My Jihad: One American's Journey Through the World of Usama Bin Laden--as a Covert Operative for the American Government [Mass Market Paperback]

Aukai Collins (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 28, 2003

He was a brawny, blue-eyed, Irish-American religious convert who became a holy warrior in the name of Islam -- until the holy war began to change.

Aukai Collins grew up hard: abandoned, surviving in the streets and running with thugs. While serving time, he converted to Islam, and went to fight with the Muslims who were targeted for genocide in Chechnya and Bosnia. This led him to Usama bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan. As terrorist attacks on civilians around the world intensified, Aukai was asked to lead a mission that included hostage taking and the killing of civilians -- something he would not do.

Disillusioned by those who used Islam for their own ends or to attack innocents, Aukai offered his services to the FBI and CIA as a counter-terrorist operative, even getting close to one of the leaders of the September 11 attacks. Yet his greatest strength -- providing insight into the problems surrounding the U.S. government's fight against something it doesn't understand -- was ignored by inept members of the American intelligence community.

My Jihad is an insider's story about the greatest threat to world peace and stability in modern times, told by an unforgettable true-life warrior who has walked the walk, fought the fights, and lived to tell about it.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Collins, a former mujahid and Phoenix-based FBI informant, has recently been in the news for allegedly having warned the FBI to no avail about one of the September 11 hijackers. Here he focuses mostly on his experiences fighting along with an associate of Bin Laden's in Chechnya, as well as his bitter misadventures with the FBI. (Subtitle notwithstanding, he worked primarily for the FBI but did some joint missions with the CIA.) Collins, 28, converted to Islam while serving time as a teenager in a California prison for attempted robbery. After his release, he decided to make jihad in Bosnia in the early 1990s, and thus began an odyssey with the mujahideen that took him to training camps in Kashmir and Afghanistan and to the front lines in Chechnya. He became disillusioned, however, when some extremist factions began terrorizing civilians, and decided he could best preserve the sanctity of jihad by helping Americans rout the true terrorists. But his FBI gig wasn't much more fulfilling; Collins scathingly critiques what he casts as the Bureau's willful ignorance (they didn't understand, for instance, that mosques were the wrong places to look for extremists), their self-defeating rules (he was not allowed to go undercover to a camp actually run by Bin Laden himself) and their general bureaucratic bumbling. The book doesn't offer much historical or political background, but Collins is a vivid raconteur and his accounts of illegal border-crossings in lawless Afghanistan and Dagestan are as gripping as the descriptions of actual battles. His firsthand view of the FBI, though clearly one-sided, should interest readers as well.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

The Washington Post [A] blood-soaked account of training in Osama bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan. -- Review

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Pocket Star (January 28, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743470591
• ISBN-13: 978-0743470599
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,199,168 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting but Odd, July 23, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: My Jihad: The True Story of an American Mujahid's Amazing Journey from Usama Bin Laden's Training Camps to Counterterrorism with the FBI and CIA (Hardcover)

I was drawn to this book because I feel that much of what Islam and Jihad are about have been grossly misrepresented by the media and our American tendency to over-generalize. I was also interested to hear it explained by an American so that cultural and ethnic filters wouldn't cloud the message.

I wasn't disappointed by the message but I was generally put off by the messenger. While his commitment and his physical courage are certainly remarkable he struck me at times to be little more than an egotistical wrong-side-of-the-tracks punk with a death wish. At other times he seemed to be very genuine and thoughtful and it is this schizophrenic back and forth that seemed to define his life and this book.

His accounts of his combat exploits really had me wondering if his survival was due more to dumb luck than skill. It wasn't that his combat experiences were really extraordinary or spectacular, it was more that he was such a disorganized clod. It seemed that half of the book was about how he managed to get separated from his gear time and time again leaving his basically empty handed in a war zone. This coupled with seeming complete lack of a plan that the other mujahs had made me wonder if any of them had a clue what they were doing.

While I admire his devotion it is difficult to have much respect for his methods. He seemed to be just wandering around war zones looking for trouble pumped up with "fool's courage" and not really accomplishing much other than killing a few Russians, getting his wives pregnant and losing his leg. In the end, given what it cost him personally with regard to his health and his family, I can't help but wonder what good he accomplished.

The book's title is also misleading when it comes to the author's involvement in counterterror operations and his involvement with Bin Laden's Al Qaeda network. Basically he spent some time goofing around in a muddy camp in Pakistan over a year before that same camp was later hit by cruise missiles in a symbolic retaliation for one of the terrorist attacks that took place in the late nineties. Likewise his involment with Osama Bin Laden are equally dubious. As for his "counterterror" work he had basically goofed around on the FBI's payroll and had some more comically inept operations that definitely make it easier to understand how 9/11 could have happened without our intelligence people being any wiser and why our taxes are so high.

Despite my reservations this book is an interesting read and while it will not give you any direct insights into what happened on 9/11 it will give you a glimpse into the maddening realm of the Third World and our own government's tomfoolery that made it possible for these madmen to get as far as they have in the world. Also, while the author claims to represent "true Islam" I would take that with a grain of salt. I wouldn't know a true Muslim from a hole in the ground but the author's messed up life view makes me wonder if his perceptions can be trusted.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why we failed to penetrate Al Qaeda, October 31, 2004

By 

Michael E. Piston (Mercer Island, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: My Jihad: One American's Journey Through the World of Usama Bin Laden--as a Covert Operative for the American Government (Mass Market Paperback)

Anyone who wants to understand the U.S. intelligence failures in the War Against Terrorism needs to read this book. The author, an American jihadi who could pass without question among the most extreme elements of the Islamist movement, was frustrated at every turn by his efforts to act as an undercover agent for the U.S. among the Islamists. So extreme were the self-imposed limitations on the use of counter-intelligence agents by the FBI and CIA that the author had to vow not to be engaged in military activities when acting as a CIA spy in Chechenya, even though he would be going there as a purported guerilla fighter. Then the CIA insisted that it would have to inform both the Russian and Azerbaijan governments that the author would be entering Chechenya through Azerbaijan due to an agency rule requiring the "host" government be informed any time a U.S. agent entered its territory. This despite the author's first hand experience that both the Russian and Azerbaijan governments were thoroughly penetrated by the Islamists and their organized crime colloborators. Finally the author's opportunity to meet directly with Bin Laden himself is vetoed by his CIA/FBI handlers. If these are reflective of policies imposed by the Clinton Administration then clearly Clinton merits the charge that he sabotaged U.S. intelligence gathering activities in the 90s. However, it is by no means clear where the policies in question came from nor whether the current administration has jettisoned them. Indeed, what make Collins's account so plausible is that he himself makes no efforts to relate his experience to the American blame game and instead is simply intent on telling his own story.

I note that certain reviewers are rating this book according to whether they admire the author or not. This is not, in my view, an appropriate use of the review process. The author is the product of a severely disfunctional family and was well on his way to becoming a professional criminal when he found a religion which provided a means for sanctifying his already well-established proclivities towards violence. His performance in the jihad in many way illustrates all that is repugnant about U.S. foreign policy - strident self-righteousness, profound ignorance about foreign cultures, unwillingness to cooperate with others, open racism, and easy betrayal of friends. None of this changes the fact that this book offers a virtually unprecedented direct look into the life of a genuine jihadi, as well as a compelling illustration of why U.S. human intelligence has fallen into such a disasterous state.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting insights on our intelligence handlers, July 23, 2002

By 

John Farrar (Seattle) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Jihad: The True Story of an American Mujahid's Amazing Journey from Usama Bin Laden's Training Camps to Counterterrorism with the FBI and CIA (Hardcover)

After finishing this book, I read the reviews on amazon.com. The other readers' reviews of this book are dead on. Both the positive and negative reviews develop points that are correct. The book is not well written or edited. However, the author is not a professional wordsmith. The book, is written by a former car thief and "stick up man." He converted to Islam while in the California Youth Authority. I am sure he didn't spend much time studying literature.
I feel the books best value is the author's description of working as a Confidential Informant or "snitch" with both the CIA and FBI. He describes how our intelligence agencies are mired with incompetent ladder climbers more concerned with their respective careers than the mission. Even worse are the insanely stupid bureaucratic regulations, which hamstring our nations intelligence gathering. A perfect example of this is described in the book where the CIA would not allow the author to go to Chechnya unless he "promised not to engage in combat" due to rules prohibiting it's operatives from doing that.
Even scarier, on several occasions the CIA wanted to notify various foreign intelligence agencies of the author's status as an agent. His account of the way in which some of his handlers worked with him also raises red flags. One of them was a "born again Christian" who allowed his personal views to affect his agent handling.
All in all I think this is a very interesting account of the experiences of a "front line soldier of Islam." It is very current and should be read by anyone concerned with intelligence gathering or curious about it.