Monday, October 15, 2007

The Mystery of the Arab In The Woodpile

Michael Moss of the New York Times has outted Inshallashaheed, the al Qaeda supporting blogger who we've been investigating for over a year. I've been sitting on his true identity for months, but in one fell swoop Samir ibn Zafar Khan, who lives in Charlotte North Carolina, has been identified.

Thanks a lot to Michael Moss and the New York Times for blowing an ongoing investigation into a known al Qaeda sympathizer who lives here in the United States. I've known about this piece for a few weeks and wrote the NY Times to ask Moss not to run it. No reply from the Times.

While we appreciate Moss's commitment to spreading the word about the Internet Jihad, we really wish he would have consulted with us on the matter. He has a right to out Inshallahshaheed as Samir Khan, but doing so has jeopardized an ongoing investigation into a terror ring which begins in the US and ends in Somalia.

But that's just like the NY Times, isn't it? In Moss's defense, he seems to have asked the FBI if there was an investigation into Khan, and they declined to comment.

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You'll remember when I revealed that Inshallashaheed was an American, that he openly challenged me to prove it on his blog. In a personal e-mail to Samir I told him just to send me his address which would save me a lot of trouble.

What Samir didn't know was that I already had his address. I knew he lived in or around Charlotte, so I put out the word to Charlotte area bloggers for help. Thanks to Jeff of Meckdeck I learned what I thought was Samir's address and phone number. But that turned out to be another Samir Khan who lives in the area.

It turned out that our original investigation into Khan was right and that we already knew where he lived. We have a real picture of Samir. We have his address. We had a picture of his house. Hell, we have his car license plate number. All because Samir posted it on the internet, but using his real name instead of "inshallahshaheed".