Steve Neavling

A Chicago man accused of traveling to Somalia to become a suicide bomber for a terrorist group tied to al-Qaida faces nearly 10 year in prison, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Shaker Masri, 28, agreed to plead guilty to one count of attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization in exchange for serving no more than nine years and 10 months in prison.

Masri’s plans were recorded by an FBI informant who befriended Masri, a native U.S. citizen, and pledged to help him travel, according to the Tribune.

The pair discussed traveling to East Africa and obtaining weapons and supplies.

Masri is of Syrian descent, the Tribune reported.

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WASHINGTON — In a new memoir, a former F.B.I. agent who tracked Al Qaeda before and after the Sept. 11 attacks paints a devastating picture of rivalry and dysfunction inside the government’s counterterrorism agencies. The book describes missed opportunities to defuse the 2001 plot, and argues that other attacks overseas might have been prevented, and Osama bin Laden found earlier, if interrogations had not been mismanaged.

The account offered by the agent, Ali H. Soufan, is the most detailed to date by an insider concerning the American investigations of Al Qaeda and the major attacks that the group carried out, including bombings of American Embassies in East Africa and the American destroyer Cole, as well as the Sept. 11 attacks. The book is scheduled to be published Monday, with redactions to several chapters by the Central Intelligence Agency, the target of much of Mr. Soufan’s criticism.

In the 571-page book, “The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against Al Qaeda,” Mr. Soufan accuses C.I.A. officials of deliberately withholding crucial documents and photographs of Qaeda operatives from the F.B.I. before Sept. 11, 2001, despite three written requests, and then later lying about it to the 9/11 Commission.

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