(along with a third alleged hijacker). When police investigating the 9/11 attacks raided the Hamburg apartment of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, they found the telephone number of al-Awlaki among bin al-Shibh's personal contacts. Six days after the 9/11 attacks, al-Awlaki suggested in writing on the IslamOnline.net website that Israeli intelligence agents might have been responsible for the attacks, and that the FBI "went into the roster of the airplanes, and whoever has a Muslim or Arab name became the hijacker by default". The FBI interviewed al-Awlaki four times in the eight days following the 9/11 attacks. FBI agents conducted repeated interviews and placed the imam under surveillance. Although some law enforcement and public officials have been outspoken about their suspicions of Al-Awlaki's role in the 9/11 plot, no solid evidence emerged linking him to the plot. Al-Awlaki resigned from Dar Al-Hijrah in early 2002 due to post-9/11 media attention that distracted the imam from his duties, according to the mosque's outreach director. Later in 2002, al-Awlaki posted an essay in Arabic on the Islam Today website titled "Why Muslims Love Death", lauding the fervor of Palestinian suicide bombers. He expressed a similar opinion in a speech at a London mosque later that year. By July 2002, al-Awlaki was under investigation in the United States for having received money from the subject of a U.S. Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation. His name was added to the list of terrorism suspects. Passport fraud issues In June 2002, a Denver federal judge signed an arrest warrant for al-Awlaki for passport fraud. On October 9, the Denver U.S. Attorney's Office filed a motion to dismiss the complaint and vacate the arrest warrant. Prosecutors believed that they lacked sufficient evidence of a crime, according to U.S. Attorney Dave Gaouette, who authorized its withdrawal. Al-Awlaki had listed Yemen rather than the United States as his place of birth on his 1990 application for a U.S. Social Security number, soon after arriving in the US. Al-Awlaki used this documentation to obtain a passport in 1993. He later corrected his place of birth to Las Cruces, New Mexico. "The bizarre thing is if you put Yemen down (on the application), it would be harder to get a Social Security number than to say you are a native-born citizen of Las Cruces", Gaouette said. Prosecutors could not charge him in October 2002, when he returned from a trip abroad, because