The Border Fence, Brownsville 
The Traitor Next Door
His name was Wadih el-Hage. He had an American wife and American kids, a home in Arlington, a job at a tire store in Fort Worth, and a secret past that led straight to Osama bin Laden.
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But then events conspired to destroy the peace and anonymity Wadih had found for himself. In 1998 bin Laden issued a new fatwa. "We believe the biggest thieves in the world are Americans and the biggest terrorists on earth are the Americans," he declared. "The only way for us to defend . . . these assaults is by using similar means. We do not differentiate between those dressed in military uniforms and civilians."
On August 7 of that year bin Laden made good on his threat. At around ten-forty on a Friday morning in Nairobi, rush hour was still in effect. A school bus loaded with children jockeyed for space between honking cars and diesel-belching trucks. Then, suddenly, one truck swerved into the rear of the American embassy; within seconds, the building exploded in a ball of fire, and 213 men, women, and children were killed. Thousands more were injured, many blinded by flying glass. At almost the same time, another bomb exploded at the American embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where 11 people were killed.
Within a day, the FBI was knocking on the door of Wadih el-Hage. His world, once so big and so free, closed in around him.
Setting the Trap
IN THE EYES OF THE AUTHORITIES, WADIH was no longer a bit player in a shadowy web of international terror; he was a suspect with links to a specific crime. Interviewed in his small apartment near UT-Arlington by FBI agent Rob Miranda while his children watched cartoons, Wadih told Miranda that, yes, he had worked for bin Laden, but no, he didn't know how to find him now. He knew no one associated with the embassy bombings but doubted bin Laden would have been involved. He confessed only this: that any true-believing Muslim would want to drive the U.S. out of the Arabian Peninsula. By the end of that session, he had warmed toward Miranda. Maybe, he suggested, the two could meet again to discuss the Koran.
But a month later, in September, prosecutors summoned Wadih back to New York to testify before a grand jury investigating the embassy bombings. By then agents had thoroughly evaluated the contents of Wadih's computer and had reviewed a trove of documents that had been stashed in the office of his Help Africa People charity in Nairobi. Many papers supported Wadih's assertion that he was a legitimate businessman, but agents also found cryptic messages suggesting something sinister. There were, for instance, allusions to a Dr. Atef (the same name as bin Laden's military commander) and a document titled "Report on the Latest News in Somalia," which mentioned Wadih and militarizing an east African cell.
Prosecutors still had no evidence directly linking Wadih to the plot, but they began to pressure his associates, particularly the imam of Wadih's mosque, and they accumulated bits and pieces of information that would prove to be valuable. Wadih was asked whether he knew a man named Mohamed Odeh, a prime suspect in the bombing; when he denied it, prosecutors produced witnesses who swore Wadih had been at his wedding. Wadih denied using various aliases, like Abdel Sabbur, but the grand jury had documents that clearly proved Wadih and Sabbur were one and the same. The government asked him questions that they had asked him in front of the first grand jury, and Wadih gave inconsistent answers. Immediately thereafter, Wadih was arrested and charged with thirty counts of perjury, each carrying a five-year sentence. One month later he was indicted for conspiring to kill American nationals.
Wadih was imprisoned without bail and, for the most part, denied visitors, except for a few visits by his wife and children. (Previously, Kahane's murderer had continued to direct terrorist activities from his jail cell.) "The extraordinary limitations on his ability to communicate I had never seen before," one of Wadih's lawyers, Sam Schmidt, told me. For a while, Wadih accepted his situation. He read the Koran and tried to comfort his family. "Leaders have to be tested," he wrote his mother-in-law.
But after a year in solitary confinement, Wadih's optimism faded. His life had been reduced to a small, exposed cell; guards watched him shower and use the toilet on 24-hour surveillance cameras. He had been allowed only three visits from his family. Wadih became obsessed with his treatment—he punched walls, developed boils. And his letters home, once affectionate and teasing, became tyrannical. His concentration faltered too. He told a Harvard psychiatrist who was hired by his attorneys, "Now I try to pray, but I just start thinking and I get lost and I forget the praying." Once, during a hearing, he disrupted court by leaping from his seat and attempting to flee. He could not believe that he, an American citizen, could be treated as he had been. "They keep treating you like an animal until finally you become like an animal," Wadih told his doctor, "and then they have their justification for everything they've done to you."
The Last Word
BY THE TIME WADIH'S TRIAL STARTED, in March 2001, investigators still had little tying him directly to the bombings. It was a little like a Mafia trial—the defense could show that he was a legitimate businessman, while the prosecution had to prove that his legitimate activities were merely a front for evil enterprises. The government had no letters from Wadih ordering the bombing, no explosives in his storage room, no declarations of jihad against the U.S. with his signature. One member of the prosecution's team, admitted as much to the jury. "No, we are not going to present any evidence that [Wadih el-Hage] wired any bombs, that he offered any training, that he received any training, but that doesn't make him not in this conspiracy," he told the courtroom. "On the contrary. What the evidence shows is that he provides an essential role for Al Qaeda." The prosecutor insisted that Wadih was a "facilitator," the man who arranged fake passports, built phony businesses, and kept coded records that allowed the plot to proceed.
But even without firm evidence, Wadih was vulnerable. The jury knew he was charged with lying to the FBI and two grand juries. And, thanks to maneuvering by the prosecution, he was tried with three men who had either made or delivered the bombs that blew up the embassies—two of his co-defendants, in fact, had confessed to their crimes. Wadih appeared in full Islamic dress at the trial, his beard unclipped and his hair long, a sign of defiance.
His great loyalty to old friends was not repaid in kind, as several testified against him. They talked about his purchase of the plane for bin Laden; they recalled his close association with military strategist Atef; they recalled him weeping at the news of the death of a military leader he had told the grand jury he had never met. The prosecutors showed the jury his notebooks with their coded entries and introduced a so-called "terrorist cookbook" that contained recipes for killing on a mass scale that belonged to Wadih's former housemate, an indicted fugitive in the Nairobi bombing. A fingerprint expert testified that Wadih's prints were on letters to an Al Qaeda associate that, in grand jury hearings, he had denied writing. That evidence, combined with the horror of the crime, sealed Wadih's fate.
To everyone but himself, that is. His sentencing took place October 18, 2001, when the country was still reeling from the devastating attacks of September 11 that had occurred just blocks from the courtroom. Given the chance to speak, Wadih spoke in a soft voice of God and Islam and the "selfish and deceitful rulers" of the Middle East. But, even after September 11, he could not stop himself from repeating the lecture he had given so many times before. He said he was appalled by the bombings in Africa, which violated his teachings as a devout Muslim. "[B]ut please understand that my beliefs form my opinion that many American policies toward Muslim countries and people are wrong," he added. The American sanctions on Iraq, the U.S.'s unconditional support of Israel—these events had led his world to turn on ours. "There is nothing wrong or shameful that I did to apologize for," Wadih said, "and I hope that one day the truth will come out clear."
The speech so outraged prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that he asked permission to make an unprecedented rebuttal, and the judge allowed it. Mr. el-Hage, he said, "has talked today about choice, and I think one thing we should remember about choice is, Mr. el-Hage made a lot of choices. . . . he chose to go with those who would kill rather than to help himself, his family, his country. He claims to be a citizen, but he is not an American. He claims to be a religious man, but he is not a true Muslim. The true Americans, the true Muslims, the true family men, . . . those are the people he helped to kill. . . . he betrayed his country, he betrayed his religion, he betrayed humanity by his behavior for so many years."
Wadih showed no reaction. Sam Schmidt told me, "He wouldn't see himself as the government saw him."
Invisible Again
WADIH EL-HAGE NOW RESIDES IN SOLITARY confinement in a maximum-security prison in Florence, Colorado, where he will remain for the rest of his life. To most Americans, he is, once again, invisible. Only a few people, like his mother-in-law, still insist that he was not a conspirator, just a dupe—a ne'er-do-well in business, physically unable to take up arms, who did the bidding of others because he was told Islam demanded it and never really knew what the ultimate plot was. "Wadih was too trusting," Marion told me. "And people took advantage of him." April el-Hage has no such doubts. Her faith in her husband is unshakable. Wadih, she insisted, would never kill innocents because it would violate the Koran. Besides, she continued, he would never betray the United States. "My children and I are American," she said. To commit the crime for which he is imprisoned, "He would have to hate himself."
Her husband's acts have plunged her own life, and that of their children, into chaos and poverty, but at 35 she is still spunky and defiant, a bustling woman who wears spotless white running shoes with her traditional head scarf and robe. We met in a hotel room near Six Flags because she is constantly in hiding, moving frequently, changing her cell phone number, and chasing reporters away from her garbage. She and her children live on handouts from the mosque.
A Newsweek cover story she thought might help Wadih's appeal backfired. The editors put her face on the cover with the line "Married to Al Qaeda," which she calls a misrepresentation. "I am not a bride of Al Qaeda. I'm not married to Al Qaeda. Even the government was never able to prove that [Wadih] was a member of Al Qaeda," she told me.
Their war, she says, was the one she and Wadih fought decades ago, in Afghanistan, for Islam. "That was a U.S.-backed war," she said. "The U.S. encouraged and supported it. They said it was totally legitimate for us Muslims to go there." And then April paused, and her gay eyes went dark and steely. "I didn't see the memo about when we were supposed to stop, did you?"
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