Part 2

Hamid Hayat didn't want to believe that his closest friend was a paid government agent. Then, awaiting trial, he learned Naseem Khan would be the star witness against him.

The prison warden's letter arrived three days before Christmas.

Last fall, I wrote a letter to a medium-security prison in Arizona, requesting an interview with an inmate named Hamid Hayat. He was serving a 24-year sentence after being convicted of receiving terrorist training in Pakistan. Although Hayat's case made international headlines when he was arrested as part of an alleged al Qaeda "sleeper cell" in Lodi, a rural California town, he had never talked with a reporter before.