US terror attacks common denominator: Anwar al-Awlaki

Among the attackers who investigators and terror experts say were inspired by al-Awlaki and his videos: the couple who carried out the San Bernardino, California, shootings, which left 14 people dead in December, and the brothers behind the Boston Marathon bombing, which killed three people and injured more than 260 others in April 2013.

The director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School, Karen Greenberg, said a lively discussion is underway among public officials and those in the private sector to "find a way to take searches for jihadist propaganda and deflect it toward a counter-narrative."

Authorities have said al-Awlaki knew two of the Sept. 11 hijackers when he was the imam of a Falls Church, Virginia, mosque but didn't seem a threat, even scoring an invite to lunch at the Pentagon as part of a moderate Muslim outreach program after the 2001 attacks.

[...] al-Awlaki's essays and speeches went from providing encouragement to would-be militant fighters to playing an operational role for al-Qaida, prompting Democratic President Barack Obama's administration to add him to the government's list of wanted terror suspects.

By 2007, an informant at a New Jersey trial testified, one of five foreign-born Muslims said he was ready to attack soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey, after watching a video of an al-Awlaki lecture he considered a religious decree to attack American soldiers.

The American Civil Liberties Union said it has seen lots of pressure put on technology companies by the Obama administration as it tries to limit speech on platforms related to terrorism.