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April 2008 - Posts
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Last week, the Associated Press reported that the State Department approved National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC) guidelines for terminology in defining the enemy created by NCTC's Extremist Messaging Branch, based on a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report "Terminology to Define the Terrorists: Recommendations from American Muslims". In these new guidelines, the term "jihadist" (among others) was not to be used in defining the enemy or its actions.
But this week, it is apparent that these new guidelines are not being reflected in the State Department annual terrorist report and in comments from President Bush.
In the April 2008 State Department Country Reports on Terrorism 2007 released today, anyone can clearly see the use of the terms "jihad", "jihadist", "jihadi", "mujahedin / mujahadin", "caliphate", "Islamist" -- as nouns describing enemy terrorist activity and ideology (not just in the titles of Jihadist groups' names).
Such usage can been easily found in the Microsoft Word version of the State Department report:
- "jihad": pages 63, 75, 81, 107, 126, 127, 174, 187, 272
- "jihadi(s)": pages 10, 93, 94, 103, 107, 122
- "jihadist": pages 116, 117, 120, 121
- "Islamist": pages 17, 52, 62, 75, 87, 93, 95, 122, 188, 271, 291
These references are clearly describing State Department counterterrorist analyst descriptions of enemy terrorist individuals, activity, and ideology. For example, such phrases in the annual State Department terror report as: "promoting jihad and recruiting potential suicide bombers" (p. 75), "a recruitment network for foreign jihadis" (p. 93), "recruiting jihadists to fight" (p. 117), "numerous cells dedicated to sending Jihadi fighters" (p. 122), "AQ leadership has called for jihad against UN forces" (p. 174) -- don't sound like a view of "jihad" as a "spiritual struggle".
Moreover, in President Bush's April 28 press conference, he referred to the enemy as "jihadists" - to an assembled press corps that never asked him a single question about the remark.
In last week's reported NCTC memorandum and DHS report on the proper terminology in describing the enemy, the NCTC is quoted stating that " ever use the terms 'jihadist' or 'mujahedeen' in conversation to describe the terrorists...calling our enemies 'jihadis' and their movement a global 'jihad' unintentionally legitimizes their actions." As described in last week's article on this subject, I pointed out that this viewpoint challenges many of the key passages in the 9/11 Commission Report.
Does the NCTC and DHS now think that the State Department and President Bush are "legitimizing" the actions of the enemy by using such terms?
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Almost as soon as my last post on the transnational threat of cigarette smuggling was posted, several alert friends sent me the recent speech by Attorney General Michael Mukasey at CSIS, where he announced a new effort to understand and combat transnational criminal organizations.
The initiative is long overdue. As Mukasey noted, the Organized Crime Council had not met for 15 years. Quite a feat, given the numerous and wide-ranging indications that organized criminal groups have steadily gained influence, power and control or near-control over areas that are vital national security. As Mukasey noted:
International organized crime is a hybrid criminal problem that implicates three of the department’s national priorities: national security, violent crime, and public corruption. It needs a coordinated response and an openness to new ways of doing business. It also demands that we work closely with our foreign colleagues in order to dismantle global criminal syndicates. In short, this is about more than the Department of Justice. It involves our law enforcement and non-law enforcement colleagues at the Departments of Homeland Security, State, Treasury, and Labor, the U.S. Postal Service, as well as the intelligence community. And I’d like to thank these other agencies for their help and for their efforts.
The attorney general’s Organized Crime Council will have a leading role in coordinating that effort.
But one thing was curiously missing from Mukasey's comments, and that is growing link, as I and others have outlined numerous times, between these organized criminal networks and terrorism, including but not limited to terrorism driven by radical Islamist theology.
Mukasey did mention the case of Viktor Bout and the FARC, which I have written about extensively. But it is hear that Mukasey's silence is most interesting. My full blog is here.
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 Yesterday saw the release of Grand Theft Auto IV accompanied as usual by howls of protest from certain quarters of the media about declining moral standards. For the uninitiated Grand Theft Auto is a video game where the player takes on the guise of a criminal character in Liberty city, which is modeled to look like New York City. Whatever the protests the game is set to break opening week sales figures of over $400M, arguably making video games the most dominant of all media forms. This fact, rather than the predictable tut-tutting of assorted commentators is a trend, which is worth examining from a security and intelligence perspective.
There are a number of ideas flying around at the moment that don’t fall under a single banner but which taken as a whole can be thought of as suggesting a new way of considering terrorism or counter-terrorism, particularly through the lens of gaming and other immersive environments. The two categories that roughly coalesce are the application of gaming logic to real-life scenarios and the projects that have emerged from the ‘human terrain mapping’ initiated by the Pentagon. Putting these two modules together allows for a peek over the horizon at what might be next.
There is little doubt that gaming culture is becoming a powerful and pervasive part of society, especially the compelling nature of Massive Multiplayer games. The way these games are designed-- the intricate procedural architecture of earning points for completing certain tasks in certain ways, is a template that can be applied to real-life; especially if one were to overlay a gaming template onto real-life activities. One group that has been active in this realm is 42 Entertainment that produce Alternative Reality Games (ARGs) in order to market products. The first such ARG was tied to the Steven Spielberg movie, ‘AI: Artificial Intelligence’ and was developed by Jordan Weisman, then a Microsoft executive before he founded 42 Entertainment. The ‘AI’ game involved millions of people across the planet collectively solving a series of puzzles both online and in the real world and became known as 'the Beast'. ARG game tasks are too complicated for any one person but the Internet allows for a collective intelligence to emerge and assemble the pieces and solve the puzzles.
Two authors have recently expertly explored these themes in two quite stunning books. The first and most far-reaching is Daemon by Leniad Zeraus (Daniel Suarez). The book explores the overlaying of a gaming system onto real-life by a deceased computer game designer. This book is as intellectually expansive as Snow Crash, which is widely credited with inspiring today’s virtual worlds. The books suggestion of a world controlled by techniques directly adapted from gaming procedures is provocative and compelling. The second and more focused book is Halting State by Charles Stross, which explores a robbery at a virtual bank and again the overlaying of gaming architecture onto real-life. This theme of applying gaming logic over real life doesn’t as yet have a snappy title, although ARG comes close (perhaps Daemon is better though). Whatever you call the system it does rely, at heart, on the fact that human behavior is becoming more predictable through the collection of data about our online lives. What is remarkable at The Daemon is how much the novel relies on human social engineering as well as advanced software to make its case.
 The data being collected on users by technology companies, ISP’s and a host of other entities allows for the creation of models that with a built in level of error can somewhat predict future human behavior. One such researcher in this area is Paul Torrens who has programmed avatars to replicate certain human physical behaviors, and then by placing them in crowd situations predications can be made on the direction of the crowd. This is the fruit of the human terrain mapping projects coming out of DARPA. Nobody is quite clear as yet what the models can be used for other than obvious areas such as, the design of buildings or crowd control but this research could be combined with the gaming architectures to produce real-life gaming parameters where human responses are predictable within a range of options.
By now you may be wondering what has this all got to do with national security? Well these systems may be very good ways of organizing distributed groups to complete complex tasks -- for good or ill. The first advantage is the built in level of security as participants would not be required to know who else was involved in the wider platform or what the end result was supposed to be. The best way to highlight this is to think about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in gaming terms. By considering the desired end result the terrorist-designer of the real-life game could work backwards to gather the necessary resources and skills. Entry level gamers would (in real life) score points for learning English, becoming familiar with airport security (again tested online), radicalization (their zeal could be ranked using online quizzes and interviews and scored accordingly) and of course their capability on flight simulator software. This ‘game’ could be offered to numerous people without any of them being aware of what the purpose was. Those who score the highest could be sent the actual funds to carryout the operation. This is of course looking backwards an ARG (or Daemon) system such as this could be constructed by any radical or even mainstream organization in order to develop recruits or conduct a wide variety of distributed small tasks that collectively add-up to a significant whole. What works for one side also works for the other. Intelligence agencies around the world are currently asking themselves what their response should be to virtual worlds and gaming in general. One answer is certainly to adapt the underlying systems of these games to conduct some national security functions - training agents and organizing individuals to act as part of a massively distributed project are two such possibilities. Drawing the larger lessons from gaming architecture is the strategic response to rise of gaming and virtual worlds.
The adoption of gaming culture and platforms into real-life is a realistic scenario and one with potential benefits as well as pitfalls. The lesson from Grand Theft Auto IV’s expected success isn’t that we should be worried about declining moral standards, it is that gaming culture is now pervasive and as with all technology innovations it can be adapted by anyone for fair means or foul.
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I am a sucker for stories about Americans who find themselves on the wrong side of armed geopolitical disputes. I still maintain that the most fascinating saga to come out of 9/11 was John Walker Lindh, the young California drifter who found himself in Afghanistan, fighting for the Taliban, circa 2001. In the end, Lindh received a humanitarian gesture from the U.S. Department of Justice - a 20 year sentence. It could have been far, far worse. When he is released, John will be younger than I am now. I may be wrong, but I seriously doubt he will want to travel to Mecca, a condition his attorneys were careful to negotiate at the time of his plea. I suppose Adam Gadahn, the al Qaida spokesman from Irvine, California now indicted for treason, is another example, though we lack the happy ending, since he is still at large. It’s not too late to come home, Adam. Same goes for David Belfield, who allegedly killed an Iranian diplomat in 1980 and recently appeared as an American character in the film “Kandahar.” Their lives would be safer if they turned themselves in, rather than remaining where the US military is operating.
For those inclined to view the US and its military in the worst possible light, there’s a book they should read while trying to maintain these views. The Reluctant Communist (University of California Press) is the autobiography of Charles Robert Jenkins, the American sergeant stationed in South Korea who got drunk one night in the 1960s and ventured into the DMZ and into the arms of North Korea, where he remained a Cold War trophy for almost 40 years before being released to his wife in Japan.
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The State Department’s Annual terrorism report is being released today.
Following is the text of the Department announcement.
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Special Press Briefing and Release: Country Reports on Terrorism 2007
The Department of State will release the annual Congressionally mandated Country Reports on Terrorism 2007 on Wednesday, April 30 at 11:00 a.m. Coordinator of the Office for Counterterrorism Dell L. Dailey and Deputy Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Russ Travers will provide opening remarks and will then respond to reporters' questions. This event is on camera and on the record, and will be held in the State Department's press briefing room (Room 2209).
Advance Copies of the Embargoed Report
Embargoed copies of the publication will be available on Wednesday, April 30, at 9:30 a.m. in the State Department's Press Office (Room 2109). The entire report is EMBARGOED until the end of the press briefing, approximately 12:00 p.m. on April 30.
Press who attend this briefing should arrive at the 23rd Street entrance of the Department of State (2201 C Street, NW) and must present either (1) a U.S. Government-issued identification card (Department of State, White House, Congress, Department of Defense or Foreign Press Center), (2) a media-issued photo identification card, or (3) letter from their employer on letterhead verifying their employment as a journalist, accompanied by an official photo identification card (driver's license, passport). Press should allow adequate time to process through security and to be in the briefing room 10 minutes before the briefing.
Electronic Access to the Report via Internet
The full text of the report will be available for downloading from the State Department web site at: http://www.state.gov/s/ct as soon as possible after the briefing on Wednesday, April 30.
Press Contacts
For further information, contact: the Office of Press Relations (202) 647-2492 or Rhonda Shore, Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, at 202-647-1845.
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The NEFA Foundation has obtained and translated an interview of a Turkish Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) fighter. According to the IJU, Abu Yasir Al-Turki “left everything he had in Turkey, following the verse of Allah c.c. to do Jihad, migrated to live the life of the companions of Muhammed, and is presently fighting in the ranks of the Islamic Jihad Alliance.” During the interview, Al-Turki comments, “America and its allies have woken up a sleeping giant. I mean they re-lit the fire of Jihad, which was inside the religious community, and this fire is growing every day. We may not be able to see it, but this will go on until the conquest of Rome as promised by the prophet of God and hopefully will put all of Europe under the jizya tax with the permission of Allah.”
The interview can be accessed on the NEFA Foundation website.
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While the European Union or I should say individual member countries have recently toughened up their stance on Iran, one country is going towards the opposite direction: I am talking about the "neutral" Switzerland.
I just wrote an article for the Middle East Times on that topic.
You can read it here.
Here is an excerpt:
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter went to Damascus last week to meet with Hamas' Khaled Meshaal, a man accused of terrorism by the United States, Israel and the European Union. Carter's initiative was criticized by the leadership in Washington and Jerusalem as appeasing terrorism. As damaging as some people, such as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, say Carter's freelance diplomacy is to the United States, another visit by a Western dignitary to another Mideast leader, also accused of supporting terror, may have even greater repercussions.
I am talking about last month's meeting between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey.
In fact that meeting was a blessing in disguise for Tehran. Everything Calmy-Rey could do to please the mullah's regime was done.
First, let's start with the symbolic; meeting with an individual bent on destroying another country, denying the Holocaust and lately also questioning the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks constitutes a major diplomatic faux-pas. Especially for a country which cherishes its legendary "neutrality."
Indeed while the United Nations Security Council has passed three resolutions condemning and sanctioning Iran for its nuclear program, Swiss diplomacy seems totally unfazed by what the international community is trying to achieve.
Switzerland has now publicly fissured the more or less united front against Iran and Tehran loves it. Ahmadinejad was beaming during his meeting and Calmy-Rey could not stop smiling, obviously charmed by the attention of the Iranian president. Realizing the diplomatic coup, the images of the meeting were broadcast on Iranian networks around the clock.
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I went to the new Morgan Spurlock documentary, as I try to keep up with anything related to counterterrorism. I was not particularly taken by his earlier movie, “Supersize Me,” though I was forced to sit through several DVD screenings because my wife liked it so much. Even then, I still doubted his thesis - that McDonald’s can kill you - in part because there were people featured in the movie who gorged on Big Macs all their lives and seemed no worse for wear. My attitude was kind of like my reaction to Michael Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine” which claimed that the kids who orchestrated the bloody school massacre in Colorado had no chance in life because they grew up in the shadow of the U.S. military-industrial complex. Last I checked, Ford Motor Co. was also a defense contractor, and growing up in Flint, Michigan did not make Moore into anything but a smug fat guy. Why did Moore not turn his weapons on his classmates, as opposed to his camera on people he views as villains, growing up as he did in the shadow of a McPentagon franchise?
Spurlock does not rub me as wrong as Moore does, but I cannot say I am a huge fan. Part of why I paid admission to “Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden” was because I knew he had sought the expertise of three of my friends - Doug Farah, Evan Kohlman and Josh Meyer. It turns out their faces were left on the cutting room floor, although the front cover of Doug’s Blood From Stones is depicted briefly among a stack of books, and all three were named in the closing credits.
Spurlock decided to go to Middle East shortly after discovering that his wife was pregnant. (“What kind of world am I bringing a child into,” he asks.) The trip requires some antivirus shots and some hand-to-hand combat and tradecraft training, since his itinerary included some dangerous places, and some discussions with our friends in the counterterrorism business to get perspective on this whole, like, Muslim thing.
In the end, Spurlock talks to a bunch of people in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan, Egypt and Israel on film. It is mildly amusing. He debunks at least one myth - that solving the Israel-Palestinian problem will allay al Qaeda. Of course, that is obvious to anyone who follows al Qaeda communiqués, where the Palestinian cause seemed like a last-minute insertion into a college term paper as the deadline approaches. Spurlock’s only near-death experience in the Middle East comes when he seeks to enter a part of Jerusalem controlled by Hasidic Jews, and the Israeli police are called to rescue him. I suppose this editorial decision is telling. Amazingly, Spurlock was not physically threatened in Riyadh. The Saudis have managed to solve the crime problem there. If only the biggest worry for the civilized world were Hasidic Jews, I would rest a little easier.
Is it true that Uncle Sam found himself making friends with some odious characters in the Arab World because of the exigencies of the Cold War, as Spurlock depicts in cartoon form in the movie? Absolutely. That does not fully explain why 9/11 happened, and is hardly a new revelation. One of the things that comes through in Spurlock’s man-in-the-streets interviews is how disgusted Muslims around the world are with America, particularly what we’re doing in Iraq. Still, as I have said before, “Muslim perception” does not lend itself well to questions of statecraft. This is a group, after all, that includes people who do not subscribe to any separation of church and state, and who believe the proper punishment for homosexuals and adulterers is execution and stoning, respectively. Their “perception problem” will exist as long as other countries do not agree with them. I am not sure we should use them as any sort of reference group.
There were not any laugh-out-loud moments for me (the closest being Spurlock's ascension on a Riyadh escalator dressed as a Saudi prince), nor any scenes that blew me away with insight, which makes “Where In The World is Osama Bin Laden” sort of like “Supersize Me.” However, I can say this: if Hollywood is starting to realize the value of consulting people affiliated with the Counterterrorism Blog, as Spurlock did, we should reward those filmmakers with our patronage.
The views in this article are not those of the Department of Justice.
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The minority staff of the House Committee on Homeland Security has, as first reported by Fox News, posted an interesting report on the ties between cigarette smuggling and terrorism.
The report focuses primarily on smuggling in New York and the billions of dollars in lost revenues suffered from illicit cigarette sales.
But in fact, the smuggling and sales of cigarettes have long been one of the primary life-blood sources of criminals and, increasingly, of terrorist activities.
The criminal-terrorist nexus is not new, but it is of growing importance.
The Taliban's deep engagement in the poppy trade and the FARC's growing dominance in the cocaine trade are the two clearest examples, but there are countless others.
Some of it is petty crime, but often the overlap comes in the world's largest illicit markets, precisely because the true ownership and connections are hardest to detect in those settings.
Cigarette smuggling is one of those venues, and is not new, but is perhaps now more dangerous.
The report, (with little additional evidence other than a footnote attributing the information to interviews with law enforcement) concludes that:
Historically, the low-risk, high profitability of the illicit cigarette trade served as a gateway for traditional criminal traffickers to move into lucrative and dangerous criminal enterprises such as money laundering, arms dealing and drug trafficking. Recent law enforcement investigations, however, have directly linked those involved in [the] illicit tobacco trade to infamous terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah, Hamas and al Qaeda.
The connection is likely to be less linear than the prose suggests, but it is likely there, as it has been for other organizations for decades. My full blog is here.
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At a panel on Capitol Hill on April 15, Contributing Experts Matthew Levitt and Walid Phares, along with Prof. Yonah Alexander and Dr. Milton Hoenig, discussed the range of options available to the U.S. and the West in dealing with Iran in a panel titled, "Iran and the United States: Outlook for the Next Decade?" The event was co-sponsored by the Counterterrorism Foundation; the Inter-University Center for Terrorism Studies, the International Center for Terrorism Studies at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, and the Inter-University Center for Legal Studies at the International Law Institute. The following is a summary of the presentations by the panelists at the event. We will jointly publish a detailed transcript, including the questions and ansswers by attendees. You can also review an article written about the event, which I posted on April 16.
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Big time terrorism plots are always big news whereas more subtle and interesting trends are often recorded as footnotes. One such footnote occurred over Christmas 2007 in the British city of Birmingham. A 38-year-old man, Hassan Muhammed Sabri Al Tabbakh of Syrian origin was arrested by local police on terrorism charges. He is accused of stockpiling chemicals and information on how to construct a bomb. He appears to have acted alone and this continues to be a conspiracy of one. Further, details may be forthcoming during the trial (now scheduled for May 16 at Birmingham Crown Court) but this little noted case has a number of features, which are -- noteworthy.
Bombers acting alone are a nightmare scenario for security services. Traditionally they are the hardest targets to track and catch. America had the Unabomber and the UK has had David Copeland a far-right extremist who managed to plant three bombs around London in 1999 before being captured. Copeland was self-radicalized and arguably mentally ill but managed to evade capture long enough to do significant damage to the capital. The fact that Tabbakh was apprehended before acting is therefore, to be commended as lone-bombers are usually the hardest targets of all to investigate and it clearly speaks to the UK’s enhanced ability to track the acquisition of dangerous information or materials and/or an improvement in local intelligence resources following regional reorganization.
To date, there hasn’t been a prominent jihadi ‘lone-wolf’ attacker in a western country and if this case proves to be the recorded first it will be an interesting precedent to examine. It had seemed likely, that ‘lone wolf’ bombers would become more prevalent in an era where you can ‘self-radicalize’ on the Internet, but to date this has not been the case. Acting as a lone terrorist continues to be an unusual phenomenon.
There do however, remain a number of curious unknowns about this case. Tabbakh’s age at 38 is past the point when most terrorists would be expected to be working on their first attack. The Syrian connection is also curious as it is out of the norm for the U.K. and the lack of publicity surrounding the case is also unusual, although legally proper. If more information is revealed in this case it will be interesting to view how and if local disaffection connects to international causes or perhaps how sometimes, grand theories of networks and national security collapse down to a disaffected man in a small apartment in a regional city. The self-radicalized lone-bomber continues to be a frightening prospect, whether or not Hassan Tabbakh is shown to be part of this disturbing group. The approaching trial may be worth watching.
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Bill West's post (immediately below) hits on something I started worrying about today as I thought more about the practical implications of the State Department's decision to forbid government employees from publicly using the terms jihad and mujaheddin. Plenty of post-9/11 indictments contain these words. They are also in the names of terrorist organizations. How is this going to work where the government employee is a prosecutor or FBI agent responsible for describing a defendant's words?
I first became aware of the terms from the news reports of the 1993 WTC attack and the trial of Sheik Rahman in the New York Landmarks case a few years later. I joined the Justice Department’s Terrorism Section in 1997, and soon found myself reading FBI reports frequently containing these words. If the State Department’s edict applies to the Justice Department (which it purports to, though I have doubts it will apply this far), it is going to complicate efforts to redress terrorism in American courts.
Anyone who doubts this should read Andrew McCarthy’s excellent book, Wilfull Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad, which will soon be released by Encounter Books, about his prosecution of the Sheik Rahman case. If Justice Department and FBI personnel find that they are in a trick bag because of the State Department’s decision, I hope they will contact Bill, Andrew, me, or any law enforcement friend now on the outside, so we can shed some sunlight on this problem.
The views in this article are not those of the Department of Justice.
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Bill West's post (immediately below) hits on something I started worrying about today as I thought more about the practical implications of the State Department's decision to forbid government employees from publicly using the terms jihad and mujaheddin. Plenty of post-9/11 indictments contain these words. They are also in the names of terrorist organizations. How is this going to work where the government employee is a prosecutor or FBI agent responsible for describing a defendant's words?
I first became aware of the terms from the news reports of the 1993 WTC attack and the trial of Sheik Rahman in the New York Landmarks case a few years later. I joined the Justice Department’s Terrorism Section in 1997, and soon found myself reading FBI reports frequently containing these words. If the State Department’s edict applies to the Justice Department (which it purports to, though I have doubts it will apply this far), it is going to complicate efforts to redress terrorism in American courts.
Anyone who doubts this should read Andrew McCarthy’s excellent book, Wilfull Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad, which will soon be released by Encounter Books, about his prosecution of the Sheik Rahman case. If Justice Department and FBI personnel find that they are in a trick bag because of the State Department’s decision, I hope they will contact Bill, Andrew, me, or any law enforcement friend now on the outside, so we can shed some sunlight on this problem.
The views in this article are not those of the Department of Justice.
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The AP has reported three terrorist organizations...well, in the official PC lexicon of the Bush Administration, extremist groups...have claimed responsibility for the Friday shooting attack at a factory in Nitzanei Shalom, Israel that left two security guards dead. Among those claiming responsibility was the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
But wait...”Jihad” is now a forbidden word in the Federal counter-terrorism vocabulary because our fearless Federal Leaders have bought into the Politically Correct “larger” meaning of the word. Jihad, of course, can mean something beyond “holy war” and the violence attached to such an interpretation. It can mean an “internal struggle” attempting to better oneself with no violence attached. So, in an effort not to confuse nor offend peace loving Muslims anywhere, our intrepid Feds should avoid using the term “Jihad.”
Another term they should try to stay away from is “Mujahadin” and, presumably, its variants. In the past, we Neanderthal Crusading Americans took this term to mean a “Holy Warrior” fighting “Jihad”...essentially Islamic terrorists wanting to do us in...because, well, it’s what they told us they were (and still do). Disregard all that, say the Men and Women Behind the Curtain...they know better, of course...Mujahadin has a larger and more expansive meaning in the Muslim world and can relate to those seeking Jihad as a peaceful quest for betterment.
OK then. When, as the AP reported, PIJ spokesman Abu Mujahed made the PIJ claim of responsibility for the noted attack, the Feds should say in their official reports that it was the extremist group Palestinian Islamic Internal Struggle and their spokesman Abu Seeker of Betterment who claimed to have murdered two innocent Israelis on Friday. Yes, now it all makes perfect sense. No one is offended nor confused and we are all on our way to peace, love and understanding. As for the two Israeli victims and their families...perhaps the authors of the 1984-ish Newspeak Federal policy memo can dream up some feel-good terms for them.
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It was the late 1970s and I was a rookie INS agent working the streets of Baltimore and the Maryland suburbs of D.C. Jimmy Carter was President. His Immigration Commissioner was a political crony from Texas named Leonel Castillo. Castillo, like all modern-day INS Commissioners and even their current ICE Assistant Secretary variants, had virtually no law enforcement and no immigration law experience. Castillo had supervised a human resources development program for a neighborhood day care association in Houston. He directed a jobs program there and also was a director of the Catholic Council on Community Relations. He later became the Houston city controller and treasurer of the Texas state Democratic Party. He was clearly “qualified” for the position of the Nation’s top Immigration Cop? He was highly qualified in the eyes of the Carter Administration.
Enforcing U.S. immigration and nationality laws was never easy in the twenty-five years I did it. In those early years of my INS career during the Carter Administration, it was particularly challenging. One particular reason was a directive that came from Commissioner Castillo. The policy memo directed all INS personnel to no longer refer to illegal aliens as illegal aliens. Illegal aliens were to be called “undocumented” aliens or, better still, undocumented workers or persons. Never mind the fact that “alien” was a completely non-pejorative legal term codified in U.S. law. The point was not to offend illegal aliens. We were to be the kinder and gentler Immigration Police by speaking with softer words.
Castillo’s Orwellian language directive went further. It told those of us in the GS-1811 (Criminal Investigator) career job series within the INS...the Special Agents within the Investigations Division...that we were not to refer to ourselves as “Criminal Investigators” when dealing with the public, especially the “undocumented worker” public. We did not want to make the undocumented persons believe they were in any way possibly criminals; even, perhaps, if they were...since a notable portion of that population had, in fact, committed criminal violations, including chargeable felonies such as fraud (including document fraud by those "undocumented" persons), smuggling and reentry after deportation cognizable under the Immigration and Nationality Act. Needless to say, the rank and file Immigration cops at the time mostly laughed at and ignored Castillo’s nutty directive. We began identifying ourselves as “Criminal Investigators” a lot more often than we did before.
What reminds me of this bit of historical immigration nonsense is the just announced U.S. Government directive to its current counter-terrorism and diplomatic corps to refrain from using certain terms that might be misinterpreted in the Muslim world or might offend “moderate” Muslims. Jeff Breinholt just wrote about this below. The IPT has an excellent piece covering the topic. Having lived through one effort by the Feds to change operational process via linguistic manipulation of its employees, I will suggest that the results will only be similar to what they were with Commissioner Castillo’s. Stupid is as stupid does.
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This column is another in the ongoing series on the terrorist threat to India and the surrounding region by Frank Hyland and Animesh Roul.
Realizing the benefits that accrue to nations that operate within a large, active international “web” of Counter-Terrorism (CT) relationships, India is taking a number of steps to improve the way it combats terrorism. The steps are an acknowledgement that terrorism has morphed into a quite different phenomenon than the indigenous groups largely confined to remote redoubts that have plagued India over the decades since its independence, and the new form of terrorism neither knows nor respects boundaries. India, therefore, has been adding to its list of partnerships of late. In addition, the Indian Government reportedly is planning to establish a national-level CT organization to act as a central repository for relevant data, mirroring the structure of many other nations, including the US and the UK. The moves, accompanied by a number of public statements by high-ranking members of the Indian Government, are also a recognition by India that its attempts to increase international trade and tourism are inextricably linked in today’s world with its successes in reducing the threat of terrorist attacks. Already bordered by a nation that India has blamed for a large share of terrorist attacks, India now faces another potentially growing problem with the recent electoral success of Maoists in neighboring Nepal.
As India’s top officials travel the globe, they are careful to include explicit and specific mention of terrorism in the agendas of their meeting with other nations, along with the obligatory economic trade and diplomatic initiatives. Mid-way through her 12-day long tour to Brazil, Mexico and Chile, in meeting her Chilean counterpart, President Michelle Bachelet, earlier this month, India's President Pratibha Patil, made specific reference to the fight against terrorism. India's Minister of External Affairs, Pranab Mukherjee, has also been accumulating frequent flier miles at a great rate in recent months. In the same timeframe, Mukherjee visited with Saudi King Abdullah, following on the King’s visit to India. Again, along with trade, cultural, and diplomatic initiatives, specific mention of terrorism was made. The case for an enhanced relationship with Saudi Arabia obviously makes much sense in the context of India’s long-festering problems with Islam-based terrorism: Although some distance apart both culturally and geographically, Saudi-funded NGOs dot the region and are, in effect, only an e-Mail apart; India shares a border with Pakistan; India, itself, has a large, restive Muslim population; yesteryear’s groups, such as the infamous Abu Nidhal Organization (ANO), have carried out attacks on Indian soil; it is notable that India is the fifth largest trading partner of the Saudis. In the longer term, an important reason for reaching out to a Muslim nation is that that Muslim nation (in this case, Saudi Arabia) can then reach out to another Muslim nation such as Pakistan on behalf of India.
India is now reaching out to the “easier” nations and should be encouraged to continue doing so. The tougher row to hoe in this regard will be nations such as Pakistan.
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One of the more interesting things to me in the recent spate of statements by Ayman al-Zawahiri and other al Qaeda leaders is al Qaeda's need now to constantly and viciously attack other Islamist tendencies, particularly Iran and Shities, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Brotherhood-linked Hamas.
In addition to the attacks, the recent communications show two things: a clear awareness of current events, and the ability to comment on them quickly; and a clear lack of understanding of how the world really operates.
The increasingly sharp tone of the attacks and the underlying belief in a broad conspiracy of the United States and Iran to ally against al Qaeda, indicate the organization is under some considerable stress. It may also indicate that Zawahiri's days of trying to work out some sort of tactical if short term alliance with Tehran against the United States have ended in failure.
In this translation of a recent Zawahiri statement by the NEFA Foundation, the al Qaeda leader says:
Regarding Iran, its goals are explicit: annexing southern and eastern Iraq and continuing its effort to establish a continuum with its supporters in southern Lebanon. If their (the U.S.) understanding with Iran is on the basis of accepting some, or all of its goals in exchange for ignoring the American presence in the region, this understanding will only pour more oil onto the fire that is burning at our foundation..and will spark a massive [Sunni] Islamic revival, fed by the Iranian-American conspiracy." My full blog is here.
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Doug Farah, Steve Coughlin, and I have written about the efforts to replace jihad as a descriptive term for what we are fighting. In view of the reported decision by the State Department to reward these efforts, I do not want to belabor the point or my position (other than to note that there are plenty of human rights victims in countries that operate according to Shari’ah law who have much to say about whether the non-violent “striving” meaning of jihad results in innocuous statecraft). However, I do want to share the text of an e-mail I got today from one of my Muslim friends, which is a little sobering:
As a Muslim trying to help America defend itself against the Islamist jihad, I am outraged that our government is letting us down so badly by cozying up to the enemy. I have seen this happen in my home country and in so many other places, but I never thought it would happen here. I don’t ever want to hear people asking me “where are the truly moderate Muslims” but the rest of us anti-Islamists are waiting (sadly and in a terribly frustrated way) for the next attack, which may (once again) force the “oh, let’s not hurt our enemy’s feelings” crowds to open their eyes and see the reality. I sincerely hope it won’t be too late by then. What I really don’t understand is what on earth happened to the Americans having the guts to stand up to evil? Why is America following in Europe ’s footsteps of appeasement? Is this what happened to all the good, decent and smart people who let Nazism take over, and then turned the blind eye to the Holocaust in their midst? So, never again is not really never again, huh? Is it too much relativism? Did Americans become too materialistic to recognize the power of destructive ideologies? It can’t be ignorance anymore since a lot of material is out there making the argument. Maybe faced with too much information and all the side effects of globalization, people simply lost basic common sense? I know the Islamists. There is no stopping until you all accept their rule. Of course, I’ll have to be taken care of a lot sooner than they come after you all!!"
The views in this article do not reflect those of the Department if Justice.
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 The NEFA Foundation has obtained and translated video footage of a recent Al-Qaida suicide bombing in eastern Algeria targeting a local military barracks in the town of Dellys. The footage includes the "martyrdom" will of the bomber (a young teenager who nicknamed himself "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi al-Asimi"), scenes from his education at the Abu Ibrahim Mustafa terrorist training camp in North Africa, and the actual execution of the attack itself. During his final will, "Abu Musab" called upon Muslim youths to "follow the path of jihad and martyrdom" and to "purify" Algeria "with jihad, with bullets, and with martyrdom operations... This is just the beginning of our martyrdom operations... Allah willing, you should expect dark and difficult times ahead."
After watching the video, those with further interest may also want to read this document, which is referenced therein: Transcript of May 2007 Video of AQIM Commander Abu Musab Abdel Wadoud: "Where Are Those Who Are Committed to Die?"
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In response to Andrew Cochran's latest post "No FISA? No Problem," the reason why no one has come up with a concrete example of an intelligence investigation suffering due to Congress' unwillingness to enact FISA reform is simple: this information - who the U.S. is currently targeting its FISA methods on - is classified, and therefore not subject to public discussion. The bill is hung up for one reason: disagreements over whether it should include retroactive immunity for telecoms. If telecoms that cooperated with what appeared to be legal government requests become fearful of being sued, intelligence will surely be lost while the government engages in protracted discussions with company compliance officers on the legality of their requests. That is the unfortunate legacy of an overlawyered culture. Moreoever, as I have written, telecoms were not held liable for the more serious abuses of the Nixon Administration, when American journalists and NSC staffers had their phones tapped without a warrant. This precedent makes one wonder about the legitimacy of the 40 or so cases currently pending against the telecoms. Who will pay their legal fees to fight these cases to the point of dismissal? The telecom customers, in the form of fees that are passed on to them, and the US intelligence community, who will find themselves dealing in an adversarial way with the FBI, perhaps even when presented with signed FISA orders. This is bad all around.
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Now we officially know the answer - the U.S. Government states that America is definitely not fighting "jihadists", based on new guidelines directing federal agencies not to even use the term "jihadist". So who is America fighting? Defense Secretary Robert Gates tells us: "the enemy is extremism".
A. National Counter Terrorism Center Memo and DHS Report on Terminology
Associated Press reported today that the Extremist Messaging Branch at the National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC) prepared a memorandum in March 2008 entitled "Words that Work and Words that Don't: A Guide for Counterterrorism Communication." The memorandum approved for distribution by the State Department today sets out guidelines for federal agencies in describing terrorists and their organizations. The AP report suggests that the NCTC memorandum is also supported by a January 2008 Department of Homeland Security report entitled "Terminology to Define the Terrorists: Recommendations from American Muslims".
Per the AP report, the NCTC memorandum tells federal agencies that they are not to use the terms: "jihadist", "jihadi", "mujahedeen". Specifically, the NCTC memorandum states: "Never use the terms 'jihadist' or 'mujahedeen' in conversation to describe the terrorists... Calling our enemies 'jihadis' and their movement a global 'jihad' unintentionally legitimizes their actions." It also states: "We are communicating with, not confronting, our audiences. Don't insult or confuse them with pejorative terms such as 'Islamo-fascism,' which are considered offensive by many Muslims."
Another AP report states that the NCTC memorandum advises:
- "Don't use 'caliphate' when explaining al-Qaida's goals, as this has positive implications."
- "Don't use 'salafi,' 'Wahhabist,' 'sufi,' 'ummah' and other words from Islamic theology unless you are able to discuss their varied meanings. Particularly avoid using 'ummah' to mean the Muslim world, as it is a theological term."
AP also states that the January 2008 DHS report calls for "caution in using terms such as, 'jihadist,' 'Islamic terrorist,' 'Islamist,' and 'holy warrior' as grandiose descriptions."
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As a follow-up and partial rebuttal to Dennis Lormel's post on the need for a new Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), I invite readers to review recent public statements and testimony by leading counter-terrorism officials in the Bush Administration. Review the public remarks by Deputy NSC Advisor for Combating Terrorism Juan Zarate yesterday at the Washington Institute; review the testimony by Deputy Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes Daniel Glaser last week at a hearing on Iran; review the recent speech by FBI Director Robert Mueller in England on global terrorism today and the challenges we face. Review everything you can find spoken or written by senior Administration counter-terrorism officials in the past three months, and please find me ONE clear example of the harm being done to counter-terrorism investigations as a result of the political stalemate over FISA. I was at the Washington Institute yesterday, and aside from the very brief mention of the bill, there was nothing noted on the reason for the bill to be passed right now. Having worked in Washington for over 25 years, I know, as sure as the sun rises and sets, that if there were just one such example of a failed investigation or case that had to be dropped because of the lack of a permanent FISA, that it would have been leaked to the press.
I'm not saying a reformed and permanent FISA is unnecessary; far from it. But the Administration has been unable to provoke the least bit of public concern over the law. When I asked DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff last month whether DHS investigative operations have been harmed, he said that as a "consumer" of FISA-initiated information and not a "producer," he could not say one way or another. That doesn't sound anything like "We have a major interruption of intelligence information and we lost track with 5 suspected terrorists plotting to blow up something." As it stands now, the case for FISA is a big yawner for 95% of the American public. That's not Congress' fault.
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Last month, I wrote on the importance to global security of then-pending elections in Malaysia, followed afterwards by Zachary Abuza's analysis of the gains by Islamists. The ruling coalition, led by Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, has tenuously remained in power, and earlier this month demonstrated its commitment to counter-terrorism efforts by handing over two alleged members of Jemaah Islamiyah to Indonesia, as reported here by Kenneth Conboy. Badawi's predecessor, former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, is now pushing for Allawi to step down. Mahathir Mohamad was a polarizing figure during his 22 years in power, demonstrating an unsettling tendency to accept the standard lingo of Islamists in describing American and Israeli foreign policy while defending Yasser Arafat. In 2002, he remarked, "unfortunately, the U.S. has supported the action by the Israeli government, which also amounts to terrorism.'' It is precisely this demand of Arab states to define "terrorism" so as to include Israeli's defensive actions that has led to inaction by the United Nations.
Last week, in a BBC interview, Mohamad demonstrated he hasn't changed his anti-democratic and anti-Israeli views, affirming statements he made before leaving office. For instance, in June 2003, he said, "Anglo-Saxon Europeans essentially are proponents of war, sodomy, and genocide," and in October 2003, he said that "the fact is that the United States obeys what Israel wants it to do." In the new BBC interview, he predicted that the West would "wake up and forget about democracy." Like the Saudi ruling family, Mohamad was apparently tough on Islamic militants within his own country during his tenure and still publicly decries terrorism, but is clearly sympathetic to the Islamists and jihadists who seek to bury Israel and Western ideals under the weight of sharia. Let's hope his days as an influential force in Malaysia are still behind him.
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In February, The House of Representatives failed to follow the Senates lead and vote to pass FISA legislation. Instead, they chose to allow this valuable intelligence collection tool to expire. In so doing, they made the intelligence collection capability of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies more difficult and time consuming. In this context, time is the enemy of the government and the ally of terrorists. However you assess this situation, it is an impediment to national security. Terrorists who benefit from the lapse in intelligence collection capabilities could well be planning to exploit this lapse through terrorist attacks on our homeland.
In February, when the House failed to act on the FISA legislation, I posted an article on the Counterterrorism Blog entitled “The Intelligence Bill Should Not Be Held Hostage by Politics.” It appears that House Leaders continue to hold this important legislation hostage. They seem to have adopted an out of sight, out of mind mentality. Unfortunately, terrorists do not adhere to this mindset.
Prior to, and following the inaction on the part of The House of Representatives, Director of National Security (DNI) Michael McConnell repeatedly stated that the intelligence community requires broad collection and monitoring capabilities, as provided in the Senate legislation. DNI McConnell also provided the assessment that not enacting FISA legislation weakened national security and placed the country at higher risk.
Certain Members of the House strongly criticized DNI McConnell and accused him of promoting the position of the White House on this issue. They chose to fail to recognize DNI McConnell as the nonpartisan intelligence leader and professional he is. It’s time to put politics aside and resolve this debate. The issue of immunity for the telecommunications companies that cooperated with the government and provided the government with information continues to be at the heart of this debate. The fact that this situation has lingered on is disgraceful. The American people deserve better than that.
Two questions come to mind for the Members of the House who chose to disregard DNI McConnell’s recommendations and accuse him of partisanship. First, why did they vote in favor of establishing a DNI if they intended to disregard his advice when it suited them? Second, should the next President be a member of their party, will these same Members still disregard DNI McConnell’s advice when he provides the new President with the same intelligence and recommendations?
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Today, the UK's high court invalidated the country's asset freezing regime against terrorists, ruling it to be unconstitutional.
The ruling has been described as devastating to the UK's strategy against terrorism. It was based on the court finding that the UK government could not simply implement UN Security Council resolutions directly, but had to go to Parliament first to get them authorized.
It is not clear from initial reports whether this means that the government is supposed to go to Parliament every time it wishes to freeze the assets of a designated terrorist, or after each UN security counsel resolution. Either requirement would likely mean delays in implementing sanctions based on UN decisions, giving the terrorists time and opportunity to move funds out of harm's way during the period of legislative consideration.
The critique by the UK courts was similar to that already made by the Advocate General at the European Court of Justice, Miguel Poiares Maduro, who recommended in January that the EU high courtannul EU financial sanctions against suspected al-Qaida financier, Yassin Abdullah Kadi, on due process concerns.
That recommendation remains under consideration, but the EU court is unlikely to fail to notice the decision taken in the UK.
There is thus a growing risk that the entire international regime to freeze terrorist assets is in a process of disintegration.
In light of this risk, the U.S. and other countries seeking to maintain the ability to freeze terrorist assets need to proceed quickly to develop mechanisms that would provide those subject to sanctions with baseline elements of the right to be heard by by an independent and impartial authority that has the power to grant appropriate relief with procedural guarantees for affected individuals or entities. Some of the most obvious possibilities were laid out two years ago by Professors Thomas J. Biersteker and Sue Eckert of the Watson Institute in a paper for the UN.
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The Department of Homeland Security will reportedly be issuing regulations requiring commercial airlines and cruise lines to begin collecting the biometric identifiers, notably digital fingerprints and photographs, of foreign travelers as they depart the United States. This is an effort to make the departure control half of the US VISIT border information gathering and analysis system work. This departure control segment has been lagging in development for years, and Congress has mandated its completion by June of 2009 before any new countries can join the controversial Visa Waiver Program, the benefits of which are currently bestowed upon some 27 countries.
Already, representatives of the airline industry are crying foul, saying placing this responsibility on them will lead to major costs and they do not know how they will be able to make it work. Further, the airlines are claiming this is really a governmental responsibility and not something private industry should be doing. DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff responded by saying if US VISIT departure control does not come into being by the June 2009 deadline it will be because the airline industry “killed it.”
This is shaping up to be a major battle between the airline industry and DHS. As has been noted in this Blog numerous times over the years, failure to implement US VISIT departure control has left a significant element of our border and immigration security apparatus undone. This failure has gone on for some four years.
When foreign nationals with visas enter the United States they are inspected by Officers of DHS’ Customs and Border Protection (CBP), who take their digital fingerprints and photographs and enter those into the US VISIT system. That task is accomplished at the Federal Inspection Area of airports and seaports where there is infrastructure such as inspections booths, computers and interview rooms where the processing can occur. Obviously, collecting digital fingerprints and photographs from departing foreign nationals will require notable logistical and manpower considerations, and will not be cheap. It should be noted the US VISIT system, at least the entry part of it, was implemented within a couple years of the 9/11 attacks. This is not something “new.” The resolution of the question about this being a primary Government or private enterprise responsibility will be one to watch.
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A few days ago, when oil was just $115.00 per barrel, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared that the price of oil was still “unrealistically low,” and that “Oil … needs to discover its real value." And, within a few days the market seemed to comply driving the price up to $120.00 per barrel! The effects of this spiraling oil price on the US and world economy has been staggering, and the impact will continue to be intensified as the price of oil works its way through the international economic system. Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups could never had imagined that events they set off at the turn of the millennium could ever have caused such oil dislocation and demand around the world.
Against this background it is with great trepidation that I put my pen to addressing the link between the price of oil and terrorism. The factors involved in the pricing of oil are both extremely obscure and enormously complex, and few people can truly claim to understand them. I certainly am not one of them. But, broken down into its most basic components it apparently involves a mixture of the following factors: OPEC Oligarchy practices, intensified international competition for secure access to essential commodities, increased reliance on middlemen for oil lifting, profit-motive purchasing policies and upstream practices of major oil companies, the falling dollar, and intense speculative upward bidding of oil futures on the world’s merchantile exchanges. Taken together these factors have driven up the spot price of oil and pumped tens (dare I say hundreds) of billions of dollars into the coffers of countries known to either encourage or tolerate state and/or private funding for terrorism. One may well conclude, as I am beginning to believe, that mercantile speculation, greed, and corporate profit taking are as responsible as OPEC, if not more so, for the windfall profits that help fund terrorism.
Iran's Oil Minister Gholam-Hossein Nozari had a different answer. Speaking before the representatives of some 60 exporting and consumer countries at the bi-annual International Energy Forum, he blamed the spike in oil prices on “war and sanctions,” alluding to the measures the US had adopted toward both Iran and Iraq. But, this simplistic explanation doesn’t match reality. In fact, today’s oil prices don’t seem to have any direct relationship to the actual oil market conditions, demand and consumption. The fact is that oil output has generally kept pace with actual consumption rates, and bookings for oil transport ships and tankers are actually declining showing a slackening in demand. Speculation based on future worst case assumptions seems to be pressing the price of the oil, not past events. This includes anything from a projected heavy hurricane season to recent attacks on Nigeria’s Shell oil pipelines. But, the supply effect of such events in the past have been shown to be quite minimal and of short duration. Any reason to push oil prices higher seems to suffice for the oil traders.
Another explanation for today’s high oil prices is the declining value of the dollar. So why isn’t it that Europe is getting a bargain when it comes to buying oil? The fact is that the price of oil in Europe has also hit the roof, causing European leaders to consider extraordinary measures, such as drawing on their emergency oil reserves. The EU commission has just decided to launch its own “ public consultation” on whether changes should be made to the management of emergency oil stocks held by EU members in the face of these skyrocketing prices.
Today’s oil prices are considerably higher than anyone could have predicted a year or so ago. Look at what the International Energy Agency projected in their annual World Energy Outlook for 2007. They predicted that oil prices would now be the range of $45 to $56 per barrel, and would only reach $95.00 per barrel sometimes in 2030. Boy, are we ahead of that curve!. Remember, that in 2000, OPEC oil was selling for under $28.00 a barrel and oil consumption somewhere around 76 million barrels per day. Current estimates put oil consumption at around 84 million barrels, about the same as current production levels.
So, in actual fact, it is the oil speculators that appear to be responsible, more than any other group, for the high prices of oil, and the revenue boasts that may help support terrorism. Perhaps its time for governments to get a handle on such speculation by intervening in the oil market, as necessary to stabilize the price of oil. Just a thought!
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On April 23, 2008, Deputy National Security Advisor Juan Zarate addressed The Washington Institute where he laid out the administration's strategy, successess and issues requiring an ongoing and long term commitment. His full comments are available here.
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Doug Farah's post about the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report (GMBDR) item in which the Muslim Brotherhood gives written advice on how to vote Islamic is quite disturbing. The most ominous thing is that they appear to be doing this within the U.S., even as we speak. Coincidentally, the GMBDR contains another article about how an American Muslim organization has asked one of the Presidential candidates to avoid referring to "Islamic terrorism," as if religion is irrelevant to the violent actions of those who fall into that category. If you were able to ask bin Laden or al-Zawahiri to list ten things about themselves, their first item would likely be "Muslim." Should Islam be stricken from the English language, in every sentence that mentions the word "terrorism"? How about the Muslim Brotherhood and Sheik Qawadari never using the word "Jew"? If this happened, they would essentially be deprived of any ability to communicate, so dependent are they on this term in all of their communiques. Of course "Islamic terrorism" does not denote that all Muslim are terrorists, the same way that "Christian Nationalism" does not characterize Christianity as a whole. "Islamic" is an adjective, which defines a smaller subset of the larger Muslim world. Should our next leader refuse to consider the religion of our enemies, when that religion is put forward as the reason why they are seeking to destroy the "Jewish state" and punish the "Christian crusaders," because it offends too many peaceful Muslims?
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The Colombian publication El Tiempo has published the text of further documents provided by the government of Colombia and described as taken from the FARC computers of the late Raul Reyes seized by Colombia after its raid on Reyes' camp in Ecuador May 1. They describe FARC's efforts to assassinate Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.
The documents include an e-mail from April 15, 2002, which states that FARC failed in an attempt against President Uribe in Barranquilla in an incident in which FARC detonated a bomb near Uribe's motorcade. A second e-mail, dated April 22, 2002, states that the assassination attempt involved the use of three gas cylinders containing explosives which blew up five meters from Uribe's car, but were obstructed by a passing bus. The e-mail says that FARC had also set up a tape recorder to explode at Uribe's planned press conference containing cyanide-laced shrapnel, designed to explode five minutes after the play button was pressed. But in light of the failed first attempt, the FARC assassin instead vacated the scene early and did not proceed with the tape recorder bomb.
Such documentation may give foreign governments who have contacts with the FARC pause as they consider what deals, if any, to reach with this terrorist organization.
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If one wants to get a more realistic picture of how the Muslim Brotherhood and its international legacy organizations view voting and the democratic process than the usual platitudes of their public discourse, it is well worth reading the Guide to Voting in Islam,posted by the Muslim Association of Britain.
This document and commentary on its content was first posted on the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report, available for a free subscription.
Because in political Islam there is no difference between the state and religion, voting itself becomes, as one British Imam is quoted in the document as saying, a form of jihad:
I consider Muslim political participation, especially in a non-Muslim country, as a form of jihad. This is our country and it would be foolish not to participate in the political processes which eventually shape our future and that of Islam. I support marching in the streets to raise awareness about certain issues. However, if we really want to change the status-quo then we have to influence those who walk the corridors of power. Muslims need not only to vote but put forward Muslim candidates in all the mainstream and serious independent parties. We need to be represented or be present at the tables around which policies are discussed, made and agreed.
The Guide to Voting offers grudging support for alliances with non-Muslims if the alliance is for the good of the Muslim population. Totally absent is the consideration of what is good for the country in which the Muslim individual is voting. This is made explicitly clear in a quote by Abdur Raheem Green, Dawah Administrator of the Central Mosque of London included in the Guide:
It has long been my position that any type of participation in democracy is a type of approval of that system. I have no doubt that democracy is antithetical to Islam. My full blog is here.
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Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Malki delivered a Niagara Falls-magnitude of cold water to Jimmy Carter today, pronouncing his meeting with Hamas leaders worthless. More quotes: "The only thing he achieved was permission on the part of Khaled Meshaal of Hamas to deliver a letter from a detained Israeli soldier to his family. Nothing else. Hamas offered nothing to president Carter. They reiterated the same positions. There was no change on the part of Hamas." Actually, by acting as a yellow-bellied, back-stabbing, terrorist-sympathizing idiot, Carter did have two achievements: (1) He made it possible for Congress to save some money by cutting federal funding to the Carter Center; (2) He forced Congress to take a bipartisan stance on his trip and on Hamas, as Members from both parties sprinted to microphones to denounce him. His blatantly anti-Israeli and simplistic "hate-Bush" stance enabled Hamas terrorists to enjoy some propaganda in the Arab world by showing an ex-U.S. President renouncing the laws of his country governing dealings with Foreign Terrorist Organizations and designated terrorists. You can read the more urbane and scholarly views of our Contributing Experts on his trip. I also invite our readers to review the numerous Counterterrorism Blog posts about the activities of Hamas deputy political director Mousa Abu Marzouk (or "Marzook"), one of Carter's "hosts," while he was in the U.S. before he was convicted and deported. To quote from our panel on Decemmber 11 on the Holy Land Foundation case, "And in 1994, Marzook convened a meeting in Mississippi to mediate a dispute between the HLF and Hamas member Mohammed Salah. According to government wiretaps, Marzook designated HLF over Salah as Hamas’s primary fund-raising arm in the U.S." That's Jimmy Carter's new buddy - maybe he'll fund the Carter Center after Congress takes the American taxpayer out of it.
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The rise of female bombers in Iraq is now garnering greater media attention. The wow-factor of Muslim women strapping on the bomb is important today because these women pose a security threat to U.S. coalition forces in Iraq as well as Iraqi civilians and security forces. This dangerous trend should not surprise us. The latest television report of this phenomenon appeared tonight on FOX News with Britt Hume's Special Report at 6pm and will air again at 10pm.
While an alarming trend, it is worth noting that the majority of Iraqi women are not suicide bombers or supporters of extremist groups. But women who do not join terrorist groups also fall victim to violence. As victims of war, women suffer from rape, kidnappings, and torture. Radical Iraqi men, similar to men in other Muslim countries, exact revenge against the women of their society. Reversing this deadly cycle will require increased security measures, greater protection for women, and an effort by Iraq and the international community to seek a peaceful settlement to the conflict. Without an end to war in Iraq, more women will either join terrorist groups or become their prey.
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The U.S. Treasury continued to target the Colombian FARC narco-terrorist group, by designating entities and individual FARC leaders under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act. The action freezes any assets under U.S. jurisdiction and prohibiting U.S. persons from conducting business transactions with the designated persons. From the Treasury press release: "Today's designations focus on a FARC financial network that involves two Colombian money exchange business, Cambios El Trebol and Cambios Nasdaq Ltda. Both are based in Bogota, Colombia. The FARC used these Colombian money exchange businesses, or "profesionales del cambio" as they are commonly known in Colombia, to launder narcotics proceeds... Myriam Rincon Molina and Jose Edilberto Camacho Bernal, two individuals who are tied to these money exchange businesses and who act on behalf of the FARC, were also designated today... Today's OFAC action also targets Nilson Calderon Velandia (alias "Villa") and Carlos Olimpo Diaz Herrera, both major drug traffickers for the FARC." Carlos Olimpo Diaz Herrera owns Cambios Nasdaq Ltd. and also is responsible for the production and sale of cocaine for the FARC's 27th Front. The press release included an Acrobat file of the involvement of the designated persons in the 27th Front's financial flows.
You can read a transcript of our live panel on March 19, "Compañeros de Armas ("Friends in Arms"): Chavez, FARC & South America," which I moderated. Contributing Experts Douglas Farah and Jonathan Winer were joined by former O.A.S. and U.S. State Department senior counter-terrorism official Steven Monblatt. You can also read over 70 previous posts about FARC written by our Contributing Experts.
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European authorities are taking very seriously the threat of radicalization over the web.
I just wrote an article for the Middle East Times on that topic.
Here is an excerpt:
A few months ago Bernard Squarcini the head of the DST (Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire), the French equivalent of the FBI, told the French daily Libération regarding Islamic radicalization: "An ideological transformation can be done in three months on the Web. An individual can at night auto-radicalize himself via the Web and get in touch with leaders of terrorist organizations." This assessment shows how dire the situation is in Europe when it comes to al-Qaida's use of the Web.
Al-Qaida uses the web for four different tasks: propaganda; communication, mostly to instruct those in the field; training future combatants, a kind of online university of terrorism; and to send messages to the enemy, mostly to the West.
For instance, one of the most popular jihadist sites in France is one which translates books on the jihad in French and gives lessons on urban guerilla tactics. (This site got more than 3 million visits from France alone). Another Web site explains how to get weapons in the West (hide, assemble and breakdown) and how to manufacture bombs from products found in supermarkets.
The propaganda primarily targets youngsters. Some of them join the virtual jihad or "webtifada", i.e. cyber criminality.
In March 2006, the DGSE (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Exterieure), the French equivalent of the CIA, tracked down a forum where jihadists recruited hackers to destroy "infidels'" Web sites and government sites. The jihadists recommended: "If you can't slash their throats, then at least destroy their sites."
You can read the whole article here.
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Journalism and official counterterrorism are in many ways similar. They each have important functions - journalism, to keep us informed, and counterterrorism, to keep us safe. They each have the dual goal of getting the facts right, and protecting their sources and methods. Viewed this way, you would think that there would be mutual respect between the two industries, even if they occasionally clash. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Despite the fact that journalists rely on confidential sources (even going to jail to protect them), reporters are often outraged that the government occasionally relies on secret information in exercising counterterrorism options. Secretive sources that are necessary to reporters are pernicious when maintained by the government.
Yesterday, I wrote an article that described a "parallel universe," in which “enlightened” Americans can attack Christianity with impunity while remaining dismissive of those who describe the threat of radical Islam. The words used in the attacks are indinguishable from those that regularly appear in relation to Muslims in FrontPage Magazine and Jihad Watch, which you can see by replacing the references to Christianity and the Bible in these liberals' books with Islam and the Koran. The journalism-counterterrorism double standard suggests another parallel universe. Today, FrontPage Magazine has my review of Eric Lichtblau's Bush’s Law: The Remaking of American Justice, in which a prize-winning reporter affiliated with a newspaper that has had its share of scandal has no trouble being indignant at the suggestion that he should be more transparent, while attacking the government for its lack of transparency, all while getting the facts terribly wrong. Here’s just one example: Lichtblau, without any documentation, suggests that John Ashcroft favors stoning as punishment. What is his source for that tidbit? It is just one of many serious problems with his error-filled volume.
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I have some thoughts on Andrew Cochran’s latest post, in which he expresses annoyance with Bill Maher’s recent comments about the Pope. Unlike Andrew, I come at this issue as a proud secular humanist, and someone who has chosen not to bring any religion into my household, lest my wife divorce me.
Andrew’s post refers to the recent exchange on Counterterrorism Blog between Fahana Ali and me, over whether the Danish editors should apologize for running the anti-Islam cartoons. I disagreed with Farhana that we are doomed unless we avoid the temptation to ridicule religion, at a time when there is a legitimate threat that people offended by this ridicule will violently act out on their grievances. The better course, I believe, is to refuse to accede to threats, and to support those like Salman Rushdie and Ayaan Hirschi Ali who refuse to be intimidated. So it is with Bill Maher, a guy I often want to strangle because he reminds me of so many nihilists I have known in my life. I might find him obnoxious, but would nonetheless support him if he was violently targeted by religious fanatics.
Andrew’s post makes it clear he does not qualify as a religious fanatic. His view of Bill Maher is similar to mine, though mine is based on the sense that Maher seems not believe in anything other than that America is an evil empire, and his comments about the the Pope are undoubtedly an extension of his membership in this milieu.
What I find amazing is how much anti-Christian animus is tolerated, by those who claim that Muslim “perceptions” should require us to pull our punches. Two recent books by liberals illustrate this phenomenon. Here are some quotes from those books. To show this double standard, I have replaced the references to Christianity with Islam:
What ______ wants is a cultural revolution. He’s trying to train a generation of leaders, unscathed by secularism, who will gain political power in order to subsume everything - entertainment, law, government and education - to Islam, or their version of it. That might sound like a fantasy, but it’s worth pondering what ______ has achieved so far …. Islamicism rejects the idea of government religious neutrality. The movement argues that the absence of religion in public is itself a religion - the malign faith in secular humanism - that must, in the interest of fairness, be balanced with equal deference to the Koran…That doesn’t mean that non-believers will be forced to convert. They’ll just have to learn their place…Most radical Islamic theology - a very strict Shari’ah that mandates the death penalty for homosexuality and apostacy, has little appeal to outsiders and is controversial even among moderate Muslims…Talk of persecution is common. [They] worry that one day in the future, the American government might start rounding up Muslims and executing them…Yet there are totalitarian elements in the Islamic movement, particular its attacks on decadent internal enemies and its drive to replace society’s apprehension of reality with its parallel version. As Islamism gains influence, it is changing our country in troubling ways, and its leaders say they’ve only just begun… Those who aren’t Muslim - or who aren’t the right kind of Muslim - can never be full citizens of the country the Islamists want to create…Thus for those who value secular society, apprehending the threat posed by Islamism is tricky. It’s kind of like being a lobster in a pot, with the water heating up so slowly that you don’t notice the moment at which it starts to kill you.
* * *
Islamism…seeks to politicize faith. It has, like all fascist movements, a belief in magic along with leadership adoration and a strident call for moral and physical supremacy of a master race … America becomes, in this militant Islamism, an agent of Allah, and all political and intellectual opponents of Islamic leaders are viewed, quite simply, as agents of Satan … Woman will be removed from the workforce to stay at home, and all those doomed insufficiently Muslim will be denied citizenship … The only legitimate voices in this state will be Muslim. All others will be silenced.”
As I said, these authors of these two quotes are liberals - Michelle Goldberg of Salon in her book Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism and Chris Hedges, formerly of the New York Times, in American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, respectively. Their actual quotes contain references to Christianity where I replaced them (in bold) with references to Islam. With these changes, their words would certainly raise accusations of Islamophobia, as my writings occasionally do. That they can get away with such language in relation to American Christians without any protests, I suppose, proves Andrew’s point. Elite U.S. opinionmakers can criticize Christianity without worrying about the reaction of their fancy friends, and without the fear that they will not be invited to tony cocktail parties or Martha's Vineyard. These same words, if used in relation to Muslims, would resonate more in the American heartland and with readers of FrontPage Magazine. My bet is that Goldberg and Hedges would be disturbed by this observation, and they would dispute that others' fears about radical Islam are as legitimate as their concerns with Christian nationalism.
Where does this leave me with Andrew’s post? I would rather have the option not watch Bill Maher than have the government or outraged Catholics make that decision for me, especially if the latter would also mean that I could not listen to most talk radio these days or that some of my readers may follow the lead and organize a boycott of my ideas. Here, I agree with Michelle Goldberg: it’s better to err on the side of freedom of expression. As in most First Amendment disputes, the answer to speech that makes religious minorities feel bad is more speech.
Still, the double standards - the parallel universe that exists within America these days - does not get as much attention as it should. It is a dynamic on display in Eric Lichtblau's new book, Bush's Law, which argues that the Department of Justice is hopelessly corrupt and far too secretive and afraid of public accountability. That this argument comes from a reporter from the New York Times, which has suffered through the Jason Blair scandal and refuses to disclose its confidential sources to the world, for legitimate reasons - is ironic. Those real misfires described by Lichtblau - which are a fraction of the "scandals" he lists in Bush's Law- can expected in an organization with 90,000 employees. After all, the Times is not that big, and it still had at least one very bad apple. Few have seized on the Blair scandal as a sign that the Times is dangerously trying to remake American journalism, as Lichtblau claims about the post-9/11 Justice Department and American criminal justice. I will address that particular adventure in the parallel universe in a separate article. Stay tuned.
The views in this article are not those of the Department of Justice.
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Notwithstanding former President Carter’s embrace of Khaled Masha'l last week, there is little optimism in the region that Hamas is poised to change its stripes. Indeed, after Carter’s departure, Hamas officials rolled back his amazing assessment that the terrorist organization was finally prepared to accept the right of Israel to “live as a neighbor next door in peace.”
Judging from the official statements on the Carter visit, Israel is not under any illusions about Hamas. Neither is Egypt. Cairo has long maintained ties to Hamas, but is increasingly concerned about the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood hooking up with its Egyptian counterpart. Now, with US assistance, Cairo is preparing to build a fence on its own border with Gaza.
I wrote an article about this latest fence on the Palestinian border in the Weekly Standard. Another article, published on Friday by the Washington Institute, details the current political and social crisis in Egypt, which will likely result in increased support for Egypt’s Islamists.
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Today in sentencing Abu Dujana and Zarkasih, two leaders of Jemaah Islamiyah arrested in mid-2007, the court, for the first time, designated JI as an illegal organization. My colleague Johnathan Winer lauded the decision, but I add some caution.
First some background. Despite the UN Securuty Council’s 1267 Committee designation of JI, Indonesia failed to uphold its obligation under international law or proscribe it under domestic law.
The principle reason why JI has not been outlawed is parliamentary opposition, as Islamists do not believe JI exists or secularists see the effort to ban it as a throwback to the Suharto era’s crackdown on NGOs. Indonesian official have hid behind ludicrous claims that since JI is not registered, it cannot be banned, nor can they claim that it is pointless to ban something that “is not a formal organization with card-carrying members.” As the current Coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs, Admiral Widodo A.S., insisted, “As a formal organization, Jemaah Islamiyah has never existed.” Upon taking office in September 2004, President Yudhoyono said that he was willing to submit legislation to parliament that could lead to the proscription of JI, but only after seeing proof that the organization exists. As he told Time magazine in November 2004, “If there are explanations and proof that JI as an organization does exist in Indonesia, and if it is legally proved that its members are involved in terrorist activities, then it will be declared a banned organization. We will use the legal process in order for this to become a legal and law enforcement issue, not a political one.”
But it was all political. With the rising clout of political Islamists and a growing sense of more conservative religiosity, no politician was going to risk a political ruckus to ban a group called the Islamic Community. As Indonesia’s top CT official, Ansyaad Mbai, stated with refreshing bluntness: “The reason this is not being done immediately [banning JI],” explained “is because the political situation is still very sensitive.”
Mere membership in JI was not a crime, and one had to be directly tied to an attack to be convicted and tried.
The Indonesian courts seem to be frustrated with the cowardice of Indonesian legislators for not banning JI, something that has made their jobs more difficult. In the second trial of Abu Bakar Ba’asyir in 2004, the courts found that while he was not linked to any one terrorist incident, there was significant evidence that he was the spiritual chief of JI. That was the first time that the courts had acknowledged that JI was an organization. Yet politicians did nothing.
In today’s ruling, again, the courts ruled: "JI, as a corporation which one of the caretakers is the defendant, has been declared a forbidden corporation"; but it unclear whether this will have any impact or if that ruling is binding on other branches of government. Despite the court’s ruling, I do not believe that police will be using that ruling as a basis for arresting JI members that they cannot link in some degree to a terrorist act. Parliament is still unwilling to take up the issue of JI and legally designate the group. Until they do this, Indonesian law enforcement - which deserves inordinate credit for their superb efforts that have led to the arrests and conviction of more than 3000 JI members - will be fighting with one armed tied behind their back.
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A few days ago Jeff Breinholt, my colleague on the Counterterrorism Blog noted a valuable new web resource, the Global Muslim Brotherhood Report, open to responsible researchers who are willing to provide a name and institutional affiliation.
Today the site gives a rundown on an extremely interesting case in Egypt, where five leaders of the international Muslim Brotherhood were sentenced in abstentia to10 years in prison for terrorism and money laundering.
Those convicted include some of the oldest and most venerated of the MB global structure:
These include Yousef Nada, Ali Ghaleb Hemmat, Ibrahim Farouk al-Zayyat, Fathi al-Khouli and Tawfeek al-Raey.
The sentencing was widely reported, but without some of the salient information the site offers.
Nada and Hemmat are relatively well known in the West because of their involvement in Bank al Takwa, based in Nassau, Bahamas, and designated by the United States and the United Nations as a sponsor of terrorism. Nada and Hemmat are also listed as individuals supporting terrorism. My full blog is here.
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The terrible insults of the Catholic Church and Pope Benedict XVI by HBO talk show host Bill Maher reminded me of the recent mini-debate here by Farhana Ali and Jeffrey Breinholt over the reaction in the Muslim world over the re-publication of cartoons depicting Mohammed is a way that Muslims deem offensive. As a Catholic loyal to my Church and to the Pope as the Vicar of Christ on Earth, I am personally insulted by Maher's slander, and I support calls by other Catholics for HBO to fire him. His comments and my insta-reaction induce empathy for Farhana's view that the newspaper editors who re-published the cartoons could and should have shown restraint and not re-published the cartoons. But let's note the difference between the way in which the "Catholic street" treats this episode and the reaction in the "Mulism street" to the cartoons:
- We didn't riot, didn't burn effigies of Maher in the street, and didn't kill or injure innocent civilians over it;
- We didn't threaten to kill or injure Maher or any HBO employee, and didn't destroy threaten to destroy any HBO property around the world;
- No country in which Catholics are a clear majority, nor the Vatican (the only truly "Catholic nation" left on earth), used the power of the state to protest by initiating or threatening a nationwide boycott; none recalled their ambassadors to the U.S.; none even lodged an official protest. To my knowledge, no country has cut HBO from their cable TV networks.
I'm certainly not saying Catholics are "better people" than Muslims. We have many positive lessons to learn from each other; in this case, Muslims should learn from Catholics the necessity to protest peacefully. (They could also learn that lesson from faithful adherents to Judaism, too, who don't violently protest insults to their faith in the Arab press.)
And to those Muslims in the audience who protest that their faith gets a bad rap from that tiny percentage of violent protesters, I say that no institution knows better than the Catholic Church how a small, small percentage of bad apples can harm the reputation of the entire institution, in spite of the many great accomplishments by that institution through the centures. One of the lessons of this decade, in both the terrorism and religious contexts, is that a 2% error rate is still unacceptable.
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When Jemaah Islamiyah leaders Agus Purwantoro and Abu Husna were captured in Malaysia in mid-April they were seeking false travel documents in preparation for meetings in Syria with an unspecified "international terrorist network," according to reports citing Indonesian and Malaysia police.
Abu Husna was alleged to be the current leader of JI as of the time of his arrest. What were these two senior JI officials doing going together on a high-risk mission to Syria, which ultimately led to their being taken down? At this point, one can only guess, but the most likely possibilities are all disturbing.
A positive note is that the arrests were the direct result of Indonesian/Malaysian counter-terrorism cooperation, and both governments have developed increasingly firm positions against JI. Under its current Prime Minister, Malaysia has long been focused on shutting down JI. Indonesia's position has in the past not always been so clear, as a result of unfavorable court decisions and the posturing of some political forces.
But on April 21 an Indonesian court declared Jemaah Islamiah to be an illegal, prohibited organization. Previously, the Indonesian Government had refused to ban JI, even after its proven involvement in the Bali attacks. Now, the South Jakarta District Court has sentenced JI's former leader, Zarkasih, and military commander Abu Dujana, to 15 years on terrorism charges. In doing the Chief Judge declared JK to be a "forbidden corporation," for the first time banning it in Indonesia.
The international character of JI's activities and background is also highlighted by these convictions. Prior to becoming JI's top military offciail, Dujana had taught at Islamic schools in Indonesia and Malaysia.
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Twenty-five years ago today a late model GMC truck packed with explosives slammed into the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and crashing through the lobby door. In his memoir See No Evil former CIA operative Robert Baer, who devoted much of this career to identifying the perpetrators of the bombing, “Even by Beirut standards, it was an enormous blast…”
Often overshadowed by the bombing of the Marine Barracks in Beirut only six months later (as well as the many suicide vehicle bombs since), the Embassy bombing was the deadliest terrorist attack against the United States up to that point, the first major suicide vehicle bombing, and Hezbollah’s opening move in its long war against the United States.
Beyond the symbolism of leveling a U.S. Embassy, the bombing was in fact a major strategic blow on American power.
Read the full post here.
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The New York Times today became the latest tool in an aggressive lobbying campaign aimed at sabotaging a terror investigation in northern Virginia.
The campaign to free Sami Al-Arian started last year, led by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim American Society (MAS), and other American Islamist groups after the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) operative was held in contempt of court for refusing to comply with consecutive grand jury subpoenas. He now is defying his third subpoena to testify in a terror finance investigation involving a Virginia-based network that provided Al-Arian's organizations with tens of thousands of dollars in the 1990s.
In 2006, Al-Arian was sentenced to 57 months in prison, with credit for time served, after pleading guilty to conspiracy to provide goods and services to the PIJ. Though his prison sentence is over, Al-Arian could be held in contempt again or even face criminal contempt of court charges. That's what the New York Times reports today. But, just like Al-Arian's supporters, today's Times story grossly mischaracterizes the case, distorts what Al-Arian has admitted and incorrectly states why he remains in jeopardy: "The Justice Department and some independent terrorism investigators have long accused Mr. Al-Arian of being the main North America organizer for Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which has claimed responsibility for some of the more deadly suicide bombings against Israeli targets and which the United States has designated a terrorist organization.
Mr. Al-Arian's supporters, though, say that he is nothing more sinister than an outspoken Palestinian activist, and that the Justice Department has tried to exploit the post-Sept. 11 mood in the United States to punish him for that, using legal maneuvering to keep him behind bars."
If this were a secret tribunal, Times reporter Neil MacFarquhar might be excused for blindly accepting the representations of Al-Arian's attorneys and supporters. But there is an open record, one every reporter at the nation's supposed paper of record should be able to locate. Here's some help - click here. It is Al-Arian's plea agreement. In a nutshell, it states that (Al-Arian) is pleading guilty because [the] defendant is in fact guilty."
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The General Accounting Office recently released a devastating reporton the lack of a coherent strategy governing the U.S. approach to dealing with the terrorist threat from Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATAs).
This is true FIVE YEARS after the development of such a strategy was "stipulated by the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism (2003), called for by an independent commission (2004), and mandated by congressional legislation (2007)."
Why this is not major news is beyond me. The report (with which the Defense Department and USAID concurred, and which State and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not bother to comment on, and thus did not dispute) is a huge red flag about the core of the counterterrorism strategy that is being implemented, or not implemented.
Furthermore, Congress created the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) in 2004 specifically to develop comprehensive plans to combat terrorism. However, neither the National Security Council (NSC), NCTC, nor other executive branch departments have developed a comprehensive plan that includes all elements of national power—diplomatic, military, intelligence, development assistance, economic, and law enforcement support—called for by the various national security strategies and Congress.
This strikes me as a colossal failure on many levels. There is, in essence, no strategy for taking on the enemy's command and control center, its operational center and the home to its most wanted leadership. My full blog is here.
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Two new items have been added to the NEFA Foundation online multimedia library:
- Video footage of a terrorist training camp in northwestern Pakistan run by the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU). The video shows the production and testing of explosives, and the recruitment of young children as fighters. On May 25, 2005, the U.S. State Department announced the designation of the IJU as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT). The IJU is a breakaway faction of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and was responsible for bombings in July 2004 at the U.S. and Israeli embassies in the Uzbek capital Tashkent. According an official statement from the State Department, "The Islamic Jihad [Union] continues to target Americans and U.S. facilities overseas and is a dangerous threat to U.S. interests."
- Excerpts from the "martyrdom wills" of of Abdullah Ahmed Ali, Tanvir Hussain, Ibrahim Savant, Arafat Waheed Khan, and Waheed Zaman. The five men—along with Assad Sarwar, Mohammed Gulzar, and Umar Islam—are currently on trial in the United Kingdom for plotting the destruction of several U.S. and Canada-bound commercial flights in August 2006. As British prosecutor Peter Wright has explained in court, "they intended to cause a series of explosions…by the detonation in flight of home-made bombs...The component parts of the devices would be designed to resemble soft drinks bottles and their liquid contents; batteries and other innocuous items of hand luggage." Wright added, "these men were…indifferent to the carnage that was likely to ensue if their plans were successful."
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The latest issue of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point's excellent online journal, CTC Sentinel, was released today, inlcuding an article in which I present a snapshot of al Qaeda's continuing ability to raise funds through traditional methods, even as the al Qaeda core itself is reportedly short on cash. A reverse directional flow of funds from disparate al Qaeda cells back to al Qaeda senior leadership in the Afghanistan-Pakistan area may suggest a further degeneration of the al Qaeda core. There is no question that the al Qaeda core remains highly capable of spectacular attacks and continues to pose the single greatest terrorist threat to the West today. But if, over time, al Qaeda senior leadership continues to lack the funds necessary to train recruits, produce and disseminate propaganda, etc, it could lose the financial leverage that enables it to control the activities and direct operations of cells worldwide. Without the power of the purse, would local terrorist cells still need the al Qaeda core as much as that core would need these cells? The trend may or may not continue; either way, recent successes disrupting and deterring al Qaeda's finances, constricting the terrorist operating environment -- with an eye toward al Qaeda's financial streams in particular -- should remain a strategic priority.
The full article is available here.
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Jeffrey Imm and Matt Levitt are dead-on about the audacity of Jimmy Carter in meeting with Hamas. My diagnosis: the US needs to look to political activists on the Left and borrow their techniques, if we are ever to fully exploit soft-power tools like economic sanctions. So far, we have lacked the discipline, and the willingness to practice an aggressive form of peer pressure.
The symptoms are on public display. In the Holy Land Foundation trial in Dallas, American prosecutors had to deal with a former State Department official who testified for the defense, saying that he never took seriously the US sanctions that forbid financial transactons with Hamas-controlled zakat committees. Shortly before the trial, House appropriators asked some pointed questions of USAID about its practice of giving funds to students attending Hamas-controlled Islamic University of Gaza. The USAID witness claimed that the university was not known to be equivalent to Hamas (as if). In their book Merchant of Death, Doug Farah and Steven Braun described how US military employed designated arms dealer Victor Bout to get military supplies into Iraq, whereas it would be a crime for American banks not freeze his accounts. What’s wrong with this picture?
The Left that I know from college in the early 1980s understood the power of good, old-fashioned disciplined peer pressure. A labor dispute at your elite Ivy League college, into which you busted your hump (and your parents’ savings) to attend? Better not to cross picket lines, lest your enlightened classmates and professors think you were not sufficiently supportive of organized labor. Order a Coors at happy hour? Adolph Coors was a Nazi. Better to honor the boycott, or risk the disappoval of your friends and romantic interests. Stock in companies located in South Africa under the apartheid regime? Push for divestment, and boycott the companies’ products. The personal is political, they liked to say. Carter and his friends may say his dialogue with Hamas is just talk. Well, talk is political. Hamas has killed several dozens of Americans. They do not deserve a hug from our former President. If Jimmy Carter meets with them, does it mean that Americans can give them money with impunity?
The problem is that our economic sanctions regime has never seen this kind of peer-administered discipline. We have far too many happily unencumbered government actors and private citizens who view the US sanctions regime as inconvenient enough to disregard, notwithstanding that criminal penalties apply to transgressors. This is ironic, for people who ignore economic sanctions are often the most aggressive opponents of the American military. If they disregard soft-power tools against international villains by ignoring US economic embargoes, Pentagon-type remedies become the only remaining option. Of course, that means body bags. When that happens, those who are willfully blind or intentionally cavalier will have blood on their hands. It's best they get with the program, before it’s too late. A little old-fashioned ridicule might help.
The views in this article do not reflect those of the Department of Justice.
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When I started this website in January 2005, I never envisioned that that Al Qaeda would target us for a hit piece over the Internet. Well, voila, the blessed day has arrived. The wonderful folks at the SITE Intelligence Group found the item below on Al-Ekhlaas, one of Al-Qaida's central messaging forums on the Internet, which has begun a new series in English titled, "Watching and Monitoring the Jihad Media Watchers." They passed along the item below to Evan Kohlmann, who sent it to me, and I want to share it with our readers and contributors. They also passed out a "Badge of Honor" to SITE, Evan Kohlmann, IntelCenter, the NEFA Foundation, and Internet Haganah (my congrats to them). Here is our Badge below - I am especially amused at their twist on our logo (if you can't see it, download it here into a separate window):
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THE COUNTERTERRORISM FR gathers all kind of sick and low-self esteem truth haters
they bluff about themselves by the following "about us"Welcome to the Counterterrorism Bluff, a unique, multi-expert blog dedicated to providing a one-stop gateway to the counterterrorism community. To our knowledge, there has been no such blog on the internet. We envision the blog’s audience to be the policymakers in Congress and the Executive Branch, as well as serious students elsewhere, who want to visit a single site to access (1) overnight and breaking news, with realtime intel and commentary by operational experts ("Contributing Experts"); (2) discussions of long-term trends in counterterrorism; (3) summaries of and discussions about US and international law; and (4) a calendar of upcoming events, hearings, and seminars featuring the Contributing Experts. We want to highlight those experts who are or have been deeply involved in counterterrorism cases, and thus enable them to expand their opportunities to bring their expertise to the attention of policymakers. The site is intended to provide fresh information and various perspectives (sometimes opposing), as presented by the Contributing Experts and in the news articles, columns, and website links posted on the blog. Contributing Experts are responsible only for the content of their posts and links. The editor is responsible for sidebar content and design.
All that grotesque description about their expertise, and yet they beg donations via PayPal
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I couldn't hope for a better testimonal to the credibility of our Contributing Experts and the impact of our products.
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At a panel on Capitol Hill yesterday, Contributing Experts Matthew Levitt and Walid Phares, along with Prof. Yonah Alexander and Dr. Milton Hoenig, discussed the range of options available to the U.S. and the West in dealing with Iran. I will post a more detailed summary of the discussion within the next week, but in the meantime, please review the excellent story by reporter Matt Korade in today's edition of Congressional Quarterly's Homeland Security. The story was written for subscribers, but CQ has generously agreed to my request to post the entire story as a service to our readers. I've reduced the line spacing from the original to save space.
Iran Analysts Look to Reframe the Debate
By Matt Korade, CQ Staff
To engage or confront Iran: That is the question on one of the most critical issues of the day — the Middle East nation’s nuclear program. But Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute on Near East Policy, told a Capitol Hill audience Tuesday that the question is being framed the wrong way. The two options, engagement or confrontation, are poles of a spectrum whose middle ground offers a number of alternatives, with sanctions one possibility, said Levitt, who was participating in a panel discussion of the outlook for U.S.-Iranian relations over the next decade. The discussion was part of a forum sponsored by the Counterterrorism Foundation, Inter-University Center for Terrorism Studies and the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies.
Right now, however, sanctions are seen not as one tool, but the tool, a problem akin to “constantly hitting the sink with a hammer,” Levitt said. The main thrust of actions against Iran should be to paralyze its aggressive behavior, whether that be its meddling in Israeli-Palestinian affairs through the provision of funding, technical support and weapons to Hamas and Hezbollah, its Quds force activities in Iraq, or its financing and providing arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan, Levitt said. In fact, he said, such activities as Iran’s reliance on proxy groups reflect its vulnerabilities in the international balance. Iran’s support for Sunni groups, for example, is more an effort to make local conflicts part of a global strategy to further its objectives than a Shia attempt to become part of the Salafist-Islamist movement.
Walid Phares, a senior fellow with the Future of Terrorism Project at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and author of “The Confrontation: Winning the War Against Future Jihad,” explained that the country’s activities in Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan reflect its feeling of being contained on all sides, most recently by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan; although it has gained strength since the toppling of Iraq, Iran is being prevented from easily expanding its regional influence. The nuclear question will aid Iran’s ambitions in part by enabling it to keep its domestic affairs in order, its possession of the bomb helping to prevent the international community from getting involved in its internal crises, and in particular the numerous conflicts arising from reformists.
Understanding Iran’s primary concern of stabilizing its internal control over opposition groups is a key to recognizing what kinds of negotiating tactics to take and incentives to offer with the country, Levitt said. The United States also should consider taking additional actions against the Quds force, which in addition to involvement with terrorism is invested throughout the Iranian economy, as well as examining further options against the county’s banking, reinsurance and shipping industries.
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For many months there was a debate inside the State Department and elsewhere in the policy community on how seriously to take the _jihadist_ threat from al-Shabaad al-Mujahideen Movement in Somalia, and whether the group was really linked to al Qaeda.
Ultimately, the group was designated by the Treasury Department as a terrorist entity in February.
This was the right decision, in my opinion. What I find interesting is how unable we often are to believe people when they say they want to kill us, even though they have a proven track record of doing so.
As my colleague Evan Kohlmann noted recently, the al Shabaad statement was in direct response to the Treasury designation.
As the document recently translated by the NEFA Foundation shows, the group is more than willing to answer the question for those who thought they may be the sort of group one could talk to.
Our lack of clarity towards groups who clearly state what they want-to eliminate us and all those like us, is not unusual. There is almost always a part of the policy community that wants to find a way to talk to those who may be misunderstood or who could potentially be our allies. Often, the goal is to make the United States a country that these people like instead of hate.
That is rational in many cases, but does not hold when dealing with radical Islamist groups. There is nothing to negotiate with them, as there was with the enemy in the Cold War or other wars fought over ideology. When the enemy embraces death, as the _jihadists_ do, and demand submission or surrender as the only alternatives, there is nothing to discuss. My full blog is here.
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Yesterday, former President Jimmy Carter embraced West Bank Hamas leader Nasser Shaer, and today he is scheduled to meet Mahmoud Zahar, an avowedly militant Hamas leader from Gaza, in Egypt. The parade of Hamas meetings concludes tomorrow, with the former President meeting the overall head of Hamas, Khaled Mishal, in Damascus.
As I write in today's Weekly's Standard online: Imagine the Alice in Wonderland scene that will take place later this week, when U.S. Secret Service agents entrusted with protecting former president Jimmy Carter stand guard over a meeting with the head of a designated terrorist group responsible for near daily attacks targeting civilians, including numerous attacks in which American citizens have been injured and killed. The former president may have altruistic motives, but his meeting with Hamas leader Khaled Mishal is both imprudent and dangerous.
The full article is available here.
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Is counterterrorism more of an art than a science? That question may be irrelevant, since Americans take pride in practicing both effectively. We have plenty of world-class artists, as well as experts who tell us what art is meaningful and most likely to withstand the test of time, and why. We lead the world in government-sponsored scientific research. Few qualified scientists today have not been tempted to relocate to the U.S., for such a move would allow them to most effectively practice their trade. Whether counterterrorism is an art or a science, we have the means to practice it effectively, and to fully exploit the results.
The problem is that neither art nor pure science result in immediate economic rewards for their practitioners. To solve this problem, we rely on a combination of state sponsorship and philanthropic funders to ease the way for gifted individuals to remain in the game, and to keep them working at things that may ultimately be long-lasting and priceless. On occasion, this system of funding causes people to react with alarm, and to look askance at particular scientific or artistic results
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According to the U.S. State Department's Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) listing, Hamas is a terrorist organization. It is a federal crime to provide "material support or resources" to a designated FTO. But the Washington Post, the New York Times, at least one of the Holy Foundation Trial criminal trial jurors, and Mr. Jimmy Carter do not accept that Hamas is a terrorist organization. Mr. Carter is meeting with the Hamas terrorist group and seeks to influence American foreign policy in regards to that group. As Mr. Carter embraces members of the Hamas terrorist group, what are the consequences of American tolerance of those who defend, consort with, and provide a platform of legitimacy for terrorist groups?
Many are outraged by the actions of those who provide legitimacy, defense, and a platform for Foreign Terrorist Organizations such as Hamas. But until such individuals and groups face federal legal consequences for their actions, the emboldened supporters of terror groups will only continue to grow, undermining American law and American foreign policy.
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 The NEFA Foundation has obtained and translated a new communiqué released on April 5, 2008 by the Shabaab al-Mujahideen Movement in Somalia. The statement welcomed the recognition of Shabaab as an international terrorist organization by the U.S. government: "As we are a part of the Salafi-Jihadi Islamic trend which opposes the dominance of the crusaders and the aggression led by America, we do not find it unlikely that America would add us to the names of these other honorable men, for whom we are honored to join, at the bottom of their list.” The Shabaab also announced the beginning of a new military campaign inside Somalia under the slogan "Our Terrorism is Praiseworthy": "We swear to Allah that... we will only repeat what our late Shaykh Abu Musab al-Zarqawi once said: ‘we will not compromise on our religion, we will not change the way of jihad, and will not be satisfied with compromises. Between us and the infidels, there is only the sword of Islam.'" On February 29, 2008, the U.S. State Department designated Shabaab al-Mujahideen (a.k.a. the Mujahideen Youth Movement) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. According to the U.S. State Department, the Shabaab movement includes “a number of individuals affiliated with al-Qaida. Many of its senior leaders are believed to have trained and fought with al-Qaida in Afghanistan.”
On a related note, the NEFA Foundation is also making available video footage of the "martyrdom will" of "Abu Ayyub al-Muhajir"--an English-speaking Somali national living in Europe, who recently returned to his homeland and executed a suicide car bombing in the city of Mogadishu on behalf of Shabaab al-Mujahideen. The video can be viewed on the NEFA Foundation website.
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This past weekend, Malaysia quietly handed over to Indonesia two alleged members of Jemaah Islamiyah. Both had been arrested back in January. The first, Agus Indrus, alias Agus Purwantoro, is thought to be a senior member in what is left of that terrorist organization. A 1997 graduate of medical school in Surabaya, East Java, he is reported to have served as a doctor to JI fugitive Noordin Top.
The second, Abdurrahim, alias Abu Husna, is thought to come from Sukoharjo, Central Java.
Both men were alleged to have participated in the bloody religious violence in Poso, Central Sulawesi, during 2000 and 2001. They are currently being detained at a police base in Depok, just south of Jakarta.
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Two Indian engineers were killed and at least five others injured in April 12 suicide attack in Nimroz province, located in southwestern Afghanistan, when Taliban militants targeted a convoy of road construction workers involved in 218 km strategic Zaranj-Delaram highway project. The slain engineers were working for the Border Road Organization of India (BRO).
Saturday’s blatant terror act came immediately after Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak visited India seeking counterterrorism assistance and training for its armed forces.
A desperate but resurgent Taliban has attempted to disrupt the Highway construction work which is slated to complete by December 2008. Earlier too, Taliban militants targeted BRO workers and Indian engineers. In November 2005, Maniyappan Kutty, a driver working with the BRO was abducted with Taliban demanding the immediate exit of the organization from Afghanistan. He was later killed. Again in April 2006, the Taliban had abducted and later beheaded Indian telecom engineer K Suryanarayan, who was working for a Bahrain company Al Moayed on a telecom project in that country. After the killing of Surynarayan, Taliban had threatened to perpetrate more attacks on Indians involved in different reconstruction projects there.
Despite all the hurdles and human costs, India won’t be succumbing to these pressures from Taliban militia and likely to continue its aid and reconstruction efforts in war ravaged Afghanistan.But both India and Afghanistan should deploy effective security measures for the safety of these construction workers (over two thousands Indians reportedly involved in various projects) as the existing deployment of some IndoTibetan Border Police (ITBP) personnell for BRO is not proving enough.
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On the heels of CIA Director Gen. Mike Hayden's recent "Meet the Press" appearance, in which he disclosed that Al Qaeda is recruiting and training operatives who "look western" in order to penetrate the U.S., another top spook offered a few additional scraps of information about the new threat on Friday.
"There is attention being given to finding people who can live in the west, have lived in the west, comfortably, and who can appear western, wear western clothing," Charlie Allen, chief of intelligence and analysis at the Homeland Security Department, told reporters. "I'm talking about people who are Caucasian and non-Caucasian."
Allen, who spent decades as a top CIA official, said there was "a shift in Al Qaeda's strategy" after the late 2005 assassination of Al Qaeda's external operations commander, Abu Hamza Rabia.
According to recent congressional testimony by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, it only took Osama Bin Laden's fanatics a mere six months to begin bringing western converts into Pakistan's lawless tribal areas for training. The New York Daily News reported last year that top counterterror officials fear the western-looking operatives can more easily penetrate U.S. security by blending in.
"I would think that you'd believe that Al Qaeda would look to Europe and to North America for such operatives. That's something to which we're very attentive," Allen said.
He also echoed recent comments Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff made to The News, that no Al Qaeda operatives are known to have crossed the southern border from Mexico into the U.S. But, he added, "We do know that going back to 2004, the southern border is something Al Qaeda senior leadership has looked at."
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I just wrote an article for the Middle East Times on recent developments in Syria.
You can read the whole piece here.
Here is an excerpt:
Syria has been regularly popping up in the news. In fact, recent events point to the importance of that country for the future of the Middle East. Syria's political situation may indeed have an important impact on a few countries: first of course Lebanon, second Iraq, third Israel, and finally Iran.
First, one should not underestimate Syria's potential for creating havoc on a whim by using some of the militant groups it actively supports: such as Hezbollah and Fatah al-Islam in Lebanon, or Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Palestinian territories.
But also one should not forget Syria's active role in facilitating the transit of foreign fighters joining insurgent groups in Iraq to attack coalition troops or the Iraqi army. Interestingly back in October 2007, the U.S. command in Iraq announced having seized important documents that included a list of around 500 fighters that entered Iraq through Syria.
Last week, the usually well-informed Saudi daily Al-Watan revealed that those documents showed the undeniable role of Syria in terrorism in Iraq.
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Below is an excerpt of my luncheon address at the Friday, April 11, 2008 Symposium on Terrorist Financing, hosted by the Institute of Global Security and Law of Case Western Reserve University Law School in Cleveland, Ohio.
Rock and Roll was invented in Cleveland, in that the term was coined by a Cleveland disk jockey in 1952. So despite the fact that Cleveland has never had a Rock and Roll music scene like Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia and Detroit, it does have a good claim to being the logical location of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where we had dinner last night.
I was impressed by one of the exhibits at the museum, which contained a number of quotes from such people as Tipper Gore and Ernest Hollings describing how Rock and Roll was a grave threat to human civilization. Imagine that attitude, not too long ago. Part of me wished that we had to cross picket lines to get into the Hall of Fame last night. This is something I would have enjoyed doing, defiantly and without apologies.
Rock and Roll is an American art form. We proudly invented it. Believe it or not, it is related to what we are talking about at this conference - terrorist financing.
You doubt there’s a clash of cultures? Well, unfortunately, it’s now official. We are well beyond arguing over “root causes” of terrorism. That argument is over. It’s time to declare an impasse, assign sides, and let the games begin.
Do not mistake what I am saying for militancy. I am not talking about killing anyone. I am not talking about what my friends in the Pentagon euphemistically refer to as “kinetic” activities. After all, I am a lawyer. As such, I am going into my regular mode of giving advice to a client, based on recent developments. Here's my legal advice: it’s time to get ready for trial, during which we will use every tool at our disposal. Settlement discussion, alas, appear to be over. Our lot is cast. It’s time for a full-court press. There is really one big issue, and we need to convince the jury of our side. The issue is this: Who is more humanistic, us or them? How do we deal with the disparity? I do not think I need to stress the importance of our upcoming task. In sum, it is this: the winner of this trial gets to survive and to continue to live the way do today. The loser goes off into the sunset. You have adequate fees for this, don’t you? We need to dry up all sources of our enemy's funding.
On March 20, 2008, near the 20-year anniversary of the fatwa issued on British author Salman Rashdie, al Qaeda issued its latest communiqué from Usama bin Laden, which threatened terrorist attacks in Europe. Were his complaints aligned with any real offensive on the Arab world by the West? No. Instead, they involved hurt feelings over Danish cartoons which portrayed Islam in a derogatory light. This controversy has resulted in over 100 people dead. It served to remind us about the huge disparity in the world today.
Not convinced? Are you inclined to worry about the legitimacy of the complaints by Muslims about the West, and to struggle for answers to the question, “Why do they hate us"?
The answer is obvious: al Qaeda hates everyone they don’t know, everyone who is not like them. It’s not limited to us. After all, they have enemies in Saudi Arabia, and in Egypt. They hate us because we are not as prickly as them. They hate us because we love life. In our parlance, they hate us because they are neither multiculturists nor art lovers, whereas we are. Yes, they hate us in part because of Rock and Roll.
You see, in the West, we dance and sing. We laugh. We laugh at ourselves. We also laugh at our rivals. We laugh at our leaders. We definitely laugh at our enemies. Laughter is good. It makes us live longer. Nothing is sacred when it comes to civil discourse, and that includes newspaper cartoons or “Saturday Night Live.”
As a people, we make earnest attempts to appear pious. Of course, it rarely works. Life and laughter too often gets in the way. People picketing movies like “The Last Temptation of Christ” or “The Life of Brian?” On those rare nights, as married couples, we have a night out? Are they going to spoil it for us? We laugh at them. Why should we not? They are worthy of our ridicule. They themselves know it. In the end, they laugh, too. Inevitably, they sheepishly come into the café for a coffee with us after their picket shift is over, describing how tough it is make a living working for their fundamantalist paymasters. How funny! Grab a chair! We can all have laugh together. We don’t make them watch the movie they might find distasteful, just as they don’t force us to join their picket lines. We know life is too short for that.
This, apparently, is apparently too much for Usama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. It makes him absolutely outraged.
There are, of course, people who claim that terrorism is a product of Western transgressions, that if we did not oppress the Arab world by “occupying” Saudi Arabia, al Qaeda and bin Laden would have no complaint with us. Why do we have American troops in Saudi Arabia? It was because, in the summer of 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, in an attempt to monopolize the worldwide oil industry, including natural reserves controlled by our friends in Riyadh. OK. Boys will be boys. This is the Middle East, after all. Put that whole nasty business aside. We fought that battle. Let’s not re-visit it.
But then there is this other small thing: al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11. The year was 2001 - a full 10 years after we installed troops in Saudi Arabia as a result of Saddam Hussein’s aggressions. Six years before that, Hizballah, a Shi’ite group, destroyed our embassy in Beirut.
Now, what did we do to deserve those attacks? Western imperialism? We never “invaded” the Arab world before 9/11. They invited us there. The US has never had imperial aspirations. Colonies? Think about it. The Philippines? Puerto Rico? Tonga? Samao? The Panama Canal Zone? St. Croix? We lack the patience for colonies. We have our hands full with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
So in now turns out al Qaida’s big complaint with us is that we accept people who try to make us laugh, rather than condemning them, as they think we should. Guess what? Al Qaeda is in good company. Bill Clinton and Kofi Annan have expressed disapproval for the decision by the Danish newspapers editors to run the cartoons.
Last Friday the UN's Human Rights Council took a direct swipe at freedom of expression. In a 32-0 vote, the Council instructed its "expert on freedom of expression" to report to the Council on all instances in which individuals "abuse" their freedom of speech by giving expression to racial or religious bias. The measure was proposed by paragons of enlightenment, Egypt and Pakistan. It was supported by all Arab, Muslim and African countries - hardly fonts of liberty. European states abstained. The U.S. is not on the Council, though we reportedly worked behind the scene to oppose it. However, one prominent US Muslim organization condemned Saudi Arabia for not embracing this resolution enthusiastically enough.
This is a problem for those of us who fancy ourselves champions of the soft-power tools to fight terrorism, like the combating of terrorist financing. Without these tools, military actions becomes more attractive, perhaps inevitable. Imagine how much harder it would have been for the opponents of the 2003 invasion of Iraq to argue against the action if they were deprived of the alternative of economic sanctions. If we are deprived of even the softest of all of the soft power tools - art - what is the alternative? The problem when commentators talk about “Muslim perceptions” as the basis to attack Western anti-terrorism measures: there is nothing we can do to avoid this problem. No soft power, it seems, is non-hard enough to avoid problems of Muslim perception. After all, what could be more soft than diplomacy ? How about something truly soft, like artistic expression? No one dies at the hands of art. Still, there are people today who think that art they find distasteful justifies killing people. Think about how twisted that is.
I have some bad news for Usama bin Laden. He’s not going to like it, but here is a little secret for him. We might laugh easily, but do not mistake that for a lack of will. For Americans, the gloves come off when the cause is right. We are very much like our British forefathers. We can be serious when we choose to be. We do not countenance bullies. Americans take the right to laugh - the right to enjoy such things as Rock and Roll - very seriously, so much that we are willing to die for them. It is not something with which another culture or tradition should eagerly trifle.
Hitler thought our laughter made us pushovers. Stalin and a cast of successors thought they could make the world so serious that laughter would not be tolerated. The Americans were, in their view, “decadent,” as if that was a comment on our character. They would bury us. Of course, that didn’t happen. Rock and Roll helped us bury the Soviets. The proud lovers of Rock and Roll in Prague were not going to be denied. In the end, the Soviet troops did not have a chance against Bohemians bearing flowers and peace signs. Frank Zappa was more powerful than Soviet rifles.
Don’t assume that, because we like to laugh, we do not have strong feelings over which we are willing to fight. When people tell us we should not laugh - that we should not permit such decadent things as Rock and Roll, which was invented in the place where we are today - it really is no laughing matter. It is time to get serious.
The views in these remarks do not reflect those of the Department of Justice
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Several pieces today tie together to forma disturbing mosaic. The first two are the growing threat of radical Islam in Great Britain and the penetration of the structures of several elite universities there.
The second is the new report by the NEFA Foundation on the Muslim Brotherhood structure in Belgium.
The most disturbing to me is a report that Britain's Home Secretary Jaqui Smith believes the police are being overwhelmed by the growing threat of radical Islam in Britain.
"There are 2,000 individuals who are being monitored. There are 200 networks involved and 30 active plots," she said.
And she warned the menace of Islamic fanatics is mounting so fast that police will be unable to cope within a year—unless they are given new powers to lock up terror suspects for longer.
At present cops can hold suspects for up to 28 days, but the Home Office wants that increased to 42 days.
"We can't wait for an attack to succeed and then rush in new powers," said Mrs Smith. "We have got to stay ahead."
"Because we now understand the scale of what is being plotted, the police have to step in earlier—which means they need more time to put evidence together."
If they are willing to talk about 2,000 individuals and 200 plots under observation, imagine what the real scale must be.
At the same time, the Daily Telegraph today reports a new study showing that Saudi Arabia and Muslim organizations operating from there have donated 233.5 pounds (about $460 million) to eight British universities since 1995. That is almost $40 million a year. My full blog is here.
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Former President Jimmy Carter’s plans to meet with a major Hamas leader do not technically violate U.S. policy against negotiating with terrorists, but they counter the principle and may well undermine his professed desire to support Middle East Peace efforts.
It is long standing U.S policy not to negotiate with terrorists. There are nuances to the policy; it does not preclude contacts and talks. But the bottom line has been that terrorists should not be rewarded for their criminal actions, such as taking hostages. True, the policy was violated by the Reagan Administration when NSC staffer Ollie North spear-headed the secretive effort to trade TOW anti-tank missiles for Americans kidnapped by Lebanese terrorists during the 1980’s.
Carter, of course, is no longer in a position to officially negotiate for the U.S. government. Nor he is not carrying water for the Bush Administration. Indeed the State Department says it has advised him at least twice against the planned meeting in Damascus with exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal
Following Carter’s television interview Sunday in which the former president said he was ”quite at ease” with his planned meeting, National Security Advisor Steven Hadley responded:“The State Department made it clear we think it is not useful for people to be running to Hamas at this point and having meetings.”
In his ABC Television interview from Nepal where we was observing the elections there, Carter said his goal was to “support fully the peace efforts in the Middle East.
But Hamas is a terrorist organization that conducts premeditated politically motivated violence deliberately targeted against non-combatants (the definition used by the State Department which has officially designated Hamas as a foreign terrorist organization, making it illegal for American residents to provide it with material support.) Furthermore, despite repeated public and behind-the scenes efforts to persuade the groups to change its stance, Hamas refuses to renounce terrorism and its policy calls for the destruction of the State of Israel.
Along with its continued incitement against Israel and Jews as “pigs and monkeys” in its media, Hamas engages in an extensive military campaign of firing rockets and mortars from Gaza at civilian targets in Israel even though Israel has withdrawn from the Gaza strip. It continues to smuggle long range Iranian-missiles through tunnels originating in Egypt in order to supplement the relatively crude home made rockets. There is every reason to believe that it would use a ceasefire to continue building up it its arsenal in an effort to provoke an even bloodier conflict.
For a high profile person like Carter to publicly meet with Hamas leader Mashaal at this stage only encourages Hamas to believe that if it remains steadfast in its “resistance” and rhetoric, the West will try to make deals or concessions without Hamas having to yield on its support for terrorism and opposition to Israel’s existence. And why should Hamas expect any toughness from a man who writes a book that so blatantly and erroneously tries to slam Israel with the “Apartheid” label.
Carter tried to justify his plans by saying that he has met with Hamas before. But relatively low profile meetings before Hamas staged its coup against the Palestinian authority and launched large scale rocket attacks against Israel and continued to build up- its arsenal are in a different category.
Whether or not Western officials or even Israelis think that eventually they will have to talk to Hamas, is beside the point. Cautious private low-key-talks through intermediaries are different than a high-profile visit that will just provide a propaganda platform for one of the leading Palestinian rejectionists.
Carter’s well publicized plans amount to a reward given to terrorists in advance without any negotiations.
I was in the State Department Counterterrorism office during the Lebanon hostage crisis. Carter’s actions remind me only of Jesse Jackson’s publicity grabbing efforts to “help” obtain the release of American hostages in Lebanon whenever Iran and Hezbollah decided let one go. Those terrorists, who were trying to force the release of their relatives imprisoned in Kuwait for attacks on Kuwait installations and the U.S and French embassies during the Iran-Iraq war, gained a propaganda platform. Jackson got some publicity, and the terrorists seized another hostage to replenish their “hostage bank.” It was clear that the decisions were made by the hostage takers and their Iranian backers not any high profile personality that they decided to let become the escort.
Carter’s actions are also reminiscent of the European Union’s actions in pumping hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars into Arafat’s PLO “to help the Palestinians” without insisting on strict accountability to minimize the corruption. The widespread corruption in Fatah, fed in part by at the EU money, was one of the reasons that Gazan voters reacted against Fatah and Hamas won the Parliamentary elections in January 2005. Thus, well meaning but foolishly indulgent attitudes helped lead to the situation that Gaza is in today.
A high profile meeting between Carter and the chief cheerleader for death and destruction in the Israel-Palestinian conflict will likely prolong and exacerbate it, rather than help the peace process.
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In connection with our continuing coverage of terrorists' uses of the online world (see the summary of our February 29 panel) and as a followup to recent posts by Doug Farah and Frank Hyland, I submit the following advertisement for an online seminar to educate law enforcement in the next generation of cyber forensics: "Unlike most other smart phones, the iPhone incorporates desktop-like features in an easy-to-use mobile package. As a result of its high level of technology and available features, many are likely to use it as a primary device for various forms of data and communication. While some of a suspect's data can be viewed using the direct GUI interfaces in the iPhone's software, much hidden and deleted data is available as well, which may provide for more thorough evidence gathering.
Existing commercial forensic tools are sadly lacking their ability to perform deep raw disk level recovery, and so Jonathan will demonstrate how to install his custom forensics toolkit on any existing model iPhone and send a raw disk image to a desktop machine. He will also show you how to recover files specific to the iPhone including deleted keyboard caches, photos, web objects, and much more."
"Jonathan" is apparently quite an expert at hacking the iPhone anad other mobile phones. It's good to know he's with "the good guys," although it leads me to believe, in part based on past episodes involving advanced technology, that Al Qaeda, major drug smugglers, and some other groups might figure out how to perform tricks with an iPhone to avoid being caught. The act-react nature of the struggle doesn't change.
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An interesting report by ABC News talks about the myriad ways terrorists are now trying to build explosives so they will be undetectable.
It reminds me of two thing. The first is that, like the drug cartels, these folks are infinitely resourceful and have an infinite amount of time and energy to focus on building these devises and perfecting them.
The cartel went from huge loads on private planes to multiple small shipments hidden in ingenious fashion as enforcement got better. It was a far less efficient way to move drugs, but one that was still profitable enough to make it worthwhile. Which brings me to my second point:
This is a sign of progress. Using a watch with an explosive devise inside is dangerous, but far less damaging than larger explosive attacks. But it is, technologically, far superior to Richard Reid's attempted shoe bombing. This is a far less efficient method than killing hundreds or thousands of people at one time.
Finally, while it is certainly true that there is a focus on smaller explosive items to inflict harm, those are largely the work of smaller al Qaeda-affiliated groups or wannabes, not the old guard.
The old guard or al Qaeda Central, has made it amply clear they want to surpass, in scope and sophistication, what they did on 9/11. Just as the cartels never abandoned their efforts, over time, to return to the large shipments that were much more efficient and lucrative. My full blog is here.
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In a bizarre twist to the verbal war between Ecuador and Colombia over the contents of the captured computers of FARC rebel leader Raul Reyes, killed in the March 1 cross-border Colombian attack, the Office of the President of Ecuador has published excerpts of six letters provided Ecuador by Colombia and described as having been taken from FARC computers.
The letters appear selected to show the human side of FARC's leadership, discussing family issues such as education of a child of a FARC official, the need for appropriate health care, the sorrow of loss of "comrades." The letters offer "brotherly greetings" and "hugs."
Notably, the Ecuadoran government also published the following from one of the letters, without comment:
"Of the $100,000 contributed to Correa's campaign, the Eastern Bloc donated $50,000 and the South, $20,000. That leaves $30,000 for the remaining five blocs, which are owed to the 48th Front."
Confirmation by publication and non-denial?
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The latest operations by the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) against the facilities and personnel of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in northern Iraq and in southeastern Turkey have displayed a growing competence on the part of the TSK in the use of real-time information in directing its forces in quick-reaction operations. As a result of this heightened level of skill, the TSK gives every appearance of having markedly altered the balance of power between the TSK and the PKK guerrillas since December 2007. The terrain of southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq has long been one of the chief obstacles faced by Turkey in its ongoing battle with PKK forces since 1984. The hostile wintertime climate has only added further to Turkey’s difficulty in pinpointing and reaching PKK locations in a timely fashion to carry out effective operations. In many cases over the years, Turkish forces have found themselves in the role of being forced to react to PKK attacks rather than being able to take the offensive. In its latest actions against the PKK, Operation Sancak 2, which have included cross-border artillery fire and airstrikes and ground forces operations in southeastern Turkey, it has been the PKK that has found itself on the defensive and on the run continually. The full article can be read at www.jamestown.org .
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Yesterday, IPT Executive Director Steven Emerson testified before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on the state of the threat posed to the national security of the United States and the West by Al Qaeda, its affiliate organizations and radical Islamist ideology in general.
Here is an excerpt from his testimony:
The 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was successful in obliterating much of al Qaeda’s commandand-
control structure. Due to a robust and successful counter-terrorist policy made up of good
intelligence gathered by the FBI, asset forfeitures and designations by the Department of the
Treasury, and other good work by the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies
within the intelligence community, the U.S. has fortunately not been hit with another attack since
9-11. Moreover, in the six and a half years since the those horrible events, al Qaeda’s direct
orchestration of acts of terrorism on the operational level has been somewhat constrained. This
is not to say that al Qaeda has not been involved in terrorist attacks and plots since 2001 (training
and guidance provided by al Qaeda in the 2005 London transit bombings and foiled 2006
Heathrow plot prove otherwise), but the group’s leaders have relied largely on the power of selanointed
franchises and recognized the power of spreading its message and ideology via the
Internet. Extremist Muslims throughout the world have responded to this message and have
sought to execute a number of attacks. While most have been stopped, some have been
successful, killing hundreds and injuring thousands more, resulting in propaganda coups for al
Qaeda and its leadership.
...
Al Qaeda strategy memos, intercepted letters and events themselves indicate that al Qaeda seeks
to establish operationally capable affiliates elsewhere in the Middle East, particularly in the
Palestinian territories, Jordan, and Lebanon. Terrorist plots in Europe over the last several years
speak to al Qaeda’s continued desire to launch attacks on the European continent and against the
West in general.
Due to the reconstitution of al Qaeda’s command-and-control structure in a geographically
isolated sanctuary, the increasing capabilities and sophistication of al Qaeda affiliates, and the
ongoing inspiration of extremist Muslims living inside the United States, I agree with the NIE
assessment that the terrorist threat from al Qaeda and its affiliates to this country is at its highest point since 2001. As reported by the 2007 NIE, we can expect plots against high-profile targets
that seek to inflict mass causalities and/or create fear and uncertainty in both our economy and
populace. This written testimony will focus on a number of issues, including the reconstitution
of al Qaeda in FATA, the emerging second-generation leadership of al Qaeda, the threat posed
by existing al Qaeda affiliate groups and the establishment of additional affiliate groups, the
marked increase in al Qaeda propaganda over the past several years, notable plots and attacks
since 9/11 in the West, the risk of infiltration by al Qaeda agents and operatives, and security
gaps previously exploited by terrorists that have yet to be closed. Perhaps more importantly, this
testimony will also address the larger problem of the global Islamist movement and U.S.
missteps in trying to counter that ideology and failure to recognize the dangerous threat that it
poses to the U.S. and the free world.
Steve's full testimony can be seen here, and click here for Steve's summary of yesterday's hearing, excerpted below:
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As INTERPOL completes its forensics review of the material in the FARC computers seized by Colombia in the March 1 raid that killed FARC leader Raul Reyes, officials in Ecuador and Venezuela have adopted a media strategy of continuing attacks on the government of Colombia and on the credibility of the underlying information.
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro says he does not recognize documents Colombia says prove the charges and criticizes the documents as inconsistent and incomprehensible. Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Maria Isabel Salvador says that the documents found “prove nothing.”
But by now it is obvious that the documents are likely to prove a number of uncomfortable things about political reality in the Andes, including details on operational links between FARC and the governments of Ecuador and Venezuela. Already, contents of the laptops have been confirmed by third parties and by independent facts, including in countries such as Costa Rica far away from the physical lap-tops.
New information continues to trickle out reported to come from the FARC computers. Here’s a sampling of information from e-mails published this week in Colombia by the newspaper Semana:
September 10, 2006. Raul Reyes writes that he is looking forward to meeting someone who he understands to be representing “Mr. Correa’s presidential campaign.” On October 11, 2006, another guerrilla writes that he agrees with those who are promoting Correa’s campaign, because they are helping FARC. He agrees FARC should help the Correa campaign. On October 12, 2006, an e-mail to FARC leader Raul Reyes states that the FARC Secretariat agrees to provide aid to Ecuadorian “friends.” On October 17, 2006, a communication from Raul Reyes describes a note discussing the aid delivered to Rafael Correa’s campaign from FARC per the Secretariat’s instructions. A November 21, 206 e-mail states bluntly that FARC contributed $100,000 to Correa’s campaign, of which $50,000 came from FARC’s Eastern Bloc, the remainder by six other FARC blocs.
Further e-mails from earlier in 2008 describe meetings between the Ecuadorian Security Minister, Gustovo Larrea, coming as an emissary from Ecuadorian President Correa to FARC which included discussions of providing FARC officials protection when they were in Ecuador. Other e-mails describe coordination arranged by Ecuador at meetings in Quito of FARC “comrades” from Italy, Mexico, Chile, Australia and Ecuador who help FARC from their countries. The e-mails do not further identify the nature of the “comrades” but the notion of FARC having “comrades” in Europe and Australia is a provocative one, given that FARC is at least as much a business engaged in illicit transactions (primarily narcotics and weapons) as it is an insurgent force.
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 The NEFA Foundation has obtained and translated a copy of a purported communiqué from the “Jund al-Yaman Brigades” of the “Al-Qaidat ul-Jihad Organization in the Arabian Peninsula” dated April 7, 2008. The statement claimed credit for several recent terrorist attacks in Yemen, including the April 6 mortar shelling of foreign housing compounds in the al-Hadda neighborhood of Sana’a—which, according to the “Jund al-Yaman Brigades”, was carried out “in revenge” for slain Taliban military commander Mullah Dadullah. Yesterday, the U.S. government ordered non-emergency diplomatic employees to leave Yemen due to concerns about “possible attacks by extremist individuals or groups against U.S. citizens, facilities, businesses, and perceived interests.”
A copy of the communique can be downloaded from the NEFA Foundation website.
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Yesterday I spoke at a program sponsored by the Hudson Institute's Latin America center on the growing ties among Iran, Venezuela, and non-state armed actors such as the FARC, and the strategic challenges these alliances pose for the United States.
The topic that dominated the discussion (the panel consisted of Brian Fonseca of FIU, Julio Cirino of Fundacion Pensar, and was moderated by Hillel Fradkin) was the reasons for Iran's multi-billion dollar investment in a region where it has no historic ties, little economic interest and only a very small base of Shite Muslims to influence.
I explored some of these economic issues in paper I did last year for the International Assessment and Strategy Center but did not really answer the question asked yesterday, which is fundamental to our understanding of the dynamics in Latin America.
The enigma is what common ground could there be between a leftist, populist leader like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, whose broad vision is a somewhat ill-defined, unified Latin America as Simon Bolivar dreamt of, to a radically conservative religious leader who theistic vision seems to be a world controlled by Sharia law, like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran.
The answer suggested seemed to be two-fold: a shared hatred of the United States and a desire to make Washington as nervous as possible about as many issues as possible; and a shared view of each other's regimes as revolutionary and fighting broadly for justice or a more just world order.
What is clear is that Iran sees a reason to do this, in a rather methodical and pre-meditated fashion. Given the financial and political strains in Iran, it must be important because it has continued uninterrupted for the past five years, at least. And if it is important to Iran, then it should be important to the United States. My full blog is here.
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However bad things seem (and this perception is inevitable in an election season), the public spirit of the American counterterrorism community never ceases to amaze me. There is an excellent new free website that should be a vital resource for those of us who make a living in counterterrorism commentary, and for CT Blog readers. It's called the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report (GMBDR), and it's located here. The people who run it tell me that it is open to responsible researchers willing to give their name and institutional affiliation. You can obtain a password through the on-line registration process. I have already bookmarked the GMDBR. It will be part of my daily information stream.
The GMBDR consists of articles on everything that is going on with the Muslim Brotherhood anywhere in the world. It derives exclusively from open sources, and provides commentary on the implications of developments, along with forecasts. You will quickly realize that this is no wacky outlet for conspiracy theorists, but a mature source of serious news and analysis. I urge all of our experts and readers to take advantage of this great new tool.
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Fox News reports that a U.S. official confirmed that senior Al Qaeda operative and bomb expert Abu Ubaida al-Masri (a.k.a "Ubaidah" or "Obaidah") has died of natural causes. We discussed al-Masri's ascension within Al Qaeda in April 2007 as part of the shift to a second generation of leadership in the face of worldwide pressure. Al-Masri was one of the top 10 leaders in Al Qaeda and reportedly played a key role in the recruiting and training of the London 7/7/05 bombers, preparing the 2006 UK airline plot, and planning recent attacks in Afghanistan and Waziristan. Evan Kohlmann posted in September 2005 on the apperance of London 7/7/05 suicide bomber Mohammed Sadiq Khan with Al Qaeda's #2, Ayman al-Zawahri, in a video taped before the attack. That video dispelled any doubts that the attack was an Al Qaeda operation. Al-Masri's death is a positive development, but if it were from hepatitis as reported, Al Qaeda had plenty of time to prepare a successor.
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On Tuesday, April 15, at 2 pm, I will moderate a panel titled, "Iran and the United States: Outlook for the Next Decade?" in room 2255 of the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington. Our panelists will be:
Contributing Experts Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and Walid Phares, whose newest book is The Confrontation: Winning the War Against Future Jihad;
Professor Yonah Alexander, Director, Inter-University Center for Terrorism Studies and Co-Author, The New Iranian Leadership: Ahmadinejad, Terrorism, Nuclear Ambition and the Middle East (Praeger 2008) (and a panelist in our February 12 panel, "The Evolution of U.S. Counterterrorism Policy");
Dr. Milton Hoenig, Nuclear Physicist Consultant and Co-Author, The New Iranian Leadership: Ahmadinejad, Terrorism, Nuclear Ambition and the Middle East; and
Yigal Carmon, President, Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI)
The event is co-sponsored by the Counterterrorism Foundation; the Inter-University Center for Terrorism Studies, the International Center for Terrorism Studies at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, and the Inter-University Center for Legal Studies at the International Law Institute.
To RSVP, contact Jennifer Zewin or Chris Royal at this e-mail address or call 703-562-4522. We will post a summary of this event.
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What is at stake in the debates over telecommunications company liability, and the foreign surveillance bill? If the plaintiffs suing the telecoms have righteous cases worthy of a judgments of liability, immunity might not be such a good idea. If not, the surveillance authority is arguably being delayed needlessly.
The best answer to this question might come from Watergate and the abuses of the Nixon Administration. After all, American law is based on precedent, and the principle of stare decises. What does the precedent of the Watergate scandal indicate about telecom liability for national security cooperation today?
Between February and April of 1969, Nixon Administration grew increasingly concerned about leaks to the press of certain foreign policy documents and classified information relating to U.S. policies in Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, Europe, and the Mideast. In late April 1969, President Nixon, Attorney General John Mitchell, National Security Affairs Advisor Henry Kissinger, and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover met to discuss the problems of leaks and to formulate a plan for stopping the disclosures. After receiving the Attorney General's legal opinion on the matter and assurances from the FBI Director about previous Executive practice, President Nixon authorized a program of electronic surveillance of individuals within the U.S. suspected of leaking information detrimental to the country's national defense and foreign policy. Those to be wiretapped would be selected on the basis of access to information leaked, material in security files, and evidence developed as the surveillance went forward.
On May 9, 1969, following the appearance of an article in the New York Times concerning United States B-52 bombing raids in Cambodia, wiretaps were requested on four individuals, including Morton Halperin, chief of the National Security Council Planning Group. The names were provided by Kissinger and were transmitted by Haig to the Assistant Director of the FBI's Domestic Intelligence Division, William Sullivan. Three days later, Mitchell gave his authorization for the wiretap of the Halperin home telephone.
The monitoring of the Halperin home telephone began on the evening of May 9, 1969. FBI agents monitored phone communications and prepared logs of many of the conversations. Letters summarizing some of the discussions were prepared and forwarded to FBI Director Hoover for transmittal to the President (through Presidential Counsel John Ehrlichman) and to Kissinger (through Haig). Occasionally, summaries of intercepts were sent to Mitchell. After May 1970, the FBI's summary letters were sent only to Presidential Assistant H.R. Haldeman, who was to screen the letters for relevant information. On February 10, 1971, the Halperin wiretap was removed.
Following discussions involving Sullivan, Assistant Attorney General Robert Mardian, President Nixon, and Ehrlichman concerning disposition of the wiretap documents, the records were taken from the FBI's custody and placed in a safe in Ehrlichman's White House office. The Administration's failure to produce the documents resulted in the dismissal of a criminal prosecution of Daniel Ellsberg for the leak of the Pentagon Papers in Los Angeles. On May 12, 1973, the Halperin wiretap records were recovered from Ehrlichman's safe and returned to the FBI.
On June 14, 1973, the Halpern family sued various government officials and the telephone company - Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company - under the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments to the Constitution and under Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. § 2510, seeking a declaratory and injunctive relief and money damages for defendants' allegedly illegal wiretapping of their home telephone.
Regarding phone company liability, here is what the court said:
The final defendant, Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company, argues persuasively that it played no part in selecting any wiretap suspects or in determining the length of time the surveillance should remain. It overheard none of plaintiffs' conversations and was not informed of the nature or outcome of the investigation. As in the past, C&P acted in reliance upon a request from the highest Executive officials and with assurances that the wiretap involved national security matters. Under these circumstances, C&P's limited technical role in the surveillance as well as its reasonable expectation of legality cannot give rise to liability for any statutory or constitutional violation.
Halperin v. Kissinger, 424 F.Supp. 838 (D.D.C. 1976)
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Yesterday, the Jerusalem Post ran a short story about a soon-to-be released US-Israeli report on the September 6, 2007 attack on the alleged North-Korean supplied Syrian nuclear facility. The Post says the (Israeli) attack was related to Saddam’s WMD. This is the text of the relevant part:
'Report on Sept. 6 strike to show Saddam transferred WMDs to Syria': An upcoming joint US-Israel report on the September 6 IAF strike on a Syrian facility will claim that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein transferred weapons of mass destruction to the country, Channel 2 stated Monday.
It’s a pretty remarkable story. Given Syria’s support for Saddam in the run-up to the war and the Asad regime’s ongoing efforts to support former regime elements after the fall of Baghdad, it wouldn’t be surprising if some of Iraq’s WMD actually made it to Syria. While many still believe that Saddam transferred his WMD out of Iraq on the eve of the 2003 US invasion, however, to date, no evidence has been found to corroborate the theory.
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Doug Farah’s recent post about our complacency in dealing with the problem that is Saudi Arabia dovetails well with one of my pet causes: showing that counterterrorism and human rights go hand in hand. That our most reliable social critics (and multilateralists) are refusing to condemn the deplorable human rights record of much of the Arab world, I have argued, is a symptom of partisan politics and an eagerness to find fault with what we are doing in counterterrorism. The same thing is happening in reverse when it comes to pointing out the bad records of our “allies” in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
Remember, Saudi Arabia maintains that the proper punishment for infidels who set foot in Mecca is execution. This creates a little problem for American pilots employed by American airline companies who make money ferrying Muslims to and from the Haj. The response by these American companies? Require the pilots to convert to Islam, in order to maintain their jobs. The companies even coughed up money to ease their pilots' conversions, hiring religious counselors. A federal judge in Texas inexplicably ruled that this did not constitute cognizable employment discrimination, because being a Muslim was a “bona fide occupational qualification” for these American-employed American pilots. Kern v. Dynalectron Corp, 577 F.Supp. 1196 (D.C. Tex. 1983). Go figure.
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Iran’s leaders are once again displaying their usual intransigence concerning Iran’s nuclear and uranium enrichment programs. They have refused Security Council and European attempts to engage them in a new round of negotiations despite the new round of sanctions and offers of sweetened incentives. And they continue to play the IAEA card without providing any real insights into their accelerating nuclear programs. This refusal to engage in any meaningful dialogue on their nuclear program, safeguards, and intentions portends serious dangers for the future, and marks Iran’s nuclear ambitions as one of the most serious foreign policy challenges the next President will face. By this time next year the list of viable options might will be considerably narrower than today. It is surprising, therefore, that the Iran issue has, so far, played such a back seat role in the Presidential Campaign.
All three major Presidential candidates have made statements and issued policy papers on Iran. Each recognizes the dangers that a nuclear armed Iran would pose; and each is committed to stopping Iran from possessing nuclear weapons, even if this ultimately requires a military option. Nevertheless, the candidates have shied away from providing anything more than a bare bones outline of the approach they would take in dealing with this complex, difficult and dangerous issue. And, at this stage, their positions seem more similar than different. But, on closer examination there are some significant differences. Barak Obama, for example, plays down the urgency posed by Iran's enrichment activities, and has shied away from linking these activities directly to a quest for nuclear weapons. He indicates that he would be willing, as President, to engage Iran in a direct dialogue, without preconditions, including talks at the highest levels. Hillary Clinton, while also favoring dialogue with Iran, is somewhat more restrained. She would keep such contacts at more modest levels until some significant progress might be at hand. McCain would limit dialogue with Iran at this stage only to seeking to quell the violence in Iraq. Both Obama and Clinton would employ political and economic incentives, as well as the use of increasingly stringent sanctions, to gain Iran’s suspension or abandonment of enrichment. McCain continues to stress the sticks in his approach rather than the carrots. Beyond these general outlines we still have little information about how each candidate might actually treat this issue. What measures, for example, might be employed to strengthen our leverage over Iran; How do we enlist Europe, Japan, China and Russia in this process? Should we press for increased sanctions outside of a UN framework? Should we press for Regime Change? What about Divestment? Should we offer carrots for enrichment suspension alone? Or does Iran's support for terrorism constitute an important limiting factor here? These are just a few of the questions that need some policy edification. Perhaps it’s time for the media and the electorate to begin to ask.
Below are key excerpts on Iran policy taken from the candidate’s websites, and from their foreign policy articles that appeared last summer and fall in Foreign Affairs Magazine.
BARAK OBAMA (From Obama for President Website]
“Iran has sought nuclear weapons, supports militias inside Iraq and terror across the region, and its leaders threaten Israel and deny the Holocaust. But Obama believes that we have not exhausted our non-military options in confronting this threat; in many ways, we have yet to try them. That's why Obama stood up to the Bush administration's warnings of war, just like he stood up to the war in Iraq…. Obama opposed the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, which says we should use our military presence in Iraq to counter the threat from Iran…. Obama is the only major candidate who supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions….. Obama would offer the Iranian regime a choice. If Iran abandons its nuclear program and support for terrorism, we will offer incentives like membership in the World Trade Organization, economic investments, and a move toward normal diplomatic relations. If Iran continues its troubling behavior, we will step up our economic pressure and political isolation. Seeking this kind of comprehensive settlement with Iran is our best way to make progress.
Writing in Foreign Affairs Magazine last Summer, Barak Obama said:
Our policy of issuing threats and relying on intermediaries to curb Iran's nuclear program, sponsorship of terrorism, and regional aggression is failing. Although we must not rule out using military force, we should not hesitate to talk directly to Iran. Our diplomacy should aim to raise the cost for Iran of continuing its nuclear program by applying tougher sanctions and increasing pressure from its key trading partners. The world must work to stop Iran's uranium-enrichment program and prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. It is far too dangerous to have nuclear weapons in the hands of a radical theocracy. At the same time, we must show Iran -- and especially the Iranian people -- what could be gained from fundamental change: economic engagement, security assurances, and diplomatic relations….
Finally, we must develop a strong international coalition to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and eliminate North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Iran and North Korea could trigger regional arms races, creating dangerous nuclear flashpoints in the Middle East and East Asia. In confronting these threats, I will not take the military option off the table. But our first measure must be sustained, direct, and aggressive diplomacy -- the kind that the Bush administration has been unable and unwilling to use.
Hillary Clinton
From “Just Hillary Website” : “Hillary Clinton believes that Iran’s nuclear pursuit, coupled with its leadership’s despicable anti-Semitic rhetoric, require that the United States do everything it can to deny nuclear weapons to Iran. “U.S. policy must be clear and unequivocal. We cannot, we should not, we must not, permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons. And in dealing with this threat, as I have said for a very long time, no option can be taken off the table.” [Speech on the floor of Senate 2/14/07] …. Hillary believes that the United States should use every tool in its arsenal - from imposing economic sanctions to siphoning off funds for Iran’s nuclear program to initiating a process of direct engagement with Iran. … Hillary also believes in pursuing vigorous diplomacy with Iran. …. {and to} talk to Iran in order to gain valuable insight, intelligence and information about how to pressure its leadership to change course. But Hillary has said that as president she would not commit to personal meetings with leaders of rogue states without conditions.”
Writing in Foreign Affairs Magazine last fall Hillary Clinton said:
“ Iran poses a long-term strategic challenge to the United States, our NATO allies, and Israel. It is the country that most practices state-sponsored terrorism, and it uses its surrogates to supply explosives that kill U.S. troops in Iraq. The Bush administration refuses to talk to Iran about its nuclear program, preferring to ignore bad behavior rather than challenge it. … As a result, we have lost precious time. Iran must conform to its nonproliferation obligations and must not be permitted to build or acquire nuclear weapons. If Iran does not comply with its own commitments and the will of the international community, all options must remain on the table.
“On the other hand, if Iran is in fact willing to end its nuclear weapons program, renounce sponsorship of terrorism, support Middle East peace, and play a constructive role in stabilizing Iraq, the United States should be prepared to offer Iran a carefully calibrated package of incentives. This will let the Iranian people know that our quarrel is not with them but with their government and show the world that the United States is prepared to pursue every diplomatic option.”
John McCain
From McCain Website
John McCain believes Syria and Iran have aided and abetted the violence in Iraq for too long. Syria has refused to crack down on Iraqi insurgents and foreign terrorists operating from within its territory. Iran has aided the most extreme and violent Shia militias, providing them with training, weapons, and technology that they have used to kill American troops.
The answer is not to enter into unconditional dialogues with these two dictatorships from a position of weakness. The answer is for the international community to apply real pressure to Syria and Iran to change their behavior. The United States must also bolster its regional military posture to make clear to Iran our determination to protect our forces in Iraq and to deter Iranian intervention in that country.
In his Foreign Affairs Article, in last November/December’s issue, McCain wrote
“Iran, the world's chief state sponsor of terrorism, continues its deadly quest for nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. Protected by a nuclear arsenal, Iran would be even more willing and able to sponsor terrorist attacks against any perceived enemy, including the United States and Israel, or even to pass nuclear materials to one of its allied terrorist networks. The next president must confront this threat directly, and that effort must begin with tougher political and economic sanctions. If the United Nations is unwilling to act, the United States must lead a group of like-minded countries to impose effective multilateral sanctions, such as restrictions on exports of refined gasoline, outside the UN framework. America and its partners should also privatize the sanctions effort by supporting a disinvestment campaign to isolate and delegitimize the regime in Tehran, whose policies are already opposed by many Iranian citizens. And military action, although not the preferred option, must remain on the table: Tehran must understand that it cannot win a showdown with the world.”
From McCain Website
John McCain believes Syria and Iran have aided and abetted the violence in Iraq for too long. Syria has refused to crack down on Iraqi insurgents and foreign terrorists operating from within its territory. Iran has aided the most extreme and violent Shia militias, providing them with training, weapons, and technology that they have used to kill American troops.
The answer is not to enter into unconditional dialogues with these two dictatorships from a position of weakness. The answer is for the international community to apply real pressure to Syria and Iran to change their behavior. The United States must also bolster its regional military posture to make clear to Iran our determination to protect our forces in Iraq and to deter Iranian intervention in that country.
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The Washington Post today brings word of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez's suddenly intensified efforts to crack down on the booming drug trade through his country.
Elite troops have been dispatched primarily to blow up rudimentary airstrips near the Colombian border. New Russian-made attack helicopters are supposed to give added fire power to the forces of law and order.
The pictures and the story look good, but one wonders why, after years of indifference (at best) toward the drug traffickers using Venezuela as a favorite route, Chavez has chosen to react now.
And there is a more important question: why take measures that will do little to combat the real flow of drugs through Venezuela?
The answers to both lie in the documents recovered from the camp of FARC commander Raul Reyes, who was killed by Colombian troops in Ecuador last month.
The papers made clear Chavez's strong personal relationship with the leaders of the FARC, as well as the willingness to do drug business with the designated terrorist entity. They clearly demonstrate, too, that the FARC does a wide array of cocaine-based business, something they have long and misleadingly denied.
Despite his protestations of innocence and outrage following the release of the documents, Chavez has been faced with a severe public relations problem as a result of the disclosures. The documents leave so little to the imagination, and are authentic in their tone and content that denial has been, ultimately, futile.
So what is the next best thing, faced with the truth? Create an alternate narrative. My full blog is here.
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During the last fortnight, the 'Student Islamic Movement of India' (SIMI), the radical outlawed Muslim student outfit, has received major setbacks when Madhya Pradesh State police have rounded up over 30 active cadres including its chief Safdar Nagori and Shibly Peedical Abdul from Rajgarh, Ujjain and Indore since March 27. Nagori was reportedly planning a series of major terror strikes across India. The interrogations revealed two vital developments: SIMI has plans to indoctrinate and train school going children as future jihadis and for that purpose (perhaps) they have already established a women's combat and preaching wing known as 'Shaheen Force.' The outfit provided jihadi and explosives training to its cadres at camps in Choral where Islamist recruits from neighbouring states like Jharkhand, Kerala and Karnataka participated.
SIMI, the radical outlawed Muslim student outfit is widely known for its covert involvement in all major terrorist attacks in India, outside restive Jammu and Kashmir. SIMI provides logistics and foot soldiers to Pakistan-based jihadi groups, primarily to Lashkar e Toiba and Jaish e Muhammad. Many cadres also joined terror outfits for providing logistical support in setting up sleeper cells across the country. SIMI’s cadres used to fan Muslim ghettos in many Indian cities for new recruits and base as these places are always prone for becoming a safe hideout for any terrorist or their sympathizers.
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Here is something you do not often hear: countries that have joined the U.N. Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Financing (sponsored by France) have an obligation under international law to prosecute terrorist financing they uncover in their territories. That means that every U.S. terrorist financing prosecution is compelled by our multilateral commitments. In other words, these cases cannot be explained as a function of an ideological Executive Branch or wrong-headed American unilateralism. Terrorist financing prosecutions will occur irrespective of which party is in the White House, assuming the incumbent takes international commitments seriously. Currently, in terms of terrorist financing-related international obligations, we are the most compliant country in the world. If you are a multilateralist, you should not complain.
There’s also this little fact: enforcing the legal consequences of economic sanctions is an example of “soft power.” It is an excellent alternative to military action, since it does not result in body bags. Why should targeted economic sanctions not be considered an option of first resort? Relatively speaking, they are humane. It seems strange that some of the most outspoken critics of American terrorist financing efforts are people who most aggressively oppose the U.S. military. These critics should be careful about what they wish for. If we scrap economic sanctions, military operations will be more likely, for the U.S. would be deprived of tools that are soft and non-lethal in nature. Imagine if the opponents of the U.S. invasion of Iraq did not have sanctions to promote as an alternative.
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 In February, we exposed the latest FBI (and CIA) outrage, advertising for recruits in a pro-terrorist, anti-American magazine, the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA) - (see: Looking Under a Rock: FBI and CIA Hit New Low in Recruitment Drive). Both of our top national security agencies had placed online advertisements on the webpage of a magazine that included a hagiography to a terrorist the FBI had worked almost a decade to investigate and prosecute, Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative Sami Al-Arian.
Just over a month later, it is clear that the FBI has learned nothing. The agency is advertising for recruits in the Arab American News, another publication with a long history of support for terrorism, terrorists and terrorist organizations. The current edition has an editorial titled, "Let our people go!," under an ad banner recruiting for the FBI (which also appears on the home page of the website), about accused Iraqi spy Muthanna al-Hanooti, which states:
Arab American political activist Muthanna al-Hanooti was arrested and jailed this week by federal officials upon arrival at Detroit Metropolitan Airport returning from a trip to the Middle East. The following day he was charged with two counts of conspiracy and three counts of lying to the FBI about working for agents with the Iraqi Intelligence Service under Saddam Hussein. (emphasis added)
The editorial goes on to state:
We see a man who worked tirelessly trying to prevent a catastrophe for his homeland and for his new country. We see a guy who, rather than pick up a gun and kill somebody to reach his political goals, chose to participate in the American political system because he believed in it. He believed justice would be served if only more people knew the real story of what was going on in Iraq.
So there you have it. The FBI is advertising for recruits in a publication which proclaims the innocence of an alleged Iraqi spy accused of lying … to the FBI, and claims that being a paid intelligence asset of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime is participating "in the American political system."
For the rest of the article, visit the IPT's website.
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An act of violence, of terrorism, shook America 40 years ago today. The assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King still reverberates as America struggles with racial politics and with terrorists - those who choose violence to achieve their political aims over King's courageous devotion to non violence.
As we pause to remember King's sacrifice, we see that the Muslim American Society (MAS) has the gall to compare a committed jihadist with Dr. King. In a news release issued Wednesday, MAS called attention to a recent prison visit with convicted Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) operative Sami Al-Arian.
Al-Arian was the North American leader of the PIJ network, a group responsible for gruesome suicide bombings, stabbings and mutilations of Israelis and Americans in Israel.
Al-Arian pleaded guilty in April 2006 to conspiracy to provide goods and services to the PIJ and was sentenced to 57 months in prison, after which he would be deported. But his sentence has been frozen for much of the past year and a half by contempt citations prompted by Al-Arian's refusal to comply with a grand jury subpoena in Virginia.
Last month, Al-Arian launched a hunger strike in protest of his situation. It shouldn't be a surprise to see radical Islamist organizations rally to his defense or bend the truth and omit important facts in doing so. A recent Council on American-Islamic Relations press release includes this line:
"His attorneys say an earlier plea agreement freed him from further cooperation with the government."
Sure, Al-Arian's attorneys say that. But much more importantly, there is no sign of such a provision anywhere in the plea agreement itself or in the hearing in which the plea was entered. That's why not one, but two federal appeals courts (the 4th and the 11th circuit), have ruled otherwise. As avid followers and active participants of Al-Arian's case, CAIR is very well aware of this, and just hoping that organizations and individuals in receipt of its press releases are not.
But the Muslim American Society goes further. Its press release contains this obscene comparison:
"In the tradition of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Cesar Chavez - Dr. Al-Arian believes the hunger strike is his only way of protesting the gross miscarriage of justice that he has been subjected to…"
Needless to say, Gandhi, Dr. King or Cesar Chavez never wrote a letter soliciting funds for terrorist attacks.
For the rest of the article, click here to visit the website of the IPT website.
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The following item appeared in The Washington Post Travel Section, March 30, 2008
Ancient History,
Modern Girls
I've been fascinated by the way girls are treated in Pakistan since I was a girl myself and traveled there to visit extended family. Still, I never quite understood their predicament until I stepped inside a madrasa in
Quetta in 2005. "I realized that there was nothing for these girls," the local imam told me. "When the madrasa opened, I convinced the men — mostly of Afghan origin — to allow their girls an education."
An encounter with these young women was like reliving ancient history. Behind the iron gates, girls as young as 8 memorized the Koran; they also mended clothes and cooked their own food. "Don't you want to see life outside of the school?" I asked a young teacher. Her response still stings me: "Of course we have desires, but we learn to suppress them." -- Farhana Ali, Fairfax
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In a series of thorough and carefully documented articles, the Investigative Project on Terrorism has detailed the sinister side of the self-proclaimed Muslim civil rights group CAIR.
Today's tenth and final installment takes a look at CAIR's persistent -- and often contrived -- charges of "hate crimes" perpetrated against Muslims and supposed "anti-Muslim hysteria" rampant in this country.
Here are some of the highlights:
· CAIR's annual report on the status of Muslim civil rights in the United States repeatedly has included, among what it considers to be acts of anti-Muslim discrimination, law enforcement investigations involving Muslims.
· In its 2002 report, CAIR included the closure of HLF, GRF, and BIF and wrote, "Those who oppose the government closure of the charities believe the government violated the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights." The report also condemned the 2002 SAAR raids. CAIR wrote, "No criminal charges were filed and no evidence was produced to back up the government's actions…. In the view of many Muslims, what transpired was a form of collective punishment targeting Arabs and Muslims."
· In advancing the notion that government policy has resulted in an undeserved backlash against ordinary Muslims, CAIR seeks to muster opposition to the anti-terror laws it finds objectionable.
A June 2003 US News and World Reports column reasoned that CAIR and other groups "push the ‘bias' button so hard" because "the victim stance works," attracting attention in the media and Congress and raising large sums of money. "It encourages Muslims to feel angry and non-Muslims to feel guilty," the column noted, adding that "by pre-positioning all future criticism as bias, it tends to intimidate or silence even the most sensible critics."
· When CAIR issued a similar report in 2003, the Justice Department called the group's claims irresponsible. "We're talking about unfair criticism based on a lot of misinformation and propaganda," a department spokesman told the Associated Press.
· According to the FBI, CAIR has compromised potential hate crime prosecutions by ignoring requests to keep quiet about ongoing investigations.
A spokesman for the Chicago FBI cited the 2005 case of a local Muslim family who received telephone death threats from an unidentified individual - a caller who could face felony charges if found. CAIR issued a press release even after the FBI asked it not to publicize the case, the spokesman said, and thus "compromised or impeded our investigation."
Yaser Tabbara, then executive director of CAIR's Chicago office, said his organization issued a statement to make the FBI and other agencies "more responsive" and to put the matter "under spotlight." He added, "That makes them take this as seriously as we would want them to take it….We believe we did this in the best interest of the victim."
· Many incidents that CAIR has labeled "hate crimes" have turned out to be dubious.
In a July 2004 case, for example, a fire caused $50,000 in damage at a Pakistani-owned grocery store in Everett, Washington. Firefighters found a gasoline can and a derogatory message directed toward Arabs spray-painted on a wall, and a white cross spray-painted on a refrigerator.
Though police cautioned against hastily labeling the incident a hate crime, CAIR swiftly issued a press release that "called on local and national leaders to address the issue of growing Islamophobic prejudice following an arson attack on a Muslim-owned business in Washington State."
The following month, police arrested the store's owner on a federal arson warrant that accused him of setting fire to the store to collect insurance on the building and its contents. Jurors deadlocked 10-2 in favor of conviction at his 2006 trial; he subsequently was convicted of food stamp fraud and is scheduled for release in March 2008.
Part X of our series is here, click here for the summary.
For the 9 previous installments on CAIR, click here.
Installments include:
Part I: CAIR's Origins
Part II: CAIR's Funding
Part III: The Suspect Ties of CAIR Officials, Fundraisers and Trainers
Part IV: CAIR and Hamas
Part V: CAIR and Terrorism: Blanket Opposition to U.S. Investigations, Equivocal Condemnations for Plots Against America
Part VI: CAIR Portrays "War on Terrorism" as Malicious "War on Islam"
Part VII: CAIR Denies the Challenges Posed by Radical Islamists
Part VIII: CAIR Has Participated in and Co-Sponsored Islamist Conferences Within the
United States
Part IX: CAIR’s Extremism and Anti-Semitism
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Concurrent with the start of the trial of eight alleged conspirators in the United Kingdom, the NEFA Foundation has released the fifteenth installment in its "Target: America" series, examining the 2006 plot to detonate liquid explosives on board several commercial aircraft departing from Britain and bound for the United States and Canada. Cell members reportedly planned to bring the liquid explosives onto planes in factory-sealed sports drink bottles modified with false bottoms. When announcing the plot’s disruption, Paul Stephenson, deputy chief of the Metropolitan Police, commented, "this was a plan by terrorists to cause untold death and destruction and commit mass murder." And British Home Secretary John Reid stated, "had this plot been carried out, the loss of life to innocent civilians would have been on an unprecedented scale."
The report can be viewed on the NEFA Foundation website.
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Today, the Turkish Government took the last step needed to affirm a decision years ago to freeze the assets of Yasin al-Qadi, who was designated on September 28, 2001, by United Nations Security Council following the U.S. Treasury's designation of him as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan tried to unfreeze al-Qadi's assets in Turkey, going so far as to say that "I believe in him as I believe in himself" and pressing the Council of Ministers to appeal the freeze decision. But the Council of State rejected the appeal.
Many of our Contributing Experts have posted on his alleged terrorist financing activities and the circuitous route of this final decision, beginning right after we opened in 2005. You can access all posts about al-Qadi on this special archives page, including posts about his friendship with Erdogan; his connections to Hamas; the collapse of the case against al-Qadi in Switzerland; and his role as an al Qaeda financial facilitator. Also see this excellent Forbes article on him.
The story broke in Turkish on the Hurriyet website and was translated for me by a trusted source. You can read the English translation below.
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There is little willingness to tackle the Saudis anymore on the issue of cracking down on terror finance. Intelligence services here and in Europe know most of the money for the mujahadeed in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere still come from wealthy donors in the Kingdom.
Only a handful of officials, however, dare to say so publicly anymore for fear of ruffling the feathers of those who keep our gas prices above $3 a gallon and will not allow a Bible, Torah or any other non-Muslim book into their country.
The exception has been Stuart Levy, the Treasury undersecretary for terror finance issues, who recently and publicly took on the Saudis in little-noted Congressional testimony.
"Saudi Arabia today remains the location where more money is going to terrorism, to Sunni terror groups and to the Taliban than any other place in the world," Levey said under questioning.
U.S. officials have previously identified Saudi Arabia as a major source of funding for extremism. But Levey's comments were notable because, although reluctant to directly criticize a close U.S. ally, he acknowledged frustration with administration efforts to persuade the Saudis and others to act.
"We continue to face significant challenges as we move forward with these efforts, including fostering and maintaining the political will among other governments to take effective and consistent action," Levey said, later adding: "Our work is not nearly complete."
One of the more interesting parts of the story, however, is not just what Stuart said, but the Saudi recognition that he was right, and that, in essence, the Saudi government has repeatedly lied to the U.S. government over the steps the Kingdom has taken to crack down. My full blog is here.
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Repeated statements by CAIR's leaders illustrate the group's extremist and anti-Semitic positions.
Today's installment in the Investigative Project on Terrorism's detailed analysis of the self-proclaimed civil rights group, the ninth in a series, presents a compilation of those statements.
Here are some of the highlights:
· CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper is on record as supporting financial assistance to the families of "martyrs." Reporting in 2002 on tens of millions of dollars that Saudi Arabia had paid to the families of Palestinians killed or injured during the Intifada -- including the families of suicide bombers -- United Press International quoted Hooper as saying that the Islamic faith enjoins Muslims to take care of widows and especially orphans, and that the families of suicide bombers are just as needy as those killed by military attacks.
Hooper was further quoted as challenging critics to "give us a list of Palestinian widows and orphans so Muslims can comply with dictates of not feeding the wrong people," and asking, "Are you supposed to penalize some child, some widow, because of what their father did or did not do?"
· Hussam Ayloush, the director of CAIR-Southern California, has used the term "zionazi" to describe Israeli Jews. "Indeed," he wrote in e-mail correspondence, "the zionazis are a bunch of nice people; just like their nazi brethren! It is just that the world keeps making up lies about them! It is so unfair."
· CAIR has routinely claimed that Jews control the U.S. government and push an anti-Muslim foreign policy. Executive Director Nihad Awad told a Muslim Students Association audience in 1998, for example, to ponder the Jewish origin of many Clinton administration officials.
"Who is opposing the latest agreement with Iraq?" Awad asked. "Look at their names. Look at their ethnic, their ethnic or religious or racial background…. These are the same people who are pushing the United States to go to war on behalf of a third party, and they are the same people who are opposing the peace process," he said.
Part IX of our series is here, click here for the summary.
For the 8 previous installments on CAIR, click here.
Installments include:
Part I: CAIR's origins
Part II: CAIR's funding
Part III: The Suspect Ties of CAIR Officials, Fundraisers and Trainers
Part IV: CAIR and Hamas
Part V: CAIR and Terrorism: Blanket Opposition to U.S. Investigations, Equivocal Condemnations for Plots Against America
Part VI: CAIR Portrays "War on Terrorism" as Malicious "War on Islam"
Part VII: CAIR Denies the Challenges Posed by Radical Islamists
Part VIII: CAIR Has Participated in and Co-Sponsored Islamist Conferences Within the
United States
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The NEFA Foundation has obtained a copy of a new 90-minute audio recording released today of Al-Qaida's Deputy Commander Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri. During the audio recording, Dr. al-Zawahiri responded to many of the hundreds of questions recently submitted on extremist web forums by Al-Qaida supporters and other interested parties. When criticized for killing innocent civilians in terrorist attacks, al-Zawahiri insisted, "We haven't killed the innocents, not in Baghdad, nor in Morocco, nor in Algeria, nor anywhere else… If there is any innocent who was killed in the mujahedeen's operations, then it was either an unintentional error or out of necessity… The enemy intentionally takes up positions in the midst of the Muslims for them to be human shields for him."
A complete English transcript can be downloaded from the NEFA Foundation website.
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During the week since Fitna was released over the internet, the reaction in Indonesia has largely been muted. There were a pair of demonstrations in front of the Dutch embassy in downtown Jakarta by hardliners from Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia and the Islamic Defender's Front, but both events were long on fiery rhetoric and short on violence.
That changed yesterday noon (2 April), when several dozen protesters from HMI, a Muslim student organization, vandalized the Dutch consulate in Medan, the provincial capital of North Sumatra. As of this morning (3 April), about two dozen HMI members were being held by the police.
The Medan incident was out of character, as protests in that city tend to be violence-free. The Indonesian authorities will now no doubt be bolstering security in cities where the Netherlands has consulates or cultural centers--including Jogjakarta and Surabaya--and especially following prayers on Friday noon.
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In recent days there have been news reports relating to the CIA Director expressing concerns over terrorist operatives emanating from al-Qaeda camps in the Pakistani badlands who are Westerners traveling with European passports, able to enter the United States via the Visa Waiver Program with otherwise “clean’ backgrounds who would not raise suspicions of US security personnel. There is also a Government Accountability Office (GAO) study just out that faults the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) US VISIT alien entry and exit tracking system for being nowhere near ready to implement its departure control structure.
The two supposed immigration control systems, Visa Waiver and US VISIT, are key elements to the nation’s immigration process. Visa Waiver allows citizens of some 27 countries, primarily Western and Northern European nations (but that list is about to be expanded to several East European countries), to enter the US as temporary visitors for 90 days without any visa screening application process outside the United States. The Visa Waiver program was initiated in the 1980s to facilitate international tourism during a time when terrorism and national security were far lower concerns on the border control radar screen.
The US VISIT system captures digital fingerprints, photographs and documentary information of aliens entering the United States at ports of entry and registers them in the immigration database and cross-matches the data against security threat and criminal databases. US VISIT was implemented in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. After much “fine-tuning,” the entry portion of the system is finally working fairly well; however, the departure control half of the system remains problematic. DHS has never quite figured out how to “control” those departures in concert with airlines. Further still, DHS has yet to determine what to do with the huge number of violator leads that will be generated by the system.
A number of reliable studies have revealed 40% or more of the illegal alien population initially entered the US on a nonimmigrant (temporary) visa such as a visitor or student visa and simply overstayed their authorized time period (among other violations). Once the US VISIT departure control system is placed online, it is intended to identify those entrants who are reflected as not having departed within the expiration of their authorized period of stay, if they have not otherwise received a proper extension or some legal change of status. In short order, those violator leads will be very many. Exactly what to do with all those leads becomes problematic for an agency that is already befuddled by its missions and strapped by manpower limitations.
But all of this is nothing new. My ex-INS colleague Mike Cutler and I have previously noted these issues in the CTB. I’ve posted no fewer than a dozen pieces on these topics here. It is not comforting to hear the DCI share our same concerns.
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Last Saturday, I questioned whether Shiite militias were copying the strategy and tactics of Hezbollah in its defensive standoff Lebanon in 2006 against the Israelis. Unlike other commentators who forecast victory based on body counts, I was pessimistic about the eventual outcome: "But the Shiite militia leaders have already achieved one strategic goal: they showed Pentagon planners and American voters that the Iraqi army is nowhere ready to secure Iraq, much as Hezbollah exposed the weaknesses in Israeli armed forces. We can also expect that unless the American military completely wipes out the Shiite militia (an unlikely outcome given the tactics of the militia), the Shiites will take another page from Hezbollah leaders and claim victory, thus raising the morale of their followers and their reputation on "the Arab street." And that would mean another strategic victory for their Iranian backers." Based on reports from the area since then, including this morning, I'll conclude that the short-term gains that U.S. forces made are bound to give way to a long-term strategic victory in Iraq for Moqtada al Sadr, the broader Shiite community, and Iran, unless the U.S. redeploys significant numbers of our troops to Shiite strongholds throughout Iraq.
Contradictory signals abound in asymmetric conflicts like the Iraqi offensive. An Iranian general who is a designated terrorist played some significant role in the ceasefire, thus vaildating my prognosis. Sadr's backers in Baghdad are claiming victory today, even as U.S. troops patrol their streets. The British are now freezing plans to withdraw more troops from that city, signaling a lack of confidence that the Iraqis will secure the area anytime this year. But an admission from a U.S. Army general in Iraq is telling: "Army Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner said he welcomes the Iraqi government’s commitment to target criminals in Iraq’s second-largest city but he concedes there are challenges. He said most of the Iraqi troops “performed their mission” but some “were not up to the task” and the Iraqi government is investigating what happened. The government was surprised by ferocious resistance from followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to the offensive. The Iraqi campaign in Basra also faced desertions and mutiny in government ranks before a cease-fire order by al-Sadr on Sunday." In other words, Bush pulled al-Maliki's can out of the fire this time. And that is not what either planned or thought would happen. Unless we move our troops into harm's way and keep them there, it won't be the last time.
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CAIR has co-sponsored and taken part in multiple Islamist conferences in the United States, while at the same time condemning and seeking to censor more moderate Muslims.
Those actions are described in today's installment in IPT's comprehensive 10-part series on the group. Among the highlights:
- In May 1998, CAIR co-sponsored with IAP, HLF, MAYA and others a rally at Brooklyn College where speakers spewed anti-Jewish rhetoric.
Radical Egyptian cleric Wagdy Ghoneim -- denied entrance to Canada earlier in the year based on his membership in Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood -- told those attending that "…Allah says he who equips a warrior of Jihad is like the one makes Jihad himself," then led the audience in a song with the lyrics: "No to the Jews, descendants of the apes."
- Despite the fact that a meeting program lists CAIR as a co-sponsor, group officials consistently have denied any role in the event. "As executive director of CAIR, I had never heard of this event, let alone authorize
 sponsorship for it," Nihad Awad said in 2003 Senate testimony. Spokesman Ibrahim Hooper not only denied CAIR involvement in the event, but added, "I don't even know if that [rally] happened."
- In October 2000, CAIR co-sponsored another rally, this one in Washington D.C., at which participants voiced enthusiastic support for Hamas and Hizballah.
Rally speaker Abdurahman Alamoudi said he had been "labeled by the media in New York to be a supporter of Hamas," and asked, "Anybody supports Hamas here?" The crowd cheered. "I wish they would have added that I am also a supporter of Hizballah…anybody supports Hizballah here?" Alamoudi continued. The crowd cheered again.
Part VIII of our series is here, click here for the summary.
For the 7 previous installments on the Council on Islamic-Relations, click here.
Installments include:
Part I: CAIR's origins
Part II: CAIR's funding
Part III: The Suspect Ties of CAIR Officials, Fundraisers and Trainers
Part IV: CAIR and Hamas
Part V: CAIR and Terrorism: Blanket Opposition to U.S. Investigations, Equivocal Condemnations for Plots Against America
Part VI: CAIR Portrays "War on Terrorism" as Malicious "War on Islam"
Part VII: CAIR Denies the Challenges Posed by Radical Islamists
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Today Congress held its first hearing on virtual worlds. I don’t have much to add to the summary already provided by Virtually Blind. Discussion did at one point turn to the use of Second Life by terrorists with Representative Jane Harman (D-California) reading from a very lazy article by the UK Sunday Times (owner News Corporation) published last August, which was a re-working of a horrendous hack job on the subject by The Australian the week before (owner News Corporation)! Sadly these two articles have infected the debate on the subject, I hope this is the last we see of them. As I have stated here and elsewhere it seems highly unlikely jihadi terrorists would use the Second Life platform in its current form. Although I do take issue with the Linden Lab CEO’s (Philip Rosedale) comment on the subject stating, “because we have a stronger recorded identity there, it is likely that virtual world activities are somewhat more policeable and the law is more enforceable there than it is on websites”. Last I looked you could sign on to Second Life with total anonymity, hence the platforms constant problems with ‘griefers’ disrupting the system - 'griefers' rely on anonymity.
It is the potential use of future virtual world platforms that is interesting. Such as, the recently announced collaboration between Forterra Systems and IBM to create virtual worlds for internal intelligence agency information sharing. This appears to be the way that virtual worlds are being developed - for single use applications. It doesn’t take much imagination to re-word the Forterra press release to see how this can be used in the other direction. Nevertheless, the fact that concerns surrounding the security implications of virtual world platforms now forms part of the discussion about this area of technology, is in itself encouraging.
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The Venezuelan Embassy in Washington sent a mass e-mail today with four attachments, intending to blunt growing concern in Washington that the Chavez government has cooperated with Colombia's FARC terrorists. The counteroffensive is especially aimed at discrediting a resolution introduced by U.S. Congressmen to urge that the Bush Administration designate Venezuela as a "state sponsor of terrorism."
We discussed the evidence of such cooperation, obtained by the Colombian military from the computer of killed FARC commander Raul Reyes, at our March 19 panel on Capitol Hill. One of the participants asked our panelists if the documents are "a smoking gun on Ecuador and Venezuela?" Jonathan Winer, the Clinton Administration's first Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Law Enforcement, described them as "Pretty close. They are a smoking shotgun, and there a lot of pellets." Steven Monblatt, the first Executive Secretary of the Inter-American Committee Against Terrorism at the Organization of American States (OAS), and before that, the Deputy Coordinator of Counter-Terrorism at the State Department, said, "these documents are about as incriminating as you can find."
Since then, more of the documents have been analyzed, and the NEFA Foundation today released a new report by Douglas Farah on their contents. Doug, a veteran of the Latin American drug smuggling and terrorism issues, adds that FARC sent Chavez about $150,000 when Chavez was jailed after his failed 1992 coup attempt. He also writes, "The Colombian government has agreed to allow Interpol access to all the hard drives in order to carry out a forensic analysis to show the contents have not been tampered with. A final report from Interpol is scheduled for April. But already there are clear indicators of the authenticity of the documents. Based on information in the computers, authorities in Costa Rica raided a house near the capital of San Jose and found a safe containing $480,000 in cash. In addition, as analyzed below, a stash of 30 kilos (66 pounds) of depleted uranium, discussed in internal FARC communications, was recovered."
(NOTE: Jonathan Winer reported on the uranium find here on March 26. You can also read all CT Blog posts on this issue.) The Venezuelan Embassy's release is a list of denials. It does not address FARC's $150,000 contribution to Chavez or the recent discoveries, and also glosses over the ongoing INTERPOL review of the documents. It also proudly proclaims Venezuela's refusal to join the U.S. and European Union in treating FARC as a terrorist group. Apparently FARC's kidnapping of over 6,800 Colombian and foreign citizens between 1996 and January 2008, and the killing of over 3,200 people between 2003 and January 2008, means little to the Chavez government. The Embassy also released detailed information on the potential harm to the U.S. economy as a threat in the event that the Administration designates Venezuela.
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Jihad? Fatwa? Wahhabism? Islamist terrorism? All terms distorted or created by the U.S. government and media to stigmatize the Muslim religion and scare the public -- or so CAIR officials would have you believe.
But their protestations ignore much evidence to the contrary available in radical Islamist writings, as well as statements by CAIR officials themselves intended for internal consumption.
IPT's detailed examination of CAIR focuses today on its leaders' reassuring words, and places them in the context of reality.
- CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad sought to define away Islamic fundamentalism in an August 1998 interview on NPR's "Weekend Sunday." Said Awad, "You know, holy war is like fatwa, it's become a buzz word. And I think they're severely misunderstood. I don't see holy war as a concept in Islam, it is not, it does not exist …. Jihad means legitimate struggle." He listed what he termed "noble meanings" of jihad in Islam: A mother's effort to raise her children, a struggle against injustice, "an honest person who wants to get good life."
- Hussam Ayloush, director of CAIR-Southern California, agreed in an April 2005 lecture at Chaffey College. "Jihad is the Arabic word for strive. Any struggle in a person's life, not just a Muslim's, is a jihad," Ayloush said. "Being a student is a jihad because you are striving to learn."
But those, and other, reassuring definitions appeared to be aimed for public consumption. In contrast, when CAIR Chairman Omar Ahmad spoke at the 1999 IAP convention, he defined "jihad" as, in part, "to fight in the Way of Allah. To make war."
Part VII of our series is here, click here for the summary.
For the 6 previous installments on the Council on Islamic-Relations, click here.
Installments include:
Part I: CAIR's origins
Part II: CAIR's funding
Part III: The Suspect Ties of CAIR Officials, Fundraisers and Trainers
Part IV: CAIR and Hamas
Part V: CAIR and Terrorism: Blanket Opposition to U.S. Investigations, Equivocal Condemnations for Plots Against America
Part VI: CAIR Portrays "War on Terrorism" as Malicious "War on Islam"
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