now they are like, okay. so there was a fax number. it's a mosque. a lot of people go there. well there's banking records too. the interesting thing about the hijackers is they were so fis tidhouse about their finances. they had a utility deposit of like $40 or something like that. they told the utility company in arizona, please send it to this address in falls church, virginia. and you know what the address is to? it's to anwar al awlaki's mosque. so you see, a man who ultimately became the leader of what i call al qaeda 2.0 was really an overlooked key player in 9/11 itself. his contacts with the hijackers were not a series of coincidences. they were really evidence of a

purposeful relationship. and i still talk about anwar al awlaki as the leader of al qaeda 2.0, because you see, it's really one thing to kill a man, but thanks to the web, it's quite another thing to kill his ideas. in closing before i take your questions, i'd like to tell you about the epilogue in the book. we started and finished at guantanamo bay. and it's really something to sit in that courtroom with these men. it really is. because it's very educational. very instructive. i really believe the best reporting is the reporting you do with your own eyes. and it was one of the final court appearances for the 9/11 suspects, as you know, they were in military commissions and attorney general eric holder said they were going to new york. that was ultimately reversed. so this is one of their final

court appearances in the first round. the second should come at some point this year. on a side note, i wish all of you -- and if you read the book, you'll meet some of the family members. the fact there hasn't been a trial for these people in a decade is criminal. these are people who read through their children's cell phone records up until the moment the tower collapsed because they had to understand nothing has happened. so in the courtroom, there's someone called wally ben tash. but he's like al qaeda royalty. his family and bin laden's family were friends, grew up together. and those who have seen the classified information say that wally was more important to the 9/11 plot than kalli shake muhammad because he was the guy

really moving the money. he's a little small man, very skinny. he always insists in sitting on a pillow in court because he says the chairs are too hard. so he comes in and sits on the cushion. and the courtroom is stupendous. there are five long defense tables on the left-hand side of the courtroom. it was custom built for their trial. it was around $12 million. and each table is almost as long as the tables you're sitting at right now because there's a spot for the 9/11 suspect. then there's a spot for at least one translator. there's a spot for a couple military attorneys and usually civilian attorneys as well. they are often at the table with six or eight, nine people. so wally ben tash is in the court and he has a legal pad in front of him. and i see him and he starts folding it and he ends up making

a paper airplane. he takes it and shoots it at one of the other 9/11 suspects. only three guys were in court that day. one of the other ones is so crazy it can be difficult to get him to court. so he opens up this paper airplane, and you can see these two men laughing. the sound is controlled by the military, so you can't really hear them, but you can see that there's something written inside that airplane. and when i got back to washington, d.c., through one of my legal contacts who had picked up information from the court security officer, ben tash had written either the 9/11 flight numbers or the tail numbers for those jets. just the symbolism of a military

courtroom, one of the 9/11 suspects throwing a paper airplane with the flight numbers inside after they murdered 3,000 americans, this is a real window into who these people are and it's a very dark window. i often say that people in the government who make decisions about these people, how they are going to prosecute them, or decisions about how to prosecute future cases, ought to just go sit in that 9/11 courtroom at guantanamo. half an hour, i can tell you, would be enough. because then you really understand what we're up against. so with that, i'd like to take your questions. [ applause ]

>> thanks for your presentation. recent news stories have spoken of the withdrawal of fbi training materials that have been found offensive to the care lobby in this country. along with other things that you have mentioned from your reporting. do you have an assessment of how badly compromised the fbi is relative to having their eyes open about2.0? >> that's an excellent question. if you look at the data, what you see is that the fbi has been very effective in breaking up plots inside the united states because in many respects, this administration has been very aggressive at trying to target individuals through surveillance or through the the web. almost all of these fbi cases broken up involve some type of informant, and the defense is almost that it was entrapment.

so on one hand, they have been effective, but there's a real reluctance to call this what it is. as i mentioned with fort hood, it took almost two months to call it an act of terrorism. just recently, i was the reporter who broke the story that the defense department was trying to deal with these attacks in the context of workplace violence. if you're able to speak to fbi agents privately, i interview one in the book who was very generous to do that with me. they speak of their frustration. they speak of an administration, in the opinion of this one agent, that seems desperate to assimilate these people when it's not possible to do that. and i may be old fashioned, but if you're going to tackle a problem, you have to call a spade a spade. because when you go on to the

web and you go into these websites, which are run by extremists, they mock us. they mock us for offering the olive branch. they mock us for trying to make peace. and the first said to me years ago that he always thinks of the issue this way. we've got watches, but they've got time. next question. go ahead. >> yes. thank you for your presentation. i look forward to reading your book. i'm the lpr graduate from 2008. mostly candidate for region at large. the reason i bring that up. i found it very interesting your comment about how al awlaki went to school here in colorado. apparently colorado colleges are

a source of a lot of radicalization. the entire islamist movement traces back whose outrage of university of northern colorado really in the 1940s. so i find that interesting connection. but i'm also a serving military officer. i'm in the reserve component. in fact, after today, i'm going to fort carson to serve my weekend. i'm curious as of two things. number one, i would be interest ed to hear more about how the radicalization is being spread and all the wrong type of self-actualization. and the other issue is i find it a very interesting struggle -- we in the military are struggling with this because it's a very new kind of war. we're fighting folks that exploit our weaknesses and exploit the fact that there's no

set battlefield. and we as military officers are sworn to uphold and defend the constitution and we take that oath very seriously. however, the way that it gets exploited, and the fact that they are attacking us on our home territory in ways that are certainly a form of warfare but not a traditional form of warfare, poses a number of challenges. can you address that conflict in how we fight traditionally and how we deal with the new form of warfare and attacks in our nation? >> thank you for the question. i will take that in a couple different parts. on the colorado issue, many of you will be interested to know that anwar al awlaki went to school in fort collins. he was a dual-national. but when he entered the united states to go to college, because as i say, all good terrorists want an american education. he came here saying he was an

american student so he could qualify for scholarship money that was paid for by the u.s. taxpayer. okay. that's enough there, i think. in terms of the radicalization, i am not a scientist, but what i can tell you from my reporting is that this generational divide is important. i really think there is a difference for people who grew up with social networking and the way they connect with each other on the web in a virtual way is far more intimate to them than it is to me. and what you have at play often is what i call small group dynamics. because what the web allows people to do is it allows them to identify like-minded people in a very quick way. let's say in the old days they used to congregate at the 7/11. this was the big congregation point for the hijackers at the mosque in falls church,

virginia. no offense taken to the 7/11. it was just a convenient spot. but you see, you don't have to do that anymore. you don't have to physically travel. you don't have to go to afghanistan or pakistan or yemen. you can find people who share your very extreme viewpoints, you know, in minutes. you start putting in the right words. and it's very confirming and it's very confirm toir of those forms of use. if you get people on the web that believe the moon is made of green cheese, and you know what? pretty soon you are committed to the idea that the moon is made of green cheese and everyone else who doesn't believe that is just not enlightened to what's really going on. so i believe this component is very important. what i also want to mention, and thank you for your service, is that one of the most disturbing trends we have seen in the last two years is the increasing

targeting of people in the military here in the united states. that in fact, about 70% of the plots in the last two and a half years have targeted members of the military. and the reason, as someone in a military family, that these people serve and go overseas and in some cases they become targets at home. and i have a theory as to why that is. again, it's not scientist. it's just based on what i have seen in my reporting. al qaeda has tried to sell its message to americans and western europeans since 2006 when they saw we were profiling people. they say, we can play that game too. we're going to find people who don't fit that profile. we're going to find blond, blue-eyed recruits. so they started identifying people.

and they started using the internet as a driver for that. but here in the united states, when they have been able to convince people of the ideology to become lone wolves, if you will, it doesn't seem they have been able to convince them it's okay to hit american civilians. americans feel uncomfortable with that. but because these people have bought into the false narrative that the united states government is at war against their religion, they feel that people in uniform are a legitimate target. that's my own assessment based on my reporting. and what's troubling is there really has been an acceleration in these cases. i mentioned earlier this man down in the washington, d.c., area, this alleged suicide bomber, the alleged target was the capitol building. but in fact, he considered several military targets before he settled on the capitol building. initially, he wanted to hit a

building that housed generals. then there was a restaurant that was popular with the military. you see it in almost all of these cases. >> there was a recent case in las vegas where someone walked into a restaurant where five military members in uniform, unfortunately unarmed due to policy, walked in and gunned them down. >> there was a case in arkansas, you may recall this recruitment center shooting. this is in 2009. that case was not prosecuted as a terrorism case, by the way. even though the young man wrote a letter to the judge saying that he committed that shooting on behalf of the cleric's group in yemen, al qaeda and the arabian peninsula, even though this young man carlos bledso traveled to yemen for training, it was prosecuted in state court like a drive by shooting.

thank you for the question. >> hi. glen freedman, lpr class of 2 2 2012. thank you for your talk and the great reporting you have done. has your reporting uncovered or revealed any connection between local home grown terrorism in iran or saudi arabia? >> what i found in my reporting, especially looking into 9/11, is there are many saudi contacts. this man out in los angeles is a troubling contact. he was glazed over, but not so in the joint congressional inquiry in 2002. one of the the sections in the book deals with hezbollah. a year and a half ago when i interviewed members of the radicalization unit, they talked about hezbollah and to what extent it may have a network

inside the united states. i'd say based on my reporting, that's really an unknown, but if you look at the recent statements of the director of national intelligence, james clapper, who is the nation's top intelligence advisor, he's telegraphed two very important things in the last couple of months. first and foremost, that he believes there's been a change in the calculous by the supreme leader in iran. that they may be willing to retaliate against the united states, strike here in the u.s. if there was a strike against their nuclear facilities. and secondly, james clapper said something publically that people only talked about privately for a long time, which is he believes there's an alliance between al qaeda and iran. and this is not a popular idea because the conventional thinking has been that sunnis and shiites cannot work together. but clapper said this is a shotgun marriage. a marriage of convenience.

and that the alliance really does exist. when he was pressed by, i believe it was senator portman, whether this was sort of an insurance policy, if you will, that if they were attacked they might rely on al qaeda's network to retaliate, he said that that was the belief of the u.s. government. thank you. >> i'm eric wiseman from boulder. i'm a candidate for the second congressional district. i was struck by your comments about the messaging and the stories about fort hood. how they would not recognize the facts and avoid discussing what it really meant. it made me think of the story in this morning's "times" about the intelligence agencies seeing they don't see a move by iran to build a nuclear weapon. how should we interpret these different narratives coming out of our administrations? thanks. >> i think it's very important to be your own reporter.

you know, to take the information and try and assess it for yourself. there is a lot of messaging going on, if you will. there's also what they are saying and what they really mean. when i was reporting on anwar al awlaki, people would tell me privately that i was making a very public case about why he should be on the cia kill or capture list. yet i found it bizarre that the u.s. government did not use all of the the tools at its disposal to delegitimize him. he was picked up three times in the united states for loitering around a school in san diego. and there are police records that show this. and there are mugshots that show this. and you can get a mug shot of almost any hollywood celebrity.

charlie sheen, lindsey lohan, but you can't get a mug shot of the cleric anwar al awlaki. i never understood that. because i thought that was such a powerful piece of evidence. here he is portraying himself as a holy man, on the one hand, on the web. on the otherened th enehand, he up for loitering around -- i don't know if it was an elementary school, i assume so, in san diego. it's a disconnect. and i think you have to see what's in the public domain. especially when it comes to iran. you have to see it, say, through a filter, but i think you have to use your own good judgment about measuring the message. not so much what they're saying but what they really mean. does that help? >> i think so. their commentary was they see iran building some capabilities but not developing in intention. is that a distinction without a

difference in your mind? if we could put it thank yit th filter, what are they trying to tell us? >> my assessment may be it may be an effort to minimize the findings of the iaea this week which said they had serious concerns about the nuclear program in iran. i know from speaking with the former cia director michael hayden, that he always felt that iran was one of the toughest issues to brief on to the president. in part because our general understanding of the regime is very limited. our intelligence. he said it was very opaque. you never really understood where the pressure points or the leverage points were to try to convince them to abandon this program. and that when you have countries that have a limited intelligence view, and you have a country like iran, which is becoming more and more isolated, which is

part of your strategy, to try and convince them to abandon their nuclear program, as they become more isolated, out of touch with the rest of the world, you do what, you increase the likelihood of a dramatic miscalculation. so you have two parties, limited information about each other, and the likelihood for miscalculation is very great. so i think that is part of it as well. and my final point i would make on that is recently the defense secretary leon panetta said he probably all read this, he believed israel would hit iran in april, may or june. and one of my contacts up on capitol hill who's on a relevant committee said, you know what the headline is, the headline is we don't really know. we believe. the israelis are not sharing that kind of information with us, he said, we're not in lock step. we think, we believe, but we don't really know.

and that's a change. from eight years ago. thanks for the question. >> thank you. >> hello, my name is sue meals. i'm running for national delegate here in el paso county but i'm a native of colorado, born in northeastern colorado, graduate of colorado state university, raised my children here in el paso. in 2001, my son was attending csu. we approached them about getting financial aid as an in state student and were told, what's wrong with him? foreign students get more money than he can. and then we were stationed in germany when the war broke out. there was a cell captured in heidelberg, germany, just north of us. one of the ladies had worked in the commissary. we'd seen her many times. of course we were trained, you know, watch for -- to watch for and so forth. we got back here to colorado and, oh, my gosh, i knew that

there's, like, a pipeline coming up from mexico, but i began finding out in loveland, i-76, it's no longer just migrant workers from mexico. there are many different folks from different countries coming through. also, with the beef plants in greeley and fort morgan, there's a lot of so many mmaliansomalia. how do we as citizens begin to understand who's friendly and who's not? >> that's a good question. one of the things i try and tell people is that when we look at this problem in the future, i try and remind people that one of the goals of a group like al qaeda or extremists is to try and encourage us to use religion as a dividing line.

do you know what i mean by that? to be overly suspicious of people who are muslim for example. when, in fact, i think when we want to create a dividing line, we want to ask ourselves, we're going to have the terrorists on one side and everyone else on the other. i think they try and use religion as a reg. because to use religion as a wedge here in the united states is very un-american, to sort of vulcanize us, if you will. and your question is important because what we've seen in the last ten years is that a group like al qaeda's no longer like a fortune 500 company. their franchise operations is kind of metastasized. then you have this home grown component. as i mentioned in '06, al qaeda made a policy decision to go after people from america and western europe because it kind of blows the entire profile. one thing law enforcement says to me often is it's more

important to look at who people are following because then you understood who the followers are. because it's a broad spectrum of people now. as i said it's the jihad janes, the jihad jamies. it's the baptist carlos bledsoe from tennessee. there are no -- it's not black and white anymore. that's part of the problem. so there is no real easy answer to your question. thank you. good morning. i live in denver. for my day job, i actually work with the social networks and digital advertisers doing dat that mining. i can tell you, it's amazing what we can learn about a person without actually knowing who they are. so my question to you is, given there's over 100 million users for facebook and the other social networks are just as large, how do you balance our

ability to data mine this information to find the bad guys versus my desire not to have the government intrude into my private life? >> that's an excellent question. i think that's really the leading edge of where we're going. at what point does this hateful speech on the web really cross a line. where it starts to incite silence. the head of the george washington homeland security policy group said to me recently, we really ought to treat this material like child pornography. and have filters. because what good really comes of this material. then the question becomes how do you -- what characteristics do you use to define that basket. and to what extent do we want the government looking at people on the web all the time? i know for my reporting that

after nort hood there was a facebook page up for the cleric anwar al awlaki. you had to assume when you friended him on facebook that really you were friending an fbi agent. you want to leave these sites up to see who comes to them. the flip side is that if you leave them up, you could create a problem. and an example of that was "inspire" magazine. i don't know how many of you are familiar with "inspire" magazine. it was created by this group in yemen. the editor was another american from north carolina called samir chaun. he was killed in the cia strike in september with anwar al awlaki. i know from my reporting at the time there was some consideration within the government to make him the second american on the cia's kill or capture list. this digital magazine is very select. it's kind of like the martha stewart "living" for would be

jihadists. it's a lifestyle magazine. i'm sure she would appreciate that. that plug. but it's very western, very friendly. the kind of thing you'd pick up in a dentist's office. there was a debate between the u.s. intelligence community and the british as to whether -- 'cause there's a big build-up for the release of this magazine. whether they should just leave it up and see who goes to it. obvious, right? or whether it was really going to cause a lot of problems and they should just take it down. and, in fact, the first version of "inspire" magazine when it went up, it was all crazy. it was sort of garbled and on all of these jihadists forms on the web, they said, oh, you know, it's got spy ware, there's something wrong with it. brothers, don't go near it. in fact, they were right. the british were like, we don't care what the americans think, we're taking that sucker down. we just don't want it up there. we don't want to see who goes there, see what kind of trouble it causes. so you've really hit the nail on the head there.