Anwar al-Aulaqi

Anwar al-Aulaqi is an American-born radical Islamist spiritual leader with ties to al-Qaeda, who left the U.S. in 2002. Before leaving, he had been an imam at the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Virginia. He is based in Yemen, where he was imprisoned, and has an active Web presence as well as publishing materials sold at mainstream Islamic bookstores.{{citation | http://www.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/FeaturedDocs/nefabackgrounder_alawlaki.pdf

But the FBI reported that it did not have reason to prosecute or detain Aulaqi, who left the United States in 2002 and has lived in Yemen since 2004.

Yemeni authorities detained him in mid-2006 at the request of the U.S. government, then released him at the end of 2007. Since then, Britain has barred him from speaking there, and U.S. authorities have called him an al-Qaeda supporter who has worked with its networks in the Persian Gulf and plotted attacks against the United States and its allies.

Aulaqi "targets U.S. Muslims with radical online lectures encouraging terrorist attacks from his new home in Yemen," Charles Allen, then-chief intelligence officer for the Homeland Security Department, said in October 2008, calling him an "example of al-Qaeda reach into" the United States."

Aulaqi "speaks to North Americans better than anybody else" overseas, Allen added in an interview. Aulaqi's listeners include small extremist elements in the United States and Canada, including at least one Somali American youth from Minneapolis who joined al-Shabab, an extremist Islamist insurgent group that has pledged fealty to bin Laden.

Nidal Hasan
Nidal M. Hasan and an American-born imam who U.S. authorities say has become a supporter and leading promoter of al-Qaeda since leaving a Northern Virginia mosque, officials said.

Nidal Hasan, the accused shooter at Fort Hood. attended the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church in 2001, when its spiritual leader was Anwar al-Aulaqi, a figure who crossed paths with al-Qaeda associates, including two Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers, one senior U.S. official said.

9/11 Attacks
Aulaqi has been identified as a spiritual adviser of 9/11 hijackers Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi; the 9/11 Commission Report and a subsequent congressional report noted that they met with Aulaqi at a mosque in San Diego in 2000 and after he moved to Dar al-Hijrah in 2001.

Pre-9/11
He was associated with the Holy Land Foundation, prosecuted for funding Hamas.

The FBI investigated Aulaqi nearly a decade ago, after he briefly served as vice president of the U.S. branch of a Yemeni charity that federal prosecutors later described as a front organization used to support al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. The FBI learned that he also may have been contacted by a bin Laden "procurement agent," who served as fundraiser for a charity that the Treasury Department designated a bin Laden financier, and said that Aulaqi's group was its Yemeni partner.

The FBI also learned that Aulaqi was visited in early 2000 by a close associate of Omar Abdel Rahman, the man known as "the blind sheik" who was convicted in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.