Posted on 08/13/2007 2:10:44 PM PDT by knighthawk
Raised by hippie parents, then turned to hate & radical Islam
The homegrown terrorist at the center of an Al Qaeda dirty bomb threat against the city is the first American charged with treason in more than 50 years and lives with a $1 million bounty on his head.
Adam Yahiye Gadahn grew up the son of California hippies. He lived on a sprawling goat farm at the foot of the San Jacinto mountains. He is the grandson of a Jewish doctor.
He dabbled in death metal music as a teen, but by all accounts had a peaceful childhood until he embraced a virulent strain of Islam to fill a void in his life.
Gadahn was 17 when he announced his conversion and began frequenting an Islamic center where authorities say he came under the influence of foreign-born Islamic radicals.
As a U.S. citizen, he represents a growing breed of homegrown extremists who have turned against their country.
Gadahn, 29, is known as Azzam the American and serves as a key Al Qaeda mouthpiece, appearing frequently in the terror group's propaganda videos.
On the fourth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Gadahn declared in a tape that Osama Bin Laden's followers "love nothing better than the heat of battle, the echo of explosions and slitting the throats of the infidels."
An Israeli Web site triggered a dirty-bomb scare Friday in New York City when it reported that a rush of Al Qaeda chatter was accusing Americans of the "grave error" of failing to take seriously a new videotape by Gadahn.
The tape released last Sunday warned that U.S. embassies would be targeted.
One of the Internet communications that followed said U.S. officials would "soon realize their mistake when American cities are hit by quality operations." Another said the attack would be carried out "by means of trucks loaded with radioactive material."
The NYPD responded to the threat by sending out hundreds of cops with radioactivity detectors, but declared yesterday that the threat was not substantiated.
"Gadahn is a fairly important player, and he's certainly an avid spokesman for the group, but the idea that one can divine hints about Al Qaeda's upcoming military operations from his lurid threats is wishful thinking," said terror expert Evan Kohlmann.
Most of Gadahn's childhood was spent in a cabin on a 40-acre farm in Orange County, Calif. His family lived an isolated life without running water or a phone.
Gadahn's father, born Phil Pearlman, was a psychedelic rocker and farmer. In a 1975 album titled "Relatively Clean Rivers," he dreamed that Arabs and Jews would "get together" and melt their weapons into sprinklers, tractors and hoes.
He and his wife, Jennifer, changed their last name to Gadahn in a reference to Gideon, the Biblical warrior who crushed the enemies of Israel.
Young Adam was home-schooled. He also played Little League baseball but he didn't seem to enjoy it. His parents would bring goat cheese to share with others in the stands, according to a profile in The New Yorker.
Rejecting his isolated lifestyle, Gadahn delved into the world of death metal and moved in with his grandparents, Carl and Agnes Pearlman, after finishing his home schooling.
Carl Pearlman was a urologist and board member of the Anti-Defamation League, and his hope for peace between Jews and Arabs was a central tenet of his life, although the family was largely secular.
Yearning for a spiritual home, Gadahn explored Christianity - the faith of his mom and grandmother. But he found it lacking. He fired up his grandma's computer and he found Islam.
Angered by a wave of antiMuslim sentiment in America in the wake of the 1993 World Trade Center attack, Gadahn delved deeper into extremism, hooking up with hard-liners and traveling to Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Today, he is "used by Al Qaeda for propaganda purposes intended for Western audiences," said Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke.
An FBI counterterrorism analyst said Gadahn is important to Al Qaeda because he is an American delivering their terror messages in his native English.
"Al Qaeda does not get a lot of American recruits. Whoever they get, they will use," the analyst said. "They just want the shock value of one American telling other Americans they are going to die."
ckatz@nydailynews.com
Gadahn’s Islam is a violent reaction to the self-hating Judiasm of his father and grandparents.
FBI...Alright, now mr. Goat..What type of person was this Adam Yahiye Gadahn on the farm?
Goat...Ba-a-a-d. Baa-a-ad.
I am shocked, simply shocked at the treatment by the press of this dedicated "freedom fighter!"( SARC.)
Good reading on this little limp wristed wimp.
Ain’t he really JOOOOOOISH?
Unintended consequences of do-goodism, doctor, sir.
Not saying it was him, but my recollection is he looked like him.
I think Adam was a sociopath looking for a cause. He didn’t find it it Judaism with its emphasis on peace (i.e. his grandfather, father), nor in the Christianity of his mother/grandmother, with its emphasis on peace.
What was left - the genocide of Communism which was on the decline in the world, or the superman superiority of Islam which hides its genocide behind dreams of the caliphate, sharia law, and beheadings?
If he was raised on a sheep farm, it gave him a new perspective on humanity - we are the sheep and he (Islam) is the shepard. It is the shepard who eats the sheep, not vice versa, and “some sheep are moral equal than other sheep” (George Orwell if he were alive today).
Beware of Islamofascist psychoes in sheeps clothing.
Gadahn is a plant. We are just hoping they’ll keep buying it long enough that he’ll start meeting some big players. He’s providing good intel now. He has the potential to provide great intel or maybe take an important shot.
It must be those @$%%! goats! To TROP they are irresistable!
I rather strongly suspect it wasn’t the goat’s minds that swayed Lil’ Adam.
Yeah, poor goat.
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