Terror Plots

Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, an Egyptian national, killed two Israelis and wounded four others during a shooting at the El Al ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport on July 4, 2002. He was killed during the incident when the Israeli airline's security guard shot him. The investigation found no evidence that connected him to any terrorist group, but still labeled the incident an act of terrorism as Hadayet had espoused anti-Israeli views and was opposed to U.S. policy in the Middle East.

In early 2001, Imran Mandhai, a Pakistani citizen who immigrated to the United States in 1998, told friends at the Darul Uloom Institute mosque in South Florida that he wanted to wage war against the country. One of his friends, Saif Allah, an American-born Muslim, tipped off the FBI. The FBI inserted an informant into the mosque who befriended Mandhai; they discussed targets for potential bomb attacks around the South Florida area, such as power stations, Miami International Airport and local Jewish-owned businesses, in March and April 2001. Shueyb Mossa Jokhan, whom Mandhai had met at the mosque, also joined the plot, but grew suspicious of the informant and dropped out after only four weeks. The two were indicted in May 2002 Jokhan pleaded guilty in 2005 to conspiring to damage and destroy property by means of fire and explosives, and Mandhai pleaded guilty to the same charge in January 2006.

Hasan Akbar, a sergeant in the U.S. Army, threw grenades at fellow soldiers when he was stationed in Kuwait. During his time at Camp Pennsylvania, where members of the 101st Airborne Division were preparing to invade Iraq in 2003, Akbar stole grenades and switched off a generator that powered the lights outside the soldiers' tents. He then rolled the grenades into three tents where the camp's ranking officers were sleeping and opened fire as they came out after the explosions to investigate. Two soldiers were killed and 14 were wounded. Witnesses who were in each of the tents described hearing a voice at the entrance warning, 'We're under attack,' seconds before each explosion. Hasan Akbar was convicted and sentenced to death in April 2005.

Adham Hassoun and Kifah Jayyousi were under surveillance by a FISA wiretap first obtained in 1993 as a result of the investigation of Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, commonly known in the United States as 'the Blind Sheikh' and serving a life sentence for orchestrating the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Hassoun and Jayyousi were being investigated for their fundraising activities. The wiretaps included conversations with Jose Padilla that sparked suspicion, so Padilla continued to be monitored as he traveled abroad, though his location was not continuously known. He eventually ended up in Afghanistan. Around 230 phone calls between Hassoun, Jayyousi and Padilla formed the core of the U.S. government's case against them.

On March 28, 2002, Abu Zubaydah, a Saudi citizen who was thought to be a high-ranking member of al-Qaeda, was captured and revealed a plan for a 'dirty bomb' attack in the United States that involved Padilla. Seth Jones, author of Hunting in the Shadows: The Pursuit of Al Qa'ida Since 9/11, writes that CIA and FBI officials found this moment to be pivotal. On April 4, 2002, Padilla was picked up alongside Binyam Muhammad, an Ethiopian national and British resident, in Karachi, Pakistan, on passport and visa violations. They were both released, but Pakistani intelligence tipped off Western intelligence and Padilla was arrested on May 8 in Chicago, while Muhammad was arrested on April 10 in Karachi.

It is also possible that a binder found by the FBI in Afghanistan in an old office building, which included Padilla's application to attend an al-Qaeda training camp and had his fingerprints on it, played a role in the investigation.

The New York City Police Department's intelligence division started watching Shahawar Siraj, a Pakistani-American, when a person living in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, provided a tip to the NYPD terrorist hotline that Siraj regularly engaged in anti-American tirades sometime in 2002. After a few months of reports, the NYPD sent a paid informant, who went by 'Dawadi,' to monitor Siraj. Detectives investigating Siraj at the same time found that he had illegally entered the United States. In April 2004, James Elshafay, an unemployed 19-year-old Tottenville High School dropout, was introduced to Dawadi and presented a list of proposed targets. He and Siraj then plotted an attack on the Herald Square subway station in Manhattan. The pair, who were not connected to any terrorist organization, never obtained any explosives nor did they set a date for an attack. Siraj was convicted in May 2006 and sentenced to 30 years in 2007. Elshafay pleaded guilty in October 2004 and sentenced to 5 years in 2007.

The FBI had been watching an Albany, N.Y., mosque -- Masjid As Salam -- since 2002. A raid by U.S. military forces on an enemy camp in Rawah, Iraq, on June 11, 2003, turned up a notebook with an imam's name and phone number. That imam, Yassin Aref, and the Masjid As Salam mosque became the object of a sting operation. An informant befriended Mohammed Mosharref Hossain and proposed a plan to launder money through Hossain's pizza shop for use in buying a surface-to-air missile. Hossain brought in Aref, although Aref had always been a target of the operation. Hossain and Aref were convicted in October 2006. Both men were sentenced to 15 years.

Syed Ahmed, a former student at the Georgia Institute of Technology, discussed violent jihad with Ehsanul Islam Sadequee and made a video of U.S. landmarks around the Washington, D.C., area in 2005. Ahmed also visited Pakistan for a month in July 2005 in an attempt to train with Lashkar-e-Taiba, a militant group linked to attacks in the disputed state of Kashmir. The two became subjects of an FBI investigation when they traveled to Toronto in March 2005 to meet with at least three other people who were under investigation by Canadian security services and the FBI. Sadequee was convicted of supporting terrorism in August 2009, and Ahmed was convicted in June 2009. Sadequee was sentenced to 17 years and Ahmed to 13 years in December 2009.

On July 28, 2006, Naveed Haq, a Pakistani-American, walked into the Seattle Jewish Federation in Washington state and shot six women, killing one. Haq stated during the shooting that he was Muslim and was unhappy about U.S. foreign policy and the war in Iraq. He was arrested at the scene. Haq was convicted in December 2009 and sentenced to life.

Dritan Duka, Shain Duka, Eljvir Duka, Mohamad Shnewer and Serdar Tatar were convicted in 2008 of plotting to attack the Fort Dix Army base in New Jersey. Agron Abdullahu, who was arrested with the others, pleaded guilty earlier that year to a lesser charge of providing firearms to undocumented immigrants. The investigation began when an electronics store clerk provided a tip to police after two men dropped off a tape to be converted to a DVD, and he saw it included video of the conspirators shooting guns and shouting in Arabic. The FBI then inserted two paid informants into the group. The men were arrested in May 2007.

Mohammed Taheri-Azar, a graduate of the University of North Carolina and a native of Iran, drove an SUV through a crowd at a popular gathering spot on campus in March 2006. He claimed the act was to avenge recent Muslim deaths around the world. He turned himself in to police after the incident. Taheri-Azar pleaded guilty in August 2008 to nine counts of attempted murder and was sentenced to 33 years.

The CIA triggered the investigation into Russell Defreitas, Kareem Ibrahim, Abdul Kadir and Abdel Nur through information from Guyana, but the specifics are not known. On July 13, 2006, Defreitas, a naturalized American citizen who worked for years at a small airline company based at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, met with Steven Francis, a confidential source the government had been using since 2004. On August 7, Defreitas asked Francis if he would be interested in plotting an attack on the airport, and they visited the facility four times in January 2007 to conduct surveillance. Kareem Ibrahim, a Trinidadian citizen; Abdul Kadir, a former member of the Guyanese Parliament and former mayor of Linden, Guyana; and Abdel Nur, a Guyanese national of Pakistani descent, were part of the conspiracy to tap into the international terrorist community to plan an attack on the airport. Most of the evidence used to prosecute the defendants came from the informant. Defreitas and Kadir were found guilty in August 2010. Ibrahim was found guilty in May 2011. Nur pleaded guilty in June 2010.

Ahmed Abdellatif Sherif Mohamed, traveling with an unidentified passenger, was stopped for speeding in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2007. Explosive materials, particularly rocket propellants, were discovered during a search of his car. The investigating officer first became suspicious when one of the two men in the car quickly shut a computer as they were being pulled over. A later search found jihadist literature on the computer. Mohamed pleaded guilty to providing support for terrorists by posting a YouTube video showing how to convert a remote-controlled toy into a bomb. He was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison.

NSA surveillance likely provided important information regarding Bryant Neal Vinas, an American citizen who joined al-Qaeda after 9/11. However, Vinas' arrest was the result of a routine Pakistani security checkpoint and the strangeness of a Hispanic man being in Pakistan's tribal areas, not NSA surveillance. While Vinas had been involved in discussions about potential targets inside the United States, specifically the Long Island Rail Road, it is unclear whether the discussions were part of a specific plot or simply hypothetical targets.

As for the NSA's involvement in the case, it appears that the agency intercepted chatter from jihadists in Pakistan in late 2007 or early 2008 regarding an American jihadist. The conversations referred to a U.S. citizen from New York who was missing a toe, a description broadly corresponding to Vinas, though he was not known to be the subject of the chatter at the time. The NSA alerted the CIA, which worked its sources on the ground and confirmed the presence of an American in Pakistan's tribal regions. That intelligence was taken to the Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York, where travel records and customs information were used, along with Pakistani records, to track Americans who had arrived in Pakistan. By March 2008, the FBI and CIA were certain the chatter was about Vinas.

In early 2008, Vinas sent emails from a cyber cafe in Peshawar that attracted the NSA's attention, but the agency lost track of him in March 2008 when he ceased his emails.

On November 13, 2008, Vinas bought a bus ticket in Miran Shah. The bus was stopped at a routine checkpoint. Vinas tried to escape and attempted to stab a guard in the process, but the Pakistani police arrested him. Upon his arrest, the FBI was notified. When news of Vinas' arrest reached the assistant special agent in charge of counterterrorism, he said he was surprised that Vinas was not dead, further suggesting that Vinas' arrest was the result of routine actions by the Pakistani security services, not a U.S.-directed operation.

After his capture, Vinas provided intelligence to U.S. intelligence agencies, explaining his role in providing information for a potential attack on the Long Island Rail Road, which led to a terror alert being issued for the system. In court, Vinas testified that he suggested the idea of attacking the railroad and drew a map of the area.

Michael Finton came to the U.S. government's attention in August 2007 when a search of his car -- due to a parole violation -- found a letter stating his dream of becoming a martyr. Officers also found a document in which he had written about 'awaiting a return letter from John Walker Lindh,' the American who was captured fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001. Finton traveled to Saudi Arabia for about a month during 2008, according to an affidavit filed by prosecutors. A threat analysis was conducted, and his parole officer noted that he had converted to Islam while serving a sentence for aggravated robbery and aggravated battery in an Illinois prison from 2001 to 2006. The FBI then launched a sting operation in which Finton drove a van he thought was loaded with explosives to the Paul Findley Federal Building in Springfield, Illinois, on September 23, 2009. He parked the van and then moved a few blocks away before making two cellphone calls he thought would trigger the bomb. Information was also provided by a confidential human source. Finton pleaded guilty in May 2011.

Maj. Nidal Hasan was a U.S. Army psychiatrist who opened fire in a medical facility at the Fort Hood military base on November 5, 2009, killing 13 people and wounding more than 30 others. He was sentenced to death by a military court-martial in August 2013. Hasan was scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan a few weeks after the shooting took place. He had shouted 'Allahu ¬akbar!' ('God is great') before opening fire with a high-powered, high-capacity handgun with laser sights. After firing more than 200 rounds, he was shot by military police and was paralyzed from the waist down. Medical school classmates interviewed after the incident said that he had voiced strong opinions against the war in Afghanistan.

On June 1, 2009, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, born Carlos Bledsoe, a U.S. citizen, opened fire with a rifle in a drive-by shooting on soldiers in front of a military recruiting office in Little Rock, Arkansas. He was arrested later the same day and acknowledged the shooting, which killed one soldier and wounded another. According to Muhammad, his goal was to kill as many U.S. military personnel as possible. Abdulhakim Muhammad pleaded guilty in July 2011.

Farooque Ahmed, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was lured by an email to his first meeting with a supposed al-Qaeda liaison on April 18, 2010, but the liaison was actually an undercover FBI agent. Ahmed videotaped four Northern Virginia subway stations and suggested using rolling suitcases instead of backpacks to transport the explosives for an attack the D.C. Metro. He was arrested in late October 2010. The investigation was initiated due to a tip from within the Muslim community. Ahmed pleaded guilty in April 2011.

Khalid Ouazzani and his co-conspirators, Sabirhan Hasanoff and Wesam El-Hanafi, appear to have been caught using NSA surveillance, though the specifics have not been addressed beyond the U.S. government's statement about the case. According to the government, the NSA was monitoring a known extremist in Yemen. Ouazzani was in contact with the known extremist in Yemen. The court documents in the case focus on electronic communications and lack an alternative explanation for how the case developed, suggesting that the government's explanation that NSA bulk surveillance led to the plotters is plausible.

The government also argued that the conspirators were involved in a nascent plot to attack the New York Stock Exchange, but this appears to be a stretch. While the claim arises from a trip Hasanoff took to New York, following orders to case the exchange, the extent of his efforts was a one-page report that 'was rudimentary and of limited use,' according to the government's sentencing memorandum.

FBI documents reveal that Hasanoff and El-Hanafi communicated with terrorists located in the United Arab Emirates known as 'The Doctor' and 'Suffian,' both of whom were subsequently interrogated by the FBI and asked about whether there was a planned operation at the New York Stock Exchange. One of the detained individuals, though it is unclear which one due to the report being redacted, responded no and denied that there was 'any real intention to plan or coordinate such an operation.' The individual also said he did not discuss the plan with anyone else and that he burned the report. Ouazzani was never charged in the plot to attack the New York Stock Exchange and it was not mentioned in the press release regarding Hasanoff and El-Hanafi's pleas, though it is mentioned in their sentencing memos.

While the plot fizzled on its own, if there was ever a real plot to begin with, the connection to foreign terrorists did pose a threat, and the unnamed interrogated subject said he sought to involve Ouazzani, Hasanoff, and El-Hanafi in attacks inside the United States. According to the government's sentencing memo, citing the interrogation of Suffian, El-Hanafi provided 'The Doctor' with a total of about $67,000, in addition to remote control devices, outerwear and boots, and three GPS devices. El-Hanafi was sentenced to 15 years in prison on January 20, 2015.

Private anti-jihadist Internet activists had been monitoring Colleen LaRose, a Pennsylvania woman who went by the screen name 'Jihad Jane' or 'Fatima Rose,' through her online chat postings since September 2008. It is likely that tips these activists provided to law enforcement helped initiate the investigation into LaRose and led to her eventual arrest in October 2009. However, the specific details of how the investigation was initiated remain unclear.

LaRose was plotting to kill Lars Vilks, a Swedish artist who had offended Muslims with his cartoon depictions of the Prophet Mohammed. Her arrest was kept secret because she was providing information on Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, an American woman from Colorado; Mohammad Hassan Khalid, a 17-year-old from Maryland; and a number of others who were eventually arrested in Ireland. Paulin-Ramirez's mother also provided a tip to local police. LaRose pleaded guilty in February 2011 and Paulin-Ramirez pleaded guilty in March 2011. Khalid pleaded guilty in May 2012.

On October 8, 2010, an informant who had previously worked with the FBI alerted agents to jihadist Facebook postings by Antonio Martinez, a man from Baltimore. The FBI initiated an undercover operation, during which an agent introduced himself to Martinez and provided him with an inert vehicle bomb that Martinez attempted to detonate at a Catonsville, Maryland, military recruiting center in December 2010. Martinez pleaded guilty in January 2012.

Yonathan Melaku, an ex-Marine, was caught at Arlington National Cemetery on June 11, 2011, with bomb-making materials in his backpack after he was spotted and tried to flee. In 2010 he had shot at military buildings in Northern Virginia, including the Pentagon and the Marine Corps Museum, and was linked to those attacks through ballistics. Melaku pleaded guilty in January 2012.

Joseph Jeffrey Brice, of Washington state, was put on the U.S. government's radar after a bomb he was creating exploded prematurely in April 2010. Brice also set up a YouTube channel under the pseudonym 'StrengthofAllah' and posted videos of explosions and jihad-related content. He was charged with attempting to aid terrorists in May 2011. Brice pleaded guilty in September 2012.

Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-American, attempted to detonate a bomb in New York City's Times Square on May 1, 2010. The attack was not prevented, but failed because the explosives did not ignite properly. Police were alerted to the smoldering car by street vendors and the car was then linked to Shahzad. Authorities arrested Shahzad at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport as he was boarding a plane to Dubai. Shahzad pleaded guilty in June 2010.

Ahmed Ferhani, a Queens, New York, resident who was born in Algeria, and Mohamed Mamdouh, a Moroccan immigrant, were arrested in May 2011 in a New York Police Department operation. Ferhani had purchased a hand grenade, three semi-automatic pistols and ammunition from an undercover detective after a seven-month undercover operation. The investigation revealed their desire to attack a synagogue in New York City with the intent of harming as many Jewish people as they could and avenging what they saw as mistreatment of Muslims worldwide. Ferhani was indicted and pleaded guilty in December 2012 to charges including conspiracy as a crime of terrorism and criminal possession of a weapon as a crime of terrorism. Mamdouh pleaded guilty to three counts in February 2013.

The New York Police Department learned about Jose Pimentel, a native of the Dominican Republic and a naturalized American citizen, through cooperation with smaller police departments outside the city in May 2009 and began surveillance using an informant. Pimentel made incriminating statements to the informant and the NYPD believed Pimentel was plotting a bomb attack. In January 2010, Pimentel began maintaining a website '” www.trueislam1.com '” that contained bomb-making instructions pulled from Inspire, the English-language magazine published online by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the terrorist network in Yemen. He was arrested in November 2011. He pleaded guilty on February 19, 2014. On March 25, 2014 Pimentel was sentenced to 16 years in prison.

In January 2011, Rezwan Ferdaus, a graduate of Northeastern University, told a witness -- who was cooperating with authorities and recording the conversation -- of his intent to stage an attack on the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon using remote-controlled model airplanes. The specific circumstances surrounding his meeting with the cooperating witness remain unclear. Undercover employees were inserted, and the FBI obtained Ferdaus' phone and email records and conducted physical surveillance. He traveled to Washington, D.C., in May 2011 and took photos and videos in furtherance of the plot. He was arrested on September 28, 2011, and pleaded guilty to multiple conspiracy and material support to terrorism charges on July 20, 2012.

The FBI approached Emerson Begolly in 2011 after linking him to an online identity -- 'Abu Nancy' -- that was an administrator on the Ansar al-Mujahideen English Forum, considered by the bureau to be an anti-American Islamic jihadist website. Begolly had posted instructions on making bombs and encouraged visitors to use violence in the name of Allah against the United States. Confronted by FBI agents, he resisted arrest, reaching for a gun he did not have a license to carry and biting the agents. He was sentenced to 8.5 years in prison on July 16, 2013, for soliciting others to commit terrorism and a firearms violation. Some details, especially regarding the use of a FISA warrant, remain unclear in the case.

Walli Mujahidh pleaded guilty in December 2011 to charges stemming from a plot to attack a Military Entrance Processing Center in Seattle. A year later, in December 2012, Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif pleaded guilty for his involvement in the same plot. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, 'Law enforcement first became aware of the plot when a citizen alerted them that he/she had been approached by Abdul-Latif about participating in the attack and supplying firearms to the conspirators.' The individual who alerted law enforcement became an informant and monitored the plot.

Oded Orbach and Alwar Pouryan were convicted in April 2013 of conspiracy to provide material support to the Taliban. The investigation was the result of a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) sting operation in which Pouryan and Orbach agreed to sell surface-to-air missiles and other weapons to an individual they believed was a Taliban representative for use in guarding Taliban heroin laboratories. The two men, who were not involved in the drug sales being investigated by the DEA, were introduced to the DEA's informants by Maroun Saade, a trafficker involved in both the drug and weapons cases.

On February 7, 2013, Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis pleaded guilty to attempting to explode what he believed was a thousand-pound bomb at the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Nafis was discovered by law enforcement when he contacted an informant and attempted to recruit him for the plot. The informant told the government about the plot, initiating an undercover law enforcement operation that culminated in Nafis' arrest when he tried to detonate the fake explosive.

Amine Mohamed El-Khalifi pleaded guilty on June 22, 2012, to attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction in connection with his plot to conduct a suicide bomb attack on the U.S. Capitol. The investigation into Khalifi began with reports from informants. First, in August 2010, an informant reported that Khalifi had responded to a Facebook post, expressing interest in fighting in Afghanistan. Another informant reported Khalifi to the FBI in January 2011 after he attended a meeting where weapons were displayed, and where Khalifi said the war on terrorism was a war on Muslims. By the end of 2011, Khalifi was introduced to and monitored by an undercover agent.

Erwin Rios pleaded guilty on May 14, 2013, to possession of a stolen firearm intended for use in terrorist activities. Rios spoke to an informant about killing U.S. soldiers as part of jihad. He also attempted to buy a weapon -- a Beretta 9mm -- from the informant, at which point he was arrested. Rios planned to travel overseas to wage jihad and to commit armed robberies to raise funds for weapons. However, the exact circumstances regarding Rios' contact with the informant, and whether this initiated the investigation, remain unclear.

Carlos Almonte and Mohamed Alessa pleaded guilty in March 2011 to conspiring to travel to Somalia to join al-Shabaab. The investigation into the two men began in October 2006 when the FBI received a tip from someone who knew them and spoke of their online searches for jihadist materials. On December 21, 2006, a family member told the FBI that when agents interviewed Almonte on a previous occasion, Alessa was inside the house with a large knife and made comments about attacking the FBI if they entered. In 2007, the original tipster informed the police that Alessa and Almonte were traveling to Jordan, prompting U.S. Customs and Border Protection to search their luggage as they left the country.

Three Toledo men, Mohammad Amawi, Marwan El-Hindi and Wassim Mazloum, were convicted on June 13, 2008, of conspiring to kill people outside the United States and of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists in Iraq. The investigation into their activities was initiated through the use of an informant, Darren Griffin, also known as 'The Trainer.' The three men met Griffin in a mosque and he gained their trust by posing as a former soldier who had grown disenchanted with U.S. foreign policy and converted to Islam. All three men were arrested in 2006.

Sometime in 2007, the NSA discovered a phone number that it believed was linked to al-Shabaab, and informed the FBI that the U.S. phone number had been in 'indirect' contact with an 'extremist' in Somalia. The FBI then initiated an investigation and found that the number belonged to Moalin. In December 2007, it began intercepting Moalin's phone calls. The government charged Moalin and three others '“ Issa Doreh, a worker at a money-transmitting business that was the conduit for moving the funds; Mohamed Mohamed Mohamud, the imam at a mosque frequented by San Diego's immigrant Somali community; and Ahmed Nasiri Taalil Mohamud, a cabdriver from Anaheim, Calif. '“ with conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. Together, they provided just under $8,500 to al-Shabaab. According to court filings, Moalin's lawyer, Joshua Dratel, said in December 2011 that a year's worth of Moalin's phone calls were intercepted by the government, 1,800 of which were turned over to the defense for trial preparation. Prosecutors also turned over 680 pages of Moalin's email traffic.

Interestingly, an investigation of Moalin had been opened in 2003 when the FBI suspected him of having terrorist links. However, no connections were found at that time and the case was closed.

During Moalin's trial in San Diego in February 2013, court papers identified the collaboration between the NSA and the FBI in monitoring Moalin's phone calls for contact with other suspects. In a recently disclosed email, an unidentified FBI agent discussed the role of 'another agency' '“ an apparent reference to the NSA '“ in intercepting a phone call that Moalin had just received from Moalim Aden Hashi Ayrow, an al-Shabaab leader in Mogadishu, Somalia.

'We just heard from another agency that Ayrow tried to make a call to Basaaly today, but the call didn't go through,' the agent wrote to a colleague on January 27, 2008. 'If you see anything today, can you give us a shout? We're extremely interested in getting real time info (location/new #s) on Ayrow.' Three months later, Ayrow was killed in a U.S. drone strike. Another FBI email discussed how NSA surveillance of Moalin allowed the United States to pinpoint Ayrow's location and target him for the strike. Moalin and his co-conspirators were convicted in February 2013, but Moalin is appealing on the grounds that the NSA unconstitutionally targeted him.

Mukhtar al-Bakri, Sahim Alwan, Faysal Galab, Yahya Goba, Shafal Mosed and Yasein Taher -- the Buffalo Six -- all pleaded guilty in 2003 to charges stemming from their attendance at a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan before the 9/11 attacks. The men were not accused of plotting a terrorist attack. Kamal Derwish, an American citizen who recruited the others and, unlike them, never returned to the United States, opting instead to engage in terrorist activity, was killed in a drone strike in Yemen in 2002. Jaber Elbaneh, who attended the same training camp with the six, is not in American custody and his whereabouts are unknown. The investigation into the Buffalo Six was initiated by an anonymous tip from a member of the local Muslim community sometime in the spring of 2001. Additionally, after 9/11, Alwan phoned the FBI to offer his assistance, though he did not admit to attending a terrorist training camp.

Ramy Zamzam, Aman Hassan Yemer, Waqar Hussain Khan, Ahmad A. Minni and Umar Chaudhry, known as the 'D.C. Five' because they were all from the Washington area, were arrested in Pakistan in December 2009 and later convicted of terrorism offenses by a Pakistani court and sentenced on June 24, 2010. The search for the men was the result of two of the men's families reporting their sons missing and speaking to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy organization, which forwarded the tip to the police. The tip triggered a missing persons case that eventually resulted in their arrest on terrorism charges.

Kevin James, Levar Washington and Gregory Patterson admitted in 2008 and 2009 to conspiring to 'levy war' against the U.S. government through terrorism. Hammad Riaz Samana was also convicted for his participation in the plot in 2009. James, while in New Folsom Prison, recruited fellow prisoner Washington into what prosecutors called his terrorist group. Upon his release, Washington recruited Samana and Patterson at James' direction. Together, Washington, Samana and Patterson robbed gas stations and planned attacks on locations in Los Angeles. The FBI has described the case as a success story of local law enforcement. Local police linked Washington and Patterson to a gas station robbery via a cellphone left at the scene. A search of their apartment revealed jihadist documents, including a target list, initiating the terrorism investigation. An FBI press release quotes the local police chief stating: 'This case is a prime example of front-line police officers as front-line prevention of domestic terrorism. This dangerous group was discovered by alert police officers and the teamwork between our regional law enforcement partners met this danger head-on.'

Zachary Chesser and Jesse Curtis Morton pleaded guilty in 2012 to communicating threats of violence, particularly against Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of the South Park television cartoon show, for portraying the Prophet Mohammed. The threats were made via a jihadist blog Morton operated called Revolution Muslim. Chesser also pleaded guilty to attempting to provide material support to al-Shabaab, a charge connected to his attempt to travel to Somalia and fight for the militant organization. Both Chesser and Morton were known extremists due to their publication of jihadist materials on Revolution Muslim and other websites, as well as their public threat against Stone and Parker. Chesser was stopped by an airline on July 10, 2010, when he attempted to leave the United States, as he was on a watch list. He was arrested 11 days later. After Chesser was arrested, Morton fled to Morocco and stayed there until he was arrested on May 26, 2011.

Yousef al-Khattab, also known as Joseph Cohen, cofounded the Revolution Muslim website. He pled guilty in October 2013 to a charge of using the Internet to make threats specifically related to his use of the Revolution Muslim website to post threats against Jewish institutions.

Proscovia Kampire Nzabanita, Zachary Chesser's wife and a 26-year-old Ugandan living in Virginia with lawful permanent residency at the time, pled guilty to making a false statement in relation to the investigation into Chesser. Specifically she was charged with lying regarding Chesser's attempts to leave and join Al Shabaab. According to the court documents she intended to travel with Chesser and support him in joining Al Shabaab, but she was charged with false statements rather than material support as part of the conditions of Chesser's plea deal. Nzabanita was sentenced to probation on the condition that she leave the country and renounce her lawful immigration status.

On March 5, 2013, Justin Kaliebe pleaded guilty to attempting to travel to Yemen in order to join al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Seven months later, on October 18, Marcos Zea was arrested on charges of material support and conspiracy to commit murder in another country. According to the Justice Department, he was also plotting to travel to Yemen to wage jihad and had discussed his plan with Kaliebe. Kaliebe had been monitored by undercover officers, but the initial lead in the case remains unclear.

Patrick Abraham, Burson Augustin, Rotschild Augustin, Narseal Batiste and Stanley Grant Phanor were convicted in May 2009 of conspiring to bomb several buildings, including the Sears Tower, now known as the Willis Tower. Two other individuals were acquitted of all charges. The investigation into the Liberty City Seven, as they were known for the Miami neighborhood where they were based, began when Batiste shared his political views, which were sympathetic to Osama bin Laden's philosophy of jihad, with Abbas al-Saidi, the owner of a store Batiste frequented. Saidi contacted the FBI in 2005 and became an informant, recording his conversations with Batiste. Later, another informant was inserted into the case. Some news reports have been skeptical that the plot would have emerged without the informants' efforts to encourage it, noting misconduct on the part of the informants.

In November 2005, Uzair Paracha was convicted of providing fake travel documents to Majid Khan and making false statements to police to conceal his travels. Khan pleaded guilty in a military court in 2012 to conspiring with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, to conduct attacks inside the United States. The exact investigative methods that initiated the discovery of Khan and Paracha remain unclear, although they were both connected to a number of other intelligence and law enforcement investigations into Mohammed, the 9/11 attacks and Iyman Faris, who provided material support to al-Qaeda and later became an informant for the FBI.

On October 25, 2013, the U.S. government admitted that it had used warrantless wiretapping in the case of Jamshid Muhtorov, an Uzbek national accused of providing support to the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), an Uzbek terrorist organization. The notice filed by the government in that case stated that the investigation had used wiretaps authorized under Section 702 of FISA, which do not require a warrant. Specific details about the use of wiretapping are not public, but the affidavits filed in the cases of Muhtorov and his co-conspirator, Bakhtiyor Jumaev, provide some suggestions as to how the investigation came about.

According to the affidavit filed in conjunction with the complaint in Muhtorov's case, the FBI was investigating him based on his communication with Abu Muhammad, the website administrator for www.sodiqlar.info, which hosts IJU material and is believed to be owned and operated by the organization. Muhtorov used two different email accounts to communicate with Muhammad, accounts the FBI 'lawfully discovered' and linked to Muhtorov, according to the affidavit.

Jumaev, Muhtorov's partner, had provided his mobile phone number to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security after a February 2010 immigration charge arrest, and the FBI 'lawfully searched and obtained information through various investigative techniques.' Using these techniques, the FBI determined that there were incriminating communications originating from the phone, namely that Jumaev was in contact with Muhtorov, who relayed his dealings with Muhammad and requests for funds.

The U.S. government does not allege that this case involved any plot to conduct an attack inside the United States. The extent of the funds the pair is charged with attempting to send to the IJU is only $300, though Muhtorov also allegedly planned to travel abroad to fight for the IJU.

At least 23 individuals from the Somali community in Minnesota traveled to Somalia to fight for al-Shabaab beginning in 2006 and 2007. The roots of the investigations into these individuals and the men and women who funded and facilitated their activities are unknown and difficult to determine, due to the number of cases involved. However, the government has cited community cooperation as an important contribution to their investigations.

David Coleman Headley confessed in detail in a June 2010 interrogation by Indian officials to conducting surveillance that played a key role in Lashkar-e-Taiba's 2008 attacks on the Taj Mahal hotel and other targets in Mumbai, which killed 164 people. Tahawwur Rana was convicted in June 2011 of providing general support to Headley's activities and Lashkar-e-Taiba, but was acquitted of the specific charge of conspiracy in the Mumbai plot. Neither Headley nor Rana was discovered or arrested before the Mumbai attacks. They were caught only after authorities discovered their involvement in a plot to attack the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten for publishing cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

The Obama administration has also argued that NSA surveillance played an important role in identifying David Coleman Headley, who helped plan the Mumbai terrorist attacks in November 2008 that killed 166 people and was planning an attack on the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2009 because of its publication years earlier of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, asserted during an interview with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell on June 10, 2013, that NSA surveillance helped stop Headley's planned attack on the Danish newspaper. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, also counted Headley's capture a success for Section 215 during an interview on ABC the day before.

While government officials have argued that the Headley case is an example of successful NSA bulk surveillance, there is reason to believe that the initial tip may have come from British intelligence, which was monitoring a group of extremists in the United Kingdom with whom Headley made contact. During an interrogation conducted by Indian government officials in 2010, while Headley was in U.S. custody, Headley described how he met with Basharat and Sufiyaan, two Pakistani men who were affiliated with al-Qaeda, in Derby, England, in July 2009 and received an undisclosed amount of money from them for the attack on Jyllands-Posten. ProPublica has reported that U.S. government surveillance was implemented only after a tip from the British about this meeting. Headley's interrogation by the Indians also supports this conclusion.

Officials in Clapper's office have said only that information lawfully gathered under FISA was integral to disrupting the attack in Denmark, but this does not rule out other sources of information at other points in the investigation. The NSA's surveillance programs may still have been involved, as it appears that the British tip was the result of a communications intercept, and the NSA and GCHQ, Britain's signals intelligence agency, are known to cooperate. But as the individuals Headley contacted were already under British surveillance, an NSA role would not provide support for the bulk surveillance programs, but rather for more traditional intelligence work.

The Headley case doesn't seem to have been initiated by the NSA, but rather from a tip provided by British intelligence, which in turn alerted the FBI. While NSA bulk communications surveillance does seem to have been helpful in building the case against Headley, it does not seem to have been critical. Headley was in contact with known al-Qaeda associates in Britain and was a longtime member of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a known Pakistani terrorist group, something that had been flagged repeatedly to U.S. law enforcement authorities.

In January 2009, Headley made a reconnaissance trip to Copenhagen to plot an attack on Jyllands-Posten on behalf of Lashkar-e-Taiba. Headley returned to Pakistan to meet with his handlers, only to find out that the plot was to be sidelined, so he took his intelligence and pitched the idea of an attack to his al-Qaeda contact, Illyas Kashmiri. Kashmiri gave him the names of militants in Britain, Basharat (Passha) and Sufiyaan (Simon), and in Sweden (Farid) who could help him with funds and weapons. While Headley was in Chicago during the summer of 2009 and preparing for a second reconnaissance trip to Denmark, he communicated with the two operatives in Britain.

British intelligence found out about Headley's upcoming visit and notified the FBI that a suspect was in contact with British militants. The FBI then alerted U.S. Customs and Border Protection about a suspect and asked for help in identifying him. U.S. authorities were able to identify Headley using information regarding his flight plans and coordinated with European counterterrorism officials to track his next moves, from Derby on July 26 to Stockholm to Copenhagen on July 31. Headley flew back to the United States on August 5, stopping in Atlanta, and was questioned by airport security before being released so the FBI could continue to follow him. Shortly before his arrest, his phone calls to family members were also being intercepted, and the NSA retrieved previous communications to help build the case against him. The entire effort lasted over two months until Headley was finally arrested on October 9, 2009, at Chicago O'Hare International Airport as he tried to depart for Pakistan.

Importantly, Headley could have been stopped at any time after the 9/11 attacks as his militant activities were repeatedly flagged to U.S. authorities, but, inexplicably it seems, Headley kept evading serious law enforcement scrutiny. Following the 9/11 attacks, U.S. authorities received tips regarding Headley's terrorist activity at least five times from his family members, friends, and acquaintances. The first tip was given by Terry O'Donnell, a bartender who alerted authorities in the weeks following 9/11 about Headley's extremist comments praising the attacks and his ties with Pakistan. As a result, two government officials interrogated Headley on October 4, 2001. He denied the accusations and cited his current cooperation with Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents, who were also present at the interrogation, as an informant for drug smuggling.

In the summer of 2002, authorities received another call regarding Headley's suspicious behavior, which included telling his mother he was training at terrorist camps, from a friend of his mother. The FBI office in Philadelphia that received the call did a basic record check and closed the case without ever interviewing Headley, his mother, or his mother's friend.

In the summer of 2005, Headley was arrested after he assaulted one of his wives (he was married to different women at the same time) in Manhattan; his wife also called a terrorism tip line. Agents from the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force interviewed her three times, and she told them about Headley's extremist activities. The FBI knew about the previous allegations of extremism and ties to militant groups, but still closed the case without ever questioning Headley. The assault charges were also dropped.

In late 2007 and early 2008, Headley's then-wife, Faiza Outalha, reported him to the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad. She was interviewed by State Department and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents multiple times. U.S. officials said her warnings were not specific enough to warrant any further investigation, though the State Department says it did communicate her warnings to the CIA, FBI, and DEA.

Following the 2008 Mumbai attacks, another of Headley's mother's friends informed the FBI that he might have been involved. FBI agents interviewed her on December 1, 2008. She told them that Headley was still involved in militant activity and, according to a U.S. law enforcement official, the FBI agents found the records and warnings about Headley dating back to 2001. On December 21, 2008, FBI agents interviewed Farid Gilani, Headley's cousin in Philadelphia, who told them Headley was in Pakistan (he was actually in Chicago). While the agents put the inquiry on hold since they believed Headley was abroad, their efforts show that conventional law enforcement techniques could have detected him almost a decade before he was arrested.

Humayoun Ghoulan Nabi and Ismail Alsarabbi were charged on October 10, 2013, with conspiring to provide aid, in the form of outerwear and electronics, to the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. The investigation that led to their arrest began when an informant approached the New York City Police Department.

James Cromitie, Laguerre Payen, David Williams and Onta Williams were convicted on October 18, 2010, of conspiring to bomb a synagogue and Jewish community center in the Bronx, New York, and to shoot surface-to-air missiles at military planes from the New York Air National Guard Base in Newburgh. The men were arrested as a result of an investigation stemming from their meeting with an informant, Shahed Hussain, in June 2008.

James Ujaama and Semi Osman were accused of a variety of support activities for terrorism, including the development of a terrorist training facility at a ranch in Oregon. Both men pleaded guilty to lesser charges as part of an agreement to cooperate in other investigations.

Both Ujaama and Osman were tied to the Dar-us-Salaam mosque in Seattle, which was under FBI surveillance due to a number of tips regarding suspicious activity. Ujaama's brother founded the mosque, while Osman was a member. A Seattle Police Department spokeswoman noted that during a 1998 assault investigation, several individuals mentioned that the mosque contained a large number of arms. According to Tim Evinger, the sheriff for the county where the training facility was to be located, the ranch had 'never been off the radar screen of the Joint Terrorism Task Force.' Ujaama and Osman were also linked to well-known British radical cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, who was also under investigation.

Habis Abdulla al Saoub, Jeffrey Leon Battle, Ahmed Ibrahim Bilal, Muhammad Ibrahim Bilal, Patrice Lumumba Ford, Maher Mofeid Hawash and October Martinique Lewis, known as the Portland Seven, conspired to provide support to the Taliban. Several members traveled to China beginning in late 2001 in an attempt to reach Afghanistan. Lewis, Battle's wife, remained in Portland, Oregon, and wired money to the others. Saoub was never apprehended, but was killed by Pakistani forces along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in October 2003. Hawash and Ahmed and Muhammad Bilal pleaded guilty in September 2003 to conspiring to support the Taliban. October Lewis pleaded guilty to money laundering charges in September 2003. Jeffrey Battle and Patrice Ford pleaded guilty in October 2003.

The Portland Seven came to the attention of law enforcement and intelligence officials on September 29, 2001, after a local sheriff responding to a suspicious activity tip discovered them engaged in shooting practice. The sheriff's deputy took their names, released them and informed the FBI. A few weeks later, Ali Khaled Steitiye, one of the people involved in the shooting practice but not indicted as part of the Portland Seven, was arrested. He possessed a large amount of cash, weapons and a calendar with September 11 circled. The FBI inserted an informant into the group in February 2002 and used Patriot Act authorities to receive email data.

The North Carolina-based Raleigh jihad group '“ organizer Daniel Boyd, Dylan Boyd, Zakaria Boyd, Mohammad Omar Aly Hassan, Jude Mohammad, Hysen Sherifi, Anes Subasic and Ziyad Yaghi -- trained and prepared to fight jihad overseas. Several members of the group traveled to other countries in an attempt to participate in jihad. The U.S. government has also claimed that the group plotted to attack military installations inside the United States.

According to the FBI's website, 'The case began in 2005 with a tip from someone in the Muslim community that one of its members was becoming radicalized.' The Joint Terrorism Task Force became increasingly concerned when an individual recruited by Daniel Boyd traveled to Jordan and sent a suspicious email back to Boyd. The case would later involve a variety of investigative methods, including court-ordered wiretaps and informants. One member of the group, Jude Mohammad, was killed in a counterterrorism operation in Pakistan on November 6, 2011.

Ralph Deleon, Arifeen Gojali, Sohiel Kabir and Miguel Santana were charged in California on November 19, 2012, with plotting to fight for the Taliban in Afghanistan. The initial lead for the investigation is unclear, but an informant and undercover officers who monitored the conspirators' online communications and social media interactions were used in the case. Kabir and Deleon were sentenced to 25 years each on February 23, 2015.

The Virginia Jihad Network consisted of a group of men who trained for military jihad, some of whom traveled to a Lashkar-e-Taiba training camp in Pakistan, with the intent of fighting U.S. forces in Afghanistan. According to reporting by The Washington Post, the FBI received two tips from local Muslims about Timimi leading a group engaged in military training. The FBI found radical statements by Timimi when they followed up on the lead. Charges were later filed and three of the men turned against the others, providing further evidence to law enforcement.

Kobie Diallo Williams was convicted on August 9, 2009, of a weapons charge and conspiring to support the Taliban. Adnan Mirza was convicted on the same grounds in May 2010. The two men were discovered through an investigation that was opened after James Coates was stopped with Williams in 2004 by U.S. Customs and Border Control officers in Big Bend National Park in Texas with weapons in their car. The officers informed the FBI, which interviewed Coates and opened an investigation into Williams and Mirza. In September 2005, the FBI inserted an undercover officer, whom Coates introduced to the group.

On December 24, 2009, Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab boarded Northwest Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit. As the plane began to land, Abdulmutallab attempted to light an explosive device hidden in his underwear, causing a small fire but not a sufficient explosion to destroy the plane. The passengers and flight crew then subdued Abdulmutallab, who was arrested when the plane landed. He pleaded guilty on October 12, 2011, to an eight-count indictment including charges of conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.

Two months before the incident, in October, Abdulmutallab's father had provided a tip to the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, regarding his son's radical views and possible travel to Yemen. Officials marked Abdulmutallab's file for a full investigation if he reapplied for a visa and he was placed on a list of 550,000 people with alleged terrorist connections, but he was not placed on the no-fly list.

In November 2005, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali was convicted of plotting to kill President George W. Bush and conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism. He was sentenced on appeal to life in prison in July 2009. Abu Ali was arrested in June 2003 by Saudi authorities after an individual arrested in connection with a bombing identified him as a co-conspirator. He was held in a Saudi prison for almost two months before being extradited to the United States.

On December 22, 2001, Richard Reid attempted to light the fuse of explosives that were hidden in his shoes while aboard American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami. Passengers who saw Reid's attempt subdued him, and the plane was diverted to Boston, where he was arrested. He pleaded guilty in October 2002 to attempting to blow up the airliner.

Mohamud Abdi Yusuf pleaded guilty in November 2011 to providing material support to al-Shabaab. Abdi Mahdi Hussein, who was involved in the movement of the money, pleaded guilty in January 2012 to a lesser charge of conspiracy to structure overseas financial transactions. Together the two men transferred $21,000 to an individual located in Kenya. The investigative method used to discover the activity remains unclear. A third suspect, Duane Mohamed Diriye, remains at large.

John Walker Lindh was captured in November 2001 on the battlefield in Afghanistan. Lindh had studied in Yemen before traveling to Afghanistan to support the Taliban. Lindh pleaded guilty in July 2002 to providing his services to the Taliban and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

On April 27, 2005, Hemant Lakhani was convicted of attempting to sell shoulder-fired missiles to what he thought was a terrorist group. He was sentenced to 47 years in September 2005. The investigation was a cooperative effort among the FBI, British intelligence and Russia, beginning with a cooperating witness. Christopher Christie, the New Jersey U.S. attorney stated, 'Without getting into specifics that would compromise the ongoing investigation, what I can tell you is that the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force here in Newark became aware of him through a cooperating witness. And the investigation went from there. And all of these other intelligence groups were brought in as partners with the FBI as this progressed.'

On June 2, 2004, Mohammed Babar pleaded guilty to conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists in relation to his smuggling of money and military gear to an al-Qaeda leader in Pakistan. The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force began investigating him after seeing an interview on Canadian television in which he stated his intention to travel and fight for the Taliban. He was flagged on a terrorist watch list and when he returned from Pakistan to the United States, authorities were notified.

Ryan Anderson, a National Guardsman, was convicted in September 2004 of attempting to provide sensitive information to al-Qaeda and sentenced to life in prison. He was discovered as a result of his posting numerous times on extremist websites. A private citizen and amateur cyberspy, Shannen Rossmiller, saw his postings and reported them to the FBI, which then engaged with him via the online sites through a joint effort with the Justice Department and the military.

Syed Hashmi was arrested in 2006 and pleaded guilty in April 2010 to conspiring to provide material support to al-Qaeda. He was sentenced to 15 years in June 2010. The charges revolved around his storing of gear for Mohammed Babar, who had pleaded guilty to terrorism charges in 2004, and his provision of $300 for Babar's ticket to travel to deliver the gear to fighters in Afghanistan. Babar turned on Hashmi after his arrest, providing the core of the government's case.

Paul Hall, also known as Hassan Abu-Jihaad, was convicted of material support charges and espionage in March 2008 for leaking classified information about troop movements to a terrorist cell. The material support charge was later overturned because the statute had not been expanded prior to the crime, but the espionage charge was upheld. He was sentenced to 10 years in April 2009. According to the FBI website, the FBI 'learned about Abu-Jihaad in December 2003, when British authorities raided the apartment of Babar Ahmad, a Briton later charged with raising money for al Qaeda through a London-based organization called Azzam Publications.' The search of Ahmad's apartment found a floppy disk with a document containing classified information that Hall had sent Ahmad.

Ruben Shumpert, a Seattle barber and ex-convict who converted to Islam, first came to the attention of federal authorities in 2002 when they received a tip about a group of Seattle men who were 'speaking in bellicose terms' and using jihadist rhetoric. The FBI, using paid informants, began to watch Shumpert's barber shop in the south of Seattle and gathered information on the group. Those informants told the FBI that Shumpert frequently played jihadist videos for customers. The informant also purchased a handgun and counterfeit currency from Shumpert. In November 2004, the police arrested more than a dozen men, including Shumpert, and seized various firearms. Shumpert made a deal in which he pleaded guilty to gun and counterfeiting charges on September 20, 2006, and was allowed to go free on his own recognizance until sentencing. He then fled the country and called an FBI agent from Somalia on November 18 to let him know he would not appear for sentencing. He called the FBI agent again on November 27 and made what the agent interpreted as threats. Shumpert was killed in a missile strike in 2008 in Somalia.

Charged in 2009, Jehad Mostafa is not in custody. Though not as widely known as Omar Hammami, he appeared in videos produced by Al Shabaab's media arm under the name Abdullah al Muhajir. He also took up a leadership role in Al Shabaab.

The details of the means used to prevent the attack on the 2010 Portland Christmas tree ceremony by Mohamed Osman Mohamud remain unclear. Anonymous government officials have suggested that he was initially discovered through an NSA operation, but his father also provided a tip to the FBI in August 2009, raising questions about whether the NSA initiated the investigation and whether it would have occurred regardless of the NSA's involvement. The government has not officially claimed the case as an NSA success.

Whichever method sparked the investigation, an informant and undercover employees were used to assess Mohamud and conduct a sting operation in which Mohamud planned to attack the local Christmas tree lighting ceremony. Though the case can be considered a form of an attack plot, it is distinctly different from some of the other plots because it was organized under the eyes of undercover agents. However, Mohamud's connections to Amro al-Ali, a suspected terrorist from Saudi Arabia, and Samir Khan, a U.S. citizen who published Inspire, an al-Qaeda propaganda magazine, caution against dismissing the plot as something that would not have occurred but for the government's involvement.

According to a senior counterterrorism official interviewed by Marc Ambinder, a national security reporter, the FBI was first alerted to Mohamud by an NSA operation in Somalia. The New York Times reported a similar explanation, tracing the beginning of Mohamud's monitoring to the interception of his emails with an extremist, citing an anonymous law enforcement official. Based on court documents that extremist can be identified as Ali.

Ali is a Saudi national who lived in Portland from 2007 to 2008, and was a wanted international terrorist for whom an Interpol Red Notice was issued on October 18, 2009; he is now believed to be in prison in Saudi Arabia. He is referred to in many of the court documents as 'Unindicted Associate 1' or 'UA1.'

According to the criminal complaint, court-authorized surveillance showed that Mohamud was in contact with Ali in August 2009. On August 31, 2009, Ali forwarded to Mohamud an email link regarding a religious school in Yemen. While email intercepts may have triggered the investigation, there is also an alternative explanation. The same day Ali sent the email about the religious school, Mohamud's father called the FBI office in Portland and said he was worried about his son's jihadist leanings. The call led to an in-person meeting between Mohamud's father and FBI Special Agent Isaac Delong.

On November 9, a confidential FBI source contacted Mohamud by email to help the FBI assess him, and by the time they last communicated in August 2010, they had exchanged 44 emails, though they never met in person or talked over the phone.

About three weeks after the source contacted Mohamud, Ali contacted Mohamud from northwest Pakistan. In a December 3, 2009, email to Mohamud, Ali said he was on a pilgrimage to Mecca, but a review of the IP address, a numerical label that identifies where a device connected to the Internet is located, showed that the email was sent from Pakistan's tribal regions. It is believed that the email notified Mohamud that Ali had successfully engaged in terrorist activity.

In emails from Pakistan, Ali discussed Mohamud joining terrorist activity abroad using coded language and provided instructions for Mohamud to contact another extremist, Abulhadi (UA2), to coordinate the plan. Beginning on December 12, 2009, Mohamud attempted to contact UA2, as UA1 instructed, but his efforts were ultimately unsuccessful.

On June 14, 2010, Mohamud was stopped at Portland International Airport while trying to fly to Kodiak, Alaska, and was interviewed by the FBI. Later that month, an undercover FBI employee (UCE1) contacted Mohamud and said he was affiliated with UA1. Mohamud responded to the agent's email and agreed to meet with the employee in Portland on July 30, 2010 '“ thus beginning an undercover operation.

On August 19, 2010, Mohamud met with UCE1 again and was introduced to a second FBI undercover agent (UCE2). During the meeting, Mohamud identified the Portland Christmas tree lighting ceremony as a potential target.

On September 7, 2010, UCE1, UCE2, and Mohamud met again and the undercover employees asked Mohamud to buy bomb components, send them to UCE1, and find a place to park the bomb. Mohamud agreed. On November 26, 2010, Mohamud was arrested as he tried to detonate the fake bomb.

Mohamud was sentenced to 30 years.

In February 2009, Betim Kaziu, a U.S. citizen and resident of Brooklyn, New York, traveled to Cairo, Egypt, from the United States to wage violent jihad against U.S. troops in the Middle East and the Balkans. While in Egypt, he tried to acquire weapons and attempted to travel to Somalia and join al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda affiliated group. Kaziu traveled to Kosovo in an effort to target U.S. troops stationed there or to travel onward to Pakistan to join al-Qaeda. He also recorded a martyrdom video on the Albanian coast. On August 27, 2009, Kaziu was arrested in Kosovo by the Kosovo Police Service. He was then transferred to the custody of agents and detectives of the New York Joint Terrorism Task Force to face terrorism charges filed in the Eastern District of New York. At the time of his arrest, he had already purchased a ticket to travel to Pakistan on September 15, 2009. He was convicted in July 2011 and sentenced to 27 years in prison in March 2012.

Raja Khan, a 58-year-old American citizen born in Pakistan and a Chicago cab driver, sent $950 on Nov. 23, 2009, to an individual in Pakistan for delivery to Ilyas Kashmiri, a terrorist leader Khan claimed to have known for 15 years. The criminal complaint said Khan believed Kashmiri was getting his orders from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and that Khan sent the money after Kashmiri indicated he needed cash to buy explosives. Khan accepted $1,000 from an undercover agent and assured him that the money would be used to purchase weapons and possibly other supplies, according to the complaint. Details regarding the investigation's initiation remain unclear. He was arrested in 2010 during an undercover operation and sentenced in 2012 to 90 months in prison.

Sharif Mobley, a 26-year-old New Jersey resident, traveled to Yemen to study Arabic in 2008. While there he was arrested in 2010 in a sweep of militants tied to the Yemeni branch of al-Qaeda and the Somali movement al-Shabaab. In an effort to escape the authorities, he allegedly shot two Yemeni guards, killing one of them. Mobley allegedly had contact with Anwar al-Awlaki, an American imam who became a senior al-Qaeda recruiter, by email and phone. Yemen charged Mobley with murder in October 2010.

Samir Khan ran a blog, titled InshallahShaheed, that published jihadist content from his home in North Carolina. Khan's activity was public knowledge and the New York Times linked the blog to him through his email address and interviewed him regarding his radicalization as part of an article in 2007. His views were also well known in the local community. In 2009, Khan left for Yemen, saying he was going to study Arabic. Once in Yemen, however, he became the editor of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's English language magazine, Inspire. Khan was killed in a U.S. drone strike on September 30, 2011 whose target was Anwar Awlaki, who was also killed in the strike.

Hafiz Khan was indicted in May 2011 on charges of providing material support to the Pakistani Taliban. Khan was convicted in March 2013 of sending thousands of dollars to the terrorist group and sentenced to 25 years in August 2013. According to the Justice Department, 'This investigation was initiated by the FBI in conjunction with the JTTF [Joint Terrorism Task Force] based upon a review of suspicious financial transactions and other evidence.' An informant was used but it was not an undercover sting, according to the press release. The specific circumstances surrounding the investigation's initiation remain unclear.

Jubair Ahmad was charged in September 2011 with providing material support to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani terrorist group. He was alleged to have attended terrorist training camps and to have produced and uploaded a propaganda video on behalf of and at the direction of Lashkar-e-Taiba, closely coordinating the content with Talha Saeed, the son of Lashkar-e-Taiba leader Hafiz Mohammed Saeed. Ahmad pleaded guilty to material support charges in December 2011. The investigation was initiated when the FBI received information that Ahmad might be associated with Lashkar-e-Taiba. The specifics of that initial tip remain unclear. Ahmad was sentenced to 12 years in April 2012.

Baxam, a former U.S. Army soldier, was indicted in March 2012 on charges of attempting to provide material support to al-Shabaab, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Somalia. Baxam was apprehended by Kenya's anti-terrorism police on December 23, 2011, near Mombasa, Kenya, as he tried to reach Somalia. The complaint suggests that the police were tipped off by Baxam's suspicious activity on a bus. He pled guilty in January 2014 and was sentenced to seven years.

The investigation of Mohamed Warsame, a Canadian citizen of Somali descent living in Minnesota, appears to have begun with warrantless surveillance by the NSA, but many of the case details remain unclear. According to the affidavit of FBI agent Kiann Vandenover, Warsame was interviewed by the FBI in Minneapolis on December 8 and 9, 2003, and admitted that he traveled to Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001, during which time he attended an al-Qaeda training camp. He was arrested on December 10, 2003, on a material witness warrant and was later indicted on material support charges. The affidavit provided no details on how suspicion fell on Warsame in the first place.

However, when The New York Times broke the story on the NSA's warrantless wiretapping, it cited government officials as saying the programs may have assisted in the Warsame case. Warsame's attorney also suggested that NSA surveillance played a key role, as the government presented evidence derived from FISA surveillance and, during a hearing, an FBI agent said the investigation began after a tip from another agency, without naming the agency.

As to the seriousness of Warsame's plot, during sentencing the judge called Warsame's role in actual terrorist activities 'minimal' and stated, 'I have found no evidence whatsoever that you were involved in a specific terrorist plot against the United States.' However, he also noted that Warsame had trained at two terrorist camps and had contact with al-Qaeda figures.

Tounisi was arrested on April 19, 2013, and charged with attempting to provide material support to Jabhat al-Nusrah, an al-Qaeda-linked rebel faction in Syria. He was caught as a result of an online sting operation when he allegedly contacted a website purporting to recruit people to fight in Syria but actually run by undercover agents. On Aug. 11, 2015 Tounisi pled guilty.

Kurbanov was indicted in May 2013 on charges of conspiring to provide material support and possessing an unregistered destructive device. He is accused of conspiring with unnamed co-conspirators to provide support to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and providing training in explosives, including showing Internet videos to others. The method that initiated the investigation remains unclear. Kurbanov was found guilty on Aug. 12, 2015. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison on January 7, 2016.

Siddiqui was placed on a watch list and later was the subject of an FBI global alert as a result of her known jihadist sympathies and suspicious activity post-9/11, with a special focus on her connection to Majid Khan, who was detained and later moved to the Guantanamo Bay prison. She disappeared in Pakistan for several years. A woman arrested in Afghanistan by Afghan National Police for suspiciously being outside of the Ghazni governor's house was later identified as Siddiqui. She was convicted in 2010 of attempted murder charges related to her seizing a rifle and attempting to kill the U.S. officials interrogating her after her detention in Afghanistan. Siddiqui was sentenced to 86 years in September 2010.

Hammami was charged with providing material support to terrorists in November 2007 for traveling to fight for al-Shabaab in Somalia. He was added to the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list in 2012. When Hammami left for Somalia, he told his wife he was visiting there to meet her relatives. When he ended up staying in Somalia, he told his family that he had lost his passport, and his family notified the FBI in an attempt to arrange help in obtaining a new passport. In October 2007, Hammami had publicly disclosed his jihadist activity in Somalia in an interview with Al Jazeera. In September 2013 he was killed by other members of al-Shabaab as a result of an internal political fight.

Awlaki raised suspicion early. The FBI first noted him in 1999 as a result of an investigation of militants he knew. The 9/11 Commission noted his connections to some of the 9/11 hijackers, though it did not have enough information to make any conclusions. It stated, 'Some agents suspect that Aulaqi may have tasked Rababah to help Hazmi and Hanjour. We share that suspicion, given the remarkable coincidence of Aulaqi's prior relationship with Hazmi.' Awlaki was a public figure and his radicalization over time was watched by the government, as was the appearance of his name as a radicalizing influence in many terrorism cases. He was jailed by Yemen in 2006 but released in 2007. He was tied, at least in a radicalizing role, to a number of terrorist plots, including the Fort Hood shooting and the 2009 Christmas Day underwear bomber. American officials assert that he eventually took an operational role in al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. On September 30, 2011, Awlaki was killed in a drone strike in Yemen.

In 2004 Wade Lay and his son Christopher Lay killed an armed guard while conducting an armed robbery. They were convicted in 2005. Wade Lay testified that the money was meant to buy weapons and according to the district attorney there was a 'self-proclaimed mission to revenge Waco.' Christopher Lay had made a list of individuals he deemed responsible for Waco.

Jim David Adkisson killed two people and injured seven others in a shooting at Tennessee Valley United Unitarian Church in July 2008. Adkisson left a letter in his SUV that expressed hatred towards liberals and gays prior to conducting the attack. Adkisson pleaded guilty in February 2009.

James Von Brunn killed a security guard and injured another person in a shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Museum in June 2009. Prosecutors alleged that Von Brunn had planned the shooting months in advance. Von Brunn expressed white supremacist views and was tied to a variety of neo-Nazi and white supremacist web sites. Von Brunn died during his trial.

In May 2009, Scott Roeder killed Dr. George Tiller, who ran an abortion clinic in Wichita, Kansas. Roeder admitted being motivated by anti-abortion beliefs. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Roeder had also been part of the Sovereign Citizens movement. Roeder was convicted in 2010.

In 2009 Albert Gaxiola, Shawna Forde, and Joshua Bush killed a man and his nine-year old daughter during an armed robbery of the man's house. The three conducted the robbery to help fund their anti-immigrant organization. All three were convicted.

In 2009, Keith Luke, a self-described neo-Nazi and white supremacist, killed two men and raped and critically injured a woman, all three of whom were of Cape Verdean descent. According to the prosecution, Luke targeted the victims for their ancestry. He told police 'I was planning on killing non-whites manually. I wasn't planning on even using a gun. The only reason I used a gun is because everything got haywire.' He had also stockpiled weapons. Luke was convicted in 2013.

Terry Loewen was arrested on December 13, 2013, and charged with planning to bomb the Wichita Mid-Continent Airport in Kansas. He was caught due to his online communication with an undercover FBI employee in which Loewen discussed his work as an avionics technician and his jihadist views. The FBI launched an undercover sting operation based on the communication. Loewen pled guilty in June 2015.

In 2009, Robert Poplawski killed three police officers who responded to a domestic dispute call at his mother's house where he was living. Poplawski frequented white supremacist websites and expressed anti-government and racist views. Poplawski was reportedly lying in wait and ambushed the responding officers. He was sentenced to death in 2011.

In 2010 Raymond Peake killed a man at a gun range in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in order to steal an AR-15. Peake told investigators he stole the weapon for use in an organization seeking the overthrow of the American government that he refused to name. Peake pleaded no contest in 2012.

In February 2010, Andrew Joseph Stack crashed a small aircraft into an Internal Revenue Service office building killing one person. Stack left an anti-government, anti-tax manifesto behind. Stack had a long history of anti-tax views. He died in the crash.

In August 2012, Terry Smith, Brian Smith, Derrick Smith, Kyle Joekel, Britney Keith, and Chanel Skains allegedly ambushed and killed two police officers. The group was associated with the Sovereign Citizens movement and two were reportedly on a federal domestic terrorism watchlist. Skains and Keith pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact. Derrick Smith pleaded guilty to attempted murder. Brian Smith, Terry Smith, and Kyle Joekel's trials are ongoing or about to begin.

In 2011 David Pedersen and Holly Grigsby killed four people in a multi-state killing spree. The indictment alleged that the two along with others were members of a criminal enterprise whose purposes included 'promoting and advancing a white supremacist movement to '˜purify' and '˜preserve' the white race and '˜reclaim our country' and culture through acts of murder on the basis of race, color, religion, and perceived '˜degenerate' conduct.' Pedersen pleaded guilty to a murder charge and Grigsby pleaded guilty to a racketeering charge encompassing all the crimes alleged.

On August 5, 2012 Wade Michael Page killed six people in a shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. Wade Michael Page was ensconced within neo-Nazi and white supremacist circles. He had also founded a white supremacist band. Page committed suicide during the attack.

Frazier Glenn Cross was arrested on April 13th, 2014 and charged with murder in two shootings at Kansas City Jewish institutions that killed three people. Prosecutors also announced that they would seek federal hate crime charges. Cross has deep and public ties to the white supremacist movement and founded the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan as well as the White Patriot Party. Cross shouted Heil Hitler as he was arrested. He had posted more than 12,000 times on the extremist Vanguard News Network site. On August 31, 2015, Cross was found guilty of capital murder. In November, he was sentenced to death by lethal injection. Cross remains on death row in Kansas.

In 2011, Isaac Aguigui, Anthony Peden, Christopher Salmon, and Michael Burnett participated in the murder of Michael Roark and his girlfriend Tiffany York. The four men were part of Forever Enduring Always Ready, an anti-government Georgia militia group, and killed Roark and his girlfriend to conceal their activity. According to prosecutors, the four planned to commit further attacks including bombing the fountain at Savannah's Forsyth Park, attacking Fort Stewart, and killing political figures. The group possessed multiple rifles and pipe bomb materials. Aguigui, Salmon, and Peden pleaded guilty to murder charges. Burnett, who cooperated with the government pleaded guilty to manslaughter and gang violations. Heather Salmon, Christopher Salmon's wife, was also arrested and pleaded guilty in July of 2015 to manslaughter charges in connection with Roark and York's murders..

Isaac Aguigui was also convicted of murdering his wife. According to prosecutors Aguigui used the money from life insurance and army benefits to buy weapons and otherwise fund the FEAR group. In addition, to those charged in relation to the deaths, a number of others were charged with gang violations and other lesser crimes related to participation in the FEAR group.

On May 25th, 2014 a Abu Huraya al-Amriki, who the State Department identified as Moner Abu Salha, an American citizen, conducted a suicide truck bombing in Syria as part of Jabhat al Nusra. Officials told NBC that he first came to FBI attention as a result of a tip from a friend.

On October 23, 2014 Zale Thompson, a 32 year-old American citizen, attacked New York Police Department police officers with a hatchet wounding two officers. Thompson was killed during the incident. The investigation into the incident reportedly found that Thompson had visited websites associated with jihadist terrorism and left a manifesto on his computer. John Miller, the Deputy NYPD Commissioner stated that Thompson had been, 'visiting websites that are focused on designated terrorist groups -- al-Qaida, ISIS and al-Shabaab -- as well as looking at different acts of violence' and NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton told a news conference, 'This was a terrorist act.' Police, however, have noted that they believe Thompson self-radicalized and lack ties to organized terrorist groups.

Abdel Hamid Shehadeh, a Staten Island man, was convicted of making false statements regarding a trip he made to Pakistan and sentenced to 13 years (with the two sentences being concurrent resulting in 8 years of prison). Shehadeh was 21 when he was arrested. He had run Jihadist websites, and was influenced by Awlaki according to prosecutors. Police began investigating him after he was tied to the websites he ran. Shehadeh attempted to fly to Pakistan to engage in militant activity but the Pakistani government turned him around. He was later arrested in Hawaii.

Gufran Mohammed, a naturalized American citizen living in Saudi Arabia, was indicted in August 2013 along with Mohamed Hussein Said, a Kenyan citizen who is not included in the dataset as he is neither an American nor spent time in the United States. The two were charged with attempting to provide material support to Al Shabaab, Al Nusrah in Syria, and Al Qaeda specifically by facilitating the recruitment and movement of fighters. According to court documents, Said had contacts with fighters in Al Shabaab and the two had contact with and sought to facilitate the movement of individuals known to have engaged in terrorist and insurgent activity. Gufran Mohamed pled guilty in July 2014. The case was investigated using an online informant. However, the initiating cause of the investigation remains unclear. Mohammed was sentenced to 15 years in prison on December 17, 2014.

Rahatul Khan, a 23 year-old naturalized citizen from Bangladesh and living in Texas, was indicted separately in July 2014 on attempted material support charges connected to efforts to recruit individuals to fight abroad including in Somalia. Court documents, however, tie the two cases together.

On July 23, 2014 Muna Osman Jama, a 34 year-old woman living in Reston, Virginia, and Hinda Osman Dhirane, a 44 year-old woman living in Kent, Washington were charged with providing material support to Al Shabaab. They allegedly directed a network of mostly women that funneled funds to Al Shabaab in monthly payments. The two women were indicted along with three others who were not inside the United States.

On December 2, 2014 Federal prosecutors charged Yusra Ismail, a 20-year-old woman of Somali descent and non-citizen, with stealing a friend's passport alleging she used it to try and travel to Syria. According to the complaint, the case is part of the larger investigation into Jihadist recruitment in Minnesota. The specific case appears to have been initiated as the result of a tip from a friend of Ismail's who realized her passport was stolen when according to the complaint she heard friends speaking about Ismail's travel. Ismail is at large and is not believed to have returned to the United States.

In July 2014, Adam Dandach, a 20-year-old Orange County man, was arrested at John Wayne Airport while allegedly attempting to travel to join the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham. Dandach was charged with lying about needing a passport replacement and concealing that the real reason he needed to replace his passport was that his mother had hidden his original passport to prevent his travel. The investigation appears to have relied upon interviews and cooperation with the family though the details are not known regarding the timing of cooperation and whether such cooperation initiated the investigation. Dandach pled guilty on Aug. 10, 2015..

Douglas McArthur McCain, a 33-year old American citizen from Minnesota, was killed while fighting for the Islamic State (IS) during a clash betweeen IS and the Free Syrian Army in Syria. The U.S. government was aware of McCain before his death and had flagged him for extra scrutiny when flying.

On July 1, 2014 Ali Muhammad Brown was charged in Washington with murdering three men in Washington State. Brown was later charged in New Jersey with another murder. Brown pled not guilty and is currently on trial. According to court documents from the Washington case, Brown allegedly cited American policy in the Middle East as his motivation. On July 2, 2015 New Jersey charged Brown with terrorism under a state statute. He was previously charged in a 2004 case initially regarded as terrorism related and which involved Ruben Shumpert, who reportedly fled to Somalia to avoid sentencing and is believed to have died fighting for Al Shabaab there, but the prosecution was only able to prove fraud charges.

On October 4, 2014 Mohammed Hamza Khan, a 19 year old U.S. citizen, was arrested at O'Hare Airport allegedly while travelling to Syria to support the Islamic State. Khan pled guilty on October 29, 2015.

On November 14, 2014, Heather Coffman, a 29-year-old American citizen by birth, was arrested and charged with making a false statement in a terrorism investigation. The investigation into Coffman appears to have begun when her Facebook postings came to the attention of the FBI, and was pursued using an undercover officer. The government's criminal complaint alleges that Coffman sought to support the Islamic State though it only charges her with making a false statement. According to the complaint, Coffman 'is suspected of conspiring an attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham ('ISIS').'

On November 24, 2014 two Minnesotan men, Abdi Nur, a 20-year-old American citizen, and Abdullahi Yusuf, an 18 '“year-old American citizen, were charged with conspiracy to provide material support to the Islamic State. The investigation into the two men is connected to the larger investigation into people from Minnesota traveling to fight in Syria, and Yusuf had been called before a grand jury investigating Islamic State recruitment in the Twin Cities but refused to testify at the time. The specific investigation appears to have been initiated by routine law enforcement after a passport official reported to the FBI which then initiated an investigation that Yusuf was acting suspiciously when he applied for a passport. According to the complaint, Nur was linked to Yusuf in the ensuing investigation. A relative of Nur's also filed a missing persons report with the local police. Nur is currently at large and believed to be in Syria while Yusuf was arrested while allegedly on his way to Syria, and currently sentencing in federal court having pled guilty to conspiracy to provide material support.

On February 25, 2015 the federal government unsealed a complaint charging three Brooklyn men - Abdurasul Juraboev, a 24 year old Uzbek citizen and legal permanent resident of the United States, Akhor Saidakhmetov, a 19 year old Uzbek citizen and legal permanent resident of the United States, and Abror Habibov, a 30 year old Kazakh citizen in the U.S. on an expired visa - with conspiring and attempting to provide material support to ISIS. Juraboev and Saidakhmetov allegedly tried to travel to join ISIS in Syria while Habibov allegedly funded the enterprise. Saidakhmetov and Juraboev allegedly also discussed a variety of possible attacks in the United States if they were unable to travel overseas. However, there is no public evidence these plots moved beyond talk and news reports citing officials suggest they were aspirational rather than operational. The men's alleged activity reportedly came to light after the Secret Service discovered a public Internet posting on an Uzbek language ISIS inspired site and traced the IP address back to an address in Brooklyn where Juraboev lived. On April 6, 2015, the United States charged another individual, Dilkhayot Kasimov, with supporting Juraboev and Saidakhmetov's plan to travel to fight in Syria. He awaits trial. On June 11, 2015 the United States charged a fifth man, Akmal Zakirov, an Uzbek national, with helping provide funding for other members of the group to travel to Syria.

On May 11, 2016, the United States a superseding indictment charging Azizjon Rakhmatov, a 28-year-old Uzbeki national, with conspiring and attempting to provide material support in relation to the case.

Adam Gadahn publicly disclosed his jihadist activity when he appeared in an al-Qaeda video in 2004. Haitham Bundakji, an imam in Orange County, California, who had witnessed Gadahn's conversion but later was assaulted by him, identified the man in the video as Gadahn. Gadahn was indicted in October 2005 on charges of providing material support to terrorists, and in 2006 he was charged with treason. Gadahn was a senior spokesman for al-Qaeda. According to the White House, Gadahn was killed in a drone strike in Pakistan in January 2015.

On February 4, 2015 the United States charged Hamza Ahmed, a 19-year-old American citizen of Somali descent, with making a false statement in a terrorism related investigation. According to the complaint, Ahmed sought to fly to Syria with three other individuals from Minnesota, who have not yet been publicly charged. The men were stopped at the airport and Ahmed was removed from his flight after boarding, the specific tip or lead that led to the removal and charge is unclear at this time.

On February 5, 2015 the federal government charged six people with providing support to fighters in Syria, including to an alleged American foreign fighter, Abdullah Ramo Pazaro, and two of the arrested individuals were also charged with conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country. Of the six individuals, all six are Bosnian immigrants, three of whom are naturalized citizens. The indicted individuals allegedly used social media sites and PayPal to send funds abroad. All of the individuals are in custody.

On April 15, 2013, two pressure cooker bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon. The bombing triggered a massive investigation, and on April 18, photos of two suspects were released to the public. After the suspects were identified as Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the two brothers shot a policeman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the early morning of April 19 and hijacked a car. The resulting manhunt ended when police shot and killed Tamerlan and later arrested Dzhokhar after he was discovered hiding in a boat in the Boston suburb of Watertown. Dzhokhar was indicted on multiple charges related to the bombing, including the use of a weapon of mass destruction. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found guilty and sentenced to death by a federal jury. According to NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander, the NSA's database of phone call records did not help identify the Tsarnaevs though it was used in the follow up investigation.

Tarek Mehanna was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison after being convicted in 2011 of conspiring to provide material support to al-Qaeda and to kill in a foreign country. Mehanna and his alleged co-conspirators, including Ahmad Abousamra, traveled to the Middle East in 2004 to receive terrorist training and distributed jihadist media; Abousamra reportedly died in an airstrike in Iraq after allegedly becoming a key figure in ISIS' social media activity. The methods used to initiate the investigation into Mehanna and his alleged co-conspirators remain unclear. However, an informant was used in the investigation.

On November 30, 2012, Raees Alam Qazi and Sheheryar Qazi were charged with plotting to conduct a bomb attack in New York City. While the beginning of the investigation remains unclear, the case utilized informants and recordings conducted under the authorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The U.S. government has refused to disclose whether it used warrantless NSA surveillance in the case, arguing that it 'does not intend to use any information obtained or derived from FAA [FISA Amendments Act]-authorized surveillance.' Raeez Qazi pled guilty and was sentenced to 35 years in prison while Sheheryar Qazi pled guilty and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

According to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program, Iyman Faris was known to American intelligence officials prior to 9/11, and the FBI opened an investigation into him in March 2001. According to the report, CIA documents suggest the predicate for the investigation was Faris' having been called by other extremists including "Millennium Bomber" Ahmad Ressam, information provided by a foreign intelligence service. The FBI ended up closing its investigation, but on March 5, 2003 Majid Khan was taken into custody in Pakistan, and FISA coverage of his phone showed communication with Faris. Further investigation and detainee interrogations helped reveal further information about Faris and a theoretical plan to attack the Brooklyn Bridge. Faris, a commercial truck driver, was living in Ohio when authorities arrested him in 2003.

Faris became an informant against Nuradin Abdi, a Somali living in Columbus, and Christopher Paul, an American convert to Islam, with whom he discussed targeting Midwestern shopping malls. Faris pleaded guilty in May 2003 to casing the Brooklyn Bridge and providing information to al-Qaeda. Nuradin Abdi pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorists in 2007 and Paul pleaded guilty to conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction in June 2008.

On March 25, 2015 the United States arrested Hasan Edmonds, a 22-year old U.S. citizen and his cousin Jonas Edmonds, a 29-year old U.S. citizen. The two allegedly plotted together for Hasan Edmonds, a member of the Illinois National Guard, to travel to Syria to fight with ISIS while Jonas Edmonds would carry out an attack on a military facility. The two were monitored by an undercover officer, but the initial lead that led to their investigation is unclear. On December 9, 2015, Jonas Edmonds pled guilty to conspiring to provide material support and making a false statement to a law enforcement officer regarding an offense involving international terrorism. Hasan Edmonds pled guilty to conspiring and attempting to provide material support on December 14, 2015. On September 20, 2016, Hasan Edmonds was sentenced to 30 years in prison and Jonas Edmonds was sentenced to 21 years in priosn.

On June 8th, 2014 Jerad Miller and Amanda Miller, a married couple, allegedly killed two police officers in an ambush at a pizza restaurant in Las Vegas proceeding to kill another person in a Wal Mart parking lot as they left the scene before committing suicide. Law enforcement are believed to have discovered a manifesto written by the shooters, though its content is unknown. The shooters reportedly yelled revolution during the shooting and left a swastika on the body of one policeman. They had also previously spoken of targeting law enforcement officers and expressed militant views according to their neighbors. Second Assistant Sherrif Kevin McMahill stated, "We believe that they equate government and law enforcement ... with Nazis" as quoted by CNN.

The plot by Najibullah Zazi, Zarein Ahmedzay, and Adis Medunjanin to bomb the New York City subway system in 2009 was prevented by a Section 702 NSA intercept. The bulk collection of telephone metadata did not play an appreciable role in the prevention of the attack. There is no evidence that the NSA program used to help investigate the plot was critical for counterterrorism efforts, as the plot could have been prevented through the use of traditional, targeted criminal or FISA warrants.

On September 6, 2009, Zazi exchanged emails with a Pakistan-based email address in which he asked about the correct amounts of chemicals needed to produce a bomb. According to the statements of various government officials, the NSA intercepted this email and passed the information on to the FBI. The next day, the FBI opened a full investigation. (According to Associated Press reporter Matt Apuzzo, there is no evidence that the Pakistani state or intelligence services knew of Zazi and his conspirators.)

However, the surveillance of the email address that led to Zazi's arrest did not rely on bulk collection of phone and email metadata. The email address was known to belong to an al-Qaeda figure for at least five months prior to the NSA's interception of Zazi's email as a result of a British operation in April 2009. On April 8, 2009, Britain's North-West Counter-Terrorism Unit, along with local police forces, arrested 12 people in 'Operation Pathway.' Abid Naseer, one of the men who was arrested and had been under surveillance, was in contact with the same email address between November 30, 2008, and April 3, 2009. On April 3, Naseer sent an encoded email, triggering greater attention from the British security services, who assessed that the email belonged to an al-Qaeda associate and was a sign of an impending attack.

The British shared their findings with the United States, enabling the NSA's surveillance of the email address. In the immediate wake of Zazi's arrest, the British press made clear the key role that Operation Pathway played in initiating the surveillance.

This all suggests that the plot could have been prevented through traditional individualized FISA warrants without the expanded authorities that govern the NSA surveillance programs. The knowledge that the email address was that of an al-Qaeda associate would have been sufficient to obtain a warrant for the email's contents. However, while the expanded authorities do not appear to have been necessary, the NSA did play a role. The case could not have been cracked without surveilling the al-Qaeda fixer's email address. It is also conceivable that the NSA's expanded surveillance capabilities played a key role in the Operation Pathway investigation, as GCHQ and NSA, as we noted previously, share information.

The extent of the publicly cited importance of the NSA's collection of American telephone metadata under Section 215 in the Zazi case appears to be the identification of an additional phone number for an individual who was already under suspicion. Once the FBI identified a phone number included in Zazi's email as belonging to the individual, the NSA checked the number against telephone metadata collected under the authority. The agency's examination of this metadata provided a previously unknown phone number for Adis Medunjanin, one of Zazi's co-conspirators, in New York City. However, Medunjanin was already known to the FBI as a person of interest. Indeed, according to the AP's Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman, who reported on the case, the first FBI examination of travel records noted that Zazi likely traveled to Pakistan with Medunjanin and Ahmedzay.

Moreover, the FBI itself is capable of obtaining phone records of suspects as part of specific investigations, rather than relying upon bulk collection. According to investigative reporters Apuzzo and Goldman, 'one of the first things the FBI did when investigating Zazi was to obtain a national security letter for his phone records and those of his friends and family.' The FBI made widespread use of 'national security' and 'imminent threat of death' letters to monitor Zazi's associates, who were also under 24-hour surveillance, using wiretaps under FISA warrants. These factors suggest that, in foiling the New York City subway plot, the contribution of the NSA's bulk collection of American telephone metadata was minimal at best.

On April 2, 2015, the United States unsealed an indictment charging Muhanad Mahmoud al Farekh, an American citizen, with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. Farekh allegedly left to fight in Pakistan with Ferhid Imam, who was charged in relation to the plot by Najibullah Zazi and his co-conspirators to bomb the New York City subway. Details surrounding Farekh's activity are sparse and the initial lead that led the government to identify him is unclear.

On January 14, 2015 the United States charged Christopher Lee Cornell, a 20 year old Ohio resident, with attempting to kill a U.S. government officer, specifically the complaint alleges he plotted to attack the U.S. Capitol with pipe bombs and firearms, and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence. According to the complaint, the FBI began investigating Cornell based on his tweets and the use of an informant. Cornell was arrested after purchasing firearms under the monitoring of law enforcement.

Agron Hasbajrami, an Albanian citizen who was legally residing in Brooklyn, New York, sent $1,000 to a contact in Pakistan to finance terrorism. He decided to join the militant group associated with his contact and to travel to Pakistan via Turkey. However, an FBI informant who emailed him and offered assistance organized the flight, and he was arrested on September 6, 2011, as he arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport with a one-way ticket to Istanbul. On February 24, 2014, the Department of Justice issued notice to Hasbajrami that it had used warrantless surveillance under Section 702 in its investigation. Hasbajrami pleaded guilty in April 2012 and was sentenced to 15 years, but the judge allowed him to withdraw his plea as part of the challenge to the use of warrantless surveillance in his case .Hasbajrami pled guilty again on June 26, 2015 and was sentenced to 16 years on Aug. 13..

In September 2006, Derrick Shareef, an American convert to Islam, encountered an individual in Rockford, Illinois, with whom he discussed his desire to commit acts of violent jihad. That individual was cooperating with the FBI. The specific circumstances surrounding the meeting are unclear. The confidential source said he wanted to introduce Shareef to a friend who could help him obtain weapons, but the friend was actually an undercover agent. Shareef pleaded guilty in November 2007 to attempting to use weapons of mass destruction in connection with a plan to set off grenades at a Rockford shopping mall. Shareef was sentenced to 35 years in prison in September 2008.

The FBI began monitoring Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, an illegal immigrant from Jordan, in March 2008 because of his online jihadist activity. An undercover operative conversed with him online and introduced him to another undercover agent, who then led a sting operation during which Smadi placed what he thought was a powerful car bomb in the basement of a 60-story skyscraper in downtown Dallas in September 2009. Smadi then dialed a cellphone to trigger the bomb, but the explosives provided by the FBI undercover agents were actually fake. Smadi was arrested right after dialing the number that would have set off the bomb. The investigation showed he was not connected to other terrorists. Hosam Smadi pleaded guilty in May 2010.

Description: Ulugbek Kodirov pleaded guilty on February 10, 2012, to a material support charge, a weapons charge and threatening to kill President Barack Obama. Kodirov, an Uzbek national, communicated with a confidential source working for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the FBI and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement about procuring weapons, and the source put him in contact with undercover operatives. However, the circumstances of Kodirov's first contact with the source remain unclear, with little detail provided in court documents.

On February 1, 2009, a North Carolina chemical company alerted the FBI that Khalid Ali-M. Aldawsari, 20-year-old Saudi student in Texas, was making suspicious purchases online. The FBI began an investigation that revealed Aldawsari's emails, blog posts and an online journal that expressed his desire to wage a personal war against the United States. One target he considered attacking was the Dallas home of former president George W. Bush. He was convicted and sentenced in November 2012 to life in prison.

Naser Jason Abdo, an Army private, refused to deploy to Afghanistan on religious grounds. The Army approved his request to be discharged as a conscientious objector, but on May 13, 2011, he was charged with possession of child pornography on his computer and went AWOL from Fort Campbell, Kentucky. A Killeen, Texas, gun shop provided a tip about his suspicious behavior while purchasing a gun, which led to his arrest on outstanding warrants due to his being AWOL. Upon his arrest in late July 2011, he made statements regarding his intent to commit an attack on the Fort Hood military base in Texas, and searches revealed suspicious materials in his hotel room. Abdo was found guilty in May 2012.

Sami Osmakac was charged in January 2012 with a plot to attack targets in Tampa, Florida. The investigation began when an informant told the FBI that Osmakac had entered his store to buy al-Qaeda flags. The informant and Osmakac later spoke about possible targets, and the informant introduced him to an undercover officer. Osmakac was sentenced to 40 years in prison on November 5, 2014.

Randy Wilson pleaded guilty on April 19, 2013, to conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, in connection with his plans to travel to fight in Africa. His co-conspirator, Mohammad Abukhdair, pleaded guilty in August 2013 to charges stemming from the same plot. The initial cause of the investigation remains unclear. However, in November 2010, Abukhdair was arrested by Egyptian police on suspicion of involvement with a terrorist group and was deported back to the United States in January 2011. The U.S. government later monitored the pair using an undercover officer. Wilson told the officer of his intent to make hijrah -- an emigration to a Muslim country and a reference to the Prophet Mohammed's trip from Mecca to Medina. A confidential source close to Wilson, who had previously plotted to fight in Somalia with Wilson, confirmed that in this case, hijrah likely meant travel for jihad. On June 4, 2012, a mutual friend of Wilson and Omar Hammami, an Alabama man who became a prominent member of al-Shabaab, became an informant after learning that he/she (it is unclear from the court record) could not fly due to being on the no-fly list.

Adel Daoud was arrested on September 14, 2012, as he allegedly tried to detonate what he believed was a car bomb in front of a Chicago bar. While the initial cause of the investigation into Daoud is unclear, in May 2012, two undercover operatives contacted Daoud regarding jihadist material he posted online, launching an undercover sting operation. Daoud's defense team has alleged that NSA surveillance was used to trigger the investigation. The U.S. government responded to those claims, saying that it had not used evidence derived from enhanced surveillance in the trial.

Zubair and Khaleel Ahmed pleaded guilty on January 15, 2009, to conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists. The two cousins had planned to travel abroad and fight in Iraq or Afghanistan. They were discovered by law enforcement when Marwan El-Hindi, the subject of another investigation, recruited them into his cell, which was already being monitored by 'The Trainer' -- Darren Griffin, a paid FBI informant. Hindi introduced them to Griffin at the Islamic Circle of North America conference in Cleveland, Ohio, around July 3 or 4, 2004, according to Griffin. The Ahmeds had also traveled to Egypt to participate in jihad, and while they were there, Zubair's family filed a missing persons report, noting that he might intend to fight in Iraq

Daniel Maldonado, a U.S. citizen born in New Hampshire, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Texas in 2007 to receiving military training from a terrorist organization, al-Shabaab. He converted to Islam in 2000 after dropping out of high school as a junior and soon after married his girlfriend. They moved to Texas in 2005, but moved again that year to Cairo, Egypt. In 2006, they moved to Somalia and Maldonado joined al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda affiliate. He trained with them and learned bomb-making skills. He was captured by Kenyan forces in January 2007 as he crossed the border from Somalia in an effort to escape an invasion by Ethiopian forces. Kenya turned Maldonado over to U.S. officials.

The charges against Barry Bujol, a Texas resident, resulted from a long-term investigation conducted by the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force. Authorities were monitoring the email of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American imam who was a top al-Qaeda militant, and likely discovered Bujol's emails to Awlaki. The investigation, which began in 2009, involved a confidential source who purported to be an al-Qaeda recruiter interested in helping Bujol pursue his goal of conducting 'violent jihad.' Details regarding the specifics of the investigation's initiation remain unclear. Bujol was arrested on May 30, 2010, after using a fake ID to board a ship docked at the Port of Houston. Bujol believed the ship was bound for Algeria, where he would stay at an al-Qaeda safe house before continuing on to Yemen. He was hoping to give al-Qaeda restricted military documents, GPS equipment and money. Bujol was found guilty in November 2011.

Mihalik, a Turkish citizen and a resident of Orange County, California, entered the United States in 1994 on a tourist visa and married a citizen, thus obtaining permanent legal residency. She sent illegal wire transfers amounting to $2,050 to someone in Pakistan over a three-week period in 2010-11. She had recently made a six-month trip to Turkey, and after returning from that 2010 trip she voiced anti-American sentiments to her husband, who was so frightened he secretly contacted Homeland Security officials. He reported that she told him, 'If I have to kill people for Allah, I will,' and that she called taking a citizenship oath to the United States 'a blasphemy.' Her husband's tip, combined with the suspicious financial transactions, helped trigger an investigation though the specific details of the investigation's initiation remain unclear. Mihalik pleaded guilty in August 2012 to a count of providing material support to terrorists and was sentenced to 5 years in March 2013.

Mohanad Shareef Hammadi pleaded guilty in August 2012 to attempting to provide material support to al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). Waad Ramadan Alwan pleaded guilty in December 2011 to conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals abroad, distribution of information on the manufacture of improvised explosive devices, and attempting to provide support to AQI. Both were living in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The FBI initiated its investigation of Alwan in September 2009, and an informant began meeting with Alwan in August the next year. During the investigation, Alwan recruited Hammadi. Alwan was linked to an attack in Iraq via his fingerprints; it is a standard required process for refugees from Iraq to be fingerprinted, but Alwan's fingerprints were tied to the attack only after the investigation into his support activities had begun. The initial cause of the investigation remains unclear.

Hamid Hayat was convicted in April 2006 on charges related to attending a terrorist training camp in Pakistan and sentenced to 24 years in September 2007. The FBI was monitoring the mosque Hayat attended in Lodi, California, using an informant and thus picked up on Hayat's intention. The FBI hired the informant to infiltrate the community and get close to a pair of Pakistani clerics, Shabbir Ahmed and Muhammad Adil Khan, who were in this country on religious-worker visas. One was the imam of Lodi's only mosque; the other was spearheading an effort to build a private school for Central Valley Muslim youths. The FBI began the investigation into the clerics soon after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Shaker Masri, a 29-year-old Chicago man, began espousing increasingly violent views to an individual he befriended in early 2009, and later began to openly express a desire to participate in a 'jihad' and to fight against what he characterized as 'infidels.' The person he was making these claims to was actually an informant for the FBI, who had been asked for unclear reasons to make contact with Masri. During the weeks before his arrest in 2010, Masri began to actively plan a trip to Somalia, where he hoped to join the terrorist group al-Shabaab and commit a suicide attack targeting 'infidels,' the criminal complaint alleged. He was arrested on August 3, 2010, by the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force hours before he was scheduled to leave Chicago for Somalia. Masri pleaded guilty in July 2012 to planning to travel to fight in Somalia.

Matthew Llaneza pleaded guilty in October 2013 to attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. Llaneza proposed a car bomb attack against a bank in the San Francisco area to an undercover officer. He hoped to portray the attack as a right wing anti-government attack in order to trigger a government crackdown. Under the eyes of and in cooperation with an undercover officer, Llanzea constructed a fake car bomb, that he believed to be real, and attempted to carry out the attack on a bank in Oakland, California on February 7, 2013.

Llaneza had a history of mental health issues, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, which the prosecution recognized in its Sentencing Memorandum stating 'It seems plain that this defendant's unique history of serious mental problems and his particular mental circumstances at the time of the offense influenced his offense conduct.'

Llaneza reportedly came to the FBI's attention after making online statements regarding Jihad. He had had interactions with the law. In April 2011, he began to act erratically, and his father called 911 reporting the erratic activity and Llaneza's ownership of an AK-47. Llaneza was then arrested on a weapons charge. Llaneza plead guilty to the charge and was released from jail in November 2011. Llaneza was monitored by an informant as well as a probation officer. In 2012, the FBI conducted a threat assessment and introduced Llaneza to an undercover officer leading to the circumstances of Llaneza's arrest. In February 2014, Llaneza was sentenced to fifteen years on the weapons of mass destruction charge.

Shelton Bell, a 19 year old from Jacksonville Florida, was indicted in July 2013 on a charge of attempting to provide material support to terrorists. He allegedly attempted to join Ansar al Sharia in Yemen, a front organization for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The indictment mentions another juvenile who Bell solicited to join him, but who remains unnamed. The indictment alleges that Bell conducted firearms training and also engaged in a 'night-time 'mission'' on July 4, 2012 in which he and the juvenile 'caused significant damage to religious statues at the Chapel Hills Memorial Gardens Cemetery.' The Associated Press reported that the investigation into Bell began in mid-2012 when a parent at the mosque he attended raised concerns, leading the mosque leaders to call the FBI. Bell pled guilty and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

In June 2014, Michael Todd Wolfe pled guilty to attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization by traveling to Syria to fight with the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham. Wolfe was arrested on June 17, 2014 as he tried to fly out of George Bush International Airport in Houston, Texas. The investigation appears to have begun when Wolfe's wife Jordan Nicole Furr told an undercover FBI employee about her desire to travel abroad to support Wolfe in the pursuit of violent jihad. On June 5, 2015, Wolfe was sentenced to 82 months in prison.

Sinh Vinh Ngo Nguyen pled guilty in December 2013 to a charge of attempting to provide material support to Al Qaeda. Nguyen had travelled to Syria between December 2012 and April 2013, where he stated he fought alongside Jabhat al Nusrah, the Syrian Al Qaeda affiliate. Upon his return Nguyen discussed his intent to further participate in Jihad with an informant. Nguyen, while under the informant's supervision, planned to travel to Pakistan in order to train Al Qaeda fighters to conduct an ambush. Nguyen was arrested in October 2013 after boarding a bus with the intent to travel to Pakistan to carry out the plan. The initiating cause of the investigation into Nguyen remains unclear. However, court documents note his use of social media while in Syria. The investigation relied upon the use of an informant though the context of the informant's first meeting with Nguyen also remains unclear. Nguyen awaits sentencing.

On September 25, 2014 Alton Nolen allegedly killed one person by beheading her with a knife and injured one other at Vaughn Foods, where he worked until he was suspended prior to the incident. Nolen was charged with first degree murder on September 30, 2014. Nolen's Facebook presence, which included Jihadist images, and his reported attempts to convert co-workers led police to bring the FBI into the investigation. The FBI has said that Nolen does not have any links to terrorist organizations, but his alleged motive continues to be under investigation. The District Attorney stated that Oklahoma would not charge him with terrorism saying, "There is not a terrorism statute in the state of Oklahoma. If that avenue is decided to be pursued, that could be something that's pursued by the federal authorities." Nolen was not detected prior to the incident.

In March 2014, Nicholas Teausant, a 20-year old from California, was arrested near the Canadian border while allegedly travelling to join Al Qaeda in Iraq. According to the complaint, he also allegedly discussed conducting an attack on the Los Angeles subway, but the plot was abandoned and he is not charged in relation to the alleged plot. Teausant had enlisted in the National Guard, but had not attended basic training and the National Guard was in the process of separating him. The investigation into Teausant relied on the use of an informant and his publicly available social media posts. Teausant pled guilty on December 1, 2015..

Shannon Conley, a 19 year old Denver woman, was arrested on April 8th, 2014 and charged with attempting to provide material support to ISIS in Syria including travelling there to meet her suitor an alleged ISIS fighter. According to the complaint filed in the case, the investigation began as the result of a suspicious activity tip from the Faith Bible Chapel. Conley pled guilty on September 10, 2014 and sentenced to 4 years in prison in January 2015.

In 2010, Paul Rockwood, a 35 year old man, and his 36 year old wife, Nadia Rockwood, both of King Salmon, Alaska plead guilty to making false statements in a terrorism related investigation. According to the court documents, Paul Rockwood compiled a list of possible targets, including military personnel and religious institutions. Nadia Rockwood, knowingly transported the list to a meeting with an informant. The two then lied to federal investigators about the list. The case was investigated through the use of an informant though the reason for the investigation's initiation remains unclear. Paul Rockwood was sentenced to eight years in prison in July 2010. As part of the plea deal, Nadia Rockwood was sentenced to five years probation.

On October 30, 2014 Donald Ray Morgan, an American citizen from Salisbury, North Carolina, pled guilty to attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State. The investigation into Morgan appears to have begun with a combination of his social media postings on Facebook and an informant led investigation into a gun sale he tried to make, which was illegal due to a prior conviction. Morgan traveled to Lebanon and tried to enter Syria via Turkey but was turned back. He later returned to the United States where he was arrested at JFK airport on the gun laws violation on August 2 2014. Morgan maintained a public twitter presence on which he announced that he swore loyalty to Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, and he also conducted an interview with NBC regarding his intent. Morgan was sentenced to 243 months in prison in May 2015.

On October 16, 2014 Akba Jordan, a Raleigh North Carolina man, pled guilty to conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists. Jordan sought to travel abroad to support jihadists in a number of conflict areas including Syria and Yemen. He was arrested in March 2014 along with his co-conspirator Avin Brown, who pled guilty in August 2014. Brown was arrested at Raleigh Durham International Airport while seeking to reach Syria via Turkey in order to join the Islamic State in Iraq and Al Sham. The investigation into Jordan and Brown appears to have been initiated through the use of informants and the criminal complaint states that Brown initiated contact with a confidential human source.

On February 7, 2014 the United States issued an arrest warrant charging Liban Mohamed, a naturalized American citizen who worked as a taxi driver in Washington D.C., with material support charges in relation to alleged support for Al Shabaab. In January 2015, the United States unsealed the arrest warrant and added Mohamed to its Most Wanted Terrorists list. The FBI alleged that Mohamed had traveled to Somalia to fight with Al Shabaab and had acted as a recruiter for the group in the United States. It also alleged that he was a close associate of Zachary Chesser, a Virginia man who pled guilty to terrorism charges including attempting to provide material support to Al Shabaab. According to the FBI Liban Mohamed is currently at large probably in East Africa. On March 2, 2015 the Washington Post reported that Mohamed was in Somali custody and the United States government was seeking to bring him back to the United States to face trial.

Al-Marri was arrested as a result of a traffic infraction just before 9/11. Al-Marri had outstanding warrants from the 1990s. The police took him to his apartment, where they discovered a large amount of cash, which raised suspicion. The case was linked to broader intelligence regarding al-Qaeda, including the phone records of the 9/11 hijackers linking him to the 9/11 plotters, and he was held as a material witness. In 2003 he was declared an enemy combatant and moved to a Navy brig. Al-Marri pleaded guilty on April 30, 2009, to a charge of conspiracy to provide material support. He admitted attending terrorist training camps and meeting and offering his services to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al-Qaeda's head of operations. Al-Marri was sentenced to 8 years and four months in October 2009 in addition to the time he already served while held as an enemy combatant.

On September 12, 2014 one police officer was killed and one officer was injured in a shooting at the Blooming Grove police barracks in Pennsylvania. On September 16, 2014 State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan identified Eric Frein as a suspect and announced a manhunt for Frein who was charged with murder among other charges. Police referred to Frein as a '˜survivalist' and Police Commissioner Noonan stated that Frein 'has made statements about wanting to kill law enforcement officers and also to commit mass acts of murder' and 'has expressed anti-government leanings in the past, especially toward law enforcement.' On October 30, 2014 Frein was taken into custody after seven weeks on the run. On November 13, 2014 prosecutors added terrorism charges against Frein citing a letter in which he allegedly called for a revolution and stated "Tension is high at the moment and the time seems right for a spark to ignite a fire in the hearts of men. What I have done has not been done before and it felt like it was worth a try." On January 29, 2015, Frein pleaded not guilty to all charges. He awaits trial in Pennsylvania.

In June 2014, Mufid Elfgeeh, a 30 year old naturalized citizen from Yemen living in Rochester, New York, was charged with possession of an unregistered firearm silencer. The complaint alleges that Elfgeeh plotted to shoot members of the military and Shi'a Muslims. The investigation appears to have been initiated by a report from an informant and the alleged plot developed under the watch of informants who sold him the firearms as part of a sting operation. Elfgeeh was also indicted with a charge of attempting to support the Islamic State in Iraq and al Sham. Elfgeeh pled guilty on December 17, 2015.

On the evening of July 7, 2016, Micah Xavier Johnson shot and killed five police officers at the conclusion of a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas, Texas. It was the deadliest attack on law enforcement officials since 9/11. Johnson, a 25-year-old former Army reservist who served in Afghanistan in 2014, was reportedly armed with three guns, including a semi-automatic assault-style Saiga AK-47 rifle. A search of Mr. Johnson’s home also revealed a stash of bomb-making materials, ballistic vests, rifles, ammunition, and a journal that included notes on combat tactics. Johnson’s verified Facebook page yielded information that suggested his interest in radical groups like the New Black Panther Party. According to Dallas Police Chief David Brown, “The suspect said he was upset about Black Lives Matter. He said he was upset about the recent police shootings. The suspect said he was upset at white people. The suspect said he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.” Johnson, the only gunman, was killed by a robot-controlled police bomb after a standoff with police officers.

On September 19, 2016, seven charges were brought against Ahman Khan Rahami including attempted murder of police officers and unlawful possession of a weapon in connection to bomb plots at four locations in New Jersey and New York City on September 17 and 18, 2016. A pipe bomb exploded on the morning of September 17 near the route of a Marine Corps 5k charity race in Seaside Park, New Jersey. That same evening, security video documented an individual – allegedly Ahman Khan Rahami – wheeling one duffel bag at two separate locations in New York City, West 23rd Street and West 27th Street. A device on West 23rd Street exploded near a dumpster around 8:30pm and injured 29 individuals, while the device on West 27th Street, found at roughly 11:30pm, did not explode. A cell phone attached to the device on West 27th Street contained Rahami’s fingerprints. Both devices were filled with shrapnel and built using pressure cookers, flip phones, and Christmas lights. At roughly 8:45pm on September 18, 2016, a backpack filled with five pipe bombs was discovered on top of a trash receptacle near a train station in Elizabeth, N.J., also the town in which Rahami supposedly lives and works. Rahami was found sleeping in the doorway of a bar in Linden, N.J. – 12 miles south of Elizabeth – on the morning of September 19. After being found by officials – due to a tip from the bar owner – and asked to show his hands, Rahami engaged in a shootout with local law enforcement before being detained. Two officers were reportedly injured. In 2014, in connection with a domestic violence charge involving Rahami and one of his brothers, his father, Mohammad Rahami, told the FBI that his son might be a terrorist. The FBI conducted a brief investigation but found nothing to substantiate the father's claim. On October 13, Mr. Rahami, connected via video conference to the courtroom in Elizabeth, NJ from his hospital bed, pled not guilty.

On September 17, 2016, Dahir A. Adan, a 20-year-old Somali-American who was born in Kenya but immigrated to the United States as a toddler, attacked and injured 10 individuals with a kitchen knife at the Crossroads Center Shopping Mall in St. Cloud, Minn. Adan, who was later shot and killed by an off-duty policeman, reportedly referenced Allah during the course of his attacks and allegedly asked one victim if he was a Muslim before attacking. Amaq, the ISIS-affiliated news agency, released a statement the day after claiming Adan was “a soldier of the Islamic State and carried out the operation in response to the citizens of countries belonging to the crusader coalition.” However, law enforcement officials have not yet identified any contact between Adan and ISIS or any direct involvement from ISIS in the attack. The FBI is investigating the case as a “potential act of terrorism.” Richard T. Thornton, special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Minneapolis Division, said on October 6, 2016 that Adan's actions were in keeping with the "philosophies of violent radical Islamic groups."

On August 20, 2016, Wasil Farooqui, a 20-year-old U.S.-born American citizen, attacked a man and woman with a kitchen knife in an apartment complex in Roanoke County, Va. During the attack, Farooqui allegedly yelled “Allahu akbar” and later told authorities that he had heard voices in his head telling him he was stupid and to attack someone. Farooqui reportedly traveled to Turkey in the last year and is suspected of attempting to sneak into Syria to join ISIS. The FBI is investigating the incident as a potential terrorist attack.

On August 4, 2016, Erick Jamal Hendricks, 35, was arrested near his home in North Carolina on charges that he conspired to provide material support to ISIS and for his role in recruiting other Americans to support ISIS and potentially carry out attacks in the United States. According to the criminal complaint filed in the Northern District of Ohio, Hendricks had been in contact with Elton Simpson – who, along with Nadir Hamid Soofi, carried out the Garland, Tex. shooting in May 2015 – through a social media application before the Garland shooting took place. In conversation with various ‘recruits,’ Hendricks had said he was attempting to “get brothers to meet face to face” and “get brothers to train together.” Hendricks also made reference to a document written by him and his wife called “GPS for the Ghuraba in the U.S.” and said to a paid, confidential FBI informant that he aimed to create an ISIS sleeper cell at a secure compound for training purposes. He also mentioned his desire to attack members of the military.

On September 30, 2016, Nelash Mohamed Das, a Bangladeshi citizen and a Legal Permanent Resident of the United States, was arrested in Maryland on charges of attempting to provide material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization – ISIS. Mr. Das came to the United States aged 4 in 1995 and was most recently residing in Hyattsville, Maryland. According to the charges brought against him in the complaint filed in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, Mr. Das was active in his support of jihadist activities on Twitter, intended to carry out a violent attack specifically against a member of the U.S. military, and had communicated to a FBI Confidential Human Source (CHS) that he was in touch with ISIS militants in “Al Dawla,” which is ISIS territory in Iraq or Syria. Mr. Das did not own a firearm, but in the days leading up the day in which he planned to lethally target a member of the U.S., he purchased ammunition for 9mm and .40 caliber firearms. Mr. Das, whose operation to carry out violence against a member of the U.S. military was orchestrated, staged and controlled by the FBI, was detained at the house at which he thought belonged to the U.S. military member he intended to target.

On July 21, 2016, three associated individuals were arrested in Florida for their connections to ISIS. The first two, Gregory Hubbard, 52, and Darren Arness Jackson, 50, were arrested at Miami International Airport after Jackson had knowingly dropped Hubbard off to board a flight to Berlin, Germany en route to joining ISIS in Syria. Hubbard, also known as “Jibreel,” and Jackson, also known as “Daoud,” are charged with conspiring and attempting to provide material support and resources to a designated FTO. The third individual, Dayne Antani Christian, 31, was arrested at his place of work and charged with the above crime and, due to his status as a convicted felon, illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition. All three men are U.S.-born citizens. According to the criminal complaint filed in United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Christian and Hubbard were known to consume or share videos by Anwar al-Awlaki. Christian had stated that he was in contact with an ISIL militant in Syria and that, according to the affidavit, “he was at war with the U.S. military.” Through the involvement of a FBI Confidential Human Source (CHS) informant, the FBI learned that the men had advocated for acts of violence against Americans in the United States, and Hubbard specifically had voiced support for prior attacks at Fort Hood, in San Bernardino and Orlando, and in Nice, France. During a meeting of the CHS, Christian, and Hubbard, Christian – who had previously been convicted for “making a false statement to a firearms dealer in connection with the acquisition of firearms” – Christian provided the CHS with a KelTec 9mm Luger pistol, ammunition for a different gun, and made reference to his own AK-47.

On August 3, 2016, Nicholas Young, a 36-year-old now-former officer with the Washington Metropolitan Transportation Authority, was arrested on charges filed in the Eastern District of Virginia that he attempted to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization. This is the first documented case of a U.S. law enforcement official being charged in connection to a foreign terrorist group. Young had previously and willingly told an FBI investigator in 2011 that he had twice travelled to Libya in 2011 and had been “with rebels attempting to overthrow the Qaddafi regime.” In 2015, Young referenced his service with the Libyan and possibly al-Qaeda-linked Abu Salim Martyrs Brigade. Young, who was associated with Zachary Chesser before his arrest in 2010 and with Amine El Khalifi, who attempted the U.S. Capitol bombing in 2012, was arrested primarily due to sending $245 worth of gift card codes to an undercover FBI operative who Young believed to be an American fighting with ISIS in Syria. Young's lawyers have said he suffers from depression and insomnia, and has since been out of solitary confinement in an Alexandria jail and to Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw, Va.

On July 31, 2016, Sebastian Gregerson, a 29-year-old U.S.-born citizen and resident of Detroit, Michigan, was arrested at a gas station in Monroe, Michigan after taking receipt of grenades in an arrangement created by two FBI undercover employees. Gregerson, aka Abdurrahman Bin Mikaayl, is a Muslim convert, is married and has twin boys aged four. In conversations with FBI informants, Gregerson expressed solidarity with ISIS and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, referred to Omar Mateen as his “brother,” was a frequent visitor of ISIS-linked websites, and mentioned that he wanted to move to ISIS territory with his wife and children. Recently, connections between Gregerson and Libyan-born, Maryland-based radical cleric Imam Suleiman Bengharsa have emerged. Court documents allege that Gregerson used a $1,300 check from Bengharsa on June 24, 2015 to finance the expansion of Gregerson’s cache of firearms and grenades. Bengharsa openly supports ISIS and violence against Americans through his now-deleted Facebook page and a subscription-only website and Maryland-based operation called the Islamic Jurisprudence Center. The charges brought against Gregerson do not currently include ties to terrorism, but include the unregistered possession of a destructive device and the unlicensed receipt of explosive materials.

On July 1, 2016, Mahin Khan, an 18-year-old resident of Tucson, Ariz. was arrested by FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) agents on charges, brought by the state of Arizona, of terrorism, conspiracy to commit terrorism and conspiracy to commit misconduct involving weapons. Mr. Khan, in a plea deal, pled guilty to these charges on October 10. The plea arrangement comes after Mr. Khan initially pled not guilty on July 12. The FBI's investigation into Mr. Khan began in February 2016 after the agency received a tip regarding Khan’s suspicious activity. According to a statement from the Khan family, Mahin Khan “went through an extensive inpatient psychiatric evaluation under the directive and supervision of the FBI” three years ago, according to The Intercept. The Khan family referenced Mahin Khan’s severe mental health issues, making reference to his unconfirmed autism and his immature and underdeveloped cognitive abilities. Mr. Khan’s mental health did not factor in to his ability to stand trial. The charges brought against Mr. Khan reference his support of and potential contact with ISIS and the Pakistani Taliban, in addition to his plotting of attacking Air Force recruitment centers in Tucson and Mission Bay, Calif. Records also indicate Mr. Khan’s interest in attacking a Department of Motor Vehicles registration office and a Jewish community center. Mr. Khan’s sentencing will occur on November 4.

On October 14, 2016, Jason Michael Ludke, 35, and Yosvany Padilla-Conde, 30, were detained near San Angelo, Tex. where they were believed to be en route from Wisconsin to Mexico to attempt to travel to join ISIS in Iraq and Syria, or Yemen. Ludke, charged with attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization and Padilla-Conde, charged with aiding and abetting the attempt to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, documented their support of ISIS and desire to travel to Iraq and Syria to join the group in email messages, videos, and social media conversations that were sent to an FBI undercover agent, who, in September 2016, received a social media friend request from Ludke and subsequently conversed with both individuals about their support of and plans to join ISIS. Ludke informed FBI agents of his consumption of videos of Anwar al-Awlaki videos and has a criminal history, including jail time. Both pledged their allegiance to ISIS’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The two men, residents of Milwaukee, had the charges brought against them in Eastern District of Wisconsin after their arrests – Ludke for an outstanding warrant in Milwaukee and Padilla-Conde for immigration-related issues – in Texas.

On July 3, 2016, Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a 26-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen who resided in Sterling, Va. and was born in Sierra Leone, was arrested on charges of attempting to provide material support or resources to ISIL, attempting to procure a weapon to use in an ISIL-directed attack in the U.S., and financial support of ISIL. Jalloh, a former member of the National Guard who decided to not reenlist after listening to lectures by Anwar al-Awlaki, had traveled to Sierra Leone between June 2015 and January 2016 and also visited Nigeria to meet with an ISIL facilitator to attempt to join ISIL in Libya, which he did not end up doing. Jalloh, prior to leaving Sierra Leone to return to the United States, came into online contact with Abu Saad Sudani, to whom Jalloh gave financial support and who was actively plotting an attack in the United States. Jalloh also provided online financial support to the ISIL facilitator in Nigeria and another overseas ISIL contact of Sudani. Once back in the United States, Sudani arranged an introduction between Jalloh and an undercover FBI agent by – a person Sudani believed would help him and Jalloh carry out an attack in the United States – to whom he mentioned his admiration for and inspiration from Nidal Hassan and Mohamed Yousef Abdulaziz, the Fort Hood and Chattanooga shooters, respectively. After returning to the U.S. in January 2016, Jalloh purchased a Glock 19 handgun and attempted to procure another via an associate, believed to be a relative, in North Carolina. He was unsuccessful, but was able to purchase a Stag Arms AR-15 the day before his arrest. Jalloh pled guilty via a plea agreement on October 27, 2016.

On October 12, 2016, Michelle Marie Bastian, aged 49, was arrested in Maricopa County, Ariz. in connection to her involvement with providing her husband, Thomas Orville Bastian, aged 39, with materials to set off a bomb in the Arizona State Prison-Complex Lewis where he serves a life sentence – since 2007 – for first degree murder. Mrs. Bastian is charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism, terrorism (by making property intended to facilitate an act of terrorism available to another), conspiracy to commit misconduct involving weapons, conspiracy to promote prison contraband, and promoting prison contraband. Mr. Bastian is charged with those same crimes, excluding promoting prison contraband and including a separate terrorism charge (soliciting others to promote or further an act of terrorism). The charges are brought by the state of Arizona. Mr. Bastian radicalized and converted to Islam while in prison and Mrs. Bastian provided him with extremist materials – including issues of al-Qaeda’s Inspire magazine, a copy of “44 Ways of Supporting Jihad” by Anwar al-Awlaki, ISIL’s Dabiq magazine. Handwritten notes regarding how to build a homemade bomb were also discovered, in addition to extremist materials including procedures and steps to build a bomb. The Bastians planned to have Michael use bomb-making material provided by his wife to plant a device in a visitor center vending machine and/or to kill the prison’s warden.

The charges were filed on October 18, 2016. Mr. Bastian remains in solitary confinement in the Lewis prison and Mrs. Bastian is being held on $100,000 bond.

On November 7, 2016, Aaron Travis Daniels (also known as Harun Muhammad and Abu Yusef), a 20-year-old resident of Columbus, Ohio, was arrested at John Glenn International Airport as he was intending to travel to Libya (via Houston and Trinidad) to “for the purpose of joining” ISIS, according to federal officials. The FBI and JTTF became aware of Daniels in September 2015, when he set up an email address and social media account under the previously-stated pseudonyms and spoke of his desire to participate in jihadist violence, including in Afghanistan and Syria. Daniels is also accused of sending $250 to an overseas ISIS operator, who is believed to be an intermediary for Abu Issa al-Amriki, an American believed to have been killed by a U.S. air strike in Syria in late April/early May 2016. In an interview with the Columbus Dispatch, Daniels’ mother, Adrienne Daniels, said that her son is “not well, mentally.” Daniels’ family is not Muslim, but the Columbus Dispatch story reports that in recent years Daniels had become more interested in Islam, studied Arabic independently, and attended the Masjid As-Sunnah, a nearby mosque, though with little involvement.

On August 24, 2016, charges were brought against 20-year-old Mohamed Amiin Ali Roble, a U.S. citizen with Somali ethnicity who traveled to Istanbul, Turkey from Wuhan, China on December 27, 2014 (when he was 18) and is believed to be in Syria fighting or ISIL since that date. He is charged with attempting to provide and providing material support, specifically personnel and, resources, to ISIL in United States District Court for the District of Minnesota. Roble is connected to the group of ten Somalians and Somali-Americans in Minneapolis who were supporters of ISIL, nine of whom have been convicted of various offences. Roble has used a significant portion of $91,654.22 insurance sum he was paid after being injured in a bridge-collapse incident in 2007 to fund various ISIL-related people and interests, including – according to discussions between the aforementioned co-conspirators – cars for ISIL militants and two women for another ISIL fighter to marry.

On May 21, 2015, Munir Abdulkader, a 20-year-old Naturalized U.S. citizen who attended Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, was arrested on charges of conspiracy to provide material support to ISIL, conspiracy to kill a government employee, and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence. Abdulkader was in contact with Junaid Hussain, a notorious British-born highly influential member of ISIL in Syria, in 2014 and 2015. Hussain dissuaded Abdulkader from attempting to travel to ISIL territory and “directed and encouraged” him to carry out a violent attack in the United States. Abdulkader was active on Twitter, indicating his desire to attain martyrdom, live under ISIL rule in Syria, noted that two unnamed cousins had died in Syria while fighting for ISIL, and disseminated violent ISIL propaganda including beheadings and other graphic content. Over the course of the investigation conducted by the FBI and his conversation with an FBI Confidential Human Source, Abdulkader plotted to target, abduct from his home, and kill a member of the U.S. military who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan and then video himself attacking a police station using firearms and Molotov cocktails. Abdulkader pled guilty in March 2016, and Benjamin Glassman, Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, has recommended Abdulkader face the maximum sentence of 25 years in prison and lifelong supervision.

In July 2016, Yusuf Abdirizak Wehelie, a 25-year-old U.S. born citizen with Somali parents, was arrested – after attempting to board a flight to Minneapolis – in northern Virginia on charges of possessing a firearm after conviction of an offense punishable by more than one year in prison. Wehelie, who was sentenced to three years in prison in 2011 on felony charges of statutory burglary, was again convicted on felony charges in 2012 for violating the terms of his probation stemming from the 2011 burglary charges. The new charges could bring a 10-year sentence and emanate from an FBI officer convincing and paying Wehelie $300 to transport firearms across state borders. No weapons were found at Wehelie’s home. While no terror-related charges are being brought against Wehelie, law-enforcement officials claim Wehelie has expressed interest in traveling to ISIL territory to join the group or blow up a U.S. military installation using explosives. Wehelie’s mother said her son had been smoking marijuana and was struggling to find a job due to his past felony convictions. She also stated that he needed to find treatment for his mental-health issues. Wehelie plead guilty to the charges on November 15, 2016.

On October 5, 2016, Jason Michael Ludke, 35, and Yosvany Padilla-Conde, 30, both of Milwaukee, Wis., were arrested near San Angelo, Tex. near the Mexican border. The two men were traveling to Mexico so Ludke – via Padilla-Conde’s contact with a man in Mexico – could travel to Iraq or Yemen to join ISIL. Ludke is charged with attempting to provide material support or resources to ISIL. Padilla-Conde is charged with aiding and abetting Ludke’s attempt to provide material support to ISIL. Ludke, a Muslim convert, and Padilla-Conde had both pledged their allegiance via emailed video to ISIL’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Badghdadi. Ludke also told law-enforcement agents he consumes videos of now-deceased American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. The FBI detained and arrested Ludke based on an outstanding warrant from Milwaukee, and Padilla-Conde for immigration-related issues. Padilla-Conde had previously expressed fears over deportation.

Mohamed Rafik Naji, a 37-year-old Yemeni-born legal permanent resident of the United States, was charged on November 19, 2016 with “knowingly and intentionally attempt(ing) to provide material support and resources … including personnel, including himself," to ISIL. Naji traveled to Yemen by way of Turkey in March 2015 and returned to the U.S. in September 2015. While in Yemen, he fought with ISIL and posted content on his Facebook page that showed his support of and allegiance to ISIL. An email to his wife, who remained in New York and wired Naji thousands of dollars while he was in Yemen, on April 20, 2015 acknowledged that it was his first day as an ISIL fighter in Yemen. In other digital communications with his wife, Naji shared content – an image with a quote – related to Anwar al-Awlaki. Upon Naji’s return to the U.S. in September 2015, he came into contact with an undercover FBI employee. They were in contact for roughly a year, up until Naji’s arrest. Naji, during an in-person conversation on July 19, 2016, communicated to the FBI agent that he supported the idea of conducting a Nice-style attack in Times Square in New York City.

On November 28, 2016, Abdul Razak Ali Artan, an 18-year-old Somali-born legal permanent resident of the United States, drove a car into a public gathering space and then proceeded to wield a butcher knife and injure 11 individuals near an academic building on the campus of Ohio State University (OSU). Artan, a third-year OSU student who arrived in the United States as a refugee with his family in 2014 after leaving Somalia in 2007 and then spending time in Pakistan, was not known to the FBI prior to carrying out the attack. A Facebook post allegedly made by Artan and posted on his personal page before the attack – a screen shot of a typed note – listed his grievances. He wrote, “I am sick and tired of seeing my fellow Muslim Brothers and Sisters being killed and tortured EVERYWHERE. Seeing my fellow Muslims being tortured, raped and killed in Burma led to a boiling point. I can’t take it anymore.” He also calls on other Muslims to listen to “our hero” Anwar al-Awlaki and says that if the United States wants lone-wolf attacks to stop, it should “make peace with “Dawla in al sham.”” The case, according to Columbus Police Chief Kim Jacobs, may proceed under a terrorism investigation. She said, "That's why our federal partners are here and helping. I think we have to consider that it is." Amaq, the ISIS media agency, claimed Artan as a "soldier of the Islamic State," thought the claim is as yet unsubstantiated.

On Dec. 17, 2013, Balwinder Singh, a 39-year-old Indian-born permanent resident of the United States was arrested in Reno, Nev. in connection to his involvement in plotting a terrorist attack in India. He was charged on Dec. 18, 2013 on six counts of conspiracy to murder, kidnap, and maim persons in a foreign country; conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists; false statement on an immigration document; use of an immigration document procured by fraud (counts four and six); and unlawful production of an identification document. Singh had sent thousands of dollars to two co-conspirators in India in support of Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) and Khalistan Zinzabad Force (KZF), two organizations who sought to create an independent state of Khalistan. According to the indictment, Singh was the leader of BKI in the United States. Singh and his co-conspirators used their money to obtain weapons and other support mechanisms for the groups. Singh fraudulently filled out an Application for Travel Document on multiple locations in an effort to arrange his travel to India. Singh also allegedly had a telephone conversation in which he gave instructions on how to fashion an explosive device. On Nov. 29, 2016, Singh pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and will face a maximum of 15 years in prison. He will be sentenced on Feb. 27, 2017.

In court documents filed on October 17, 2016 in the case of Ahmed Mohammed El Gammal – an Arizona man charged in August 2015 with providing material support to ISIS – it was revealed that Samy Mohammed el-Goarany, a 24-year-old college student residing in the New York/New Jersey region, traveled to ISIS territory in Syria in January/February 2015, joined the group, and was subsequently killed in or around November 2015 while fighting for ISIS. El-Goarany had been in contact via Facebook and other online digital communication tools with El Gammal and another co-conspirator during his time in Syria and before he left. The court document states that El Gammal “facilitated the travel of a 24-year-old United States citizen, CC-1, so that CC-1 could train and fight with ISIL.” CC-1 is el-Goarany. El-Goarany and El Gammal came into contact in August 2014 via Facebook and an online forum where El Gammal had posted pro-ISIS comments. El-Goarany and El Gammal met in New York City in October 2014. El Gammal also facilitated the online introduction between el-Goarany and the other co-conspirator, CC-2, who was in Turkey and met el-Goarany upon his arrival in Istanbul in January 2015.

In 2009, Saynab Abdirashid Hussein was brought before a grand jury in connection to her involvement with Somali-Americans from the Minneapolis area who traveled to Somalia to join and fight with al Shabaab. In August 2013, she was charged with perjury, as she told the court that she did not know anyone who raised money for the al Shabaab fighters, which was a lie. She personally helped to raise money for Mohamed Abdullahi Hassan, to whom she was introduced by their mutual friend Ahmed Ali Omar, who was already in Somalia fighting with al Shabaab. Hussein and Hassan, known as “Miski,” both attended Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis. Hussein helped to raise $1,300 for Miski, who later went to Somalia and was in contact with Elton Simpson, one of the two Garland, Tex. shooters. Hussein was sentenced to 36 months’ probation and a $100 fine on May 15, 2014.

On December 21, 2016, Lionel Nelson Williams, a 26-year-old U.S. born citizen and Virginia resident, was arrested in Suffolk, Va. in response to A) a public tip in March 2016 made to the FBI regarding Williams’ support of ISIS on his Facebook page and B) Williams’ communication with an FBI undercover agent to whom he communicated his support of ISIS, desire to carry out an attack in the United States (specifically against a member of the military, police officers, or armed civilians), and his financial support (totaling $250) in support of what he believed were ISIS-related causes but in reality was an FBI agent. Williams had acquired an AK-47 on December 3, 2015 – the day after the San Bernardino, Calif. shootings – and also had a pistol. He, as previously noted, was active in his online (Facebook) support of ISIS and posted videos of radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Williams was charged on December 22, 2016 with knowingly attempting to provide material support to ISIS.