Adam Yahiye Gadahn shocked his Southern California family and his country when he surfaced online a decade ago as the U.S.-born poster boy for al-Qaida and became the first American charged with treason since World War II.
On Thursday, U.S. officials announced that Gadahn, who was raised in Riverside and Orange counties, was killed in January by a CIA drone strike in Pakistan. Two hostages, one American and one Italian, were killed in a separate attack that was part of the same mission.
Word of Gadahn’s death at 36 came as another twist in the strange odyssey of the hazel-eyed convert to Islam known as Azzam al-Amriki, Arabic for “the American.”
He grew up on a remote goat farm in Riverside County and spent his teen years living with his Jewish grandparents in Santa Ana. As a young adult, he moved to the Middle East, where he devoted himself to delivering denunciations and threats to his homeland by video.
Nancy Pearlman, who is Gadahn’s aunt and lives in Los Angeles, declined to comment Thursday on his death
Gadahn was put on the FBI’s Most Wanted list in 2004 after surfacing online in videos as an English-speaking spokesman for al-Qaida. He married a woman from Afghanistan and is believed to have a child.
In recent years, as the terror organization Islamic State group has gained influence in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East, a handful of other Americans have followed Gadahn’s path by joining or trying to join the fighting.
“Gadahn’s treasonous descent into al-Qaida’s lair presaged a troubling trend of what is now a continuous chain of restless Western youths’ embrace of overseas radicalism,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino.
Adam Dandach, a 21-year-old from Orange, is held in Santa Ana on federal charges of trying to aid a terror group after allegedly trying to fly to Turkey and meet up with terrorists in Syria. It’s unclear how many Americans have tried to join Islamic State, but federal statistics indicate at least 180 have tried to get into Syria where the group is strongest.
Still, in the end, Levin said Gadahn’s success as al-Qaida’s first American spokesman was limited.
“His awkward style never fully resonated with his superiors or those Westerners he sought to recruit,” Levin said.
“His real impact was not in being good, but in being first. And he paved the way for others who were far more Web savvy to exploit young, would-be radicals.”
LOCAL KID
Gadahn’s religious roots are Jewish and Catholic.
His paternal grandparents, now-deceased urologist Dr. Carl K. Pearlman and his wife, Agnes, were once well-known in Santa Ana for their philanthropy and activism on behalf of civil rights and such causes as the United Jewish Welfare Fund and Bonds for Israel. They were secular Jews.
But Gadahn’s father, Seth Philip Gadahn, converted to Christianity and moved to a farm in Winchester, northeast of Temecula. He sold milk, cheese and meat of the goats he raised.
Adam Gadahn was born Sept. 1, 1978, the oldest of Philip and Jennifer Gadahn’s four children. Gadahn was home-schooled until 17. He grew up working on the farm.
His childhood home was described as a “primitive wooden shack” by a friend of Gadahn’s youngest sibling. His mother cooked on a stove using firewood, and water for drinking and bathing was trucked in. Gadahn, as a boy, had little access to television or computers.
A young Gadahn has been described as quiet and shy, polite and considerate. But there were issues, never fully identified in news accounts of his early life, that led his grandfather to describe him as “troubled” after his mid-1990s move to his grandparents’ Santa Ana household.
As a teenager, Gadahn tried to find meaning in influences as diverse as fundamental Christianity and death metal music.
In a missive he later wrote for the Arab News publication, Gadahn described his teens in this way:
“As I learned that belief in the Trinity, something I find absolutely ridiculous, is considered by most Christians to be a prerequisite for salvation, I gradually realized I could not be a Christian.
“In the meantime, I had become obsessed with demonic Heavy Metal music, something the rest of my family (as I now realize, rightfully so) was not happy with. My entire life was focused on expanding my music collection. I eschewed personal cleanliness and let my room reach an unbelievable state of disarray. My relationship with my parents became strained, although only intermittently so.”
He goes on to say that the “turning point” in his life came after he moved in with his grandparents: His grandmother introduced him to America Online, where he came across discussions about Islam.
Gadahn devoured English translations of the Koran, and in 1995, made his way to a local mosque. Muzammil H. Siddiqi, religious director of the Islamic Society of Orange County in Garden Grove, said he met Gadahn in 1995.
“He came to us indicating he wanted to be Muslim,” Siddiqi said.
Gadahn was also seeking employment and was hired by the Islamic Society as a security guard. But within two months, he was fired.
“He was asked to leave,” Siddiqi said. “He fell asleep (while on duty).”
Siddiqi described Gadahn’s decison to become a jihadist as “absolutely wrong” and contrary to the teachings of Islam.
“The message of Islam is peace,” he said.
Haitham Bundakji, vice chairman of the board of directors for the Islamic Society of Orange County, said in a September 2006 Orange County Register story that he had witnessed Gadahn’s conversion, describing how Gadahn had “found that Islam, as a religion, caters to people of all walks of life, not just the rich.”
But Gadahn turned toward extremism after becoming friends with two men, Hisham Diab and Khalil al-Deek, that Bundakji later barred from the Garden Grove mosque.
Gadahn himself was barred from the mosque in 1997 after he hit Bundakji in a fit of anger after being confronted about loitering with several men in the mosque following prayers.
“He was very nice, quiet and polite, but he became a monster after he was radicalized,” Bundakji said Thursday.
Gadahn pleaded guilty to assault and battery for striking Bundakji. He was sentenced to two days in jail and 40 hours of community service.
By then Diab and al-Deek had helped set him up in an apartment in Garden Grove, and the innocent-looking American youth was making bank deposits and purchasing radar detectors from Radio Shack for the use of al-Qaida, according to an account given to the Register in 2006 by Saraah Olson, who was al-Deek’s wife.
Gadahn made his first trip to Pakistan in 1998. Family members have said they last spoke with him in 2002. He reportedly told them he was working for a Pakistani newspaper.
VIDEO TERROR
Videos of a masked figure believed to be Gadahn espousing anti-American ideals first appeared online in 2004.
He wore a thick beard and either a head scarf or a turban, and railed against such things as the “debt, debauchery and doubt they call the American Dream.“
One such video was released a few days before the 9/11 anniversary in 2005, and others followed through 2013. In some, he tried to persuade U.S. soldiers to switch sides in the Iraq and Afghan wars.
While Gadahn’s death is noteworthy, it will have little effect on al-Qaida, according to terrorism expert Levin.
“In the end, his biggest contribution was his nationality.”
Siddiqi hopes Gadahn’s death will serve as a cautionary tale to others attracted to radical Islam.
“There should be justice,” Siddiqi said. “I hope it will be bring peace and common sense to people to behave the right way.”
Contact the writer: 714-796-7793 or twalker@ocregister.com
