[UPDATED 7:07 a.m., March 8] The New York Times, citing “senior Administration officials,” reports that it appears to be some other American who is in custody, not Gadahn.
Adam Yahiye Gadahn, also known as Azzam the American and, on the Weekly's Navel Gazing blog, at least, as Goat Boy, was arrested this morning in Karachi, Pakistan, the AP is reporting Gadahn, who grew up on a goat farm in Riverside County before converting to Islam at a Garden Grove mosque where he befriended radical Muslims like Palestinian-born Khalil Deek (whose current whereabouts are unknown but is rumored to have died in Pakistan) disappeared somewhere in Pakistan before Sept. 11, 2001. He later resurfaced in a series of 2004 videos, disguised in a mask and warning America of terrorist attacks that would rival 9/11.
In 2008, Gadahn was rumored to have been killed in a missile strike but he showed up in yet another video proving he was still alive.
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Now, in what foreign policy experts are heralding as a new era of
cooperation between Pakistan and the United States, Gadahn is in jail
awaiting possible extradition to America, where he could face the death
penalty as the first American since World War II to be charged with
treason.
Ironically, the AP reports, Gadahn was busted the same
day a video he made appeared in which he praised the U.S. Army shrink
who went nuts at Ft. Hood, Texas and shot his fellow soldiers. Assuming
Gadahn proves to be as talkative during his future interrogations as he
has been in his Al Qaeda videos, it'll be interesting to hear what if
anything he can say about the the only other OC resident suspected of
high-level involvement with the terrorist network, Deek, who has been
the subject of numerous Weekly articles, which you can read here and here.
Award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou is Editor of OC Weekly. He is the author of Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Nation Books 2006), which provided the basis for the 2014 Focus Features release starring Jeremy Renner and the L.A. Times-bestseller Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love’s Quest to bring Peace, Love and Acid to the World, (Thomas Dunne 2009). He is also the author of The Weed Runners (2013) and Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood (2016).