Want an Al-Qaeda job? Apply now--with references, please.(Scan)

An al-Qaeda application form? It sounds like a skit from Saturday Night Live, but it's all too true. In the wake of the fall of the Taliban, the FBI recovered thousands of documents from al-Qaeda strong-holds in Afghanistan, a good number of which were none other than detailed applications for membership in Osama bin Laden's organization.

Reading "Mujahideen Identification Form/New Applicant Form" at the top of the page, these documents require prospective applicants to provide their name, alias, date of birth, citizenship, language, and references, as well as a detailed essay on the position they are seeking.

One of these applicants was none other than would-be dirty bomber Jose Padilla, who went by the nom de guerre Abdullah al-Muhajir, or the Pilgrim Servant of God. Padilla, a former Chicago gang member who converted to Islam and joined al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, is now being held as an enemy combatant by the United States, and it was his recovered application form, among other things, that was cited by Deputy Attorney General James Comey on June 1 as a reason Padilla should remain that way.

The idea of al-Qaeda application forms may strike the casual Western observer as bizarre, but it actually makes a great deal of sense when one stops to consider the history and nature of the organization. Unlike smaller terrorist groups like the IRA or Hamas, al-Qaeda consists of far more people than the network's leadership can keep track of offhand. Even in its early days in Sudan, the network employed as many as 1,000 "civilian" members just to administer bin Laden's considerable business portfolio. Depending on whom you talk to, anywhere between 10,000 and 110,000 fighters were trained in the Afghan camps during the 1990s. From the perspective of any terrorist ...