blown out of the sky two days ago. The plane had been co-owned by Reza and three other lawyers, the other men all white Christians. The morning he attacked the White House, Reza had been seen by two people at the Stafford airfield who had known him for five and seven years respectively, and one of those men had seen Reza climb into the cockpit of the Cessna.
Ten minutes after the F-16 pilot had identified the tail numbers on the Cessna, FBI agents had been dispatched to Reza’s home in Arlington. Inside the house they found Reza’s wife and two children – a boy of eight and a girl of eleven – all dead. They’d each been shot once in the head with a .9mm automatic that had been found sitting in the middle of the Zarifs’ dining room table like some sort of ugly lethal centerpiece. Reza’s fingerprints were on the gun.
One sentence in the article said that the FBI had found a document in Reza’s house that indicated he had ties to al-Qaeda, but that’s all the FBI would tell the press. The Bureau claimed that the specifics of the document were classified because disclosing them could affect other ongoing operations, which was a fairly standard explanation used by the feds when they wanted to keep something from the media. Whether the explanation was true or not was a different issue.
Had Reza Zarif been an Iranian national who had slipped into the country using a false passport, his actions might have made some sense: just another radical Muslim who had decided to strike a blow for his brethren in the jihad and sacrificed himself and his family in the process. But that’s not who Reza Zarif had been.
Reza and his brother, Hassan, were Americans, born and raised in Boston. They attended public schools, and then Reza went to Boston College where he obtained a law degree. After law school, he moved to Washington, worked briefly for the Department of Justice, then established a small private practice near his home in Arlington, Virginia. A large number of his clients had been of Middle Eastern descent and he dealt mostly with mundane matters related to wills, taxes, and property. And he prospered.
But all this changed with 9/11. Reza became a fervent advocate for American Muslims. He was concerned that, in the backlash following the attacks, Muslims would suffer the same fate as Japanese Americans had following Pearl Harbor. He objected loudly and publicly to the Patriot Act and defended several Muslims, all American citizens, who had been detained or incarcerated for allegedly having terrorist connections.
Reza was handsome and articulate and passionate. He became an occasional guest on NOW and The News Hour with Jim Lehrer , and when Senator William Broderick made his famous speech, Reza became one of his most vocal opponents. Two weeks before his death, Reza appeared with Broderick on Meet the Press – and he lost it. He absolutely lost it.
The morning of the show he’d flown in from New York, where he had been defending a client, and had received disproportionate attention from airport security personnel. So when he arrived on Russert’s set he was already angry. For a while he maintained his composure with Broderick, but then Broderick made a remark about how performing background checks on American Muslims seemed like a pretty sensible thing to do, them being the people most likely to be terrorists. It wasn’t so much what Broderick said as the way he said it, as if it was no big deal – and Reza just went nuts. He rose up from his chair, pointed his finger at Broderick’s pale face, and screamed at him for several minutes, spittle flying from his mouth. Russert cut to a commercial when the fireworks died down, and when the show resumed Reza had left the set – which was too bad, as Broderick was then able to use the remaining air time to give his standard pitch.
Unfortunately, one of the things Reza said to Broderick was that 9/11 had occurred in part because of people like Broderick, people who
Ten minutes after the F-16 pilot had identified the tail numbers on the Cessna, FBI agents had been dispatched to Reza’s home in Arlington. Inside the house they found Reza’s wife and two children – a boy of eight and a girl of eleven – all dead. They’d each been shot once in the head with a .9mm automatic that had been found sitting in the middle of the Zarifs’ dining room table like some sort of ugly lethal centerpiece. Reza’s fingerprints were on the gun.
One sentence in the article said that the FBI had found a document in Reza’s house that indicated he had ties to al-Qaeda, but that’s all the FBI would tell the press. The Bureau claimed that the specifics of the document were classified because disclosing them could affect other ongoing operations, which was a fairly standard explanation used by the feds when they wanted to keep something from the media. Whether the explanation was true or not was a different issue.
Had Reza Zarif been an Iranian national who had slipped into the country using a false passport, his actions might have made some sense: just another radical Muslim who had decided to strike a blow for his brethren in the jihad and sacrificed himself and his family in the process. But that’s not who Reza Zarif had been.
Reza and his brother, Hassan, were Americans, born and raised in Boston. They attended public schools, and then Reza went to Boston College where he obtained a law degree. After law school, he moved to Washington, worked briefly for the Department of Justice, then established a small private practice near his home in Arlington, Virginia. A large number of his clients had been of Middle Eastern descent and he dealt mostly with mundane matters related to wills, taxes, and property. And he prospered.
But all this changed with 9/11. Reza became a fervent advocate for American Muslims. He was concerned that, in the backlash following the attacks, Muslims would suffer the same fate as Japanese Americans had following Pearl Harbor. He objected loudly and publicly to the Patriot Act and defended several Muslims, all American citizens, who had been detained or incarcerated for allegedly having terrorist connections.
Reza was handsome and articulate and passionate. He became an occasional guest on NOW and The News Hour with Jim Lehrer , and when Senator William Broderick made his famous speech, Reza became one of his most vocal opponents. Two weeks before his death, Reza appeared with Broderick on Meet the Press – and he lost it. He absolutely lost it.
The morning of the show he’d flown in from New York, where he had been defending a client, and had received disproportionate attention from airport security personnel. So when he arrived on Russert’s set he was already angry. For a while he maintained his composure with Broderick, but then Broderick made a remark about how performing background checks on American Muslims seemed like a pretty sensible thing to do, them being the people most likely to be terrorists. It wasn’t so much what Broderick said as the way he said it, as if it was no big deal – and Reza just went nuts. He rose up from his chair, pointed his finger at Broderick’s pale face, and screamed at him for several minutes, spittle flying from his mouth. Russert cut to a commercial when the fireworks died down, and when the show resumed Reza had left the set – which was too bad, as Broderick was then able to use the remaining air time to give his standard pitch.
Unfortunately, one of the things Reza said to Broderick was that 9/11 had occurred in part because of people like Broderick, people who
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