Most of the arrests stunned not just the Yemeni-American community in this town, but the larger community as well. The Lackawanna High School graduates -- some went on to Erie Community College -- played soccer in the park, shot pool at Crazy Eight Billiards on Abbott Road. Their fathers worked for Bethlehem Steel before the plant closed in the 1980s; all but one was born in the United States. They're family men. None was known for anti-Americanism; about as political as they got was to register as Democrats. They were the cool, assimilated guys in the community. "They had fun," attests Lawanda Albanah, 26, who attended high school with two of them. "They partied. They had girlfriends left and right."

Taher, a former all-star soccer player who co-captained the varsity Steelers, is a handsome, trim 24-year-old who raised local eyebrows when he married a former cheerleader -- a white girl -- with whom he has a 3-year-old son. He loved tooling around his hometown on his Suzuki motorcycle, dressed in baggy hip-hop attire. His bio was so all-American, in fact, that newspapers and at least one network morning show referred to him as a former homecoming king -- an honor he never won, according to his wife.

Or take Sahim Alwan, 29 when arrested, considered a clean-cut, articulate pillar of the community who worked with disadvantaged kids. The son of a steelworker, he earned $31,500 a year selling satellite TV systems, was quoted in the Buffalo News condemning the 9/11 attack and declaring that Muslims are "citizens of this country and we're proud of that." Before a 2002 pilgrimage to Mecca, Alwan called the local FBI to give them a heads-up.

But the Lackawanna Six were brought together by a seventh, shadowy figure named Kamal Derwish. Born in Buffalo, Derwish moved abroad as a kid, spending most of his life in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The pious and intimidating 27-year-old returned to Lackawanna in 1998, where he became the angry conscience of the Muslim community. From the Yemeni owner of the Holland Street deli who sold pork -- considered an unclean food in Islam -- to the younger men who went out clubbing, Derwish chastised his brethren for straying from the righteous path.

He led independent study groups at the mosque, taught at an Islamic school on weekends. "He was looking for guys who are sincere, devout Muslims," a defense source says. "He told them that every Muslim has an obligation to be ready if Islam is attacked." Derwish recruited the Six and told them "about this place in Pakistan which would be a place for them to go learn about the Islamic religion," Albanah says. "Here in America we've got religion, but it's not a good religion. They could learn more back home."

Taher's attorney, Rodney Personius, says his client "went there because he was brainwashed, shamed and guilted by Derwish. He believed he had to do this in order to cleanse himself of his past sins and prepare for Allah." Those sins, Personius says, included drinking and partying, not praying enough and, worst of all, having a child out of wedlock with his non-Muslim common-law wife, Nicole Frick. Derwish slammed him for that and "Yasein bought it -- hook, line and sinker."

At least one other recruiter worked with Derwish -- a mysterious figure from Indiana identified previously only as "Juma." According to one source close to the investigation, his full name is Juma Muhammad Abdul Latif al Dosar. Known as Abdullah Juma at the Lackawanna Mosque, where he led prayers a couple of times, he said he and Derwish were old friends, that they'd fought together in Bosnia defending Muslims.

Juma, Personius says, was brought in to close the deal, get the Six to travel abroad for training on how to defend Islam.

No one should be surprised to learn that in 1998, al-Qaida was recruiting in the United States. Law enforcement officials assert that bin Laden had been trying since the '80s to get American Muslims to join his jihad, and not without success. Egyptian-born former U.S. Army Sgt. Ali Mohamed was jailed for helping to plan the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224. Former Silicon Valley car salesman Khalid Abu-al-Dahab, currently serving time in an Egyptian prison, is credited with recruiting 10 or more Americans into al-Qaida. In 1995, the two smuggled Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's chief deputy, into the U.S. for fund-raising. Around then, bin Laden's former personal secretary, Wadih el-Hage -- since convicted of perjury and conspiracy in the embassy bombings -- obtained U.S. citizenship and recruited in Texas, Oregon and Florida.

Since 9/11, the government has intensified its search. On April 14, Earnest James Ujaama of Seattle pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to provide goods and services -- computer software -- to the Taliban. Last July, authorities arrested former Chicago gang member and Muslim covert Jose Padilla, alleged to have conspired to detonate a so-called dirty bomb. In August, four Arab men near Detroit with fraudulent passports were charged as members of a "sleeper operational combat cell." In October, four Portland, Ore., residents -- one a member of the U.S. Army Reserves -- were accused of trying to travel to an Afghan terrorist training camp after the 9/11 attacks.

Dr. Rohan Gunaratna, author of "Inside al-Qaeda: Global Network of Terror," tells Salon that throughout the 1990s, al-Qaida recruiters favored areas where Muslim immigrants live -- North Jersey, Brooklyn, Dearborn. "The threat is of those individuals that have gone through those training camps since 1996 that have scattered around the world," Dale Watson, a former FBI counter-terrorism official told the Senate last September. "Where are those people? Are they living in Texas? Are they living in Montana?" Up to 100 recruits may still be living in the United States, terrorism experts say.

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