Once a Qaeda Recruiter, Now a Voice Against Jihad
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In the four years that he ran the Revolution Muslim website out of his walk-up apartment in Flatbush, Brooklyn, Jesse Morton became one of the most prolific recruiters for Al Qaeda, luring numerous Americans to the group’s violent ideology.
The men and women he inspired through his online posts and tutorials were accused of plots that included flying a remote-controlled plane strapped with explosives into the Pentagon and trying to kill a Swedish cartoonist who satirized the Prophet Muhammad. One of his collaborators was killed in a drone strike in Yemen, where he had joined Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Several are now fighting for the Islamic State.
Mr. Morton, 37, is now at the forefront of an experiment to counter the pull of groups like the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. After a stint as an F.B.I. informant and his release from prison last year, Mr. Morton has been hired as a fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, where he will research the very ideology he once spread.
Although countries like Britain have for years been putting former extremists to work in think tanks to provide authentic voices against radical ideology, Mr. Morton is the first former jihadist to step into this public a role in the United States.
That has not come without some anxiety for his new employer, said Lorenzo Vidino, the director of the extremism program at George Washington’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security.
In an interview with The New York Times this month, after he was asked why anyone should believe he had truly changed, Mr. Morton insisted that he was trying to make amends.
“As many people as may have traveled, or may have committed criminal acts, because of my words, I hope that I can deter just as many,” he said. “I may never be able to repair the damage that I have done, but I think I can at least try.”
The line was finally crossed on April 15, 2010, when Zachary Adam Chesser, a volatile, 20-year-old associate of Mr. Morton’s, uploaded the home addresses of the creators of the cartoon show “South Park” after an episode mocking the Prophet Muhammad.
When Mr. Chesser was arrested while trying to board an international flight on his way to joining the Shabab militant group in Somalia, Mr. Morton fled to Morocco. A year later, he, too, was arrested, and initially held in a Moroccan prison.
The Americans came for him on Oct. 27, 2011. He recounted being driven to a deserted airport, where he clutched his Quran as a team of United States agents handcuffed, shackled and blindfolded him. Before placing earphones over his ears, they took away his Quran.
He was surprised when one of the agents removed the blindfold midflight and handed him back the holy book. It was the first of several gestures that he said would touch him, a step along what he described as a long, gradual path out of radicalization.
Back in the United States, he awaited sentencing in solitary confinement, where a guard broke the rules and allowed him to leave his cell and spend the duration of her shift in the library. … Over the coming weeks, he lost himself in the writings of the Enlightenment, starting with John Locke’s 1689 “Letter Concerning Toleration.”
At night, he said, he would dream he was sitting across from Bin Laden.
“I’m asking him questions: ‘Am I becoming a disbeliever? Am I going to hell?’” Mr. Morton said. “He doesn’t talk. He has nothing to say.”
It was in the prison library that a guard pulled Mr. Morton aside and led him into a room where two F.B.I. agents were waiting.
they wanted him to become an informant. Wrestling with the idea, and increasingly disillusioned with fundamentalism, he eventually agreed.
He now lives in Virginia, and the terms of his release prevent him from traveling outside the greater District of Columbia area. On Monday, when classes resume at George Washington University, Mr. Morton will head to campus to begin his research.
Still, he said, at night he is overcome by fear.
“I’m scared — not because I think I’ll go back, but because of what’s coming,” he said. “I was so committed to destroying the world that I lived in, and now, for rational reasons, I realize that international order needs to be protected.”
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