Only in America could a boy grow up to be…THE NUMBER THREE GUY IN AL QAEDA??!!

A suspected Al Qaeda operative who lived for more than 15 years in the U.S. has become chief of the terror network’s global operations.  The FBI says that this marks the first time a leader so intimately familiar with American society has been placed in charge of planning attacks.   Uh oh.

Miami-based FBI counterterrorism agent Brian LeBlanc told The Associated Press that Adnan Shukrijumah, 35, has taken over in the position at the Terrorist organization once held by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was captured in 2003.  This position means that he will be communicating regularly with Al Qaeda’s senior leadership, including Osama bin Laden.

Shukrijumah and two other leaders were part of an “external operations council” that designed and approved terrorism plots and recruits, but his two cohorts were taken out in U.S. drone attacks, leaving Shukrijumah as the de facto chief and successor to Mohammed, his former boss.

According to LeBlanc, the FBI’s lead Shukrijumah investigator:

He’s making operational decisions is the best way to put it.  He’s looking at attacking the U.S. and other Western countries. Basically through attrition, he has become his old boss.

Shukrijumah has been in the FBI’s crosshairs since 2003.   They believe that he is the only Al Qaeda leader to have once held permanent U.S. resident status, or a green card.

Shukrijumah was named earlier this year in a federal indictment as a conspirator in the case against three men accused of plotting suicide bomb attacks on New York’s subway system in 2009.  The indictment signaled the first criminal charges against Shukrijumah, who previously had been sought only as a witness.

Shukrijumah has also been identified as playing a role in the plotting of potential Al Qaeda bomb attacks in Norway and a never-executed attack on subways in the United Kingdom, but LeBlanc said no direct link has been found.  LeBlanc also said that travel records and other evidence point to Shukrijumah doing research and surveillance in spring 2001 for a potential plot to disrupt commerce in the Panama Canal by sinking a freighter there.

Shukrijumah trained at Al Qaeda’s Afghanistan camps in the late 1990s.  He was labeled a “clear and present danger” to the U.S. in 2004 by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft.  The U.S. is offering a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture and the FBI also is releasing an age-enhanced photo of what he may look like today.

According to LeBlanc, it’s natural he would focus on attacking on the U.S:

He knows how the system works. He knows how to get a driver’s license. He knows how to get a passport.

Shukrijumah’s mother, Zurah Adbu Ahmed, lives in a small home in suburban Miramar, FL.  According to her, he frequently talked about what he considered the excesses of American society, such as alcohol and drug abuse and women wearing skimpy clothes, but that he did not condone violence.   But, she also said she has not had contact with her son for several years.

She said:

This boy would never do evil stuff. He is not an evil person.  He loved this country. He never had a problem with the United States. 

Yeah, right.  He joined Al-Qaeda for the great benefits plan.

LeBlanc said that they brought these new charges against him because the New York subway bomb suspects identified him to investigators as their Al Qaeda superior.   The New York suspects also provided other key information about his Al Qaeda status.

LeBlanc said:

It was basically Adnan who convinced them to come back to the United States and do this attack.  His ability to manipulate someone like that and direct that, I think it speaks volumes.

Before embracing Jihad, Shukrijumah lived in Miramar with his mother and five siblings.  He excelled at computer science and chemistry courses while studying at community college.   He had come to South Florida in 1995 when his father, a Muslim cleric and missionary trained in Saudi Arabia, decided to take a post at a Florida mosque after several years at a mosque in Brooklyn, N.Y.

According to the FBI, at some point in the late 1990s,, Shukrijumah became convinced that he must participate in “jihad,” or holy war, to fight perceived persecution against Muslims in places like Chechnya and Bosnia.

He journeyed to training camps in Afghanistan, where he underwent basic and advanced training in the use of automatic weapons, explosives, battle tactics, surveillance and camouflage.

Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism research fellow at the New America Foundation said:

What’s dangerous about an individual that understands the U.S. is he may have a better sense of our security vulnerabilities and insights into how to terrify the American people using smaller attacks for large, political impact. This increases the risk of attacks outside traditional places we normally worry about like New York and Washington.

Shukrijumah was born in Saudi Arabia.  He is a citizen of Guyana, a small South American country where his father was born.  His father died in 2004.

While still in Afghanistan, he met another outstanding young American. Jose Padilla, an American citizen, was once suspected of plotting to set off a radioactive “dirty bomb”.  He is now, thankfully, imprisoned on a 2007 terrorism material support conviction in Miami.  Authorities discovered in their interrogations of Padilla and other Al Qaeda detainees that Shukrijumah and Padilla were paired in a plot to fill apartments in several high-rise apartment buildings with natural gas and blow them up, but they had a falling out.

LeBlanc said:

They just couldn’t get along. It’s like two guys that could not work together.

The FBI is still hopeful that they can bring charges in South Florida against Shukrijumah.  However,  key information about him was provided by Guantanamo Bay detainees such as Mohammed, whose use as a witness would be difficult.

 LeBlanc said:

For us, it’s never been a dry hole. It’s always been an active investigation and it’s global in nature.  We have never stopped working it.

A couple of thoughts to ponder:

How many of these American-grown Terrorists are residing, undetected, on our soil, primed to kill innocent Americans?

United States Attorney General Eric Holder was a senior partner with Covington & Burling, a prestigious Washington, D.C. law firm, which currently represents 17 Yemenis and one Pakistani currently held at Gitmo.  Mr. Holder, while Deputy Attorney General, pushed for the release of 16 violent FALN terrorists against the advice of the FBI, the US Attorneys who prosecuted them and the NYPD officers who were maimed by them.  As we have seen in his performance so far, including his desire to put KSM on trail in New York City, he is perfectly willing to put politics before the national security interests of the country.  Just how vigorously is Attorney General Holder pushing our domestic intelligence operatives to locate these monsters hiding among us? 

Sources:  foxnews.com, michellemalkin.com, ap.com, masslive.com