Hatred at Home: al-Qaida on Trial in the American Midwest

31. Changing of the Guard

 31 Changing of the Guard Late in 2000, as Iyman Faris and Maqsood Khan returned from their fateful forty-five-minute visit to the training camp where they met Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, they got in a van and sat down in front of two men in camouflage, their faces covered. The strangers’ accents gave them away as African Americans . When Faris asked them where they were from, they replied, “All over.”1 As a black, U.S.-born defendant in a federal terrorism case, Christopher Paul stood out from the majority of alleged conspirators, usually Muslim immigrants or first-generation Arab Americans. But he was not entirely alone. Just as some Muslims had adopted a radical interpretation of the faith they were born to, some black converts took an equally radical step with the faith they adopted.2 An al-Qaida defector, L’Hossaine Kherchtou, has testified there were some African Americans with the group when it was based in Sudan in the mid-1990s. Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir was introduced to two African Americans when he visited bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1998. In New York City in the 1990s, former hospital worker Clement Hampton-El, a Brooklyn native who was black, allegedly plotted with blind Egyptian cleric Sheik Omar AbdelRahman to bomb the United Nations, FBI offices, two tunnels, and other New York landmarks. Like Paul, Hampton-El was a veteran of the 1980s Afghanistan conflict, from which he’d returned with wounds from a Russian shell and an apparent animosity toward the West common to many foreign mujahedeen.3 Jeffery Leon Battle and Patrice Lumumba Ford, both members of the alleged Portland cell, were African Americans; both are now serving time in federal prison. James Ujaama, of Seattle, born James Earnest Thompson, entered a guilty plea in 2003 to a charge of conspiracy to provide goods and services, including computer software  hatred at home and technology, to the Taliban during a trip to Afghanistan. Kevin James, indicted in 2005 for alleged robberies connected to the goals of a terror group he had founded while in state prison in California, was a black convert to Islam, along with two of his fellow conspirators . Kobie Diablo Williams pleaded guilty in 2006 to conspiring to support the Taliban by conducting paramilitary-style training around the Houston area. In total, a 2010 study identified twentyfour African Americans among 139 defendants in domestic terror cases it tracked in the decade after 9/11.4 of the three Columbus suspects, Paul’s case proceeded the most quietly and uneventfully. Almost immediately, the government gave notice it would use information gathered during electronic surveillance as part of its prosecution. Paul’s attorneys did not respond and in fact did not file a single motion opposing the indictment or challenging any government evidence, other than to ask for a six-month delay to translate documents. Paul’s Worthington family refused all interviews, and his lead attorney, Jim Gilbert, was parsimonious with his comments by comparison with the lawyers for Faris and Abdi. After Paul’s arrest and indictment in April 2007, the remainder of that year and the first half of 2008 were taken up with housekeeping notices and the setting of status conferences with attorneys. Then, on June 2, 2008, with no formal notice, Paul indicated in a court filing he was going to change his plea to guilty; the government said he would receive a twenty-year sentence in exchange. Though he would never say so publicly, it was clear that Paul looked at the reality of going to trial as an alleged terrorist in post9 /11 America and, like, Abdi, calculated that the odds were against him. The following day, in the courtroom of U.S. District Court judge Gregory Frost, Paul pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction—specifically bombs—in terrorist attacks. Prosecutors then agreed to drop charges of providing material support to terrorists and conspiracy to provide support to terrorists. It was a perfunctory hearing. FBI agent LaTisha Hartsough read a statement alleging that Paul plotted with a German terrorist group to bomb Americans at home or abroad, and Paul agreed to the statement’s accuracy. Paul’s only comments during the hearing were a polite series of, “Yes, sir,” and “No, sir,” to questions from Frost.5 Changing of the Guard  Paul was just as...