat of terrorism.

In 1995, the Oklahoma City federal bombing attack

killed 168 people.

It was right-wing extremists who did it.

And if you do the thought experiment

when 9/11 didn't happen,

we would be probably very concerned

about right-wing extremism.

But 9/11 did happen, and that's why we continue

to be very preoccupied by this subject.

Since 9/11,

there have been twice as many right-wing attacks

versus jihadist attacks in the United States.

Look at Dylann Roof, for example.

If Dylann Roof's name was Muhammad, then, definitely,

it will be a terrorist attack.

But, in this case, it was considered a hate crime.

When you have something from outside,

something that's connected to wars

in different regions,

something that you really don't understand,

I think people will be more scared.

It's an overreaction,

but it's the intended overreaction.

The drama in terrorism is meant to create fear,

and the ending, of course, is the carnage.

Post-9/11,

al-Qaeda set its sights outside of the U.S...

...Madrid...

Bali...

Istanbul...

Mumbai...

London.

By the time of the trials in London,

when it emerged that Awlaki's lectures

were on people's hard drives,

that's the point where we decided,

at The Washington Post,

we got to dig in a little bit more on this.

When Sue Schmidt began digging back into the story,

she discovered Awlaki's connections

to known terrorists prior to 9/11

that the FBI had looked into, but dropped.

I gathered string here and there.

There were stories about

when Awlaki was living in San Diego,

he was visited by a procurement agent

for bin Laden.

He was also visited by an associate

of the blind Sheik Rahman,

who was by then already in prison.

So, the FBI opened these investigations.

Each went on for a couple of months.

They did not go anywhere, so they closed both of them.

Ironically, the second one, they closed a month or so

after the hijackers had arrived in San Diego.

In 2006, Awlaki was picked up by the Yemeni authorities.

It's a little murky why he was in jail.

There were reports that he was arrested

for kidnapping issues.

The FBI was very interested

in making a case against al-Awlaki,

but the Yemeni government let him out of jail

somewhat unexpectedly at the end of 2007.

Allahu akbar wa lillahil-hamd!

On condition of anonymity,

a CIA operative finally gave Schmidt,

on the record, the confirmation she was looking for.

U.S. intelligence officials

were saying that they believed

he was an operational, active al-Qaeda terrorist.

I think, when he became involved with al-Qaeda

in the Arabian Peninsula,

also known as AQAP,

he found a channel for his narcissism.

And that was being the English spokesperson

for the narrative of al-Qaeda.

Jihad will continue until the day of Judgment.

It is youth who always, in history,

bear the burden of change.

If you have come out for jihad in my cause,

the ones who will sacrifice their lives

and their wealth, their time and their belongings

for Allah, azza wa jalla,

will be given a lot of rewards

from Allah, azza wa jalla.

I was never a supporter of al-Qaeda.

I found al-Qaeda's views

to be repugnant to the religion of Islam.

I always deemed them to be a fringe group

that had nothing to do

with the actual jihad movement

that I was familiar with, from Bosnia.

Nevertheless, I was still an enthusiast of the mujahideen

that were fighting in Kashmir.

I encouraged a friend that I had to go and get training there.

For helping his friend travel to Pakistan

to train with a jihadist group,

Ismail Royer was arrested in 2003.

He pled guilty and received a 20-year prison sentence.

Because I was in prison,

I was only tangentially aware

of how important the Internet

had become in radicalization

until I met this crop of young people

who had come in

after having been radicalized online.

This group of people were of a different degree altogether

of ideological extremism

than anyone I'd ever encountered before.

We tell you Muslims to rise up.

To hell with every ideology, ism, and schism

that does not agree with our Islam.

I was handing out flyers

on behalf of the Islamic Thinkers Society,

and a young individual approached me

and said that he agreed with our message,

and we became friends.

Zachary Chesser was incredibly intelligent and articulate,

but narcissistic to a degree that was scary.

He went from not being a Muslim at all to being a Muslim

and then on to becoming a staunch supporter

of Anwar al-Awlaki almost overnight.

He and Anwar al-Awlaki would communicate,

like anybody else could, over e-mail -- general e-mail.

I still remember Anwar al-Awlaki's,

you know, Yahoo account.

We started to discuss the idea

of formulating a new organization.

So we started Revolution Muslim.

Revolution Muslim posted anti-Western propaganda

on its blog and website

to draw recruits to their cause.

The hits on the website went from couple hundred a day,

in the beginning, to several thousand a day.

The rate of people that go

from a radical, violent, extremist ideology

to actually the commission of violence is very low.

But the more and more that you spread the ideology,

that pool of recruits grows.

And I remember, the very first public case

that was connected to Revolution Muslim,

and her name was, in the press, Jihad Jane.

The woman behind the veil,

Colleen LaRose, hiding behind alias "Jihad Jane,"

recruited fellow radicals over the Internet.

It was a case of homegrown radicalization.

And they asked her, "Well, what did you pay most attention to?"

She said, "I listened to the lectures of Anwar al-Awlaki,

and I watched this website that I loved, Revolution Muslim."

With more on this, we go to Younus Abdullah Muhammad.

He heads up the website revolutionmuslim.com.

Rather than talking about Jihad Jane,

they should have been talking about G.I. Joe.

Anwar al-Awlaki was proud and very happy about this case.

And I remember he said, "Now Jihad" --

basically, meaning "terrorism" --

"is as American as apple pie."

A new terror recruiting video calls out by name

a number of young Minnesota men

who died fighting for al-Shabaab.

Amongst the many Muslims

who could no longer call the United States their home

were the Minnesota martyrs.

These young men could not afford

to just sit and watch as the American crusaders

perpetrated the most hideous atrocities

against their Muslim brothers.

Allahu akbar!

- Allahu akbar! - Allahu akbar!

The three things that young people seek

across the board, across countries,

is they're looking for identity,

they're looking for belonging,

and they're looking for a purpose.

We are facing you with men who love death

just like you love life.

We love death more than you love life.

We seek martyrdom.

Young kids who want adventure,

who want to be part of a change,

who have that revolutionary zeal --

Salafi jihadism is offering that to them.

30, 40 years ago, these were kids

who may have been looking towards far left

or anarchist ideologies or communism.

Unfortunately, now, the biggest

sort of revolutionary countercultural movement

in Western society,

and perhaps in the world, is Salafi jihadism.

If you guys only knew how much fun we have over here.

This is the real Disneyland.

You need to come here and join us...

Allahu akbar!

...and take pleasure in this fun.

It's a shock, and it's never the way

I imagined that our life would turn out.

Troy was a really energetic child.

♪ You make a lot of better friends ♪

He was very athletic.

He played basketball and did karate.

By time Troy was out of high school,

he wasn't doing well.

I think he was sometimes frustrated,

sometimes feeling really lost.

Troy converted to Islam,

and it really was great for him.

He'd been struggling with chemical use,

and it was just really clear,

you know, you don't use chemicals.

And he stopped, and he was really clean and positive.

He loved the community.

He loved the Friday prayers with all the men.

He was excited about things

and really wanting to know more about the religion.

Be careful.

Do not trust the enemies of Allah.

I do remember, he was watching some videos with a cleric,

but the little things that I'd see,

it didn't seem really hateful.

Many of the people just follow what is told,

what they're told.

I just was not aware to, like, watch and go,

"What is that guy saying?"

Never ever trust a kuffar.

Then, all of a sudden, he said he was going to Kenya

to study and to teach English.

And you know, it was a little strange to me --

like, I questioned him about it --

but in my mind, the way it made sense

was sort of the same way Christian organizations

send missionaries places.

- Allahu akbar! - Allahu akbar!

When the FBI came to let me know

about what they thought was happening,

it was really shocking to me. I didn't --

And I even e-mailed him, and I said, "Stay in Kenya,

because the FBI thinks

that you're connected with something bad.

And if you go into Somalia,

you're, you know, that -- that..."

So I was still really thinking that he was in Kenya.

We're here in the land of jihad -- Somalia.

You guys need to come here.

This is the place to be.

Troy never would have considered that he was a terrorist.

I think he may have believed he was joining a rebellion

to help the Somali people.

He never was violent.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I'm not stupid.

I know that those people get into the force of the group.

People do do horrible things.

- Takbir! - Allahu akbar!

- Takbir! - Allahu akbar!

Troy Kastigar left his home in Minnesota

in November of 2008.

Less than a year later, he was killed in Somalia.

The loss is terrible and shocking.

I'm careful about talking about this loss,

because I can't bear

to have anyone be hateful toward my son.

And, um, I just can't bear it.

There is this idea that these young people are demons.

So to have other people

that you can just share the grief with,

who also adore their children...

and understand they made some bad decisions.

Yes, my son was trained, processed,

programmed to kill,

in Yemen, in a foreign country.

Carlos grew up as a very happy person.

In Memphis, we operated a tour-bus company.

Carlos would love to hang around

and talk to the people.

He loved to try to pick up on a different language.

He got in some trouble in college.

And basically, when he went to court, the judge said,

"If I see you in my courtroom again, you know,

you're going to do time."

And we honestly think that scared him.

He wanted to change his religion because he thought,

"Well, maybe I'm not getting enough

from the Baptist religion.

I need to find another religion

to try to help keep me out of trouble."

While in college in Nashville,

Carlos Bledsoe converted to Islam

and changed his name to Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad.

One of the things that really changed with Carlos --

when he gave away his dog.

Carlos loved animals.

And the golden retriever, which was his heart,

he left him out in the woods,

because he said that that was not something --

as a Muslim,

you shouldn't have animals in your house.

Carlos come home maybe a couple months later

and said to us that he was going to be going to Yemen.

Bledsoe arrived in Yemen

with a letter of recommendation from an imam,

describing him as a practicing Salafi.

He was admitted to Dar al-Hadith,

an Islamist seminary, where he studied the Qur'an.

One late night, got a phone call.

"Your son" -- that's the only thing

I could understand at the time.

While in Yemen,

Bledsoe was arrested for carrying a fake passport,

which he had intended to use

to travel to Somalia for training.

He was also in possession of a flash drive

loaded with bomb-making instructions,

as well as lectures by Awlaki and others.

At the State Department,

we had a dialogue that lasted almost a couple months

before Carlos was abruptly released

from the Yemenis' jail

and they was going to allow my son

to travel back to America.

When he was in Yemen, before he came back,

he was in a jail with well-known terrorists.

They threw him in there with the wolves.

And now he's being told that when he comes back to America,

that he must do something.

Shots rang out at this Little Rock shopping center

shortly after 10:00 Monday morning.

The victims -- two U.S. Army soldiers.

23-year-old Private William Long

of Conway was killed.

18-year-old Private Quinton Ezeagwula

seriously injured, when, police say,

a suspect in a black S.U.V. drove by, opening fire.

When I got that phone call from the FBI...

that was...

really a knockout pain.

"Why would you do this, Carlos?"

That was the question that we kept repeating,

asking ourselves, "Why would you do this?"

My son Carlos -- he forgot who we were.

You give away your dog,

you give away all your possessions.

And if you can't convince your parents or your family

to become Muslims,

then you forget who they are, as well.

Carlos Bledsoe sent a letter from jail

to the judge in the case.

He described himself as a soldier of al-Qaeda

in the Arabian Peninsula.

He described the shooting as a jihadi attack,

done in retribution

for the killing of Muslims by American soldiers

in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bledsoe also spoke to the media.

He thought was he did was right.

Basically, he was going to the media

saying he'll do it again.

If he's let go, he'll do it again.

Bledsoe pled guilty to capital murder charges

and was served 11 consecutive life sentences.

This has been a tough pill to swallow.

Still trying to digest it.

I think it hurts more because I have two boys.

They do go and visit him.

And my oldest, he asked the question,

"Mommy, what did Uncle Carlos do?"

And I have not been able to fathom the words

to let him know.

I just say, "He did something bad,

and when you do something bad, you have to --

you're punished for it.

You know, you have to pay for what you've done.

And that's what Uncle Carlos is doing."

And it breaks my heart.

It breaks my heart.

Let's set the scene here at Fort Hood.

The base still on lockdown,

and we're still trying to figure out the motive

in this shooting.

Reporter

wearing an Army combat uniform, and started shooting,

shouting in Arabic that God is great.

At an Army base in Fort Hood, Texas,

a lone gunman killed 13 and wounded 32 others.

When it happened in Texas, I felt like,

"Did Carlos start something?

Did my brother start it?

Are there people trying to mimic what he did?"

Major Nidal Hasan was an American-born Muslim

scheduled to be deployed to Afghanistan

the following month.

Nidal Hasan was a man

who was an American Muslim soldier

in the post-9/11 era.

Muslims were, for right or wrong,

dying at the hands of American soldiers.

And this was an American Muslim

who was struggling with that split identity.

The Army and the FBI

are now combing Hasan's computer records,

assessing his apparent attraction

to inflammatory websites

and this mosque in suburban Washington.

While Awlaki was serving as imam of Dar Al-Hijrah,

one of the people attending the mosque was Nidal Hasan.

And Awlaki, in the spring of 2001,

presided over the funeral for Hasan's mother.

By 2009, Awlaki was openly radical,

and he started getting e-mails from Nidal Hasan.

Nidal Hasan was very keen to get instructions from Awlaki.

Awlaki didn't give him too many.

But he certainly didn't discourage him from his actions.

The FBI had been monitoring Awlaki's e-mails with Hasan.

But due to a lack of interdepartmental communication,

the 18 e-mails exchanged between Hasan and Awlaki

were never shared with the Terrorism Task Force.

Major Hasan never went to al-Qaeda training camp.

He never traveled to places considered al-Qaeda.

The criteria that was used before

to detect terrorism, did not fit.

Major Nidal Hasan was born in Arlington, Virginia,

half a century ago.

So the problem we have now is really a domestic problem.

This is a time of war.

And these Americans did not die

on a foreign field of battle.

They were killed here, on American soil.

America refuses to admit

that its foreign policies

are the reasons behind the men like Nidal Hasan,

born and raised in the U.S.,

turning his guns against American soldiers.

The American government is losing this war.

This is something that America

would never want to admit.

They would never want to admit that they're being crushed.

21-year-Old Samir Khan was a Saudi-born American citizen.

Samir Khan was a young radical living in North Carolina

who had been experimenting with jihadi media.

Samir Khan had become a little bit of a star.

His blog, written in the basement

of his parents' home in Charlotte, North Carolina,

was getting some attention.

Anwar al-Awlaki was in coordination with Samir,

recommending that we start

the very first pro-al-Qaeda magazine

in English.

And I penned an article

that served as the cover story for the very first edition

of what was called Jihad Recollections.

Are you helping recruit for al-Qaeda?

No.

- Not at all? - No.

- Helping recruit for terrorism? - Not at all.

When Samir's blog caught the attention

of American news media,

he left the country on a one-way ticket to Yemen.

When he joined Awlaki in Yemen,

they set out to re-create this magazine format and to --

not just re-create it,

but really supercharge it and expand it.

They created Inspire magazine,

which became a hugely successful, new,

slick online magazine directed at Jihadi recruits.

What Inspire really did that was different is it took

all this kind of classic Jihadi propaganda

and married it to, "Oh, by the way,

here's how to build a bomb in the kitchen of your mom."

Anwar al-Awlaki is presented

by the then-leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,

and he's asking Osama bin Laden

if Anwar al-Awlaki can become the emir,

the leader of the organization.

And bin Laden is saying, "I don't know,

because the magazine that they're publishing

and the plans that they're sending me

are absolutely even worse than what I would do."

Strapping razor blades to a pickup truck

and going down Times Square to mow people over,

and plans to poison the water supply of major cities.

Another big contribution Awlaki made

to the Salafi jihadi movement was to develop

the religious justification

for killing people who insulted the Prophet Muhammad.

You've done this town a huge favor

Hold on a second! There are some extremists

threatening that if we give to the celebrities,

they're gonna bomb us.

What?!

When "South Park" aired an episode

depicting the Prophet Muhammad in a bear suit,

Zachary Chesser posted an ominous threat

on the Revolution Muslim website.

Chesser posted a picture of Theo van Gogh,

who made a film about Islam

and was killed in the middle of the street.

He said that the writers of "South Park,"

for portraying the Prophet Muhammad in a bear suit,

would likely end up like Theo van Gogh.

This thing was covered in the press

as being the origin of it coming from Revolution Muslim.

It went viral.

We have more breaking news tonight

about one of the leaders of a homegrown, radical group

called Revolution Muslim.

"Turhibunna" -- this means "terrorize them."

It's a command from Allah.

Now a man named Jesse Curtis Morton,

who's also known as Younus Abdullah Muhammad,

has been threatening the writers

of the television comedy series "South Park."

Shortly after the "South Park" story unfolded,

Zachary Chesser was arrested

for trying to join al-Shabaab in Somalia,

and so I assumed

that I would also soon be arrested

for the "South Park" controversy.

So I left to go and move to Morocco,

where I was ultimately arrested.

The Americans came to pick me up five months later,

changed me into the orange jumpsuit,

strapped the earplugs in, blinded --

like the Guantanamo images

I used to use to promote the idea

that America was at war with Islam.

So my own conspiratorial views start to creep in.

"Oh, my God, they're taking me to a secret prison."

All of a sudden, the earplugs come out and he says,

"I just want to know,

do you prefer to be called Younus Abdullah Muhammad,

or do you want to be called Jesse Morton?"

And sort of, I didn't even think about it.

I just said, "Jesse Morton."

I wasn't going to Bagram or Guantanamo.

I was being treated like a human being.

So, I'm facing life in prison.

I ask to go to the law library.

Originally, I intended to research my case

and to get out of the trouble I was in.

Soon, it became apparent that there was no way

to get out of the trouble that I was in.

But I came across this collection

called the Encyclopedia Britannica's

"Great Books of the Western World."

And I started to read selected works

from the era of the Enlightenment.

And I realized that freedom is something

that every individual yearns for inside

and that these are principles that I myself believed in,

but allowed totalitarian interpretations of Islam

to sort of destroy.

That woke me up.

And that was the start of my de-radicalization.

Others, however, continued to be radicalized

by Awlaki's lectures online.

Nigerian-born Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab,

the son of a wealthy banker,

was studying in London when he first discovered Awlaki.

Four years later, at the age of 23,

Abdulmutallab transferred his studies to Yemen

to meet Awlaki and participate in jihad.

When asked to consider a martyrdom mission,

Awlaki's latest recruit

was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice.

Awlaki coached Abdulmutallab

in the making of his martyrdom video.

Awlaki's final instructions --

"Wait until you are in the U.S., then bring the plane down."

Northwest Flight 253, carrying 278 passengers,

was about to touch down in Detroit,

when chaos broke out on board.

We heard a loud pop.

And then we looked back,

there was some fumes and some flames.

I heard, "The bags were on fire."

Abdulmutallab evaded security

by concealing a unique powdered explosive in his underwear.

A U.S. government test showed what could have happened

had the explosives detonated on board.

It was only a technical issue with the device

that saved the flight from total destruction.

However, our brother Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab

has succeeded in breaking through the security systems

that have cost the U.S. government alone

over $40 billion since 9/11.

You are still unsafe,

even in the holiest and most sacred of days to you --

Christmas Day.

The U.S. passenger-plane plot had failed,

but Awlaki was already planning his next operation.

This time, bombs would be planted inside printer boxes

to be shipped via cargo planes.

Once over U.S. soil, the bombs would be detonated.

But after a tip-off, the packages were intercepted

at airports in the U.K. and Dubai.

When they did the UPS bombing,

they printed a special edition of Inspire, saying,

"Look, we only spent a couple thousand dollars

on this thing,

and we paralyzed half of the Western security system

as a result."

This attack elevated Awlaki's status

to the highest level of concern by the United States.

Awlaki became the first U.S. citizen

to be put on a kill list by the President.

3-0-1 ready to go.

Anwar Awlaki, the chief of external operations for AQAP.

He helped oversee the 2010 plot

to detonate explosive devices on two U.S.-bound cargo planes.

He was involved in planning to blow up an airliner in 2009.

The decision to kill Awlaki, as an American citizen,

does raise complications, but you have to do something.

What you do is the question.

I got good range, good limits on him.

Declare fire.

Good impact. Break away.

The U.S.-ordered drone strike that killed Awlaki

also killed three others,

including fellow American Samir Khan.

The problem here is that the U.S. has done something

that I don't think it has ever done before.

It has killed one of its citizens,

somewhere else around the world,

without any due process at all.

I've got real concerns about it because it sets a precedent.

Two weeks after his father was killed

in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen,

the younger al-Awlaki

was also killed by a drone there.

It's not known whether he was targeted in that attack.

He was 16 years old,

and there is no public evidence

he was a member of the al-Qaeda network in Yemen.

Awlaki was not the most senior figure

in al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

AQAP will go on.

I think we've missed an opportunity

to do more than just kill him,

but to discredit the ideas that he pushed for years.

We killed the messenger,

but we did not kill the message.

It was a beautiful day. The sun was out.

People laughing and cheering.

We wanted to be there at the finish line,

even though we didn't have any specific person

who we were looking for.

It was about being there as a part of the city.

Something just blew up!

All of a sudden, it just felt like we were on a rocket.

And we shot up together and landed next to each other.

There was smoke everywhere and people screaming

and a lot of chaos.

The Boston Marathon bombing killed three

and injured hundreds of others,

17 of whom, including Jess and Patrick, lost limbs.

Get back!

I was in prison when Boston happened.

And I was numb.

I was, like, shaking, especially when it came out

that the bombs used in the attack

were built upon the article inside of the magazine

that I essentially laid a template for

with Samir Khan and Anwar al-Awlaki.

It's almost like being insane and coming to.

You see the consequences of ideas in the real world,

and it's catastrophic.

An attack on a live, televised, iconic American event --

that shakes America's soul to the core.

And the question is, "Who did this?

And who sent them? And who ordered it?"

And the answer is, "Nobody sent them."

You know, they drank the Kool-Aid on the computer.

The two brothers --

Tamerlan and the younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev --

one was an American citizen,

the other one was a legal permanent resident.

They'd been in this country since they were children.

They radicalized here in the United States.

They didn't radicalize elsewhere.

The perpetrators of this crime

lived a mile from our front door.

They both attended high school where my --

Patrick's parents met.

A teacher who knew him

at Rindge and Latin High School in Cambridge was stunned.

There's nothing about him

that would suggest anything like this --

politics, religion, nothing.

These weren't outsiders.

We were members of the same community.

So it's even more confusing and harder to understand.

If you look at Tamerlan Tsarnaev,

here's a kid who comes to America from Chechnya.

He wants to get girls and money and things,

be on the U.S. Olympic boxing team.

They changed the rule.

"You're a legal permanent resident,

but not a U.S. citizen, you're off."

That, I believe, created identity problems for him.

He became very angry, very mad.

He went to the Internet.

In the Internet, he found already established conflicts

that he can relate to.

It's the war in Chechnya.

He stumbled into people like Anwar al-Awlaki

and his fiery sermons.

And then, suddenly, he decides

that he is not accepted in America.

He is not an American, he is a Muslim,

and he has to fight for Islam.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev really saw himself as a heroic figure

whose dreams of Olympic-level glory faded over time.

The Boston Marathon attack was a way

to turn himself once again

into the hero of his own story.

The younger brother, Dzhokhar, was not an observant Muslim.

He was smoking marijuana

and chasing girls and drinking.

For him, I think it was the influence

of his older brother and Anwar Awlaki.

A month before the attack,

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev tweeted about Awlaki.

So, they watch Anwar al-Awlaki's videos,

and they got inspiration from those.

But there's no sign that they communicated back,

in a two-way street, with any terrorist organization.

Now, a lot of people will go back on that and say,

"Well, the Russians tipped the FBI,

and the FBI looked at them."

Two years prior to the Marathon bombing,

Russian intelligence sent a tip to the FBI

about Tamerlan Tsarnaev,

citing possible ties to violent extremists.

The FBI can open a preliminary investigation

that basically says, "We got a tip on this person,"

and they can run that for 90 days.

But at the end of the day, if you haven't found grist

for that initial allegation, then you have to close it.

The problem is, you can't watch everybody all the time.

An FBI surveillance team surveil one person for a week.

It takes a team of like a dozen people

working around the clock.

Some of these cases

are always going to slip through the cracks.

There's no such thing as a perfect system

for catching them all.

If the conspiracy was just between two brothers,

your ability to get in front of that plot is very challenged.

So, gone is the complex terrorist organization

with hierarchical command and control.

You're seeing lower-scale attacks,

lower levels of casualties,

but the psychological effects are still there.

America suffers the PTSD of 9/11,

which, in turn, magnifies the impact

of all these events, large or small.

I was awaiting my sentencing hearing.

I'm sitting in my cell,

and one of the inmates, a young man,

tells me that he was thwarted in his efforts

to conduct a terrorist attack,

and he tells me about people on the outside

that he left further plans with.

Me and the FBI are developing a relationship,

and so I tell them.

They need confirmation of the plot.

Long story short,

that was the very first piece of cooperation.

That relationship with the FBI continued,

and that was major part of my further de-radicalization.

I really can't comment on any specifics.

I can say that my cooperation yielded significant gains.

Some of you might remember me,

and others of you don't know who I am.

But I'm the former emir of Revolution Muslim.

In exchange for his cooperation,

Jesse was released after serving less than 3 years

of his 11 1/2-year sentence.

I was extradited from Morocco.

Jesse also agreed to re-embed himself

as an undercover informant for the FBI.

He recorded this video and posted it online.

Nobody would have ever believed that Younus Abdullah Muhammad

would have de-radicalized, or that Younus Abdullah Muhammad

would have cooperated with police.

The world is a very different place,

but I'm hoping that some of you

might be courageous enough

to welcome me back to it.

All the old buddies reached out --

everybody that I had previous contact with --

and I re-embedded myself in a network

that I really saw had become much more serious

than before I went to prison.

ISIS is a metastasization of al-Qaeda.

Essentially, the ideology is the same.

But the reason that ISIS is so effective in radicalizing

and promoting terrorism in Western countries

is because they've established something al-Qaeda never could,

and that is the Khilafah, the Caliphate.

ISIS was al-Qaeda of Iraq.

And they said, "Syria is a jump ball.

That's free real estate.

Let's grab our piece of it. We'll plant the flag.

We'll call it the Islamic State."

This is our Khilafah in all its glory,

remaining and expanding.

Therefore, what you're doing,

the violence you're perpetrating,

is actually the positive.

It is the preservation of the Caliphate itself.

You know, the Nazis and the Khmer Rouge

went to great lengths to hide their war crimes.

ISIS has broadcast them for everybody to see.

It's run as terrorism mass marketing

through social media.

ISIS has built its recruitment success

on its ability to project an image of military success.

Fire!

What we're seeing is that

as they are less able to claim that success,

as they lose on the ground,

some of their appeal is also going away.

ISIS' first priority was get people

to travel to join them in Iraq and Syria.

They no longer urge that.

They want people to stay and attack in place,

because there is no pragmatic way for them

to get them over the border, get them into place.

You have two choices -- either hijra or jihad.

You either leave or you fight.

ISIS has adopted Awlaki.

So he is as much an influence for them

as he is for al-Qaeda at this point.

"If you can't fight the enemy here,

fight it where you are,

whether that's New York, Chicago, L.A.,

or Orlando, Florida."

Born in New York, Omar Mateen moved to Florida

with his family at a young age.

Mateen's school years were checkered

with fights and expulsions.

It was a pattern of behavior

that would follow him to his job as a security officer.

When his second marriage produced a son,

Mateen appeared to be settling down.

But something he said at his local mosque

led a fellow worshiper to call the FBI.

Based on the tip, the FBI interviewed Mateen.

But the field officer assigned to the case

concluded that Mateen was not a terrorist.

"I don't believe he will go postal."

Gunfire, gunfire! Gunfire, gunfire!

Position of cover.

Mateen is an individual who wanted to be a policeman.

Because of psychological testings,

he was not able to be a policeman.

That triggered him to go on a totally different path.

In Orlando, 49 were killed and 53 others were wounded.

It was the deadliest mass shooting

by a single shooter in U.S. history.

Omar Mateen, one of the soldiers of the Khilafah,

was one of the few that was truthful to his Lord.

ISIS is very happy to take advantage of that

and say, "Hey, see?

They responded to our message,

and they are soldiers of the Caliphate.

Look what they did in America."

But are they really soldiers of the Caliphate?

No. The only relationship they have is a narrative

that convinced them to commit murder,

to commit terrorism,

in order to justify some sick feelings inside them.

Same thing with San Bernardino.

He went berserk.

He met his wife, and they killed a lot of his co-workers.

In San Bernardino,

14 were killed and 24 were wounded.

The links to ISIS from that attack

are very, very unclear.

But because ISIS judged accurately

that they could make this claim credibly

and that nobody would really push back on it,

it's become part of the ISIS folklore now

that this was an ISIS attack.

It is an ideology that can convince an individual

to kill for the name of the Caliphate

or for the name of al-Qaeda.

If we don't combat the narrative,

if we don't kill the ideology,

we're going to continue to play a game of whack-a-mole.

Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown

of Muslims entering the United States

until our country's representatives

can figure out what the hell is going on.

Isolating American Muslim community

by making the statement,

this hurts us twice --

as Americans and as Muslims.

Protection of the nation

from foreign terrorist entry into the United States.

That's big stuff.

Let's say we banned all immigration tomorrow.

That wouldn't solve the problem.

People are being radicalized

in their bedrooms by the Internet,

which is not susceptible to being banned.

So, that being the case,

what you need is not to alienate the Muslim community,

you need to enlist them.

This is absolutely playing into the hands of ISIS.

You're already seeing, on social media,

pro-ISIS radicals claiming victory.

The West will eventually turn against its Muslim citizens.

If that view gains currency,

which one fears that it might,

that would have the effect of, in fact,

driving people into the arms of extremists

who otherwise wouldn't.

The narratives of these organizations,

a lot of times,

it's based on our mistakes.

We invaded Iraq. That fed into the narrative.

The images of Abu Ghraib fed into the narrative.

Guantanamo Bay fed into the narrative.

Killing innocent people with drone strikes

fed into the narrative.

Banning Muslims fed into the narrative.

That's why, on the eve of 9/11,

al-Qaeda had 400 members.

Today they have thousands and thousands.

I believe this was part of bin Laden's vision.

Mr. Bin Laden, you've issued a fatwa.

When I talked to him in 1998, in an interview, I asked,

"Are you worried about being captured or killed by America?"

And he said, "Oh, it doesn't matter what America does.

Someday this will become a movement

that's driven by the message."

A lot of what he predicted has come true.

It went from being an organization

to being a network of organizations

to being basically a movement driven

by social media.

ISIS, al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab --

we have to realize that these are groups

that represent a wider movement.

And it's the wider movement we need to be more worried about.

As long as that movement exists,

as long as it still attracts people,

it will continue to be a problem.

We had a lot of tactical successes

in the war against al-Qaeda.

But all the tactical successes we had,

in some weird way,

amounted to a strategic failure --

a strategic failure that we are still dealing with today.

If you really think back to 15 years ago, it's like,

"Is the problem better, or did we make it worse?"

During the hearing of an operative

arrested as a result of Jesse's testimony,

his undercover status was blown.

This is a message directed towards Jesse Curtis Morton,

previously known as Younus Abdullah Muhammad.

Let's be honest, you lied to my face

and took advantage of many brothers' sincerity.

I called you to inform you that a mutual friend of ours

might be an informant

that entrapped a Muslim recently.

And now I just found out that you've been one all along.

Seriously, man, lost all respect for you.

You know who this is.

That's an old friend --

one of my better friends from the movement.

But the reality is that they are not friends,

and they never were friends.

In the beginning, he emphasizes, like,

"Jesse Curtis Morton," the whole name.

Basically, you know, that's letting people know,

you know, "There's the middle name,

so now you can find him."

So, what do you do with that?

You just realize how positive it is,

the change that you made in your life,

and that you need to continue to do work to counter them.

What would you do if I came to your house, blew it up?

I'm glad that I've been able to tap into my personal issues

and see the world the way it really is,

rather than as an outlet for me to project my own animosities.

De-radicalization, it's a process,

it's not an event.

It's almost like drug addiction.

You think that you're healed

and that you're never going to relapse,

that you're never going to return,

but then you realize,

"Oh, that still exists in me."

In late December of 2016,

Jesse was arrested for possession of cocaine

and soliciting a prostitute.

We have to think about the concept

of re-entry or rehabilitation.

We have to de-radicalize them on the ideologies,

but you also have to give them re-entry skills

so they can become productive members of society.

It's not a new idea, but the fact

that we've only started talking about it

from the government side now, it's, uh...

This is what makes you think,

"Okay, are we really serious about dealing with the issue?"

Right now, if you're a family member

worried about your kid, you got nothing.

You do nothing, kind of hope it's a phase,

you know, teenage angst, they grow out of it.

Or you call the FBI and, potentially,

talk to your loved one behind a prison bar for 20 years.

What happened to my son...

I thought it's only Somali community.

I never thought that it's Caucasian.

I never thought that it's African-American.

I find out this happen to everyone.

We're talking about small numbers of individuals

that are drawn to groups like ISIS --

105 people in the last two years.

These are manageable numbers

in terms of one-on-one interventions.

You can have a bench of religious leaders,

properly vetted,

intervention specialists, social workers,

mental-health professionals that you can say,

"I got a guy down the street.

I need your help on this. Can you help me out?"

We haven't done that.

I'm an ordinary citizen, but I don't understand

why we have so much fear of talking

about what is real.

It is a real threat to America,

as I said earlier today.

It came into my house,

but it's at your doorstep, and we need to talk about it.

This shouldn't happen to anyone--

any child, any American citizen,

any parent -- no one.

I used to travel to Minneapolis

to meet with mothers of kids who had joined al-Shabaab.

And they're saying, you know,

"Seamus, can you help me save my kids?

They're been brainwashed, they've been kidnapped.

Help me save them."

That actually frames the way I look at this issue.

I never want to have to sit in an apartment-building basement

talking to grieving mothers.

I don't want to do it.

I think there's a way to do this,

because at some point,

you don't want to have those conversations anymore.

We got to figure this out.

We need to develop a strategy where people --

regular people in communities around the world --

feel part of this fight against radicalism,

part of this fight against evil.

That's the only way we can win this war.