By Scott Shane. The American-born Awlaki preached jihad from Yemen and directed plots like the underwear bomber and the attempt to blow up cargo planes. On Dec. Such solo drives had become routine for him, though the settings varied; sometimes it was a motel in a seedier part of the city, or tonier lodging in the sprawling Virginia suburbs.
In a Washington Post online chat a few weeks earlier, he had explained that Muslims abstained from sexual activity during Ramadan between sunrise and sunset. It was p. He was a computer engineer, born in India and now living in California, Awlaki told her. He was polite and apologized for sneezing so much, explaining that he was suffering from hay fever. She declined and he went on his way. He was a busy man, after all.
After a series of testy, inconclusive interviews with Awlaki in September , the bureau assigned the Special Surveillance Group to keep tabs on him, to see if he was keeping any secrets. He liked the lights on, the agents learned. He found the escort services online and booked their services under his real name.
Sometimes he asked for intercourse, sometimes oral sex, and sometimes he just watched the woman stimulate herself while he masturbated. The women had no complaints though one, checking him out through the peephole in the hotel room door when he knocked, thought he resembled Osama bin Laden. If he harbored anti-American feelings or was concocting secret terrorist schemes, he showed no sign of it. The pages and pages of scribbled notes from the surveillance teams and the typed interviews with escorts contained few surprises.
Awlaki had been picked up twice in San Diego for soliciting prostitutes, but he had not been deterred. Despite his more demanding schedule and the higher stakes now that a spotlight was trained on him in Washington, it had become a habit he could not, or did not want to, break. His FBI tails even followed him as he took the subway to the Pentagon to appear as a luncheon speaker. The imam who had preached at the Capitol, whose CDs were in the homes of the devout, who was regularly quoted as a spiritual authority, skulked secretly around the city, violating the moral rules he taught.
