American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us

by Steven Emerson

  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.

  Chapter Two

  Anatomy of Infiltration

  ONLY 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, fundraising, 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 fundraising. 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, fundraising and/or money-laundering, networking, and direct organizing.

  Recruitment

  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 Is
rael 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.

  FundRaising/Money-Laundering

  Much of the terrorists’ fundraising 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.

  The suspects were initially accused of fraudulently obtaining visas and of setting up sham marriages. Their main economic activity alledgedly consisted of buying cigarettes in large quantities from outlets in North Carolina and smuggling them to Michigan. Later, authorities charged eight men and one woman with providing assistance to Hizballah. These individuals are accused of planning to purchase night-vision goggles and cameras, stun guns, blasting equipment, binoculars, radars, laser range-finders, mine-detection equipment and advanced aircraft-analysis and design software; they also had wired money between accounts controlled by Hizballah operatives and even arranged life-insurance policies for operatives who might be killed in action. The government, unable to resist the pun, dubbed its sting “Operation Smokescreen.” A trial for the nine key players is scheduled for the spring of 2002.

  I myself can testify to how widespread grassroots fundraising efforts are here in the United States. I have been at multiple conferences at which money has been raised for jihad, with passionate speeches that spare few details about the ultimate objectives of the fundraisers.

  Networking

  By far the most important tactic utilized by terrorist groups in America has been to use nonprofit organizations to establish a zone of legitimacy within which fundraising, recruitment, and even outright planning can occur. The use of charitable organizations by jihad warriors and their supporters is a complicated subject. Often, the organizations are perfectly legitimate, but they wittingly or unwittingly provide a forum for
evil. Many of these organizations react strongly when accused of collaborating with or facilitating the work of terrorists, for understandable reasons. If their official policy is to oppose and denounce terrorism, how much responsibility must they bear for the contrary behaviors of individual members or guest speakers?

  At the meeting of the Muslim Arab Youth Association that I happened upon in 1992, for example, I was at a conference of a group that does very little, at least on the surface. MAYA runs conferences which other groups attend, and where speakers make speeches; it produces and sells an Arabic magazine, Almujtamaa, and it helps Muslim youths meet one another. At its Web site, you can download a “marriage application” in English or in Arabic. The organization does not issue many press releases, and those that they do are perfectly respectable. After September 11, 2001, MAYA promptly issued a condemnation of “these apparently senseless acts of terrorism against innocent civilians, which will only be counterproductive to any agenda the perpetrators may have had in mind.” The release added the observation that “No political cause could ever be assisted by such immoral acts.”10

  Yet, as I have witnessed firsthand, MAYA’s conferences bring together many promoters of hate and violence, and serve as fundraising opportunities for groups that funnel money to the families of terrorists, perhaps even to the terrorists themselves. I have been accused of anti-Muslim bias for charging MAYA and similar organizations with supporting terrorism. I do not mean to suggest that all members of MAYA are sympathizers, much less collaborators. But I do believe that the organization must take responsibility for what happens at its conferences.

  Appendix C of this book will lay out the case against some of the most prominent of such organizations, ones with legitimate sounding names such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the American Muslim Council, or the Muslim Public Affairs Council.