Word: al-qaeda
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...Diego, intelligence officials say, was also where al-Awlaki first made contact with jihadists. He was on the board of a charity run by a Yemeni associate of bin Laden; the FBI has said the charity was a fundraising front for al-Qaeda. Officials also say al-Awlaki met with a close associate of Omar Abdel Rahman, the "Blind Sheik" behind the 1993 attempt to bomb New York City's World Trade Center...
...al-Qaeda Connection But intelligence officials say al-Awlaki was leading a double life. In 2000 he met with Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, two of the five men who on Sept. 11, 2001, would hijack American Airlines Flight 77 and fly it into the Pentagon. These sources say that al-Awlaki held several closed-door meetings with the hijackers and that they regularly attended his sermons. But although the FBI investigated al-Awlaki's possible al-Qaeda connections before 9/11, it was unable to make anything stick. (See TIME's photo-essay "Double Agents: A Photo Dossier...
...early 2001, al-Hazmi would follow al-Awlaki to his next mosque, the Dar al-Hijrah in Falls Church, Va. Again, al-Awlaki paired his new job with an academic interest: he began working on a doctorate at George Washington University in Washington and, for good measure, became the university's Muslim chaplain. The double life continued. As in San Diego, al-Awlaki's sermons at Dar al-Hijrah were largely uncontroversial. Indeed, he spoke out against radicals, prompting the New York Times in October 2001 to label him as one of a "new generation of Muslim leader capable...
What distinguishes al-Awlaki is not his record; other preachers have had demonstrably closer links to al-Qaeda and jihad. It is his target audience. Al-Awlaki aims his sermons at young Muslims mostly living in the U.S. and Britain. This is a group he understands better than any other radical preacher. In his fluent English, he has become that rare specimen: the jihadist cleric who can communicate effortlessly with audiences in the West. His tone and his message can appear seductively conciliatory. Most of his sermons have nothing at all to do with radical ideology; they are simple translations...
That leaves a U.S. drone strike as the most likely option. There is a precedent for that, but also an unpleasant reminder that al-Awlaki is not the first man brought up in the West - and will surely not be the last - who threw in his lot with jihadists. For in November 2002, one of the first ever drone operations took place in Yemen, killing, among others, Ahmed Hijazi, a suspected al-Qaeda operative. He was an American...