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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...
These associations remained hidden from most of al-Awlaki's congregants. Many in San Diego remember him as a likable, articulate preacher with moderate views. Ahmad Ibrahim, president of the Muslim Student Association at the University of California at San Diego in 1999-2000, heard al-Awlaki speak on several occasions and says the cleric only occasionally addressed controversial topics like Palestinian suicide bombers. "He had the opinion that ... their mission was acceptable," Ibrahim says but adds, "I don't believe he ever proposed killing civilians." Another worshipper says the congregation wouldn't have tolerated extremist preaching. "[He wasn...
...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...
After 9/11, al-Awlaki swiftly condemned the hijackers. A PBS NewsHour program in October 2001 shows him in a sermon criticizing U.S. foreign policy but arguing that it did not justify killing Americans. On the contrary, he told PBS, "Every nation on the face of the earth has a right to defend itself and to bring the perpetrators to justice...