American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us (3 page)
Read American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us Online
Authors: Steven Emerson
Tags: #Politics, #Non-Fiction
Although I continue to live at an undisclosed location, I occasionally speak at universities and other public forums. The universities usually provide some form of security but there are never metal detectors. I’m always looking out for somebody who goes quickly into his jacket. One time at Ramapo Community College in New Jersey a group of Muslim protesters rushed the stage. For a brief moment I thought I was finished, but the police restored order. Another time I was speaking at Harvard Law School at a memorial for a twenty-year-old Brandeis University student, Alisa Flatow, who had been killed in Israel in a car bombing carried out by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The audience turned out to be 80 percent Muslim. No matter how many times I condemned the Jewish Defense League and Christian terrorists, they continued to bombard me with accusations that I was a racist and anti-Muslim. Up until that point I had thought militancy was a mind-set of impoverished and ill-educated people whose fervor was driven by their lack of opportunity in life. But this was an audience of privileged young people—future doctors and lawyers—and still they openly supported Hamas. This brought home to me that Islamic fundamentalism is a trans-class movement. Poverty and lack of opportunity have little or nothing to do with it. The real proof of militant Islam’s trans-class appeal can be seen in the support for the Islamic Fundamentalism among the unions representing doctors, lawyers, and scientists in Islamic countries and in the support for bin Laden in such wealthy countries as Saudi Arabia, Qator, and Kuwait.
Even at my February, 24, 1998, testimony before a Congressional subcommittee on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the World Trade Center bombing, I had a police escort to and from the hearing room. It was jarring to think that I needed police protection right in the halls of the Senate. Afterward the police escorted me to my car but that was the end of it. They said good-bye and left me on my own.
* * *
Less than a year ago, I participated in a seminar at a public agency in Washington where we spent time trying to imagine the worst possible terrorist calamity that could occur in the United States. Two basic scenarios were presented. One individual suggested that the Chinese would launch a nuclear attack using ballistic missiles. Everybody thought that scenario was the most likely. My suggestion was that we would be hit by a much lower-grade attack by Islamic fundamentalists on American soil. Moreover, I said, our response would be constrained because we would not want to offend the sensibilities of Islamic fundamentalist leaders and their groups. They were already establishing a demographic base in both the United States and Europe and would argue strenuously against any kind of effective response.
Unanimously, the other participants responded, “This could never happen.” First, they said, fundamentalists would never attack us here. Second, they knew that the U.S. would respond so horrifically if such an event did occur that we would wipe them off the face of the earth. Finally, they said, fundamentalists had no real motive to pull anything like this off.
These were very smart people, dedicated public servants. They had no axes to grind. They weren’t arguing the case for one group or another but were sincerely trying to evaluate America’s situation as far as international terrorism was concerned. Yet I walked out of that meeting and e-mailed a friend, “We’re doomed. It is beyond the official imagination of this government to conceive that we can be attacked. There is a an underlying assumption that we are such good people that nobody would ever want to attack us here.” There was nothing venal in their attitude. It just meant our defenses were down. We were turning a blind eye toward the many possibilities for terrorist attack and the militants’ infrastructure already in place to help coordinate it. I wanted to grab those people by the lapels and shout, “Don’t you see how far this thing has gone already? Don’t you realize there are people in this country who hate America and everything it stands for and have absolutely no fear or compunction about doing something about it?”
Since September 11, 2001, everything has changed—and yet nothing has changed. The only difference between February 26, 1993, and September 11, 2001, is that there are 3,500-odd more people dead. We are still vulnerable. We have only a short time to prevent the next chapter from unfolding. This is the most important battle of our time. Today we still have a window of opportunity to prevent further devastation. But the window won’t be open for long.
O
NLY BY KNOWING HOW THE TERRORISTS’ NETWORKS OPERATE,
and what they have accomplished in the past decade, can we be vigilant in detecting any new activity. Unfortunately, the terrorists’ world is complex and shadowy, full of unfamiliar names and half-known or hidden activities. In later chapters I will point out the most important known instances of American network organization, fund-raising, recruitment, and operations, but I cannot hope to name every name. Therefore, I have included in this book several appendices that provide some basic factual information on the militant fundamentalist Islamist movement’s history and on its support networks here in America. In the main text, I have focused on discrete pieces of the puzzle, including the three most significant foreign groups on American soil: Hamas, al Qaeda, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. I have detailed some of their most successful operations, beginning with the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993; and the international support they receive from and, in turn, give to countries like Sudan, Egypt, and Afghanistan.
* * *
In 1987, FBI informants reported seeing weapons in the Al-Farooq Mosque in Brooklyn. An application for a wiretap was nonetheless turned down by the Justice Department, since there was no evidence of criminal conspiracy. As it turned out, however, the Alkhifa Refugee Center then based at the mosque had become a center for counterfeiting tens of thousands of dollars, shipping explosives to Hamas in the Middle East, reconfiguring passports to enable Muslim volunteers to visit the United Sates, and enlisting new recruits for Jihad in Bosnia, the Philippines, Egypt, Algeria, Kashmir, Palestine, and elsewhere. But at the time, none of this was known.
Two years later, on August 29, 1989, a Connecticut state trooper stopped a suspicious vehicle carrying six “Middle Eastern persons” near the High Rock Shooting Range in Naugatuck. According to FBI reports, the trooper found a small arsenal of semi-automatic weapons and several out-of-state license plates in the trunk. The guns were legally licensed to the driver, a local gun dealer and former Waterbury policeman of Albanian origin. He told police he was training volunteers to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. A computer check found that the extra license plates were registered to El-Sayeed Nosair, a name that meant little at the time. A year later, on November 5, 1990, Nosair leapt onto the front pages of newspapers when he murdered Rabbi Meir Kahane, the founder of the Jewish Defense League and leader of a militant anti-Arab movement in Israel, at a hotel in New York. By then, several foreign militant movements had moved into the liberal environment of the United States of America. By 1990, Hamas (of Palestine) and al-Gama‘at al-Islamiyya (of Egypt) were here, as was the precurser to the now-infamous al Qaeda (of Afghanistan and Sudan) run by Osama bin Laden.
In the following decade, a shifting cast of characters attempted a series of attacks on American targets:
- In January 1993, Pakistani citizen Mir Aimal Kasi shot five CIA employees outside the agency’s headquarters, killing two.
- In February 1993, the first World Trade Center bombing killed six and caused over 1,000 others to suffer smoke inhalation. Four men were found guilty, and 118 were listed as potential unindicted coconspirators.
- In June 1993, nine followers of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and the Sheikh himself were arrested in a sting operation, for planning a Day of Terror in New York. They had schemed to bomb the United Nations Headquarters, the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, the George Washington Bridge, and a federal office building.
- In March 1994, livery driver Rashid Baz opened fire on a bus filled with fifteen Hasidic Jews on the Brooklyn Bridge, killing one and injuring three others.
- In February 1997, a Palestinian schoolteacher opened fire on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, killing one tourist and injuring six others before turning the gun on himself.
- In July 1997, Ghazi Ibrahim abu Mezer was arrested by New York City police, foiling his plan to bomb the subway system.
- On September 11, 2001, nineteen men hijacked four cross-country jetliners, flying two into the twin towers of the World Trade Center which succeeded in collapsing both buildings, and flying one into the Pentagon. The fourth plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania, after passengers foiled the hijackers’ plans. Over 3,000 people were killed.
These acts all aimed at Americans at home. But terrorists have also used the country as a base for mayhem committed against other nations and against American targets abroad. Osama bin Laden, for example, used agents in the United States to purchase a satellite telephone and carry it to him, for use in planning the 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Hamas is known to have sent promising Middle Eastern recruits to the United States for training; here they were taught how to build car bombs and other explosives for use in the Middle East. Above all, the United States has proven a fertile ground for fund-raising. Nonprofit foundations have helped raise untold sums supporting terrorist activities in the Middle East and elsewhere. Overall, the terrorists’ activities can be divided into four categories: recruitment, fund-raising and/or money-laundering, networking, and direct organizing.
Foreign terrorist organizations have utilized solo operators in America as well as groups. Some of their representatives and supporters have entered the country illegally, using visa fraud; they have also actively recruited individuals who are able to use American passports to travel freely around the world.
A few examples will give the general idea. For just one example of visa fraud, consider the case of Ghazi Ibrahim abu Mezer. In 1997, he was arrested by New York police acting on a tip, foiling his plan to bomb the city subway system. Abu Mezer had no business being in this country; he had been apprehended on three separate occasions by the Immigration and Naturalization Service within little more than a year prior to his arrest, each time for illegally entering the country from Canada. The INS had begun deportation proceedings, a lengthy process during which abu Mezer was free on bail. He had complicated the matter by applying for political asylum on the grounds that he was in danger of arrest by Israeli law enforcement thanks to his membership in the Hamas organization.
1
As abu Mezer’s example demonstrates, visa fraud is a messy business for terrorists—it is possible, and sometimes even easy, to avoid detention and INS proceedings for months and even years, but if your real name is on a list of suspected terrorists, you must operate clandestinely. Even if the wheels of justice grind slowly, they do grind. Far better, then, for the terrorist organizations is to recruit members who hold American passports. For example, Hamas used Mohammad Salah, an American naturalized citizen, to travel to Israel using his American passport, in order to enter Palestinian territories carrying hundreds of thousands of dollars—primarily from the head of the Hamas Political Bureau in the United States, Musa abu Marzook—to be distributed to Hamas military leaders in the Palestinian territories to help build the military/terrorist infrastructure there. Salah, also known as Abu Ahmed, is a Chicago-based car dealer who was arrested by the Israelis in 1993 while funneling these monies to Hamas terrorists and who was subsequently released in 1997 ultimately to return to Chicago. While he was detained in Israel, he was declared a Specially Designated Terrorist by the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and his assets were frozen in 1995.
2
On June 8, 1998, his assets, and those of the Quranic Literacy Institute in Chicago, were seized in a civil forfeiture action by the U.S. Government as proceeds of a Hamas money-laundering operation.
3
Another example is that of Wadih el-Hage, a forty-year-old naturalized American citizen from Lebanon who worked for al Qaeda and who was convicted in 2001 for the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. FBI Special Agent Robert Miranda testified in 2001 at the trial of Wadih el-Hage and others for their roles in the bombings regarding an interview he conducted with el-Hage on August 20, 1998:
Q: Did he indicate to you why it was that he was asked to work for Usama bin Laden?
MIRANDA: Yes. He said that because he had an American passport, Usama bin Laden wanted him to work for him because he could travel more freely and buy things for bin Laden.
4
One of Wadih el-Hage’s attorneys, Sam Schmidt, emphasized this point even further at the same trial by stating:
The evidence will show that Wadih el-Hage was hired by bin Laden to work in the Sudan, not only because he was well-educated, a hard worker, honest, responsible and a devout Muslim, but, yes, he was an American free to travel throughout the world on an American passport.
5
Wadih el-Hage served as Osama bin Laden’s personal secretary in the early 1990s. In 1994, el-Hage moved to Kenya to set up businesses for bin Laden to be used as terrorist fronts. Mr. Hage’s business card shows him as a director of Anhar Trading, a company with addresses in Hamburg, Germany, and Arlington, Texas.
One last example of al Qaeda’s use of a U.S. passport holder shows how American residents can use their mobility and access to technology to promote evil. On December 29, 1999, Jordanian authorities arrested “Khalil Ziyad,” identified by the FBI as a Florida-based “procurement agent” for Osama bin Laden.
6
His arrest was not publicly revealed by Jordanian authorities and he was later released. But according to U.S. government sources, “Khalil Ziyad” is most likely cooperating with the FBI and providing crucial evidence about the U.S. network of militant muslims. “Ziyad” was to “procure computers, satellite telephones and covert surveillance equipment” for the leadership of bin Laden’s organization.
7
“Khalil Ziyad” is actually known in the United States as Ziyad Khaleel (a.k.a. Ziyad Sadaqa, a.k.a. Ziyad Abdulrahman). Public records reveal that he was associated with a variety of addresses in Orlando, Detroit, Columbia (Missouri), and Denver. Khaleel was also responsible for administering a variety of the most radical Islamic Web sites on the Internet. At various points in the late 1990s, according to Internic/Network Solutions database records, Khaleel was the administrative and billing contact of the official Hamas Web site (
http://www.palestine-info.net
), the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) Web site (
http://www.fisalgeria.org
), the Web site of Liberty for the Muslim World (
http://www. lmw.org
), and the
Palestine Times
Web site (
http://www.ptimes.com
). Liberty for the Muslim World, a London-based group, vigorously promotes and defends Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other terror groups, and republishes much of their propaganda. The
Palestine Times
is a monthly newspaper of the Palestine Information Center, the sponsor of the official Hamas Web site. The official Hamas Web site is regularly updated to maintain a photographic record of Hamas terrorists who have been killed, or martyred, as a result of their terrorist actions. In addition, the Web site contains a section entitled “Hamas Operations—The Glory Record” which details many of the significant terrorist attacks carried out by the Hamas movement since its beginning. Khaleel has given at least one lecture to students at the University of Missouri (Columbia campus) representing the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), a group that I discuss at length in
Chapter 5
.
Until recently, the FBI would not have been allowed to investigate Khaleel. He did not have to tell anyone about his whereabouts. He couldn’t be stopped from giving a lecture even if there were suspicions about him. Our freedoms of speech, assembly, and religion are among our most cherished rights, and the Bill of Rights, where these freedoms are enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution, is one of the documents that makes America a beacon to the world. What we must understand, however, is that these same freedoms are especially attractive to religious terrorists. We cannot stop anyone from preaching violence short of the “clear and present danger” standard, because we punish deeds, not words. We cannot stop groups from gathering to share their political views, even if one of those views is that the U.S. must be destroyed.
Much of the terrorists’ fund-raising has been the old-fashioned kind: grassroots drives, featuring conferences at which leaders exhort attendees to dig down deep. Representatives of charities dedicated to serving “widows and orphans” of the Middle East conflict make pious appeals; they generally don’t admit that they are sending money to the widows of suicide bombers. For example, an organization called the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development has been suspected of funneling millions per year to Hamas activists.
8
Sometimes, according to authorities, the terrorists get more creative. On July 21, 2000, agents from the FBI in Charlotte, North Carolina, charged eighteen people with smuggling contraband cigarettes to Michigan from North Carolina and money laundering, among other things. What they were really doing, according to authorities, was providing “currency, financial services, training, false documentation and identification, communications equipment, explosives, and other physical assets to Hizballah, in order to facilitate its violent attacks.”
9
The media quickly dubbed the group the “Charlotte Hizballah cell.” The group’s lawyers say that providing aid to Hizballah shouldn’t be illegal, since it is primarily a political and religious group. They also say that the case should be limited to a routine cigarette-smuggling claim rather than anything related to counterterrorism statutes.
