Last week, a Hawaii man was arrested and accused of making false statements to the FBI about his plans to attend terrorist training in Pakistan. In August, a Virginia man was caught trying to leave the country to go fight with an al-Qaida-affiliated group in Somalia. And in May, Faisal Shazhad, a naturalized citizen from Pakistan, tried to set off a car bomb at a bustling street corner in New York.

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The FBI has made several cases with agents working undercover: Last year, authorities arrested a Jordanian national after he tried to detonate what he thought was a bomb outside a Dallas skyscraper. In an unrelated case, authorities in Springfield, Ill., arrested a man after he tried to set off what he thought were explosives in a van outside a federal courthouse. In both cases, decoy devices were provided to the men by FBI agents posing as al-Qaida operatives.

A LinkedIn page that was created for Farooque Ahmed identifies him as a network planning engineer with a bachelor's degree in computer science from the City College of New York in 2003, during the same period that other records showed he had been living in New York. In Reston, Va., Ericsson Federal Inc. issued a statement confirming that Ahmed had done contract work for the company.

A check of legal records for Ahmed found several traffic offenses in Virginia, including speeding.

Neighbor Margaret Petney said Ahmed moved in about a year and a half ago with his wife and young child, and that they wore traditional Muslim clothing.

Ahmed's wife, Sahar, joined the Hip Muslim Moms, a support group for women with children under 5 years old, and brought her young son to play dates with other mothers, said group organizer Esraa Bani. She had moved to the area and was looking for a mothers group when she joined.

She was very quiet and kept to herself.

Petney observed that "they didn't seem to be too friendly with anybody."
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By ALICIA A. CALDWELL Associated Press
Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan, Matt Apuzzo and Sarah Brumfield in Washington, Brett Zongker in Arlington, Va., Kathleen Miller in Reston, Va., and Kasey Jones and Ben Nuckols in Baltimore contributed to this report.