Dina Temple-Raston uncovers a strange corner of the war on terror in Lackawanna, New York, home of the first homegrown al-Qaeda terrorist cell in America. Or was it?
The "Lackawanna Six" were young men, born of Yemeni families long settled in upstate New York, who took a trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan and spent time in an al-Qaeda training camp—long before the specter of 9/11, before most people had even heard of Osama bin Laden, and before the existence of the Homeland Security Act.
This is a story of preemptive imprisonment for an act of terrorism never committed, a terrorist cell that may not even have been a cell, and a mysterious al-Qaeda contact who was supposedly killed but whose remains were never found. The Jihad Next Door is a book that forces a reevaluation of the casualties of the war on terror.