So I Married a Terrorist . . .

After Diab and Deek returned from Bosnia, they seemed to spend more time with Gadahn. In July 1995, they founded a nonprofit organization, Charity Without Borders, that received a grant from the state of California to recycle used motor oil. The ostensible purpose was to raise money for Muslim charities in the Middle East. Olson, who helped her husband file the paperwork, claims it was a fake charity designed to fund terrorist activities. At the time, Diab was working as a tax accountant for a company that had received a similar grant. Olson says he stole the idea from them.

After Diab finally received his start-up money, she says, her husband began printing fliers at the mosque. "On one side, in English, it talks about how America has to support Muslims everywhere and help Muslims here learn English," she says. "But on the back, in Arabic, it talks about how America is a terroristic state—and the checks start rolling in. They start slowly collecting money."

Meanwhile, Diab and Deek also included Gadahn in their Friday-evening prayer circles for single men at the Garden Grove mosque, which is run by the Islamic Society of Orange County. Those discussion circles quickly became critical of the society's leadership, particularly Bundakji, who they saw as too liberal and pro-Western in his views.

Led by Diab and Deek, the group began referring to Bundakji, who frequently met with Christian and Jewish leaders in Orange County, as "Danny the Jew" and even distributed fliers bearing that epithet inside the mosque. "They were supposedly sitting in circles discussing the Koran," Bundakji recalls. "So I never really paid any attention to them until they started becoming nosy and noisy. That's when Hisham Diab, Adam Gadahn and their circle started calling me 'Danny the Jew.' And that's when I started interrupting their circle and asking them to leave."

Bundajki first met Gadahn when he converted to Islam in a ceremony at the mosque. "I was happy to see a young man finding the right path," Bundakji says. "We had a really good discussion about how he came to accept Islam." Because Gadahn spent so much time at the mosque, Bundakji says he offered him a job as a security guard.

"He was there practically the whole day, so I thought he was the perfect guy," he explains. "It was only for a short time because I caught him sleeping at 2 a.m. and I gave him a piece of my mind." Bundakji told Gadahn that sleeping on the job was tantamount to stealing from the mosque. The confrontation provided Bundajki the first inkling that Gadahn didn't like him. "After that, he started mumbling and talking to people, and I started hearing from people that this guy is talking about me, criticizing me."

One day in 1997, Gadahn charged into Bundakji's office. "He was calling me a hypocrite, Jew, Jew-lover, things of that nature," Bundakji recalls. "And then he slapped me right across the face. I was shocked." Other security guards detained Gadahn at the mosque until police arrived, but Bundakji declined to press charges. "I felt sorry for him," he says.

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After a particularly brutal fight in which her husband hit Ryan in the back and dragged her down the stairs by her hair, Saraah Olson divorced Hisham Diab in October 1996. She remarried the following month. Her new husband, she says, was a Muslim in name only and more interested in Armani suits and fast cars than jihad. Olson had a daughter, Ala, who is now 9 years old, before quickly divorcing again.

Adam Gadahn left the United States for Pakistan in 1997. He never spoke to his family again, except to say he was learning Arabic and had married a Muslim woman. The next time his family heard from him was in mid-2004, when Gadahn began appearing on Al-Qaeda propaganda videos under the nom de guerre "Azzam the American." In May of that year, the FBI announced it was seeking Gadahn for questioning in connection with an unspecified plot on U.S. soil.

Gadahn's evolution from confused teenager to alleged terrorist does not surprise observers who note his close relationship to Khalil Deek, who also left the U.S. permanently in 1997 or 1998. He wound up in Peshawar, Pakistan, just across the border from Afghanistan, and rapidly became friendly with Abu Zubaydah, an alleged top lieutenant of Osama bin Laden who was later captured and is now being held at Guantanamo Bay. The two shared a bank account together.

In January 1999, Pakistani police arrested Deek and flew him to Amman, Jordan, where he faced trial in connection with the so-called Millennium Plot against targets in the U.S.—most notably LAX airport—and the Middle East. Authorities found a computerized version of the terrorist training book Encyclopedia Jihad on Deek's computer. He spent several months behind bars, but in May 2000, Jordan freed Deek, citing his cooperation in decoding encrypted computers used by Al-Qaeda. He returned to Pakistan and promptly disappeared.

Deek's brother Tawfiq, who used to live in the same apartment building as Olson, Diab and Deek, has steadfastly maintained his brother was never a terrorist. He says Khalil moved to Pakistan because he wanted to live in an Islamic country and marry a Muslim woman, which by all accounts he did. The last time Tawfiq, who still lives in Anaheim, spoke to his brother was in May 2001, when Khalil told him he was having difficulty obtaining visas for his Syrian-born wife and their four children.