Al Qaeda's Web Revival

Visual News / Getty Images The FBI stopped a plot to blow up a Dallas building by surfing online forums. Their next worry: the return of a site once used for al Qaeda command and control.

He logged onto an extremist Web site, declaring his determination to carry out deadly jihad against the United States. But the FBI was monitoring his ominous plans. So when Hosam Maher Husein Smadi parked a vehicle in the basement of a  60-story Dallas office building hoping to detonate explosives triggered from afar by a cellphone, undercover agents who had been posing as anti-American jihadis swooped in.

On Monday, a judge decided there was enough evidence to send the case against Smadi, a 19-year-old Jordanian who is charged with conspiring to set off a weapon of mass destruction, to a grand jury (Smadi's court-appointed counsel said "we have a lot of work to do," arguing that it was too early in the proceedings to make a fair determination about his client's conduct). But his is not the only worrisome case of jihadi plotting online to surface of late. A new front in the so-called global war on terror has emerged inside an office building in Los Angeles—and it was launched the day before Americans commemorated the 8th anniversary of 9/11.

That’s when al-Ekhlaas, al Qaeda’s most important Web forum, suddenly came back to life—roughly a year after mysteriously going dark. Its name, which means “devotion” in Arabic, was registered at a Los Angeles domain registry company called namecheap.com.

“There is nothing that has made me more happy this Ramazan (sic) than [t]he Commencement of Al Ekhlass (sic) Forum,” wrote one man on “The Ignored Puzzle Pieces of Knowledge,” a Web site sympathetic to jihadis. “May they remain steadfast on the media frontlines.”

For four years, beginning in 2004, al-Ekhlaas was a key site for jihadi command and control, recruitment, fundraising, and propaganda, according to cyber-jihad investigator Evan Kohlmann. A plot to kill the British prime minister was hatched on the site, according to British investigators—who say the plot may have been thwarted because al-Ekhlaas was shut down before the plotters had a chance to act. Thanks to online recruitment, many of the forum’s thousdans of dedicated members found their way to Iraq and Afghanistan to become suicide bombers, according to Kohlmann. Then site went offline on Sept. 10, 2008. Kohlmann says he does not know why.

No sooner had al-Ekhlaas lurched back to life this fall than questions began spreading in jihadi online communications and chat rooms about its authenticity. Some saw it as a trap, created by U.S. intelligence. Kohlmann and others who track jihadi sites say it was most likely set up by foreign intelligence or cyber-vigilantes. Some jihadis suspect the handiwork of the CIA.

A further sign that jihadis are suspicious: The Al-Fajr Media Center and the Global Islamic Media Front, al Qaeda’s media operations, have warned followers to stay away. When Osama bin Laden’s most recent communiqué was released, it did not appear on al-Ekhlaas—a telling sign, since previous messages from bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders had appeared there in the past.

Ekhlaas has been the target of international terror investigations before. As recently as August, 2008, an al Qaeda-linked jihadi in Israel was indicted for planning to blow up a bus depot there—using bomb-making instructions he found on Ekhlaas.

Those who believe in violent jihad are spread out around the world, making the Web the best way to communicate. Al-Fajr and GIMF—sophisticated, media-savvy Web operations—distribute the official proclamations of bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and other al Qaeda leaders. And intelligence agencies around the world pay close attention, seeking insights into al Qaeda’s activities. Forums like al-Ekhlaas enable jihadis to share information, plan operations, and raise funds.

When it first resurfaced, al-Ekhlaas was hailed in the jihadi Web world. Several other sites, like al-Faloja and al-Shamokh, had been shut down in the days leading up to the 9/11 anniversary—sowing confusion and suspicion among those looking for their global jihad Web hookup. Some suspected the blackout may have been a concerted effort by intelligence agencies to prevent transmission of bin Laden’s annual 9/11 proclamation.