A member of the Washington State National Guard was taken into custody on Thursday to face possible charges that he tried to pass information to Al Qaeda terrorist network. Army officials said the soldier, Specialist Ryan G. Anderson, whose 81st Armor Brigade is scheduled to deploy to Iraq next month, is being held at Fort Lewis, near Tacoma, where the authorities will determine whether enough evidence exists to charge him. The arrest followed a brief investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Justice Department and Army officials after they said they learned that Specialist Anderson used a computer to try to contact Al Qaeda cells in the United States and, as one Army official said, "offer his services."
Specialist Anderson is a tank crew member of the 81st Armor Brigade, a 4,000-member unit headed for a one-year deployment in Iraq. The deployment is the biggest for the Washington Army National Guard since World War II. The Army now has several weeks for the unit commander and a military lawyer to determine whether there is probable cause for formal charges to be filed against Specialist Anderson. If probable cause is found, he would face the equivalent of a grand jury investigation, after which the commander would decide whether to initiate a court-martial.
The Army released only sketchy information about Specialist Anderson. But his hometown newspaper, The Everett Herald, reported on Thursday that he was 26 and was a member of a Fort Lewis tank crew. It also said he graduated from Cascade High School in 1995 and from Washington State University in 2002 with a degree in military history, specializing in the Middle East. The newspaper also said he converted to Islam five years ago. Aziz Junejo, who is the host of an Islamic talk show on public access television in Seattle, said Specialist Anderson joined a local Muslim e-mail group two years ago, using as his Internet names Abdul Rashid and Gunfighter. Mr. Junejo said Mr. Anderson bragged about being an expert marksman and said he wanted to teach other local Muslims to use assault rifles. Mr. Junejo said that he angrily confronted Specialist Anderson regarding his e-mail, and that eventually he stopped sending such messages. Specialist Anderson also made irregular visits to a mosque in Mountlake Terrace near Seattle, Mr. Junejo said. "The really careless thing was that his demeanor and behavior, whether in the e-mail or in the mosque, was noticeable, and it didn’t fit with the community," he said. "He mysteriously came into the community a couple years ago," Mr. Junejo said, "and then just as mysteriously disappeared."
| So they thought he was a plant... |
Dr. Marina Tolmacheva, a history professor at Washington State, said that Specialist Anderson took three classes from her in 1996 and 1997 focusing on Middle Eastern history and Islamic civilization and that his grades were substandard.
I’ve seen the photo floating around the net and the guy is almost certainly Caucasian, incidentally. |