by Sperry, Paul
In addition, Yee convinced his superiors to provide the Muslim terrorists with prayer beads, prayer oils, prayer caps, and up to half a dozen books on Islam from the library, which he stocked with some $26,000 worth of Arabic and English titles.
Thanks to him, the terrorists have been able to brush up on their jihad as they await repatriation to Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Pakistan. No doubt some of the more than seventy-five former Gitmo detainees who have returned to the anti-American jihad were among those the former chaplain “counseled.”
But not to worry, Yee says, he didn’t see any terrorists there, not even the dozens confirmed to have resumed their terrorist activities. “It’s safe to say there weren’t any prisoners who could be definitely connected to hardcore terrorism,” he recently maintained during a BBC Radio interview promoting his book.21
Yee’s legacy lives on at Guantanamo. Today, even prayer rugs are standard issue for detainees there. Arrows point the way to Mecca in their cells. Speakers blare out the Arabic call to prayer five times a day. Hardbound, embossed copies of the Quran are wrapped in cloth and distributed by a sympathetic Muslim librarian, who now catalogs some ten thousand pieces of Arabic literature as well as Arabic movies. No infidel is permitted to touch the Quran, not even the post commander.
Worse, security officials at Gitmo have been investigating another possible spy ring involving several “dirty” Arabic linguists who are accused among other things of:
omitting valuable intelligence from their translations of detainee interrogations;
slipping notes to detainees inside copies of the Quran;
coaching detainees to make allegations of abuse against interrogators; and
meeting with suspects on the terrorist watchlist while traveling back in the states.
Gitmo security officials recently met with FBI agents in Philadelphia to aid their investigation into one of the Muslim linguists under contract at Gitmo, according to sources familiar with the investigation.22 They also this summer briefed members of Congress about the prison camp’s internal security breaches.
“Three years of investigations have revealed the presence of pro-jihad/anti-Western activities among the civilian contractor and military linguist population serving Joint Task Force Guantanamo,” states a copy of a classified Gitmo briefing, which was prepared in May 2009 for the FBI and CIA, as well as the congressional intelligence committees.23
The report explains that dirty Arabic linguists have gathered classified data involving detainees, interrogations, and security operations in an effort to “disrupt” Gitmo operations and U.S. “intelligence-collection capabilities.”24
It goes on to specifically finger the Muslim Brotherhood, which it calls a terrorist group, in the conspiracy.
“These actions are deliberate, carefully planned, global, and to the benefit of the detainees and multiple terrorist organizations, to include al-Qaida and Muslim Brotherhood,” the briefing says.25
Shockingly, the enemy infiltration is not limited to Guantanamo. The report strongly suggests that its spies have penetrated nearly every sensitive U.S. security agency involved in the war on terror, potentially compromising intelligence government-wide. “Persons participating in this activity move regularly between multiple contracting companies, various intelligence agencies in the U.S. government [FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, etc.], and every branch of the U.S. military.”26
OSAMA BIN LADEN
Yes, CAIR has even come to the defense of the al-Qaida kingpin. In 1998, after he was fingered for blowing up the U.S. embassies, CAIR demanded that Los Angeles-area billboards with bin Laden’s picture under the headline “Sworn Enemy” be taken down.
Then in 2001, when most of the civilized world condemned bin Laden for attacking New York and Washington, CAIR abstained for more than three months, while blaming instead “the Zionist network” and demanding a halt to U.S. bombing in Afghanistan, bin Laden’s home base. In an interview with journalist Jake Tapper, now with ABC News, CAIR communications director Ibrahim Hooper refused to condemn bin Laden outright for 9/11, even after the government stated he was clearly responsible for the attacks.27
In fact, CAIR didn’t assign guilt to the 9/11 mastermind, even under direct questions from the press, until bin Laden incriminated himself in a videotape aired in December 2001. (And even in CAIR’s belated press release, the group does not expressly condemn bin Laden. It merely concedes the undeniably obvious fact that he is connected to “the events of September 11.”)
On the other hand, CAIR has suggested Jews were behind 9/11. A month after the attacks, with Ground Zero still smoldering, CAIR made outrageous claims that Mohamed Atta and other hijackers were alive, that Atta’s passport was stolen, that the attacks were not caused by Muslims, and that the media should investigate the Israelis.
“What about the world Zionist network?” demanded CAIR’s New York executive director Ghazi Khankan. “Why are you in the media not looking at them?”28
CAIR has received funding from two of bin Laden’s favorite charities. In 2000, for example, CAIR research director Mohamed Nimer solicited $18,000 from the Global Relief Foundation, an internal letter reveals.29 The donation was made a year before the Bridgeview, Illinois-based foundation was shut down as a charitable front for al-Qaida. Global Relief, in fact, helped fund the bombings of the U.S. embassies, according to the Treasury Department.
And the U.S. offices of the Saudi-based International Islamic Relief Organization contributed at least $12,000 in financing to CAIR.30 The Treasury Department has blacklisted IIRO’s branches in the Philippines and Indonesia for fundraising for al-Qaida and affiliated terrorist groups.
CAIR also defended al-Qaida’s spiritual leader in America, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, after his conviction on charges he plotted to blow up bridges, tunnels, and buildings in New York. As noted earlier, CAIR’s co-founder and former chairman hosted the Blind Sheik at his Silicon Valley home last decade.
Cementing CAIR’s support for bin Laden is a 2004 political “talking points” memo found in Awad’s personal files dealing with the agenda of the so-called American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections, which CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood fronts formed after 9/11 to help elect more sympathetic politicians, including the president. The memo is basically a wish list for pro-Islamist changes in Washington policy.
Under the heading “American-Islamic Relations,” which are the last three words in CAIR’s name, the memo recommends Washington abandon Israel and start currying favor with bin Laden and al-Qaida to avoid another 9/11. Here are the relevant demands listed (by talking point number) in the shocking memo:
1. Abolish the faulty Middle East policy of the past century.
2. Democrats and Republicans need to share the blame for the failure of our Middle East policy, and need to assume responsibility for the damage done to the country as a result of 9/11.
3. Recognize that the seeds for 9/11 were planted in 1948.
5. Do not make Fundamental Islam the enemy. It will not work long-term, and there is no need for it.
8. Attempt to understand Islamic movements in the area, and start supporting Islamic groups including Mr. bin Laden and his associates.31
ANWAR N. AULAQI
Born in New Mexico, Aulaqi is al-Qaida’s go-to imam for preparing suicide cells in the West, including the 9/11 hijackers, for “martyrdom operations.” He reminds them of the carnal “pleasures” and high “rewards” Allah has waiting for them in Paradise—foremost, a harem of houris, or virgins—in case they lose their nerve.
This rock star of the jihadi preaching circuit has cultivated some fans among CAIR. Heading his booster club within the organization is the civil rights coordinator for CAIR’s Los Angeles chapter, Affad Shaikh, who has listened to Aulaqi’s lectures and posted links to his Web site on his blog Muslamics. Shaikh, who in 2008 was questioned by Homeland Security agents near San Diego, appears to have a death wish. “In death there is something to celebrate,” he recently w
rote on his blog in a post titled “Celebrating Death.”32 The essay mirrors one Aulaqi previously posted on another Web site titled “Why Muslims Love Death.”
“Our culture of martyrdom needs to be revived,” the imam fumes, “because the enemy of Allah fears nothing more than our love of death.” Global domination is the goal. “We will implement the rule of Allah on earth by the tip of the sword whether the masses like it or not,” he has written.33
Who is Anwar Nasser Aulaqi? Investigators now suspect he was a key facilitator and advisor, and possibly even a surviving field commander, for the 9/11 cell that hit the Pentagon. He’s also an American citizen. They suspect he knew details of the plot and girded the al-Qaida terrorists’ resolve to carry it out. Evidence is strong that he was enlisted to, at a minimum, hold the hijackers’ hands and take their temperature as they moved closer to Zero Hour. In short, he’s (if as yet unofficially) an unindicted 9/11 co-conspirator, and he remains at large.
Three of the hijackers of that uniquely all-Saudi cell that torpedoed the Pentagon spent time at the Saudi-connected Aulaqi’s mosques in both San Diego and Falls Church, Virginia, where he served as prayer leader. The phone number for the Falls Church mosque—Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center, controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood and closely tied to CAIR—was found in the Hamburg, Germany, apartment of one of the planners of the 9/11 attacks, Ramzi Binalshibh.
The 9/11 Commission concluded Aulaqi, who aided and privately counseled the hijackers, was “suspicious” and should be brought in for questioning. The commission was not told, however, that he was taken into custody a year after 9/11 on a warrant, but then released after the warrant was mysteriously rescinded. Aulaqi was allowed to turn around and leave the country on a Saudi Arabian airline without any further investigation, even though he remained on the terrorist lookout as the subject of multiple investigations involving al-Qaida and Hamas financing.34
Law enforcement officials involved with the warrant are still steamed about the missed opportunity to wrap Aulaqi up and leverage him for information regarding the 9/11 operations and possible future plots and sleeper cells still secreted inside America.
According to a federal investigator with the Joint Terrorism Task Force in San Diego—where Aulaqi originally met with the Pentagon hijackers behind closed doors before they followed him to Washington—the warrant for his arrest was based on passport fraud charges. Aulaqi, who grew up in Yemen, also allegedly made false statements on an application for U.S. State Department grant money to attend engineering classes at Colorado State University (he received some $20,000 per year).
“Everyone was excited about the prospect of hooking this guy up,” the federal investigator says. “The FBI was ecstatic that we were able to get the warrant and that we had a charge on him.”
He added: “Everybody wanted to get this guy in a chair under a charge—under the cloud of potential prosecution—to motivate some conversation with him regarding his relationship with the hijackers.”35
When investigators heard the warrant had been pulled back, they were stunned.
“We got the word that they wanted to rescind the warrant,” the JTTF investigator recalled, “and everybody’s, like, What the f*** do you want to do that for?”36
He says that for some reason federal prosecutors got cold feet. “It was odd,” he says, offering that he wouldn’t be surprised if it had something to do with Aulaqi’s Saudi connections. The Saudi embassy booked him to lecture at its Islamic institute in Washington and sponsored him to take American Muslims on pilgrimages to Saudi’s two great mosques.
Aulaqi ended up fleeing to Yemen, his family’s ancestral home bordering Saudi Arabia. After the 9/11 Commission scolded the FBI for not investigating Aulaqi more thoroughly, he suddenly became a high-value U.S. target. And in 2006, U.S. authorities asked Yemen to detain Aulaqi, but the country released him before the FBI could build an airtight case against him.
Not that CAIR cares, but U.S. officials now believe that the thirty-nine-year-old Aulaqi has been involved in other serious terrorist activities since leaving the U.S., including plotting new attacks against America and its allies. For one, Aulaqi preached jihad and praised suicide bombers at London-area mosques before the 2005 attacks on the London subway.
And three of the New Jersey Muslims recently convicted of plotting to attack the Fort Dix Army base were inspired by one of Aulaqi’s Internet sermons, as were some of the young Somali-American men who recently left Minneapolis to join al-Qaida’s widening jihad in West Africa. Court testimony revealed the Fort Dix terrorists watched his “Constants of Jihad” lecture the day before they finalized their plot, convinced that the cleric had given a fatwah, or blessing, to strike military targets on American soil.
A senior Homeland Security official warns that Aulaqi—whom he describes as “an al-Qaida supporter”—is actively targeting “U.S. Muslims with radical online lectures encouraging terrorist attacks from his new home in Yemen.”37
CAIR AND THE 9/11 IMAM
Aulaqi also was involved briefly with the Virginia Jihad Network, led by a CAIR official. Before fleeing the country, Aulaqi met with the spiritual advisor to the Virginia jihadists, whose ringleader, Royer, worked out of CAIR’s national headquarters.
Federal court records show Aulaqi met with Royer’s mentor, Ali al-Timimi, the imam of a small storefront mosque a few miles from Dar al-Hijrah. The two spiritual leaders discussed recruitment of young Muslim men for jihad. Members of Royer’s cell drove Aulaqi to al-Timimi’s home for the meeting, and at least one had Aulaqi’s phone number stored on his cell phone. Al-Timimi was later convicted of soliciting jihad and treason against the U.S.38
There’s more to the Aulaqi-CAIR connection.
Al-Timimi’s storefront mosque was located in the same Falls Church office building as a Muslim-run travel agency that booked trips to Saudi Arabia for the hajj, or Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. Copies of its travel itinerary show Aulaqi acted as a tour guide for the trips. Listed directly under him was a trip advisor named Mohammad el-Mezain, who happens to be the CAIR fundraiser recently convicted of providing material support to terrorists in the Holy Land Foundation trial. El-Mezain co-founded the Hamas charitable front with CAIR director Elashi.
El-Mezain and Aulaqi, both hardcore Muslim Brothers, knew each other from San Diego. Before his arrest, el-Mezain headed Holy Land’s San Diego office and, like Aulaqi, served as a leader in local mosques there.
But that’s not all. The pair once lived in the same small Colorado apartment complex together.
According to federal investigators, el-Mezain likely met Aulaqi in Fort Collins, Colorado, around 1990, when the two were neighbors and attended the same local mosque. Authorities have traced el-Mezain’s address at the time to 500 West Prospect Road in Fort Collins. Aulaqi also listed an address then at 500 West Prospect Road. El-Mezain occupied Apartment 19C, while Aulaqi occupied Apartment 23L.39
Investigators say that although Aulaqi has not been known to carry out the acts of violence he encourages, he is many times more dangerous than the terrorists who do. By getting dozens, perhaps hundreds, of young Muslim men jacked up for jihad with his radical sermons, he’s a force multiplier for the enemy.
If anybody knows the identity of al-Qaida terrorists here inside America, investigators say, it’s the American Aulaqi. He may even know about terror plots in the pipeline. If ever there were a candidate for waterboarding, they say, it’s him.
Yet CAIR looks up to this 9/11 imam as a guru.40
For its part, CAIR argues that just because it consorts with or defends terrorists and terrorist groups doesn’t mean it necessarily agrees with their activities. Like a defense attorney, it is merely standing up for their right to fair representation.
“Do we defend unpopular issues? Yes,” says Corey P. Saylor, CAIR’s national legislative director.
If that makes CAIR unpopular with critics, he argues, so be it—the organization is in good company.
“Befor
e he became president, John Adams acted as legal representation to British soldiers accused of perpetrating the Boston Massacre,” Saylor points out. “This act did not make him popular with his peers.”41
But Omar Ahmad is no John Adams. Nor is Nihad Awad. And neither of them are lawyers. They are co-conspirators who share the violent and subversive agenda of the massacrers they support.
And unlike a criminal defense attorney, whose job begins and ends with making sure the state proves its case, CAIR keeps on defending terrorists even when juries return unanimous and overwhelming verdicts of guilt, as one did in 2008’s Holy Land case—guilty on all 108 counts.
Moreover, CAIR’s internal documents betray Saylor’s explanation. They make it plain that his attempt to compare CAIR’s motives to those of a Founding Father is just more patriotic eyewash designed to conceal from the public CAIR’s true seditious agenda.
Privately, CAIR believes that it doesn’t matter if terrorist suspects are guilty as charged. If they are Muslims accused by non-Muslims they are automatically innocent—and must always be defended and supported.
Witness a talking points memo found among Awad’s files, and written in 2004—as the cases of Ismail Royer and his terrorist co-conspirator Masaud Khan were going to trial. It discusses the duty of Muslim leaders to do all they can to release imprisoned fellow Muslims.
“Give this talk as if it were your last before meeting Allah,” the document says. “Discuss verses from the Quran and ahadith regarding the degree previous Muslim leaders went through to release fellow Muslim prisoners.”42
The memo, which cites the Royer and Khan cases by name, goes on to praise Muslims who don’t plea bargain and refuse to rat out other Muslims.
“Relate the difference between the brothers that have turned on their brothers by pleading guilty,” it says, “and why we should come to the aid of those who are standing firm because of their conviction and iman,” or faith.43
