Adam Gadahn, American Al-Qaeda Spokesman, Still At Large

Ten years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Osama bin Laden is dead and American drone attacks along the Afghanistan–Pakistan border have supposedly decimated Al Qeada's leadership. But despite repeated rumors of his demise (and in one case, capture) neither American nor Pakistani anti-terrorist forces have been able to locate, much less kill, Al Qaeda's American spokesman, Adam Yahiye Gadahn.

Gadahn, also known as Azzam al-Amriki (that's Arabic for 'Adam the American') or, on this blog at least, as “Goat Boy,” grew up on a Riverside goat farm before moving to Orange County and converting to Islam at a Garden Grove mosque, and later, traveling to Pakistan, where he disappeared shortly before 9/11, and which, not coincidentally, is where U.S. officials now believe the ongoing, but unconfirmed 9/11 anniversary terror plot was hatched.

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n the summer of 2004, Gadahn, disguising his face with a scarf, began appearing in a series of Al Qaeda videos threatening attacks on U.S. soil that would rival 9/11. After he unveiled himself in later videos, in which he blandly sermonized about the merits of radical Islam and the evils of U.S. imperialism and Zionism (Gadahn also has acknowledged being Jewish), he became the first American citizen since World War 2 to be charged with treason. He was last heard from shortly after the Associated Press erroneously reported him to have been arrested in Karachi, Pakistan.

U.S. officials apparently still believe Gadahn is hiding out somewhere in Pakistan. You can read more about him and fellow suspected terrorist and former Orange County resident Khalil Deek (who also disappeared in Pakistan before 9/11 but is rumored to have been killed) in our Navel Gazing archives.