My Jihad: The True Story of an American Mujahid's Amazing Journey from Usama Bin Laden's Training Camps to Counterterrorism with the FBI and CIA

by Aukai Collins
June, 2002

[an extract of the last two pages]

September 11, 2001

I struggled for about a year to get my work and family life together. I started to develop a career as a bounty hunter specializing in south-of-the-border apprehensions, a description of which would require at least another book. One of these operations took me to Mexico for a couple of weeks, where I chased a drug dealer who was wanted for failure to appear in court in Mancopa County. Eventually I found out that the information someone had given me was bogus, so I went back across the border to negotiate another contract in Phoenix. On September 10, 2001, I decided to stop off in San Diego and spend the night. The next morning I woke up and went on-line to check out the latest postings on the Black Flag Cafe, a message board on www.comebackalive.com, Robert Young Pelton's Web site. Someone bad posted a message saying that the World Trade Center had been attacked and that it was on fire. Yeah right, I thought. A lot of people post weird stuff like that on the Internet. After browsing through the other messages, I turned on the news. That's when I saw that the message posted on Black Flag was serious, and that the World Trade Center really had been hit.

As more of the story came out, I contacted the FBI and told them I was ready to go back to work. They didn't call back for a few days, but when they did we made arrangements to meet at the Phoenix office to have a little chat. By this time some of the details were coming out about the people who were alleged to have taken part in the hijackings, and it was apparent that a few of the guys were known not only to me but to the FBI as well. I was full of hope as I sat down to offer my assistance. I offered to go to Afghanistan, to talk to people I knew, or to help the FBI in any way. But my hopes proved to be naive. When FBI agents have absolutely no information, they don't grasp at straws; they rely on fear and intimidation. They immediately started in on me as though I were a suspect. I even took a voluntary polygraph to clear up any crazy ideas they had about the remote chance that I'd had any advance knowledge of September 11.

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I was very mistrustful about the fact that Usama Bin Laden's name was mentioned literally hours after the attack. When I combined this with the fact the FBI had no apparent desire to accept what I brought to the table, I became very skeptical about anything anybody said about what happened, or who did it. I thought back to when I was still working for them and we had the opportunity to enter Bin Laden's camp. Something just hadn't smelled right. There were also the details I knew personally about Hani Hanjoor, one of the "hanky-panky" hijackers on the Pentagon flight. He wasn't even moderately religious, let alone fanatically religious. And I knew for a fact that he wasn't part of Al Qaeda or any other Islamic organization; he couldn't even spell jihad in Arabic.

Within hours of the attacks Muslims all over the country were being rounded up and being held as supposed "material witnesses." In the end nearly a thousand Muslims, mainly of Arabic origin, were sitting in jail cells across America. How could nearly a thousand people keep a secret about something of that scale without leaking it somehow?

To this day I'm unsure who was behind September 11, nor can I even guess. But one thing is apparent: Bush and his so-called war on terrorism are doing the world far more harm than good. At this writing, the authorities have apprehended neither Usama Bin Laden nor even a single important terrorist. For all the talk of secret terrorist cells lying dormant in the United States, we haven't seen evidence of a single one yet.

Someday the truth will reveal itself, and I have a feeling that people won't like what they hear.




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