missile that I showedyou.â Hussain pronounced the word missile as mee-zile , as if he were attempting a Russian accent. None of this seemed to register with Aref, who never looked up from counting the money. (Aref, whose English is poor, would later maintain he never heard the word mee-zile and that he didnât realize the trigger mechanism was part of a weapon. 26 ) âSo as soon as [the money] comes, Iâll give youâthis is $5,000, so next couple of weeks, or less, Iâll get you more money,â Hussain continued.
â InshaâAllah ,â Hossain said. âItâs no problem, see, actually, I didnât need all that. I just need to keep going, just so I can pay the bills.â 27 Hossain, as the line suggested, believed the money was for a personal loan, not for weapons.
The FBI and Hussain stayed close to Hossain and Aref for the next several months, presumably in the hopes of documenting some type of criminal behavior. There were dozens of conversations during this time, and in some between Hussain and Hossain, the informant used a code word for the missile, chaudry . According to the government, this was evidence that Hossain knew about the missile, but from the transcripts, it isnât clear whether Hossain knew the informantâs meaning of chaudry . Hossain also began to pay back Hussain with regular checks, as he had agreed, suggesting that the pizzeria owner truly believed their arrangement constituted a loan, not money laundering. In fact, on the memo line of one check, he wrote that it was for a loan repayment.
Finally, after seven months without criminal activity by either Hossain or Aref, the FBI arrested the pair in August 2004, charging them with conspiring to aid a terrorist group, providing support for a weapon of mass destruction, money laundering, and supporting a foreign terrorist organization. They went to trial together in September and October 2006.Because Hossain and Aref had not encountered a real terrorist during the entire FBI operationâonly an informant posing as an arms importer for terroristsâthe prosecution needed to find a way to link Hossainâs and Arefâs recorded statements to terrorism. For that, the U.S. government turned to Evan Kohlmann, a then-twenty-seven-year-old self-described terrorism expert whom an FBI agent once dubbed âthe Doogie Howser of terrorism.â
A Florida native whose Manhattan apartment walls are covered with pictures of terrorists, Kohlmann is the governmentâs most prolific terrorism expert, having served as an expert witness in seventeen terrorism trials in the United States and in nine others abroad since 2002. With most of his knowledge gleaned from the Internetâthe type of information the CIA describes as âopen source intelligenceââKohlmann has testified to juries about the history of Islamic terrorism, how terrorist organizations finance themselves, and how they spread propaganda and recruit others for terrorist acts. Since 9/11, Kohlmann has made a living testifying for the prosecution in terrorism trials as well as appearing on cable news as a terrorism expert. Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University, described Kohlmann to New York magazine as having been âgrown hydroponically in the basement of the Bush Justice Department.â 28 Several defense lawyers, including those in the cases of âdirty bomberâ JoÅe Padilla and the so-called Virginia jihad group, have tried to have Kohlmann disqualified as an expert witness, arguing that his only qualifications as a terrorism expert are self-fashioned. 29 However, because few experts with university credentials and social science backgrounds are willing to testify about terrorism, the Justice Department has had little trouble persuading judges to allowKohlmann to take the stand, where, as one of his critics put it, he spews âjunk scienceâ by suggesting that
Alys Arden
Claude Lalumiere
Chris Bradford
Capri Montgomery
A. J. Jacobs
John Pearson
J.C. Burke
Charlie Brooker
Kristina Ludwig
Laura Buzo