With the global economy teetering on the brink of self-destruction, America still fighting a two-front war in Iraq and Pakistan, the LA Times about to fire the 75 people who somehow haven't been fired yet, and the Angels out of the race for the pennant, it's about time for a feel-good human interest story to raise our spirits, isn't it?
Good news, folks: according to CNN, Adam Gadahn, the goat farm-bred, Orange County-raised American face of Al Qaeda is still alive and well, despite rumors to the contrary that we recently covered here.
Speculation that Gadahn was dead first surfaced in January of this year, in remarks made by anonymous U.S. intelligence officials who said goat boy was likely killed in an American Predator missile strike on a village where Al Qaeda figures were reported to be meeting. Gadahn was said to be attending the meeting, and after the attack, he suddenly stopped broadcasting his wacky lectures on Islam and American foreign policy.
Then came the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Gadahn's favorite time to harangue his former countrymen and no still no videotape. Where's our favorite terrorist nutjob? the public wondered. I even got to speak on Patt Morrison's KPCC talk show. (To hear the segment, click on this link and scroll down to “Azzam the American: Alive or Dead?). In the interview, I told Patt that if Gadahn was really killed months ago in a missile strike, we'd likely never find his remains, but the fact that Al Qaeda hadn't confirmed his transition from scruffy word-flinger to martyr, that there was no reason to believe he really was dead, and that given America's stunning lack of progress in tracking down and killing Osama bin Laden and other high-ranking terrorist figures, we've apparently got nothing better to do than resort to regurgitating unproven tales of demise involving Gadahn.
A final thought: let's leave Goat Boy alone. He's doing more to undermine support for terrorism with his inane and wacky ramblings than we'd do buy whacking him.
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).