The CIA, embarrassed by its failure to recognize the import of these trips, tried to suppress this revelation.43 But Timmerman contends that even the available evidence is explosive enough, revealing that the Islamic Republic of Iran, in his words:
•helped design the 9/11 plot;
•provided intelligence support to identify and train the operatives who carried it out;
•allowed the future hijackers to evade U.S. and Pakistani surveillance on key trips to Afghanistan where they received the final order of mission from Osama bin Laden, by escorting them through Iranian borders without passport stamps;
•evacuated hundreds of top al-Qaeda operatives from Afghanistan to Iran after 9/11 just as U.S. forces launched their offensive;
•provided safe haven and continued financial support to al-Qaeda cadres for years after 9/11;
•allowed al-Qaeda to use Iran as an operational base for additional terror attacks, in particular the May 2003 bombings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.44
The Ayatollah Khamenei knew about the plot. During the summer of 2001, he instructed Iranian agents to be careful to conceal their tracks and told them to communicate only with al-Qaeda’s second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Imad Mughniyah of Hizballah.45
Mughniyah was Iran’s key player in the 9/11 “Satan in Flames” plot. During the Havlish trial, former CIA agents Clare M. Lopez and Bruce D. Tefft submitted an affidavit stating that “Imad Mughniyah, the most notable and notorious world terrorist of his time, an agent of Iran and a senior operative of Hizballah, facilitated the international travel of certain 9/11 hijackers to and from Iran, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan, and perhaps various other locations for the purpose of executing the events of September 11, 2001. This support enabled two vital aspects of the September 11, 2001 plot to succeed: (1) the continued training of the hijackers in Afghanistan and Iran after securing their United States visas in Saudi Arabia, and (2) entry into the United States.”46
The Obama-era CIA went to great pains to try to ensure that information about Iran’s role in 9/11 did not come out in the Havlish case. In August 2010, a CIA official pressured a Havlish witness to withdraw his testimony in exchange for a new identity, new passport, and new job. In December of that year, another CIA operative approached a different Havlish witness, showed him documents stolen from the case, and took him to a U.S. embassy, where he was subjected to five hours of interrogation and finally offered cash if he recanted his testimony. Says Timmerman, “After I reported those attempts at witness tampering to a Congressional oversight committee, they ceased.”47
Judge Daniels determined that Iran, Hizballah, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security, and other Iranian government departments, as well as the Ayatollah Khamenei himself and former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani were all directly implicated in Iranian efforts to aid al-Qaeda in its 9/11 plot.48 He awarded the plaintiffs in the Havlish case 394,277,884 dollars for economic damages, as well as ninety-four million dollars for pain and suffering, eighty hundred and seventy-four million for mental anguish and grief, and 4,686,235,921 dollars in punitive damages, along with nine hundred and sixty-eight million in prejudgment interest, for a total of 7,016,513,805 dollars.49
The Havlish plaintiffs were unlikely to receive a check for that amount from the Islamic Republic of Iran neatly signed by the Ayatollah Khamenei. However, in March 2014, as part of the Havlish judgment, the plaintiffs were awarded ownership of a five-hundred-million-dollar office tower in midtown Manhattan—one that had been owned by Iranian companies.50
This award provided a small bit of compensation for the loss of life and the years of trauma that these families had suffered as a result of the Islamic Republic’s war against the United States. More important, it stood as a tangible acknowledgment of Iran’s role in the 9/11 attacks.
Confirming all of this was the revelation in November 2017 of a document captured in the May 2, 2011, American raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan. It details a mutual agreement between al-Qaeda and the Islamic Republic of Iran to strike American interests in “Saudi Arabia and the Gulf”; the Iranians agreed to supply al-Qaeda “money, arms,” and “training in Hizbollah camps in Lebanon.”51
Infiltration
Standing with President Bush in the mosque in September 2001 was Abdurrahman Alamoudi, who was then one of the most prominent Muslim leaders in the United States. During the presidency of Bill Clinton, Alamoudi served as a State Department “goodwill ambassador” to Muslim lands.52 In June 2001, he attended a White House briefing on George W. Bush’s faith-based initiative program.53
Even though it was universally taken for granted that Alamoudi was a “moderate,” he never bothered to conceal his true allegiances. In 1994 he declared his support for the jihad terror group Hamas. He claimed that “Hamas is not a terrorist group” and that it did “good work.”54 In 1996, Alamoudi defended Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzouk, who was ultimately deported because of his work with Hamas and currently leads a branch of the terror group in Syria. “I really consider him to be from among the best people in the Islamic movement,” said Alamoudi of Marzouk. “Hamas…and I work together with him.”55
At a rally in October 2000, he encouraged those in the crowd to show their support for Hamas and Hizballah. As the crowd cheered, Alamoudi shouted: “I have been labeled by the media in New York to be a supporter of Hamas. Anybody supports Hamas here?” As the crowd cheered, “Yes,” Alamoudi asked the same question again, and then added: “Hear that, Bill Clinton, we are all supporters of Hamas, Allahu akbar. I wish they added that I am also a supporter of Hizballah. Anybody supports Hizballah here?” The crowd again roared its approval.56 But even that did not raise any concern among those in Washington who were confident that he was a sterling and reliable “moderate Muslim.” And so, in January 2001, the year he was invited to the Bush White House, Alamoudi traveled to Beirut to attend a conference with leaders of al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hizballah, and Islamic Jihad.57
Then, in September 2003, Alamoudi was arrested in London’s Heathrow Airport while carrying three hundred and forty thousand dollars in cash—money that, as it turned out, he had received from Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi in order to finance an al-Qaeda plot to murder the Saudi crown prince, the future King Abdullah.58 Indicted on numerous charges, Alamoudi was found to have funneled over one million dollars to al-Qaeda; he pled guilty to being a senior al-Qaeda financier and was sentenced in October 2004 to twenty-three years in prison.59 In 2011, the Obama administration reduced Alamoudi’s sentence by six years, without making public its reasons for doing so.60
So, as he proclaimed that Islam was a religion of peace that had no connection to the September 11 attacks, George W. Bush was standing in the company of a financier of the organization that was responsible for those attacks. Nor was that by any means the extent of the influence in Washington of groups with ties to others that applauded or even had involvement in the attacks. It was due to the influence of these groups that the world’s chief superpower, while expending massive resources in tracking down and neutralizing various jihadi individuals and groups, committed itself to a policy of complete denial regarding why the jihad was being fought in the first place.
That denial made the American response to 9/11 curious and wrongheaded in numerous ways. The war went ahead in both Iraq and Afghanistan, both rather off the point if the United States really wanted to confront the sources of jihad activity worldwide. The invasion of Afghanistan made some sense, since the Taliban government was cooperating with al-Qaeda and allowing it to operate training camps on its soil. The invasion of Iraq, however, was based on allegations of cooperation between bin Laden and Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein that were much more tenuous. In both cases, the invasions were predicated on the assumption that the people of each country would welcome the Americans. Vice President Dick Cheney said o
n March 16, 2003: “I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.”61 Of course, he was proven wrong: operations in both Afghanistan and Iraq became quagmires, immense drains on American personnel, money, and materiel, with little to no upside.
Cheney’s odd idea that the Americans would be greeted as liberators seems to have been based upon the Bush administration’s ahistorical belief that Islam was a religion of peace and compatible with Western notions of secular and democratic rule, such that the Iraqis would welcome the fall of the oppressor and the chance to express themselves at the ballot box. This view completely ignored Islam’s political character, and the idea of Sharia as the immutable and perfect law of Allah that was superior to any man-made law.
This may have been attributable to Muslim Brotherhood influence in the United States government. The Muslim Brotherhood spelled out its goals for the United States in an internal document seized by the FBI in 2005 in the Northern Virginia headquarters of an Islamic charity, the Holy Land Foundation. The Holy Land Foundation, once the largest Islamic charity in the United States, was shut down for sending charitable contributions to Hamas. The captured document was entitled, “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America.”62
In it, Muslim Brotherhood members were told that the Brotherhood was working on presenting Islam as a “civilizational alternative” to non-Islamic forms of society and governance, and supporting “the global Islamic state wherever it is.”63 In working to establish that Islamic state, Muslim Brotherhood members in the United States: “must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”64
The Muslim Brotherhood has been active in the United States for decades, and is the moving force behind virtually all of the mainstream Muslim organizations in America: the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), the Muslim American Society (MAS), the Muslim Students Association (MSA), the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT), and many others.
Obama in Cairo
Against this backdrop, it is no surprise that when President Barack Obama made his outreach speech to the Muslim world from Cairo on June 4, 2009, he included fulsome praise of Islam that played fast and loose with the historical record:
As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. It was Islam—at places like Al-Azhar—that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities—it was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed. Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation. And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.
I also know that Islam has always been a part of America’s story. The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco. In signing the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, our second President, John Adams, wrote, “The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims.” And since our founding, American Muslims have enriched the United States. They have fought in our wars, they have served in our government, they have stood for civil rights, they have started businesses, they have taught at our universities, they’ve excelled in our sports arenas, they’ve won Nobel Prizes, built our tallest building, and lit the Olympic Torch. And when the first Muslim American was recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to defend our Constitution using the same Holy Koran that one of our Founding Fathers—Thomas Jefferson—kept in his personal library.
The Jefferson and Adams who were told by the Tripolitanian ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman that Tripoli “was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have answered their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found” might have found Obama’s insinuation that they admired and respected Islam startling.65 Undaunted by facts, Obama continued:
So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed. That experience guides my conviction that partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn’t. And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.66
Where this executive duty to defend Islam appeared in the Constitution, he did not explain.
In September 2012 at the United Nations, in the wake of the jihad massacre of four Americans by al-Qaeda operatives in Benghazi in Libya, which key members of his administration falsely and repeatedly attributed to a spontaneous demonstration arising over a video criticizing Muhammad on YouTube, Obama went even farther, saying: “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”67 The specter of the leader of the free world vowing to enforce Islamic blasphemy laws was not just rhetoric. The idea that Islam in America was beset by negative stereotypes that same year helped to defeat an attempt to investigate Muslim Brotherhood influence within the United States government.
Efforts to Investigate Infiltration Stymied
In 2012, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) tried to call attention to this influence, asking for an investigation into Muslim Brotherhood infiltration into the U.S. government. She accused the first Muslim member of Congress, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) of having a “long record of being associated” with CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood.68
In response, Ellison accused Bachmann of religious bigotry.69 Yet he really did have a “long record of being associated” with Hamas-linked CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood. As long ago as 2006, Ellison’s closeness to CAIR’s cofounder and National Executive Director Nihad Awad was a matter of public record.70 Awad, who notoriously said in 1994 that he was “in support of the Hamas movement,” spoke at fundraisers for Ellison, raising considerable sums for his first congressional race. Ellison has appeared frequently at CAIR events since then.71
Investigative journalist Patrick Poole explained that “according to Justice Department, Awad is a longtime Hamas operative. Multiple statements made by federal prosecutors identify Awad as one of the attendees at a 1993 meeting of US Muslim Brotherhood Palestine Committee leaders in Philadelphia that was wiretapped by the FBI under a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant. The topic of discussion during that 1993 meeting was how to help Hamas by working in the U.S. to help sabotage the Oslo Peace Accords.”72 But none of that fazed Ellison. Nor has he ever expressed any concern over the fact that CAIR is also linked to the Muslim Brotherhood through its parent group, the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP).
Ellison’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood were also more direct. In 2008, Ellison accepted 13,350 dollars from the Muslim American Society (MAS) to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca.73 As we have seen, the Muslim American Society is the principal arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States.
In December 2012, possible corroboration of some of Bachmann’s allegations came from an unlikely quarter: Egypt’s Rose El-Youssef magazine, which asserted in a December 2012 article that six highly placed Muslim Brotherhood infiltrators within the Obama Administration had transformed the United States “from a position hostile to Islamic groups and organizations in the world to the largest and most important supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood.”74
The article said that “the six named people include: Arif Alikhan, assistant secretary of Homeland Security for policy development; Mohammed Elibiary, a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council; Rashad Hussain, the U.S. special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference [OIC]; Salam al-Marayati, co-founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC); Imam Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA); and Eboo Patel, a member of President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships.”75
Besides Elibiary and Magid, Bachmann also raised concerns about the OIC, to which Hussain was Barack Obama’s ambassador. And so the Egyptian article stood as vindication of her concerns, and showed that her request an investigation be opened of the Muslim Brotherhood’s infiltration was entirely reasonable and not a manifestation of “bigotry,” “racism,” or “McCarthyism”—contrary to the hysterical (and formulaic) claims of her leftist detractors.
Of course, the Egyptian article had to be taken with a grain of salt. It could have been the product of a Muslim Brotherhood advocate in Egypt, anxious to bolster perceptions of his movement’s clout and credibility. While that was possible, however, it could not responsibly be assumed to be the case without closer examination; it was equally possible that the article represented a genuine indication that Bachmann’s concerns were justified, and that the Muslim Brotherhood had indeed penetrated the highest levels of the U.S. government.
Infiltration in American institutions was undeniable. Louay Safi, a Muslim activist, had ties to two Muslim Brotherhood entities—the Islamic Society of North America and the International Institute of Islamic Thought—as well as to convicted jihad leader Sami al-Arian. Yet Safi was training troops and even meeting with the families of victims at Fort Hood in December 2009, the month after a Muslim Army major, Nidal Hasan, massacred thirteen people there while shouting, “Allahu akbar.”76 Safi later became a leader of the Syrian opposition to Bashar Assad that was dominated by al-Qaeda and other pro-Sharia Islamic supremacist groups.77
The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS Page 38
