Early news reports suggest that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man who attemped to bring down a Northwest Airlines plane in Detroit, went in search of Al Qaeda masterminds in Yemen. If the reports are accurate, this would mean Abdulmutallab was following a pattern established by several other suicide terrorists and would-be suicide terrorists. Rather than have terrorist masterminds reach out to young people in search of volunteers for suicide terrorist missions, what we see are young people who are already radicalized (and often from wealthy families, sometimes from Western countries) reaching out to terrorist masterminds for operational assistance. In The Tunnel, one of the chapters in The Hidden Brain, I explain the unconscious factors that prompt young people to become suicide terrorists. See also http://bit.ly/7vPqCe
