American Spies: Espionage against the United States from the Cold War to the Present

26 Espionage and the War on Terrorism

26 283 Espionage and the War on Terrorism I wish to desert from the US Army. I wish to defect from the United States. I wish to join al-Qaeda, train its members, and conduct terrorist attacks. National Guardsman RYAN ANDERSON on an FBI videotape, quoted by Counterintelligence Centre, “Ryan Anderson” The thought of a spy or saboteur working for terrorists inside the US military or anywhere in the US government is chilling. Ryan Anderson, fortunately, offered his services not to terrorists but to FBI agents engaged in a sting operation against the young guardsman. Anderson seemed like the baby-faced boy next door. He was raised in Everett, Washington, a city about twenty-five miles north of Seattle whose official website boasts that it is “an All-American city” with the secondlargest marina on the West Coast and “some of the best salmon and steelhead fishing in the world.”1 The son of a schoolteacher, Anderson followed the typical path of many young boys in Everett during the 1990s, attending a Lutheran church with his parents, graduating from a local high school, and then attending Washington State University, where he studied Middle Eastern history. Anderson was so attracted to the Middle East that he converted to Islam before earning his college degree in 2002. After graduation, he joined the Army National Guard and was stationed at Fort Lewis in his home state. Espionage in the New Millennium 284 Sometime before the scheduled deployment of his unit to Iraq in late 2003, the boy next door was lured by extremist fundamentalism and transformed into “Johnny Taliban,” as he was later dubbed by the media.2 The few classmates and teachers who remembered Anderson from his student days claimed that he frequently adapted his personality to gain acceptance by various cliques.3 While in the Washington National Guard, he tried to join a far more dangerous clique than those of his school days. He began roaming through extremist chat rooms on the internet under the alias “Amir Abdul Rashid” to contact al-Qaeda, claiming that “I share your cause.” Thankfully, no one from al-Qaeda contacted Anderson, but his notes attracted the attention of a concerned citizen, Shannen Rossmiller, a judge in Montana who surfed jihadist websites on her own initiative to seek any hints of impending terrorist attacks. She baited Anderson with a phony exchange of e-mails and, shocked when he admitted that he was a National Guardsman, she immediately contacted the Department of Homeland Security, which in turn called the FBI. The army and the FBI identified Anderson and launched a sting operation .4 In late January 2004, FBI agents posing as jihadists met with the unsuspecting Anderson. The budding terrorist, who was a tank crewman in the National Guard, not only told them that he wanted to attack America butalsoofferedsketchesofarmytanksandinformationabouttanks,weapons, and vulnerabilities of armor deployed in Iraq. He was arrested in February 2004 on five counts of attempting to aid the enemy and providing intelligence to a terrorist network. Although his defense counsel claimed that he suffered from mental disorders, the twenty-seven-year-old guardsman was convicted at a court-martial and sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole. Anderson was an immature, delusional, and, fortunately for the United States, hopelessly inept volunteer who was caught before he could inflict harm against American troops in Iraq. His case, however , was not an isolated incident. Paul Raphael Hall In 2001 Paul Raphael Hall of Phoenix, a convert to Islam who went under the name Hassan Abu Jihaad, served as a signalman second class aboard Espionage and the War on Terrorism 285 the naval destroyer USS Benfold operating in the Middle East. Just a few months after the al-Qaeda bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, Abu Jihaad communicated with a well-known website run by Azzam Publications, a prominent recruitment and propaganda arm for extremists. Azzam was headed by Babar Ahmad, a British citizen of Pakistani origin who was under investigation by the British authorities. During a search of Ahmad’s London residence, the British discovered e-mail correspondence regarding movements of the aircraft carrier battle group that included the Benfold together with information about potential vulnerabilities of the ships to terrorist attack.5 The British passed the information to the US authorities, whose investigation surfaced Abu Jihaad as a likely suspect. The FBI used an undercover source acquainted with Abu Jihaad...