THREATS, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE BY ANNETTE STARK

THREATS, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE
Southern California acolyte Adam Gadahn may be mystery man in new Al Qaeda threat tape
By Annette Stark

http://www.lacitybeat.com/cms/story/detail/?id=1357&IssueNum=74

Suspected terrorist and metalhead Yahiye Adam Gadahn was back in the news last week. But this time the former Southern California resident's adolescent fascination with death metal was barely mentioned, as U.S. intelligence officials considered the possibility that Gadahn is the mystery man, "Azzam the American," who showed up on an Al Qaeda terror tape threatening "blood in the streets."
The 75-minute videotape, delivered to ABC News, appears to have been made with sophisticated production techniques and bears the logo of the Al Qaeda production house, As-Sahab. It shows a heavily disguised man in an Arab headdress and sunglasses, staring directly into the camera, speaking in fluent English and bursts of Arabic, proclaiming that Osama bin Laden is his leader and declaring that "the streets of America shall be red with blood, matching drop for drop the blood of America's victims."
A courier had actually delivered the tape to an ABC office in Pakistan over the weekend, but the news organization first turned it over to U.S. intelligence officials before airing segments on Thursday, October 28. The move has prompted criticism elsewhere in the media that ABC sat on the story.
While U.S. intelligence officials were still actively interviewing Gadahn's family members to see if they could identify him as "Azzam," Fox News reported on October 29 that it had independently acquired a copy of the tape and had shown it to Imam Haitham "Danny" Bundakji of the Islamic Society of Orange County - the man responsible for converting Gadahn to Islam in 1995 - and that Bundakji had confirmed that Azzam was indeed Gadahn.
Also back in the news, this week: Osama bin Laden, in another video, also delivered to a news organization in Pakistan. But this video appeared on a doorstep outside the television network Al-Jazeera, as reported by the U.K.'s Guardian Unlimited. In the video, bin Laden appeals to U.S. voters to change government policies in the Middle East. He references big contracts for Halliburton and cites a scene from Michael Moore's documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11, in which Bush sat in a classroom reading the children's book My Pet Goat while thousands of Americans burned. It is also the first time that bin Laden actually claims responsibility for the attacks.
The scoop, which only vaguely mentioned further attacks, accomplished something huge: It proved that bin Laden is still very much alive.
Comparisons between the two tapes were quickly preempted by the mainstream media's assessments about how the bin Laden tape would influence the tight presidential race. But the appearance of both videos in the same week in the same city has yet to be explored, along with questions as to why the Azzam tape contains maniacal threats such as "now it's your turn to die," and menacing hand gestures pointed straight at the camera, while the bin Laden tape features the terrorist in his most "reasonable" light.
"Our investigative course is to absolutely try to determine if these were manufactured individually," says an FBI spokesperson. "I think the CIA authenticated the bin Laden tape, but don't know if it's been done on the Azzam, yet."
Gadahn, 26, first showed up on the FBI's suspect terror list last May, following a TV announcement by Attorney General John Ashcroft that Gadahn was the first American suspected of having enlisted at an Al Qaeda training camp. The agency has posted a photo of the suspected terrorist on its website and cautions that he might be "armed and dangerous."
"He's still not charged with any crimes," says the FBI spokesperson, confirming that the FBI and CIA are actively questioning Gadahn's family. "Even if it is him, what does that mean? It means the same thing it previously did, which is that he's wanted for questioning."
As a suspect terrorist, Gadahn is arguably the biggest enigma Al Qaeda could serve up. As previously reported in CityBeat, Gadahn is the son of Phil Pearlman, a Southern California establishment dropout, Vietnam antiwar protester, and member of the 1960s band Beat of the Earth. Pearlman changed his name to Gadahn and moved to a goat farm in rural Riverside County, where Adam and his three siblings - all home schooled - were raised without benefit of running water or electricity. At 15, Adam Gadahn moved in with his grandparents in Orange County, where he also enjoyed a fanatical - though brief - fascination with death metal.
In an essay titled "Becoming Muslim," apparently written by Gadahn in 1995 and originally posted to a USC website, he details his subsequent conversion to Islam. "Having been around Muslims in my formative years," he writes, "I knew well that they were not the bloodthirsty, barbaric terrorists that the news media and the televangelists paint them to be."
The Associated Press reported in May that Phil Gadahn hadn't seen his son since Adam moved to Pakistan more than five years ago, and that they had only spoken briefly after 9/11, when he learned that Adam had married and was working as a journalist for a Pakistani newspaper. Last week, Adam's aunt Nancy Pearlman, an award-winning Los Angeles broadcaster and environmentalist, confirmed for the press that the family was working with the FBI to identify the man on the tape.
It's been widely reported that Gadahn is fluent in Arabic, fueling speculation that he has worked as a translator for Al Qaeda. Arabic speakers who heard the Azzam tape told The Christian Science Monitor that that the man who calls himself Azzam the American "speaks the language well, but not as a native."
But, other than Nancy Pearlman's observation that her nephew was "quick to learn languages," there are no reports as to how Gadahn became fluent in Arabic. "I think he's married to a Muslim, so he learned it the way anybody learns it, by living in another country," the FBI spokesperson speculates, stressing that she doesn't know what kind of intelligence the FBI has on this, "Maybe he just has an aptitude for languages."
Explanations about his violent predilections are even harder to come by. "Our family are strong believers in non-violence," Pearlman told CNN last May. "We are strong believers in peace."
According to Bundakji, Gadahn's membership and employment in his Orange County mosque was not unlike his death-metal phase - fanatical and brief - cumulating in a violent episode that led to Gadahn's dismissal. Bundakji recalled to CityBeat: "He came charging into my office screaming. I never knew him to be violent before that. He was not even very talkative, at least to me and people of my rank. That day, he came in screaming and yelling and slapped me across the face."
Bundakji was raised in a Palestinian refugee camp during the time of escalating Israeli/Palestinian conflicts, and has admitted in interviews that he harbored an early hatred of Jews, until a trip to Mecca in 1986 convinced him to change his ways. Since then, Bundakji has worked with interfaith communities and speculates that this was a source of resentment to Gadahn. "He had been hanging around with six guys that did not like my approach with interfaith communities. They just stuffed his head with resentment for me because they felt that I was too Americanized. I would not allow them to assemble in the mosque in the evening."
The Orange County imam hesitates to use the word "extremist" when speaking about Gadahn. "He just had the wrong ideas and was hanging around people who also had these ideas," Bundakji says. As to how Bundakji is so positive that Gadahn and Azzam are one and the same, considering that he hasn't seen Gadahn since their falling out in the late '90s, he says it was mostly the gestures. "I knew him for over two years and recognized him as the person who worked for me. His voice, his manners, and especially his frenetic hand movements."
Published: 11/04/2004