Vanguard correpondent Christof Putzel reported from Somalia in 2006 and followed the desperate flight of Somali refugees across the Gulf of Aden in 2008. His most recent documentary, American Jihadi is on Current TV now.

A Somali militant group's claim that it carried out the devastating attack on a popular restaurant in Uganda during the World Cup final triggered widespread fear of a new and frightening threat to innocents in Africa and beyond. The slaughter on Sunday of at least 76 people who had gathered to watch the game on television in Kampala, Uganda's capital, appears to be the first terrorist strike outside Somalia by Al-Shabaab, a militant Islamic group allied with Al Qaeda.

Al-Shabaab has earned a reputation inside its own country for ruthless determination to seize the strife-torn failed state whose weak, supposedly transitional government is clinging to control of the Somali capital of Mogadishu. Its quest, thanks in part to successful recruiting of Muslims in the West, is often described as a jihad, or holy war. I recently profiled a young American for Vanguard, raised as a Christian in Alabama, who is now a leader in Al-Shabaab and an effective Internet propagandist rallying disenchanted young Muslims in the West to come join the cause.

Kampala is, in once sense, an obvious place for Al-Shabaab to strike, because Uganda is the largest contributor of troops to the African's Union's peacekeeping force that shores its principal target, the existing government in Mogadishu. But the coordinated double bombing also serves as a warning to other African nations--and the West as well--that Al-Shabaab's ambitions are growing.

When I was in Mogadishu four years ago, Al-Shabaab was a ragtag band of youths acting as the military arm of the Islamic Court Union, an Islamic coalition that brought momentary calm to the chaos in Somalia. In nearly two decades of disastrous corruption and disruption inside Somalia, hundreds of thousands of Somalis have fled to new communities around the world, including sizable populations in Toronto, Minnesota and elsewhere in North America.

But Al-Shabaab has drawn hundreds of foreign recruits to join its cause its war to establish Islamic rule. They have certainly established their cred among disenchanted exiles, but what has been a recruiting ground could also be a cover for planting cells of homegrown terrorists managed by Al-Shabaab.

Moments before twin bomb blasts tore through crowds of football fans. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

Darren Foster is a producer for Vanguard.

Just a few months ago, I sat down for a final dinner in Uganda with Vanguard correspondent Mariana van Zeller and producer Alex Simmons. We were joined by a couple of other foreign reporters who we had become friendly with while covering the country’s controversial anti-gay legislation. One of them, a French photojournalist who is based in Uganda, suggested the place: Ethiopian Village, a leafy outdoor restaurant that’s as popular for its food as for its giant projection screen.

Expats—journalists, missionaries, NGO workers—along with Ugandans regularly gather at Ethiopian Village to watch big sporting events. And that was the scene last night when a large crowd gathered to watch the World Cup final between Spain and the Netherlands. The match was entering the final minutes of regular time when a bomb ripped through the packed restaurant. A near simultaneous explosion tore through a rugby field where large screens showing the match had drawn hundreds of spectators. At last count, 74 people were killed, and many more injured.

While reporting in Uganda this kind of terrorism was the furthest thing from our mind. Kampala is a safe and peaceful city. But as early as last week, the leader of the Somali Islamist group, Al-Shabaab, threatened to launch an attack on Uganda, whose troops are part of the African Union peacekeeping force in Mogadishu. Also, lost in the bigger headline of New York Times reporter Jeffrey Gettleman’s recent story about child soldiers working for the US-backed government in Somalia was the fact that many of the government forces are trained in Uganda.

The Ugandan military dismissed the threat from Al-Shabaab. They may have thought that Uganda was too far outside the scope of international terror. And while many are reporting that this is Al-Shabaab’s first strike outside of Somalia, that’s not entirely accurate. Al Shabab is a franchise of a global network. A network that put itself on the map with another coordinated bombing in East Africa. In 1998, al Qaeda simultaneously bombed the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania killing hundreds of people.

Lawrence Wright reported in his excellent book on al Qaeda, The Looming Tower, that it was Osama bin Laden’s hope that the bombings would draw the US into Afghanistan, where he had recently moved al Qaeda. All bin Laden got were a few cruise missiles. But three years later, after the Sept. 11 attacks, he finally got his wish.

Since then, Afghanistan and Iraq have largely defined the war on terror. But as the bombings in Kampala show, with terrorism the battlefield isn’t always so clear or obvious.

Alex Simmons is the producer of Vanguard's "War Crimes."

From the front page of The New York Times today:

The government is preparing to issue new rules that will make it substantially easier for veterans who have been found to have post-traumatic stress disorder to receive disability benefits, a change that could affect hundreds of thousands of veterans from the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam...

Under the new rule, which applies to veterans of all wars, the department will grant compensation to those with P.T.S.D. if they can simply show that they served in a war zone and in a job consistent with the events that they say caused their conditions. They would not have to prove, for instance, that they came under fire, served in a front-line unit or saw a friend killed.

The new rule would also allow compensation for service members who had good reason to fear traumatic events, known as stressors, even if they did not actually experience them.

The move reflects a greater understanding of PTSD, that one doesn't have to serve on the front-line or come under direct fire to return with the disorder. [Watch an outtake from "War Crimes" about a Los Angeles treatment clinic for veterans with PTSD.]

Of the vets we spoke to with PTSD during the making of Vanguard's "War Crimes," some experienced what are considered classic causes of combat trauma, seeing a good friend die or having their Humvee hit with an IED, like Jesse Bratcher.

But others, like Clark Fish, returned from the war zone traumatized not by fighting on a battlefield, but from working in an emergency room and seeing soldiers, and Iraqi children, die on a daily basis. [Meet Clark Fish in this scene from "War Crimes."]

In the past, it has been much harder for those like Clark to prove they had PTSD after never coming under fire from the enemy. These new rules are attempting to change that.

Watch Vanguard correspondent Kaj Larsen talk about his experiences as a Navy SEAL returning from combat below.

Correspondent Kaj Larsen and producer Alex Simmons both live Tweeted during the premiere of "War Crimes."

a_simmons This is Clark Fish...accused of murder. [Watch an introduction to Inmate Fish.]

a_simmons This was the first time I've ever filmed in a maximum security jail.

a_simmons No joke, DMX was in the same "pod" as Clark Fish [Watch Kaj talk about meeting DMX.]

a_simmons A lot of these scenes were filmed with a Canon 7D, using a steadicam.

kajlarsen Clark's father, Rickman Fish, is a vietnam veteran.

a_simmons Clark's dad was also a vet, who had PTSD and who got in trouble with the law. An scary coincidence @kajlarsen and I thought.

a_simmons This is the only article ever written about Clark. It's not long. http://bit.ly/9TRAi2

kajlarsen Breathe tattooed on Clark's arm. Ironic?

a_simmons @kajlarsen 1 of 5 ironic tattoos he has

a_simmons An excellent article about all the murders in Co. Springs by local reporter Dave Philipps. http://bit.ly/pRLXZ

a_simmons The Co. Springs Sgt. wanted nothing to do with us until he found out @kajlarsen was also a vet [Watch Kaj talk about going from Navy SEAL to reporter.]

a_simmons Dave Philipps went to Journalism School with @marianavz and @darrenfoster. Found out after intv.

kajlarsen Dave was extraordinary. Small town ski and snow reporter who stumbled on to an incredible story in his backyard [Watch Dave explain the lack of statistics about soldiers with PTSD who commit crimes.]

a_simmons + a Pulizter nom RT @kajlarsen: Dave was extraordinary. Small town ski and snow reporter who stumbled on to an incredible story

kajlarsen Gotta love the WARCAT. An acronym for everything.

a_simmons How good was Jack in this movie. http://youtu.be/DCUmINGae44

kajlarsen One of the greatest movies of all time! [One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was shot at the same mental health institution where Kaj and Alex shot.]

a_simmons My girlfriend actually found this article about Jesse Bratcher and suggested I read it. Led us to Salem, OR. http://bit.ly/9ymUyv

a_simmons Also, I went to Willamette University...in Salem, OR

a_simmons The very talented @justinmitchell helped us film many of these scenes in John Day. See his doc, it's incredible. www.riobreaks.com

kajlarsen Markku was awesome. A really interesting character.

kajlarsen Markku's father was a professor working with Einstein. Smart family.

a_simmons Markku Sario also runs the local community theater, hence his love of Shakespeare.

kajlarsen This murder is still a very touchy subject in John Day.

kajlarsen Quick push-up break, try and get 50 in.

kajlarsen Done, lets get back to Vanguard.

a_simmons Jesse and Celena got married one month after the murder.

a_simmons Neither the DA or the Defense team wanted to talk about Clark's PTSD in the trial. Elephant in the room?

a_simmons  Nic Gray now runs his own business, helping other vets start their own businesses. http://bit.ly/9DX8Z3

kajlarsen Vets courts have a dramatically lower recidivism rate than traditional criminal courts.

a_simmons The judge of this Vet Court is a former Army General.

kajlarsen Next commercial break, 50 Burpees! Might take me a minute to recover. Thats a real set.

kajlarsen 2.5 years is an unbelievably long time to await trial. Its the nature of death penalty cases, but a very questionable system...

kajlarsen as mentioned by our latest retiring supreme court justice. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/judicial/2010-05-05-stevens_N.htm?csp=34

kajlarsen Bud is a vet himself.

a_simmons The last report on veterans incarcerated in America used 2004 data. The next one will be out in 2012.

a_simmons We teamed up with @GOOD and they made an amazing graphic using this data. http://bit.ly/cWLBUK

a_simmons One of my best friends actually played a soldier on Grey's Anatomy. Random... [Watch Kaj talk about Rambo and other stories about soldiers with PTSD.]

kajlarsen Bud brown telling it straight.

a_simmons half of Vietnam vets with PTSD have been arrested or incarcerated at least once. insane stat I thought.

 kajlarsen At first I thought Clark was joking, he wasnt.

Watch Kaj talk more about "War Crimes" in the behind the scenes commentary below.

In a jail in Phoenix, Arizona sits Inmate P382209--Clark Fish. Clark is 24. He is wearing black and white stripes that suggest a different era of incarceration. Young, good looking, with sandy blond hair, well spoken in a self-educated way, he does not give off the impression of a hardened criminal. Clark is in his 16 by 9 cell taking two pink socks (the inmates have pink undergarments in the Maricopa County facility) and symmetrically rolling them together into a little ball about the size of an orange. He finishes by making and adjusting the dimple impression where the socks come together into a perfect curve--or, as my drill instructor used to say when I was in Officer Candidate School, "I want those socks to smile, Candidate Larsen! Why is the goddamn smile on those socks crooked?"

Clark's perfectly folded socks were a tell tale sign that he had once worn a different uniform than the old-school stripes he wears today. Just four years ago he was an Army medic deployed to Iraq. Thanks to his former military training his socks contain the perfect smile--but Clark does not. He finds himself in the most grave of circumstances: convicted of first-degree murder for strangling his girlfriend and now facing the death penalty.

In June of this year, after two-and-a-half years awaiting trial, Clark was found guilty. He joined the growing ranks of veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who return home and commit crimes. As I found in "War Crimes," my new Vanguard documentary, one common thread among these fallen heroes is that a large majority of them are suffering from PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder. [Watch a trailer for "War Crimes" here.]

Clark was diagnosed with PTSD, which encompasses a wide array of long-lasting physical and mental responses to experiencing trauma, in 2007. To date over 350,000 veterans have been diagnosed with the condition and a recent Stanford University study suggests that as many as 770,000 of those returning from the two wars overseas may be suffering with PTSD.

As I followed the case of Inmate Fish, who had served six months at Balad Air Base in Iraq, I began to wonder just how many other veterans with PTSD from Iraq and Afghanistan were, like Clark, spending time behind bars. The answer is unknown. Neither the Department of Justice, nor the Department of Defense, nor any institution has an accurate count of how many vets are in our nation's prisons and jails. It is troubling that the scope of this problem is not understood.

The anecdotal evidence points to an iceberg-sized trend looming beneath the surface. Dozens of soldiers have been accused of killing girlfriends or wives, a town in Colorado had eight murders within a single battalion, and there is a landmark case in Oregon where an Iraq vet used PTSD as a defense for murder. In a yellow ribbon political climate, asking questions about incarcerated veterans is a sticky issue. But as I started looking at small town newspaper articles and speaking to advocacy groups, the pattern was undeniable: veterans are getting arrested and getting locked up.

In 2008 The New York Times published an article on Iraq/Afghanistan veterans who had been charged with murder after returning home. The researchers, using Lexis-Nexis and culling reports from local papers, determined that there had been at least 121 murders by veterans since the start of the two wars. The report was an initial indicator of a problem--but it may have underestimated the size and scope of the issue. The research technique only flagged articles where the veteran's status was explicitly mentioned. A case such as Clark Fish's, where there was no mention of his military service, did not make the tally. We were able to determine that there have been at least 44 additional murders since the article was published two years ago. While high-profile murders are headline grabbing, they represent only the apex of a pyramid of crime committed by veterans, including domestic violence, drug use and DUIs. The sum total of crimes committed by veterans is even more striking.

For the most part the military denies a connection between crime and combat, the tacit suggestion being that among any population there is going to be a certain amount of crime. However, the rate at which veterans are committing crimes wildly outpaces the general population. A series of articles by Dave Phillips, a local reporter from the Colorado Springs Gazette, about a battalion known ironically as the "Lethal Warriors" in Ft. Carson, Colo., documents one unit of about 500 soldiers in which eight men were charged with murder. Statistically that is about 500 times greater than the average murder rate of the city where the crimes occurred. In all the cases in Colorado--and in the case of every veteran we spoke with who had spent time in jail--PTSD had played a role in the crime.

So what's happening here? Why are a growing number of veterans linked by their service and their PTSD ending up behind bars? The pattern we observed seemed to follow a typical downward spiral. A veteran suffering from PTSD doesn't seek or receive the treatment he or she needs. They begin self-medicating to deal with PTSD, abusing alcohol, prescription drugs, and illegal drugs, and eventually getting in trouble with the law. These first offenses are early warning signs that go unheeded. Then, in many of the cases, the smaller offenses lead to larger offenses--like murder.

What is troubling about this trend is that the scope is not understood. Some experts have suggested that there is a lag effect of about five years between veterans returning and a follow on crime wave. They predict, eerily, that we are at the leading edge of a "tsunami" of veteran crime. Perhaps even more disturbing is the dearth of data and conversation about the subject.

Ultimately we ask our veterans to do an incredibly difficult thing. We ask them to go to a war and deal with the reality of death, destruction, and despair--and then to return home and put those things behind them, to fully function as members of society. Imagine spending 15 months overseas and never leaving your rifle. Sleeping with it, eating with it, even taking it to the john. You are trained to never be without it. Then you come home, and you feel naked without it. So you do what you where trained to do and carry the weapon at all times. Only now, if you bring your weapon to a movie theater, you may have committed a crime. In many of the cases, having a weapon on them was a critical component of a veteran being charged with a crime. Compounding that adjustment, many of these returning veterans are also suffering mental health injuries. The explosive cocktail of PTSD, self-medication, and combat experience has proven in some cases to be a violent combination.

This problem may have been pre-empted by forethought. America has ample evidence of returning soldiers damaged by war. In the early 1980s, one in five prisoners in America was a Vietnam veteran. Hollywood registered the trend. In Rambo: First Blood a small town sheriff arrests a Vietnam veteran. Homer chronicles Ulysses' struggle to adjust to coming home after a decade of war. Yet despite the prevalence of literature and pop culture precedent, the military and the Veterans Administration seem to have been underprepared to deal with a generation coming home after the current conflicts.

The news is not all bad. There are some encouraging signs. Veteran's Courts around the country are being established to focus on treating veterans for their PTSD rather than punishing them for their crimes. A positive step, but simultaneously an indicator of the problem at hand. The VA is getting better at identifying and treating the invisible wounds of war. Certainly the key to solving the issue is to identify vets suffering from PTSD before it spirals into criminal behavior. And a few voices within the military are reluctantly starting to acknowledge the issue. The former Commanding General of Ft. Carson, one of the epicenters of the PTSD and crime epidemic, spoke of the "crescendo effect"--the idea that lesser crimes like DUIs and assault are red flags for further trouble. The critical issue remains: we have neither a comprehensive tracking system nor an adequate plan to receive the hundreds of thousands of veterans who are suffering from PTSD and may be at risk for ending up in jail or prison.

I have a close friend, a fellow veteran, who talks about the difference between the aftermath of WWII and Vietnam. He says, "After World War Two, a whole generation of soldiers came back home and built up their country. Conversely, we can acknowledge that after Vietnam many veterans returned and struggled to find their place." The battle for how this new generation of veterans will be remembered is still up for grabs.

While it's important to emphasize that the vast majority of veterans return home after serving honorably and re-integrate into society using many of the skills and strengths of their military service, the last several months have taught me that an increasingly alarming number are unable to leave the war behind. For the most extreme cases, PTSD is rapidly becoming a pipeline to prison. From Clark Fish who faces the death penalty in Arizona, to Jessie Bratcher, who was found guilty but insane because of PTSD in Oregon, veterans are fighting difficult battles in the courtrooms.

What steps we take to prevent other soldiers from becoming embroiled in these tragic scenarios will help define how this generation of veterans returns home and move from soldiers to citizens. We help the entire country by helping veterans who are on the edge. It makes our communities safer and honors the values they fought for.

After the jump, meet Inmate Clark Fish in this exclusive clip from Vanguard's "War Crimes," premiering Wednesday, July 7 at 10/9c on Current TV. 

Correspondent Christof Putzel tweeted live commentary during the East Coast premiere of "American Jihadi."

+ @KajLarsen and I arrived in Mogadishu before the airport opened by hitching a ride from Nairobi on a World Food Program plane.

+ I was surprised to learn that a lot of people we met in Daphne had never heard of Omar Hammami. [Watch Christof's behind the scenes commentary.]

+ I hopped around bars + restaurants in Daphne for 3 days before I finally met someone who remembered Omar.

+ I hooked up with Bernie after meeting a waiter at a restaurant who had run into him at a Wal-Mart a few weeks earlier.

+ Omar had a reputation in Model UN of only choosing Muslim countries (such as Pakistan and Indonesia) to represent.

+ McMeans also included Omar’s name on tests she would give to her students, comparing Omar to Richard Reid, “the shoe bomber.”

+ Omar Hammami goes by the name Abu Mansour Al-Amriki. Al-Amriki means “the American.” [Watch a video about Omar's messages posted to internet forums.]

+ Bernie’s friends were disappointed that he’d found a new friend and was no longer interested in smoking pot and skipping school.

+ After 9/11, Omar condemned the terror attacks.

+ Omar and Bernie spent all their time studying Islam, sparking other Muslims in the community to mock them, nicknaming them “the Dixies.”

+ Since there were so few pictures of Omar we relied heavily on a few pictures of him we found in a Daphne High School yearbook.

+ Canada has one of the largest Somali populations in the West, with the census reporting 37,785 people claiming Somali descent.

+ I was surprised when after this interview the owner called me asking permission to sell bootleg copies of Mogadishu Madness in his store.

+ One of the best parts about hanging out with Bernie in Toronto was that he knew all the best Somali spots to eat!

+ Andrea Elliott wrote an excellent profile on Omar in the New York Times.

+ Sadiyo is an incredibly charming woman and we were honored that she granted us her first on-camera interview.

+ Sharon serves up a mean key-lime pie. While we were filming in Daphne, a Muslim gentleman from Toronto who Sharon had met online flew down to meet her and propose.

+ In Mogadishu Madness, you can see our first encounter with guys from Al Shabaab back when they were the military wing of the ICU. 

+ Omar’s first hip hop track, “First Stop Addis,” can be heard in its entirety here: http://tinyurl.com/27gbl7c

+ In April, Omar released another video with Al Shabaab entitled, “Festival for the Children of the Martyrs.” [Watch an extended version of one of Omar's recruiting videos.]

+ Almost nobody in Toronto’s Somali community was willing to talk on camera about the men who allegedly left to join Al Shabaab.

+ Shirwa Ahmed earned the unique distinction of becoming the first American suicide bomber.

+ We were with Bernie and Sadiyo when news broke that one of the missing men was killed in Somalia fighting with Al Shabaab. [Watch a video about Al-Shabaab recruiting Westerners.]

+ Moe spent six months fighting alongside Al Shabaab in Somalia. He is starting an organization entitled Generation Islam dedicated to radicalizing young Muslims.

Watch a trailer for "American Jihadi" after the jump.

After reading about an American youth who converted to Islam and joined an extremist insurgency in Africa, I realized he and I had unwittingly crossed paths a few years before. In Current TV’s “American Jihadi,” a new episode of the Vanguard documentary series airing Wednesday, I go looking for the young man pictured above. I wanted to find him, if not in the flesh, at least to trace his route from small-town high school boy to anti-American warrior.

I was in the war-ravaged city of Mogadishu in 2006, one of the first American TV correspondents to see the place in years. An Islamic coalition calling itself the Islamic Court Union had seized control of the Somali capital and imposed an uneasy peace that at least possible to get inside the chaotic “failed state.”

To me and many other Americans, Mogadishu was best known as the site of the military tragedy and movie “Black Hawk Down.” Twenty-six years old and no stranger to hot spots around the world, I was drawn by the spirit of adventure and a journalist’s curiosity, despite warnings from others—including my father, a seasoned war correspondent, that the story wasn’t worth the risk.

It was. My colleague, Kaj Larsen, and I found Somali expatriates streaming back to their homeland by the thousands to pick up their lives in a spirit of hope and renewal, despite the ruins and hair-trigger tempers that were the legacy of a 15-year civil war. I interviewed Islamist leaders who had captured the city and listened to their pleas for peace and a chance to re-establish a nation. Accusing the Islamic Courts of having ties to Al Qaida, the U.S. government branded them as terrorists.

Shortly after my return to the United States to put together my piece, “Mogadishu Madness,” Ethiopian troops invaded Somalia with U.S. military support and drove the Islamists into hiding. Somalia plunged back into war.

As it turned out, in the flow of people arriving at the reopened international airport in Mogadishu during that brief period of peace was another twentysomething American. Drawn by a passion to help establish an Islamic state in Somalia, Omar Hammami had left his wife and family in Egypt and arrived in Mogadishu shortly after I did. Like many Somali Muslims who answered a call for jihad to fight off the Christian invaders from Ethiopia, Omar joined Al Shabaab, one of the most ruthless and determined factions that had previously fought each other but were now united against the foreigners.

After rising to become a top field commander, Omar is now a prominent Internet propagandist for the Somali allies of Al Qaida who helps recruit other young Muslims from the West to enlist in the cause. In the past three years, at least 30 American and Canadian citizens have turned up fighting in Somalia with Al Shabaab, more than have joined any other extremist group affiliated with Al Qaida.

In “American Jihadi,” I retrace Omar’s path from Bible Belt Christian to Islamic extremist. I flew to Daphne, Alabama with practically no leads and spent three days cruising bars and restaurants—local hangouts where I thought people Omar’s age might hang out. At a Hooters, I met a patron who vaguely remembered playing soccer with Omar as a kid, then another who believed her fiancé may have taken a class with him sophomore year.

Discouraged, I mentioned my quest to a waiter at a sports bar and grill on my last day in town. He had recently run into Omar’s best friend, a man named Bernie Culveyhouse, at a Walmart and remembered the street where he lived.

I went there, looking for a house that might offer some clue, and asked a 14-year-old playing outside if he knew the Culveyhouse family.

“You mean the people with rags on their heads?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I guessed.

“They stick out because we don’t have that many Jews around here.”

No one was home so I left a letter on the doorstep with a DVD of my work and requested that we meet to discuss my assignment.

As I was boarding a flight home to the West Coast with no story in hand, Bernie called my cell phone. He said he’d turned down every request for an on-camera interview but liked what he’d seen of my work and would agree to meet. I walked out of the airport and spent that evening with him, watching “Lost” and talking about “Mogadishu Madness”—and his dear friend Omar.

It was the first of many visits, including a trip to Toronto to meet Omar’s ex-wife, a Somali-Canadian, and the sister of Bernie’s wife. Bernie had taken much of the journey with Omar, beginning with their conversion to Islam in Daphne, to the Somali community in Toronto, and ending in Alexandria, Egypt, where they expected to find comfort and happiness in an Islamic country.

Bernie went home to Daphne with his family; Omar slipped away and was next seen on the Internet as a guerrilla fighter in Somalia.

Bernie and I still struggle to understand why.

Vanguard’s “American Jihadi” premieres Wednesday, June 30 at 10 p.m. on Current TV. Watch a trailer after the jump.

Watch a special encore of Vanguard's "Missionaries of Hate" on Wednesday, June 23 at 10/9c.

In March 2009, three American evangelicals traveled to Uganda to headline an anti-gay conference. Soon after, legislation was proposed that would make being gay punishable by life in prison or, in some cases, death. The anti-homosexuality bill drew international condemnation, with both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama weighing in.

And while many American evangelicals released statements criticizing the bill after the controversy erupted, at least one of them traveled to Uganda in person. In May, Lou Engle, founder of TheCall Ministry and a chief campaigner for Proposition 8, the measure that outlaws same sex marriage in California, traveled to the east African nation to headline a prayer event.

Before he left for Uganda, Engle sent out a press release saying that he was not going there to promote the anti-homosexuality bill. Weeks after returning, Engle sent out another press release voicing his regret that the bill was promoted at TheCall Uganda event and says that it happened after he had left.

As we show in Vanguard's "Missionaries of Hate," during TheCall Uganda, Engle surrounded himself with some of the key backers of Uganda's anti-gay legislation, including Pastor Julius Oyet, Minister of Ethics and Integrity Nsaba Buturo and the bill's author, MP David Bahati.

Others have already pointed out how Oyet actually spoke in support of the bill before Engle with Buturo following just after. We showed a bit of what Engle said in our documentary, but many have been wondering what else he said during his sermon at the prayer event.

Here's a bit more of the man in his own words:

Darren Foster is a producer for Vanguard.

If the BP oil spill happened in Nigeria would it still make a sound? Apparently, not. But some kidnappings might.

The New York Times did a great story from the Niger Delta, where on average an Exxon Valdez disaster happens every year… for the last 50 years. In 1989, the Valdez spilled nearly 11 million gallons of oil into the waters off Alaska. The latest estimates of the BP disaster say that up to 2.5 million gallons a day may be pouring in the Gulf of Mexico. That’d make it the worst in US history, but rather pedestrian for the Niger Delta.

Perhaps no place on earth has been as battered by oil, experts say, leaving residents here astonished at the nonstop attention paid to the gusher half a world away in the Gulf of Mexico. It was only a few weeks ago, they say, that a burst pipe belonging to Royal Dutch Shell in the mangroves was finally shut after flowing for two months: now nothing living moves in a black-and-brown world once teeming with shrimp and crab.…

The oil spews from rusted and aging pipes, unchecked by what analysts say is ineffectual or collusive regulation, and abetted by deficient maintenance and sabotage. In the face of this black tide is an infrequent protest — soldiers guarding an Exxon Mobil site beat women who were demonstrating last month, according to witnesses — but mostly resentful resignation.

In 2007, I traveled with Vanguard correspondent Mariana van Zeller to the Niger Delta in Nigeria to look into a growing insurgency there. We visited at the height of a kidnapping for ransom campaign, where rebels were regularly attacking oil facilities and taking foreign workers hostage. The rash of violence managed to capture some international attention, but we wanted to know what was behind the unrest in one of the US’s most important energy suppliers.

For many of the delta’s residents, the violence was 50 years in the making, ever since oil was first discovered in the country.

The two big takeaways from my trip were:

1. Despite becoming one of the world’s leading oil producers, Nigeria has very little to show for it. The Niger Delta, for example, is responsible for 80 percent of the entire country’s total revenue, but it remains one of the poorest regions. Most of its inhabitants live on less than $1 a day.
2. For many communities in the delta, the failed promises of development are nothing compared to the environmental damage oil has caused.

Since it was first pumped in Nigeria, more than 1.5 million tons of oil has spilled in the delta, that’s more than 500 million gallons or about 50 Exxon Valdez disasters. One a year since oil was first pumped in 1961.

Activists in the delta have for years been trying to attract international attention to this environmental devastation and to make oil companies accountable, but to no avail.

The sight of oil company executives being brought before Congress for a tongue-lashing—or, better yet, setting up a $20 billion fund to pay damage claims—must seem as foreign to Nigerians as a bunch of masked rebels attacking oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico would be to Americans. But all things are not equal.

Watch Vanguard's "Rebels in the Pipeline" after the jump.