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Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/07/30/robertson.al.qaeda.full/index.html#cnnSTCText
Recruits Reveal al-Qaeda's Sprawling Web
[CNN] Nic Robertson and Paul Cruickshank - Bryant Neal Vinas is a young American who was arrested in Pakistan late in 2008 after training with al-Qaeda in the Afghan/Pakistan border area. In January he pled guilty to charges of conspiracy to murder U.S. nationals, providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, and receiving military-type training from a foreign terrorist organization. In notes made by FBI agents of interviews with Vinas, he admits he went to Pakistan to join al-Qaeda and kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan. On Thanksgiving weekend last year, shortly after his arrest, much of the New York mass transit system was put on high alert. Vinas had told al-Qaeda's command everything he knew about the system. Vinas' account of his time in al-Qaeda training camps in Pakistan is a playbook of how the terror group survived after 9/11 and continues to operate in the remote hills of Pakistan. Al-Qaeda remains committed to launching attacks in the West, according to the descriptions of several Western recruits who spent time in al-Qaeda camps between September 2007 and December 2008.