The Caliphate has fallen but it hasn’t taken all of its secrets down with it. In the years since ISIS lost the last vestiges of its territory, prosecutors and grand juries across America have been sifting through the rubble piecing together a fuller picture of the Americans who sought to defend it. But those fragments are scattered across 93 U.S. Attorney offices, 56 FBI field offices, thousands of official records, and dozens of interviews.
While researching for our book, Homegrown: ISIS in America, we thought we had a good sense of the scope and breadth of jihadist activity in the United States. But with every new piece of information came the realization that it will take years to fully understand it.
For three years, we collected and reviewed over 20,000 pages of court records from across the country and traveled to numerous courthouses to sit in on trials and retrieve documents only available in person.
Read more from Seamus Hughes, Bennett Clifford, and Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens at the Daily Beast