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Global Intelligence Challenges 2005: Meeting Long-Term Challenges with a Long-Term Strategy

2005-06-15T08:43:00.000-04:00

Testimony of Director of Central Intelligence
Porter J. Goss
Before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice Chairman, Members of the Committee.

It is my honor to meet with you today to discuss the challenges I see facing America and its interests in the months ahead. These challenges literally span the globe. My intention is to tell you what I believe are the greatest challenges we face today and those where our service as intelligence professionals is needed most on behalf of the US taxpayer.

We need to make tough decisions about which haystacks deserve to be scrutinized for the needles that can hurt us most. And we know in this information age that there are endless haystacks everywhere. I do want to make several things clear:

Our officers are taking risks, and I will be asking them to take more risks--justifiable risks--because I would much rather explain why we did something than why we did nothing,

I am asking for more competitive analysis, more collocation of analysts and collectors, and deeper collaboration with agencies throughout the Intelligence Community. Above all, our analysis must be objective. Our credibility rests there.

We do not make policy. We do not wage war. I am emphatic about that and always have been. We do collect and analyze information.

With respect to the CIA, I want to tell you that my first few months as Director have served only to confirm what I and Members of Congress have known about CIA for years. It is a special place--an organization of dedicated, patriotic people. In addition to taking a thorough, hard look at our own capabilities, we are working to define CIA's place in the restructured Intelligence Community--a community that will be led by a new Director of National Intelligence--to make the maximum possible contribution to American security at home and abroad. The CIA is and will remain the flagship agency, in my view. And each of the other 14 elements in the community will continue to make their unique contributions as well.

Now, I turn to threats. I will not attempt to cover everything that could go wrong in the year ahead. We must, and do, concentrate our efforts, experience and expertise on the challenges that are most pressing: defeating terrorism; protecting the homeland; stopping proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and drugs; and fostering stability, freedom and peace in the most troubled regions of the world. Accordingly, my comments today will focus on these duties. I know well from my 30 years in public service that you and your colleagues have an important responsibility with these open sessions to get information to the American people. But I also know all too well that as we are broadcasting to America, enemies are also tuning in. In open session I feel I must be very prudent in my remarks as DCI.

TERRORISM

Mr. Chairman, defeating terrorism must remain one of our intelligence community's core objectives, as widely dispersed terrorist networks will present one of the most serious challenges to US national security interests at home and abroad in the coming year. In the past year, aggressive measures by our intelligence, law enforcement, defense and homeland security communities, along with our key international partners have dealt serious blows to al-Qa'ida and others. Despite these successes, however, the terrorist threat to the US in the Homeland and abroad endures.

Al-Qa'ida is intent on finding ways to circumvent US security enhancements to strike Americans and the Homeland.

It may be only a matter of time before al-Qa'ida or another group attempts to use chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons (CBRN).

Al-Qa'ida is only one facet of the threat from a broader Sunni jihadist movement.

The Iraq conflict, while not a cause of extremism, has become a cause for extremists.

We know from experience that al-Qa'ida is a patient, persistent, imaginative, adaptive and dangerous opponent. But it is vulnerable and we and other allies have hit it hard.

Jihadist religious leaders preach millennial aberrational visions of a fight for Islam's survival. Sometimes they argue that the struggle justifies the indiscriminate killing of civilians, even with chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons.
Our pursuit of al-Qa'ida and its most senior leaders, including Bin Ladin and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri is intense. However, their capture alone would not be enough to eliminate the terrorist threat to the US Homeland or US interests overseas. Often influenced by al-Qa'ida's ideology, members of a broader movement have an ability to plan and conduct operations. We saw this last March in the railway attacks in Madrid conducted by local Sunni extremists. Other regional groups--connected to al-Qa'ida or acting on their own--also continue to pose a significant threat.

In Pakistan, terrorist elements remain committed to attacking US targets. In Saudi Arabia, remnants of the Saudi al-Qa'ida network continue to attack US interests in the region.

In Central Asia, the Islamic Jihad Group (IJG), a splinter group of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, has become a more virulent threat to US interests and local governments. Last spring the group used female operatives in a series of bombings in Uzbekistan.

In Southeast Asia, the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) continues to pose a threat to US and Western interests in Indonesia and the Philippines, where JI is colluding with the Abu Sayyaf Group and possibly the MILF.

In Europe, Islamic extremists continue to plan and cause attacks against US and local interests, some that may cause significant casualties. In 2004 British authorities dismantled an al-Qa'ida cell and an extremist brutally killed a prominent Dutch citizen in the Netherlands.

Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-US jihadists.

These jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced in and focused on acts of urban terrorism. They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups, and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries.

Zarqawi has sought to bring about the final victory of Islam over the West, and he hopes to establish a safe haven in Iraq from which his group could operate against "infidel" Western nations and "apostate" Muslim governments.

Other terrorist groups spanning the globe also pose persistent and serious threats to US and Western interests.

Hizballah's main focus remains Israel, but it could conduct lethal attacks against US interests quickly upon a decision to do so.

Palestinian terrorist organizations have apparently refrained from directly targeting US or Western interests in their opposition to Middle East peace initiatives, but pose an ongoing risk to US citizens who could be killed or wounded in attacks intended to strike Israeli interests.

Extremist groups in Latin America are still a concern, with the FARC--the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia--possessing the greatest capability and the clearest intent to threaten US interests in the region.

Horn of Africa, the Sahel, the Mahgreb, the Levant, and the Gulf States are all areas where "pop up" terrorist activity can be expected.

AFGHANISTAN

Mr. Chairman, Afghanistan, once the safe haven for Usama bin Ladin, has started on the road to recovery after decades of instability and civil war. Hamid Karzai's election to the presidency was a major milestone. Elections for a new National Assembly and local district councils--tentatively scheduled for this spring--will complete the process of electing representatives.

President Karzai still faces a low-level insurgency aimed at destabilizing the country, raising the cost of reconstruction and ultimately forcing Coalition forces to leave.

The development of the Afghan National Army and a national police force is going well, although neither can yet stand on its own.
IRAQ

Low voter turnout in some Sunni areas and the post-election resumption of insurgent attacks--most against Iraqi civilian and security forces--indicate that the insurgency achieved at least some of its election-day goals and remains a serious threat to creating a stable representative government in Iraq.

Self-determination for the Iraqi people will largely depend on the ability of Iraqi forces to provide security. Iraq's most capable security units have become more effective in recent months, contributing to several major operations and helping to put an Iraqi face on security operations. Insurgents are determined to discourage new recruits and undermine the effectiveness of existing Iraqi security forces.

The lack of security is hurting Iraq's reconstruction efforts and economic development, causing overall economic growth to proceed at a much slower pace than many analysts expected a year ago.

Alternatively, the larger uncommitted moderate Sunni population and the Sunni political elite may seize the post electoral moment to take part in creating Iraq's new political institutions if victorious Shia and Kurdish parties include Sunnis in the new government and the drafting of the constitution.

PROLIFERATION

Mr. Chairman, I will now turn to the worldwide challenge of proliferation. Last year started with promise as Libya had just renounced its WMD programs, North Korea was engaged in negotiations with regional states on its nuclear weapons program, and Iran was showing greater signs of openness regarding its nuclear program after concealing activity for nearly a decade. Let me start with Libya, a good news story, and one that reflects the patient perseverance with which the Intelligence Community can tackle a tough intelligence problem.

LIBYA

In 2004 Tripoli followed through with a range of steps to disarm itself of WMD and ballistic missiles.

Libya gave up key elements of its nuclear weapons program and opened itself to the IAEA.

Libya gave up some key CW assets and opened its former CW program to international scrutiny.

After disclosing its Scud stockpile and extensive ballistic and cruise missile R&D efforts in 2003, Libya took important steps to abide by its commitment to limit its missiles to the 300-km range threshold of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR).

The US continues to work with Libya to clarify some discrepancies in the declaration.

NORTH KOREA

On 10 February 2005, Pyongyang announced it was suspending participation in the six-party talks underway since 2003, declared it had nuclear weapons, and affirmed it would seek to increase its nuclear arsenal. The North had been pushing for a freeze on its plutonium program in exchange for significant benefits, rather than committing to the full dismantlement that we and are our partners sought.

In 2003, the North claimed it had reprocessed the 8,000 fuel rods from the Yongbyong reactor, originally stored under the Agreed Framework, with IAEA monitoring in 1994. The North claims to have made new weapons from its reprocessing effort.

We believe North Korea continues to pursue a uranium enrichment capability drawing on the assistance it received from A.Q. Khan before his network was shutdown.

North Korea continues to develop, produce, deploy, and sell ballistic missiles of increasing range and sophistication, augmenting Pyongyang's large operational force of Scud and No Dong class missiles. North Korea could resume flight-testing at any time, including of longer-range missiles, such as the Taepo Dong-2 system. We assess the TD-2 is capable of reaching the United States with a nuclear-weapon-sized payload.

North Korea continues to market its ballistic missile technology, trying to find new clients now that some traditional customers, such as Libya, have halted such trade.
We believe North Korea has active CW and BW programs and probably has chemical and possibly biological weapons ready for use.

IRAN

In early February, the spokesman of Iran's Supreme Council for National Security publicly announced that Iran would never scrap its nuclear program. This came in the midst of negotiations with EU-3 members (Britain, Germany and France) seeking objective guarantees from Tehran that it will not use nuclear technology for nuclear weapons.

Previous comments by Iranian officials, including Iran's Supreme Leader and its Foreign Minister, indicated that Iran would not give up its ability to enrich uranium. Certainly they can use it to produce fuel for power reactors. We are more concerned about the dual-use nature of the technology that could also be used to achieve a nuclear weapon.
In parallel, Iran continues its pursuit of long-range ballistic missiles, such as an improved version of its 1,300 km range Shahab-3 MRBM, to add to the hundreds of short-range SCUD missiles it already has.

Even since 9/11, Tehran continues to support terrorist groups in the region, such as Hizballah, and could encourage increased attacks in Israel and the Palestinian Territories to derail progress toward peace.

Iran reportedly is supporting some anti-Coalition activities in Iraq and seeking to influence the future character of the Iraqi state.

Conservatives are likely to consolidate their power in Iran's June 2005 presidential elections, further marginalizing the reform movement last year.

Iran continues to retain in secret important members of Al-Qai'ida-the Management Council--causing further uncertainty about Iran's commitment to bring them to justice.

CHINA

Beijing's military modernization and military buildup is tilting the balance of power in the Taiwan Strait. Improved Chinese capabilities threaten US forces in the region.

In 2004, China increased its ballistic missile forces deployed across from Taiwan and rolled out several new submarines.

China continues to develop more robust, survivable nuclear-armed missiles as well as conventional capabilities for use in a regional conflict.

Taiwan continues to promote constitutional reform and other attempts to strengthen local identity. Beijing judges these moves to be a "timeline for independence". If Beijing decides that Taiwan is taking steps toward permanent separation that exceed Beijing's tolerance, we believe China is prepared to respond with various levels of force.

China is increasingly confident and active on the international stage, trying to ensure it has a voice on major international issues, secure access to natural resources, and counter what it sees as US efforts to contain or encircle China.

New leadership under President Hu Jintao is facing an array of domestic challenges in 2005, such as the potential for a resurgence in inflation, increased dependence on exports, growing economic inequalities, increased awareness of individual rights, and popular expectations for the new leadership.

RUSSIA

The attitudes and actions of the so-called "siloviki"--the ex-KGB men that Putin has placed in positions of authority throughout the Russian government--may be critical determinants of the course Putin will pursue in the year ahead.

Perceived setbacks in Ukraine are likely to lead Putin to redouble his efforts to defend Russian interests abroad while balancing cooperation with the West. Russia's most immediate security threat is terrorism, and counterterrorism cooperation undoubtedly will continue.

Putin publicly acknowledges a role for outside powers to play in the CIS, for example, but we believe he is nevertheless concerned about further encroachment by the US and NATO into the region.

Moscow worries that separatism inside Russia and radical Islamic movements beyond their borders might threaten stability in Southern Russia. Chechen extremists have increasingly turned to terrorist operations in response to Moscow's successes in Chechnya, and it is reasonable to predict that they will carry out attacks against civilian or military targets elsewhere in Russia in 2005.

Budget increases will help Russia create a professional military by replacing conscripts with volunteer servicemen and focus on maintaining, modernizing and extending the operational life of its strategic weapons systems, including its nuclear missile force.

Russia remains an important source of weapons technology, materials and components for other nations. The vulnerability of Russian WMD materials and technology to theft or diversion is a continuing concern.
POTENTIAL AREAS FOR INSTABILITY

Mr. Chairman, in the MIDDLE EAST, the election of Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas, nevertheless, marks an important step and Abbas has made it clear that negotiating a peace deal with Israel is a high priority. There nevertheless are hurdles ahead.

Redlines must be resolved while Palestinian leaders try to rebuild damaged PA infrastructure and governing institutions, especially the security forces, the legislature, and the judiciary.

Terrorist groups, some of who benefit from funding from outside sources, could step up attacks to derail peace and progress.

In AFRICA, chronic instability will continue to hamper counterterrorism efforts and pose heavy humanitarian and peacekeeping burdens.

In Nigeria, the military is struggling to contain militia groups in the oil-producing south and ethnic violence that frequently erupts throughout the country. Extremist groups are emerging from the country's Muslim population of about 65 million.

In Sudan, the peace deal signed in January will result in de facto southern autonomy and may inspire rebels in provinces such as Darfur to press harder for a greater share of resources and power. Opportunities exist for Islamic extremists to reassert themselves in the North unless the central government stays unified.

Unresolved disputes in the Horn of Africa--Africa's gateway to the Middle East--create vulnerability to foreign terrorist and extremist groups. Ethiopia and Eritrea still have a contested border, and armed factions in Somalia indicate they will fight the authority of a new transitional government.

In LATIN AMERICA, the region is entering a major electoral cycle in 2006, when Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, and Venezuela hold presidential elections. Several key countries in the hemisphere are potential flashpoints in 2005.

In Venezuela, Chavez is consolidating his power by using technically legal tactics to target his opponents and meddling in the region, supported by Castro.

In Colombia, progress against counternarcotics and terrorism under President Uribe's successful leadership, may be affected by the election.

The outlook is very cloudy for legitimate, timely elections in November 2005 in Haiti--even with substantial international support.

Campaigning for the 2006 presidential election in Mexico is likely to stall progress on fiscal, labor, and energy reforms.

In Cuba, Castro's hold on power remains firm, but a bad fall last October has rekindled speculation about his declining health and succession scenarios.

In SOUTHEAST ASIA, three countries bear close watching.

In Indonesia, President Yudhoyono has moved swiftly to crackdown on corruption. Reinvigorating the economy, burdened by the costs of recovery in tsunami-damaged areas, will likely be affected by continuing deep-seated ethnic and political turmoil exploitable by terrorists.
In the Philippines, Manila is struggling with prolonged Islamic and Communist rebellions. The presence of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terrorists seeking safe haven and training bases adds volatility and capability to terrorist groups already in place.
Thailand is plagued with an increasingly volatile Muslim separatist threat in its southeastern provinces, and the risk of escalation remains high.

WMD COMMISSION REPORT

2005-06-15T08:39:00.000-04:00

STATEMENT BY THE DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
PORTER J. GOSS

The Intelligence Community welcomes the final report of the "Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction." It is the product of an in-depth, yearlong inquiry into a complex topic vital to all Americans. The men and women who contributed to the report have performed an important service to our country. Chairmen Silberman and Robb, and all the members, and staff of the Commission deserve much credit for the work they have done on behalf of our nation.

The Commission is right to underscore the difficulty of gathering intelligence on the WMD target. These are some of the most closely guarded secrets of foreign groups and governments. The Commission also rightly points to successes and to improvements—operational and analytic—that have been and are being made at the CIA and elsewhere across the Intelligence Community.

We need more robust collection and more rigorous analysis, and I agree wholeheartedly with the Commission’s findings on these issues. These findings, coupled with the Presidential mandate to enhance our HUMINT and analytic capabilities, provide additional momentum as we recruit, train, and deploy officers with substantive expertise, who also speak the languages and know the cultures of the targets critical to America’s security.

We can never become complacent. There is still much to be done as we continue to transform the way the Intelligence Community does its work. If anything, we need to accelerate this transformation. It is one of my highest priorities to join with the new Director of National Intelligence to make the desired changes as quickly as possible, with the least disruption to the mission before us, and to achieve greater integration across the Intelligence Community for the enhancement of American security.

Intelligence is an area in which we can never afford to stand still. From the acquisition of information, and the assessment of intelligence sources, to the questioning of basic analytic assumptions, and the timely sharing of information, the Community can and must do better—and it is determined to do so.

At its core, intelligence is about being objective and unbiased in the collection and presentation of facts. We appreciate constructive criticism. We acknowledge mistakes when we make them, and build on our strengths and talents. There is great richness throughout the Intelligence Community, and we will harness our resources to provide the kind of product our consumers expect and the American people deserve.

Reformist Egyptian Writer Critique's Islamist Education and Propaganda

2005-06-13T05:33:00.000-04:00

http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD92205

In the wake of the recent wave of terrorist bombings in Egypt, the reformist Egyptian writer Sayyid Al-Qimni published an essay in the weekly Roz Al-Yousuf in which he argues that the responsibility for terrorism in Egypt lies not just with the terrorists themselves but also with those who create a cultural atmosphere conducive to terrorism. Thus, in Al-Qimnis opinion, the fight against terrorism requires combating extremist trends among Muslim clerics and in the Arab media.

At the end of his essay, Al-Qimni presents a famous episode in early Muslim history to support his argument. When 'Ali Ibn Abi Talib became caliph in 656 A.D., he was opposed by a number of the Prophet Muhammads closest companions, including Muhammads wife Aisha. In the first intra-Muslim fighting (fitna) in history, these opponents met Ali at what is known as the Battle of the Camel, in December 656 A.D. Although killing animals in war is generally forbidden in Muslim law, and despite the aura of sanctity attached to 'Aisha, Muslim tradition relates that Ali ordered his followers to bring down the camel on which Aisha rode, as he considered this necessary in order to win the battle for the caliphate. Al-Qimni uses this episode to urge Egyptians to oppose those who threaten society, even if they speak in the name of religion: (1)

A Barrier Separates the Muslim's Mind from the Real World, Making Him Lose the Capacity to Distinguish Good from Evil

"This suicide bomber was not a lone drop-out from society. He was certainly part of a cell... Nonetheless, it is now possible that an isolated individual can carry out a bombing, as indeed occurred when an [Egyptian] citizen stabbed a tourist who was kissing his [own] wife one week prior to the recent explosion. It is taught in the schools, on television, in the mosques, and within the family that this secene [of a husband kissing his wife], which touches the hearts of people all over the world, and makes them overflow with feelings and humanity - is ugly, promiscuous, and immodest. Thus, the terrorist act of that citizen was merely a result of what we planted in him. He was unable to resist the generator of hate and repugnance within him, so he stabbed the couple with a switchblade...

"The generator of hatred, revulsion, and cruelty is like a generator of energy; it explodes if internal pressure rises. That is what happens to the poor Muslim when he is exposed to the enormous pressure of the religious people in our country, which is far greater than that to which people of other religions in the world are exposed. While for the Christian it is enough to make the sign of the cross, which only takes one second, the Muslim is required to be a mechanical instrument, performing the same action every day. He is required to go to the mosque five times a day, and is required to constantly read the Koran, and to force himself to weep if he cannot weep, and to spend an entire work day in the mosque. No one can make him work so long as he is reading the Koran and reciting endless supplications and devotions. [Such recitations] accompany his every motion and position, from the moment he gets up at dawn to the moment he retires to the conjugal bed...

"There is a barrier separating the [Muslim's] mind from the real world around him, so that he falls into a state of constant hallucination and, as a result, loses the capacity to distinguish between good and evil. He only recognizes the value of halal and haram [i.e., permissible vs. prohibited] according to the Islamic point of view. Muslims are burdened with many repressive restrictions... Freedom of thought and expression are fenced in by Islamic restrictions ..."

"The Muslim is Fenced in to the Point Where His Mind is Paralyzed"

"There are stipulations and rules concerning clothing, such as the veil (hijab)...

"Muslims are forbidden to participate in carnivals which bring together all fellow citizens of the homeland to meet each other in the streets in an atmosphere of mutual love and love for the homeland...

"Muslims are forbidden to enjoy refined dance ... forbidden to enjoy cinema, novels, theater, and music...

"The Muslim is fenced in to the point where his mind is paralyzed, and thus he surrenders his mind to the deputies of Islam upon Earth, because there is someone [else] to think for him...

"As for the Muslim woman, she is consigned to wretched slavery. According to the foremost of [Koranic] exegetes Al-Razi(2)... she is like a prisoner in a man's possession.

"[Sheikh Yousef] Al-Qaradhawi explained on Al-Jazeera... 'The woman is subject to more restrictions [than the man] ...because the man is not a [source of] temptation as is the woman, who is required to cover her hair, bosom, and neck and to wear [clothing] that is neither transparent nor tight-fitting...'

"[Muslim] women have surrendered their minds and spirits and believe that these are religious duties that are obligatory for them, to such an extent that women academics from Al-Azhar [University] accused the author of these lines of apostasy when I spoke about the rights to which they are entitled by virtue of their being full-fledged citizens just like men.

"Through the media, education, mosques, and [voluntary] religious associations, they have been able to take control of peoples' minds, and thus to direct them however they wished. We become their instruments, which they use however they want. If they want, they make us fight for their glory, and if they want, they turn some of us into walking explosive devices.

"[Among them] there is a group engaged in preaching and guidance, and it is the most dangerous of all, because it prepares the intellectual ground for terrorism. [Another] group [is responsible for] justifying terrorist acts through the media. [This group] mouths condemnation of [terrorist acts] while finding the worst sort of excuses for them ... but when they are hard-pressed, they claim that they [i.e. the terrorists] are a minority who have nothing to do with Muslims and that Islam is not to blame for them, and they blow themselves up around us and amongst us ... because they have been deprived of freedom.

"Now do you see the achievements of the Blessed Islamic Awakening? Do you see that we have now reached a record level of backwardness among the nations, and we have earned the height of the world's contempt?

"They have deluded our youth into believing that despotism is of recent advent, invented by the current [Arab] governments with the support of the infidel countries, headed by the American Satan. They have deluded [the youth] into believing that the values of freedom, justice, and equality once prevailed in Muslim societies before the advent of colonialism..."

Qaradhawi and His Followers Have Appointed Themselves the Deputies of Allah

"When we ask ourselves who is the [real] criminal murderer in the [terrorist]
incident at Al-Azhar, and in those that occurred before it and after it, we are at a loss.(3)

"Is it Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi, the [religious] authority for the Muslim Brotherhood and for their brethren of various sorts? It is he who took a stand against tourism, which is the most secure source of financial income for Egypt...?

"[Qaradhawi] said in a television broadcast on Al-Jazeera: 'They [the reformists] claim that it is in the people's interest to permit prostitution and to permit [the selling of] alcohol so as to encourage tourism.' First of all, this - prostitution and alcohol - is his pretext for declaring tourism to be contrary to Islam.

[Al-Qaradhawi continued,] 'Mecca was also like this [i.e., with prostitution and alcohol], but the Prophet forbade this kind of income and replaced it with another kind of income - jihad for the sake of Allah, in order to gain an income which is greater and better by conquering other countries. And Allah said: 'If you fear poverty, then know that Allah will enrich you from his bounty, [Koran 9:28] ' meaning that if you are afraid of suffering dire [financial] straits, the Lord will deliver you from these straits,- and in fact Allah enriched them through conquest and spoils.'

"Consider [how Qaradhawi] brazenly attempts to deceive the Muslims and Allah. The substitute [for income from tourism according to Qaradhawi], then, is jihad in order to conquer the entire world, after tourism is banned from our country...

"Qaradhawis position against Egypt is certainly not [merely] his own personal position ... because he is part of a whole band, mostly in Egypt, that constantly repeats the same message. Qaradhawi opines: 'There are [people] who strive to break Islam into pieces. They want it to be an Islam without jihad ... principles of faith without shari'a... and the Koran without the sword. [Islam, however,] is a calling that encompasses all aspects of life, from toilet etiquette to the structure of the state. It provides laws [to govern] man's [life] from birth to death.'

"Naturally, Qaradhawi does not tell us that there is no legal Islamic statement on political matters or on the nature of the regime... However, Qaradhawi and his followers say that political affairs should be under Allah's rule and not under human rule, and since Allah does not rule in person, they have appointed themselves to rule as His deputies.

"Qaradhawi has misled our youth with this idea of Islam's shumuliyya [i.e., the notion that Islamic law covers every aspect of life] and that this is the essential principle of Islam, [so that] if you do not accept it, you commit outright apostasy. But then reformist thinkers forced him to admit that it had never been an essential principle of Islam... and that the idea of Islam's shumuliyya was in fact introduced in 1928 by Hasan Al-Bana [the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood] and that the concept of hakimiyya [i.e., the idea that Allah is the sole sovereign] appeared relatively late, in the writings of Sayyid Qutb [a Muslim Brotherhood leader, executed by the Nasser regime in 1966]... These concepts [of shumuliyya - the totality of Islamic law - and hakimiyya - Allah's rule] are nothing more than ideas and beliefs of an outlawed group that is soiled with blood...(4)

"[According to these concepts] we should refer to the seventh century in all our matters..."

We Let Terrorism Grow When We Allowed Islamist Thought to Infiltrate Our Media and Schools

"Who is responsible [for the terrorist acts]?...

"We let terrorism grow and flourish when we allowed Islamist thought to infilirate our media and schools... Terrorism grew when we allowed the Islamists to plant in the minds of Egyptian Muslims [the concept] that citizenship and patriotism are reprehensible innovations, and this is because the Islamists do not recognize [individual] countries, for they are the Islamic nation of la ilaha illa 'llah ['There is no God but Allah'], wherever they may be. The issue of the ideology of hatred got out of hand when we allowed the [Egyptian] Fatwa Authority to decide in matters outside its jurisdiction...

"This cancer spread when we allowed them to steal the souls of our children... The virus thrived when we allowed the current of hatred to be directed against the very interests of the people, when we charged the souls with the current of hatred for the advanced Western countries to the point where our peoples now hate everything associated with the West - even freedom, dignity and democracy - instead of hating those Islamic sheikhs and armed militias who have dragged our honor in the mud for the whole world to see."

The Arab Media Has Given the Islamists Legitimacy to Kill Innocent People

"We have once again given them [i.e. the Islamists] legitimacy ... to kill innocent people, because all [the Arab media] ... have been using the term resistance to refer to what the Arab infiltrators and the remnants of the bloody Ba'th in Iraq are doing against our own people, while 'resistance' is a laudatory term suggesting legitimate national resistance. Thus the Islamists compare [the 'resistance' in Iraq] with the French resistance against the Nazi occupation...

"[The Arab media] supported the Sunnis in Iraq when they refused to participate in the elections - if some [media outlets] did not say so explicitly, but this was implied...

"We know that the Sunnis do not want partners in ruling Iraq - not Kurds nor Shi'ites nor Christians nor Assyrians nor Chaldeans nor Mandeans... They are striking at the majority of the [Iraqi] people, who courageously went to the polls while saying to [the Sunnis], 'No! Your time and the time of your monopoly on rule is over.' However, the Sunnis aren't giving up, because they are convinced that rule over Iraq is theirs and theirs alone by right...

One of the programs on Al-Jazeera, Al-Qaradhawi declared: 'One should sacrifice one's life and one's country for Islam, because Islam takes precedence over human life'... [In one of his books] Al-Qaradhawi states [in one of his books]: '[Our goal is] to establish a Muslim state that will be governed by Allah's Shari'a. The Islamist activists need to exert their best efforts to prepare public opinion to accept their ideas and to [pave the way for] their state.' In another book he says: 'Fighting apostasy, heresy, secularism, and immorality, and fighting their foreign and domestic supporters, is the religious duty of these times and the order of the day.'

"Proper education and teaching create an individual who loves life, - not one who hates life and thus destroys himself and others. However, our universities have turned into religious associations that discuss what is halal [permissible] and what is haram [prohibited], and they research religious commentaries instead of researching the laws of physics and mathematics. Our universities now research the issue of the head covering, the veil, modesty, virtue, and the pillars of Islam... The universities have forgotten their role as the primary place for scientific research, that is, to examine the country's ills, whether in medicine or in the field of culture, in order to fight against them... The universities have abandoned their field of expertise and have assumed the role of the mosque...

To be specific, when you visit the University of Zaqaziq, to be specific, which is where the suicide bomber from the Al-Azhar incident studied and was an outstanding student, you will find slogans everywhere, none of which have anything to do with science. They are all about hatred, the veil, and jihad.

"We nurtured the seed of terrorism when we allowed our laws, our media, and our schools(5) to divide our people into two camps, with the country belonging to only one of them. This one group is in possession of the absolute truth, and is obligated to correct the others, or, if it can't correct them, to destroy them...

"This is [the same] trial which Muslims faced at the beginning of their history, at the Battle of the Camel... 'Aisha's camel was the symbol of a culture of rebellion against the caliphate, its legitimacy, and its law. This is the culture of armed Muslim opposition in the name of religion. Therefore, 'Ali called out: 'Bring down the camel! As long as the camel lives, people will die.'

"My dear countrymen: bring down your camel! Bring down the camel, even if it be sacred, to keep Egyptians from dying."

Endnotes:
(1)Roz Al-Yousuf (Egypt), May 5, 2005.
(2) Fakhr Al-Din Al-Razi, d. 1209.
(3) The bombing at the Khan Al-Halili, on April 7, 2005.
(4) These two concepts - shumuliyya and hakimiyya - are closely related. Shumuliyya states that all aspects of life fall under the jurisdiction of Islamic law. Hakimiyya states that the only legitimate government is Allahs government, which in practical terms means government according to Islamic law.
(5) The specific mention of the schools is probably a reference to Egypts two-track educational system, one track is more religious (or in the author's opinion, radical Islam,) than the other.

*********************
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is an independent, non-profit organization that translates and analyzes the media of the Middle East. Copies of articles and documents cited, as well as background information, are available on request.

MEMRI holds copyrights on all translations. Materials may only be used with proper attribution.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI)
P.O. Box 27837, Washington, DC 20038-7837
Phone: (202) 955-9070
Fax: (202) 955-9077
E-Mail: memri@memri.org
www.memri.org

Arab Criticism of Muslim Extremist Activities in the West

2005-06-11T06:49:00.000-04:00

To view this Special Dispatch in HTML, visit http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD92105

Extremist Muslims in Western countries have come under increasing criticism by moderate Muslims who are familiar with the West through living in America or Europe, either temporarily or permanently. In three recently published articles, Arab academic and intellectuals harshly criticized their extremist activities.

In his article on the reformist website www.elaph.com, Dr. Ahmad Abu Matar, a Palestinian academic residing in Oslo, stated that Muslims in Europe foster conflict instead of coexistence. Muslims in Europe, he explained, are influenced by an extremist fundamentalist brand of Islam and moderate Muslims are not speaking out adequately against this activity.

In the UAE daily Al-Itihad, Saudi journalist Turki Al-Dakhil, whose popular interview program on Al-Arabiyya television frequently hosts reformist Muslims, wrote about the hatred of the West that is spread by Muslims in the U.S., sharing his personal experience during his studies in the U.S. around the time of 9/11.

In the wake of Al-Dakhil's article, Tarek Hamo, a Kurdish journalist living in Germany, also criticized the actives of extremist Muslims in the West. In his article in www.elaph.com, Hamo accused Arab and Muslim states that seek to appease the extremists and to keep them away from political activity in their own countries, as well as the European host countries that are turning a blind eye to extremist activity on grounds of "tolerance" and "religious freedom," and more recently, on grounds of a "dialogue of civilizations."

The following are excerpts from the three articles:

Muslims in Europe Foster Conflict, Not Coexistence

Dr. Ahmad Abu Matar wrote: "The presence of Muslims of all nationalities, and especially those of Arab nationality, has become a palpable phenomenon in all of the EU countries, and in Western Europe in particular. In some of these countries, like France, for instance, they number more than five million, and in many countries they have centers, institutions, and activities that they cannot sustain in their own Arab and Muslim countries."

As an example of activities conducted in the West that are not permitted in Arab countries, Abu Matar mentioned the Islamic Liberation Party, which "announces from London its political platform to establish the Islamic caliphate over all corners of the earth and declares that the party will suggest to the Queen of England that she convert to Islam, and thus will not have to pay the Islamic poll tax on non-Muslims [jizya]." As another example he cited the activities of Abu Hamza Al-Masri, the imam of Finsbury Park Mosque in London, who called for jihad and suicide bombings in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The third example he gave is the thousands of mosques and Islamic charitable organizations in Europe and America that publicly collect contributions, and in addition, receive annual budgets from European countries.

In light of the freedom of movement and action and the freedom to proselytize enjoyed by Muslims in Europe, Abu Matar assessed the behavior of Muslims, and especially Arabs, in the continent. According to him, "the last five years have been decisive in shaping the image of the Muslim Arab in Europe. Because of the incidents and practices that the European continent has experienced, the image of the Arab Muslim in the European lexicon has become: a terrorist who murders without a conscience or any human feeling...

"The European citizen has begun to feel that Europe has become a target for Islamic terrorism, particularly of the Arab type, because of the crimes he has witnessed in reality, and not in the imagination or in a horror movie. Even screenwriters and directors of horror movies wouldn't conceive of some of these actions.

"It doesn't help that alongside these actions, [some] say that Islam forbids such actions and that their perpetrators are damaging Islam, since the actions are accompanied by a theological doctrine [elaborated] by those who claim to speak in the name of over a billion Muslims, and especially the triumvirate of Bin Laden, Al-Zarqawi, and Al-Zawahiri.

"None of the Arab or Muslim religious legal authorities responded to them or cast doubt on their legitimacy as representatives of Islam. On the contrary, there are fatwas from scores of ulama supporting these actions..."

Abu Matar cited a number of examples of crimes committed by Muslims in Europe and pointed to the public incitement to violence in mosques. He mentioned the case of Nur Al-Din Kaplan, whom a German court in Berlin decided to deport because of his incitement to violence and suicide bombings. The latter went into hiding, and for weeks the German police have been searching for him.

Another example is an open letter published by Ayman Al-Zawahiri in the summer of 2003, encouraging Muslim youth to attack European and American targets. Abu Matar adds that the Islamic proselytizer in Denmark, Said Mansour, goes a similar path, and distributes a cassette among the Muslims encouraging them to join Al-Zarqawi in Iraq.

"This immoral incitement," says Abu Matar, prompted the murder of the Dutch cinema director Van Gogh in November, 2004, by a young Dutchman of Moroccan origin. According to Abu Matar, "the incident only occurred because of the [atmosphere of] incitement in which the young murderer lived, the incitement of sheikhs who do not fear Allah and who consider everyone whose opinion differs from theirs to be an enemy of Islam."

In conclusion, Abu Matar states that Muslims in Europe promote conflict and do not encourage coexistence. "As a result of these actions... millions of the new generation of Muslims in Europe have become a source of fear and anxiety for decision-makers in European countries. This is because the new generation has fallen under the influence of extremist fundamentalists who interpret Islam as they see fit, and also because enlightened scholars and intellectuals haven't made a parallel intellectual effort to counter the extremist and deviant intellectual efforts of the fundamentalists."

"In their extremism, [the fundamentalists] are preventing the new generation of Muslims from internalizing the principles of freedom and enlightenment that have existed in European societies for over a century.

"[This enlightenment] enabled European societies to develop in every sphere and led to the humanistic tolerance that made Muslim presence in Europe possible....

"[In contrast to] this [Western] tolerance, Christians living in Arab countries have been forbidden for generations to build churches, except within [the framework of] tiresome conditions, and especially in Egypt the land of the [Christian] Copts.

"What will these millions [of European Muslims] do in the Arab countries if the European countries, Canada, and the U.S. were to expel them? I say 'if' since these countries cannot expel them, not because they are afraid of the Muslims, but because their laws don't allow it...

"From what has been said here, one may conclude that those who speak falsely in the name of Islam have turned the Islamic presence in Europe and America into a presence of conflict instead of coexistence..." (1)

Allah Treated Us Mercifully When He Did Not Stop the Blood in the Veins of
the Jews and Christians So They Protected Us after 9/11

In his article titled "Oh Allah, Curse Them," Turki Al-Dakhil wrote: "An American friend of Arab origin told me that he went with his 13-year-old son to a demonstration for the Palestinian cause, held in a U.S. city. Everything went well until one of the demonstrators, in the grip of enthusiasm, took the U.S. flag and set it alight. My friend said to me: This instance saddened me, but I intentionally turned a blind eye while my son commented that it was not fitting to thus treat the flag whose citizens we are...

"As soon as I heard the story I remembered the imam of the mosque where I attended Friday prayers when I studied in the northwestern U.S. The imam was an American of Palestinian origin, and it seemed to me that he thought a sermon was pointless unless he cursed the Jews and Christians every week.

"I saw [in the congregation] native-born Americans who had joined Islam not long ago, and mused at the curse applying to them, harming their parents and sometimes their wives, and their friends and co-workers.

"A few months later came the catastrophic events of 9/11. I met with a group of students from the Gulf states in the [U.S.] city where we were studying, and we discussed what we could do regarding our apprehensions about American reactions... We agreed that we would not go anywhere alone and would wait [to go together to the mosque] until the coming Friday the first after the events.

"[That Friday], when the young Arabs reached the street where the mosque was, their hearts were beating like that of a sprinter. Their pulses quickened when they saw groups of Americans surrounding the mosque. They drew closer in dread to discover that the groups were Christian organizations and 'hippies' who wanted to protect the Arab and Muslim worshipers from any attack that might occur as a reaction by Americans to [the Al-Qa'ida] raid on Manhattan.

"The sight was melodramatic. Those same people whom our imam customarily cursed every Friday and whom he asked Allah to exterminate, orphan their children, and widow their wives and, when he was really fired up, whose blood he would also ask Allah to dry up in their veins these same people came to serve as a human shield for our prayers.

"I remember that most of the worshipers believed, like parrots, the calls of the imam who angered me. I confess that I was too cowardly to oppose them in public, settling for conversations in closed rooms with some of my colleagues.

"But I thanked Allah greatly that he did not answer the calls of our imam... The American presence [near our mosque] continued every Friday for the next five or six weeks, and the governor joined them.

"Allah treated us mercifully when he did not stop the blood in the veins [of these Jews and Christians], and did not curse them or orphan their children..."(2)

Muslim Teachers are Spreading Hatred of the Infidel West Among Immigrant Muslim Children

Tarek Hamo, a Kurdish journalist residing in Germany, writes from a personal perspective: "In my many travels connected to my job in the Arab department of the Kurdish television channel... I meet many Islamists who, the moment they identify a Middle Eastern face, run to me, motivated by lust for religious preaching and dispiritedly talk of 'the state of the Muslim nation.'

"During the conversation (which develops the moment you respond to their greeting), you see that these people are bearing a tremendous amount of hatred for Europe and its culture (in which they live in dignity). Most of them, unfortunately, supported and still support Al-Qa'ida terrorism in New York, Madrid, and Baghdad...

"Once, a Turkish imam approached me as I traveled on an express train to Brussels. After I indicated to him that he might sit down, he began to lament 'the state of the Muslim nation' and the 'deeds of the infidel West' and the Muslim rulers connected to it (who also, [in his view,] were certainly of Jewish-Crusader origin).

"When I asked him for his view on Turkey's joining the European Union and its ramifications for the Turks and their future, he stood up and said: 'This is a crusader plan, and its aim is [to change] the identity and history of the Turkish nation. Ultimately they that is, the Westerners want to meld the Muslims into the Christian region, and to conduct missionary activity amongst them.' In order to prevent this and to repel the 'Crusader attack,' he said, 'There is no substitute for establishing an Islamic caliphate.'

"After finishing his speech... he began to tell me about his work as a teacher of Muslim children in a German city, and how he makes them understand 'Islam and its fundamentals' and stresses to them 'the obligation not to assimilate into infidel German society, and to preserve their religion and identity'...

"This example is one of many, since many teach the children of Muslim immigrants the fundamentalist interpretation of Islam (which usually causes terrorism). They are sent from their countries by their organizations, and understand not a word of the host country's language... Their goal is to spread hostility and hatred among the Muslim workers and refugees, and to push them towards stories of religious wars and the atmosphere of 'the global conspiracy against the Muslims.'

"The ones responsible for the existence of these [extremists] are the Arab and Muslim countries that capitulated to the madness of the religious groups... and set their curricula in accordance with the desires of these groups, in order to appease them and to distance them from thinking of politics and 'earthly matters' [in their homelands].

"Also responsible for this are the European countries... that turned a blind eye to their [i.e. the extremists'] suspicious religious activity, on grounds of tolerance and religious freedom and, more recently, on grounds of 'dialogue between civilizations.'

"Thus we see Mr. Tarek Ramadan, who participates in dialogue conferences with Muslims in the West, preaching 'European Islam.' Do you understand what European Islam is? This 'Islam' is not very different from the European Islam once offered by the Turkish fundamentalist leader Nijmuddin Erbakan [the Turkish prime minister who headed the Islamic Welfare Party] when he clarified wholeheartedly: 'Our aim is to put down roots in the European continent, and to act quietly and in accordance with the laws, so that one day we may see all of Europe Muslim!'..."(3)

Endnotes:
(1) http://www.elaph.com/ElaphWriter/2005/4/55793.htm, April 17, 2005.
(2) Al-Itihad (UAE), April 26, 2005. http://www.wajhat.com/details.asp?id=11414&a=1&journal=04/26/05 .
(3) http://www.elaph.com/ElaphWriter/2005/4/59059.htmm April 30, 2005.

*********************
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is an independent, non-profit organization that translates and analyzes the media of the Middle East. Copies of articles and documents cited, as well as background information, are available on request.

MEMRI holds copyrights on all translations. Materials may only be used with proper attribution.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI)
P.O. Box 27837, Washington, DC 20038-7837
Phone: (202) 955-9070
Fax: (202) 955-9077
E-Mail: memri@memri.org
www.memri.org

Cutthroat! Terror plan for Citigroup

2005-06-10T08:48:00.000-04:00

By ALISON GENDAR
and CORKY SIEMASZKO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

A terrorism plot that sparked last summer's Orange Alert envisioned turning the Citigroup Center into "cutthroat shrapnel," according to a report yesterday.
In reconnaissance plans, accused terrorist Dhiren Barot, currently jailed in Britain, called the building a glass house whose panels could be turned into "a potential flying piece of cutthroat shrapnel," according to a CBS News report.

Barot carefully cased the landmark tower on Lexington Ave. and E. 53rd St. down to the smallest detail - even describing how the toilets could be used as a place to assemble a bomb.

"The documents were very detailed," NYPD Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne told the Daily News. "They included, for example, how many seats there were around the conference table in the board room of the New York Stock Exchange [which he also scouted]. The level of detail showed they had engaged in serious reconnaissance."

Barot, 33, whose alleged Al Qaeda alias was Abu Eisa Al Hindi, checked out financial centers in Newark and Washington in addition to Citigroup and the Stock Exchange. A 50-page printout from his computer obtained by CBS revealed he was very thorough.

"Restrooms ... do not have fully enclosed ... doors," he wrote. "If anything is being assembled there ... rest it on the toilet seat. So it can't be seen."

Barot gave precise dimensions of support columns and mentioned they were coated with a "fire proof" material that was deemed "effective" except "for infernos such as ... the WTC," a reference to the 9/11 attacks.

Spencer: All Religions Are Not Created Equal

2005-06-10T08:27:00.000-04:00

This from a true warrior over at JihadWatch

I got an email this morning from someone who asked me: "Are you religious? Do you have a hidden agenda? Are you a christian, budhist, whatever?...I'm curious about your deepest motives."

I responded that there is nothing in the way of a hidden agenda about my religion. It is quite open, as anyone can see who takes a look at the Jihad Watch Book page, but that is a separate question from what I am doing at Jihad Watch. As I have said many times, Jihad Watch is for all those who are resisting jihad violence: Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, whatever. The Vice President of the Jihad Watch Board, Hugh Fitzgerald, and another principal member of the Board, Ibn Warraq, are atheists. I have no interest in the theocracy that many fantasize that Christians want to establish here. I am just trying to stimulate resistance to jihadist violence among all people.

My column below from Human Events should be read with that in mind: I am not engaging in religious triumphalism, but am noting clear distinctions when they actually exist. The resistance to jihad cannot prevail as long as this befogged moral and theological equivalence keeps attention from being paid to the real source of the problem.

Are all religions equal in their capacity to inspire fanaticism and violence? In the wake of the Koran flushing scandal, Tom Regan of the Christian Science Monitor blog wrote a piece to that effect. Even though that scandal has faded from the headlines, the attitudes Regan expressed remain—and interfere with our ability to resist the global jihad. Taking issue with the assertion by Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe that “Christians, Jews, and Buddhists don’t lash out in homicidal rage when their religion is insulted” and “don’t call for holy war and riot in the streets,” Regan wrote that Jacoby had made “an interesting point. There’s only one problem with it—it’s wrong.”
“Unfortunately,” declared Regan, “even a cursury [sic] scan of the headlines from the past few years, or even this past week, shows how wrong it is. Shall we talk about the religious leaders in Israel who have threatened violence and riots, and perhaps worse, to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his supporters, if he goes ahead with his disengagement plan?”

Did Ariel Sharon flush a Torah? Of course not. These people are angered because they think his plan threatens Israel’s survival, not because they think Sharon has insulted Judaism.

Regan goes on to mention the “Jewish religious zealot, who believed in 1995 that there was ‘a religious commandment’ to kill Yitzhak Rabin,” the “whole decades-long situation in Northern Ireland,” the “Christian militias who murdered hundreds of people in the Lebanese refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in 1982,” and “Serbian Christians who murdered 20,000 Muslims in 1995.” Not one example, in other words, of Jews or Christians murdering innocents because they believed their religion had been insulted.

The question here is not whether or not Jews or Christians commit violence. Of course they do. Human nature is everywhere the same. The question Regan is obfuscating is whether or not Islam as an ideology exhorts people to violence. Manifestly it does, and violence committed by members of other religious traditions does nothing to mitigate that fact: Islam is unique among world religions in having a developed doctrine mandating violence against unbelievers. This has spawned in our day a global network of Muslims dedicated to jihad. Are Jews targeting non-Jews, or Christians non-Christians, on a global basis? Of course not. Until the Muslim and non-Muslim world are ready to acknowledge the role of Islam in inspiring people to violence, that violence will continue.

Regan goes on to invoke those who threatened death to Michael Schiavo, and the murderers of abortionists. Yet no violence actually occurred in the Schiavo case—except that done to Terri Schiavo—and the murder of abortionists has been condemned by all mainstream Christian traditions. Where are the mainstream Muslim traditions that condemn jihad violence? The Free Muslims March Against Terror drew 50 people. Fifty. Why?

Our need to answer this question is not just Judeo-Christian boosterism, a chant of “Yea, team! The West is Best!” The nature of jihad violence has serious consequences for the Bush policy of attempting to destabilize terrorism by establishing democracies across the Middle East. It shows how difficult it will be to export the live-and-let-live attitude necessary to make for a society that enacts the will of the majority while protecting the rights of the minority. Thomas Jefferson said: “If my neighbor believes in one god, or twenty, is of no concern to me, it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” But is that exportable as a political credo to societies in which the legal tradition includes death for blasphemy and apostasy?

All religions are not the same, and do not have the same capacity to inspire violence. As un-PC as that is, it is the truth. It must be faced. Regan reflects conventional PC wisdom, to be sure—views that are held across the spectrum from Left to Right—and until this wisdom is seen for the hollow and deceptive thing it is, we are all that much more vulnerable

Steven Emerson on the Sami Al-Arian case: "Islamic Jihad on Trial"

2005-06-09T10:34:00.000-04:00

Steven Emerson, with terrorism analysts Brian Hecht and Tally Aharony of The Investigative Project on Terrorism, are covering the Sami Al-Arian trial and prepared the following report for The Counterterrorism Blog:

The widely anticipated trial against former USF professor Sami Al-Arian commenced in the Middle District of Florida Courthouse Monday morning. In the most high profile, post-9/11 terrorism case in the U.S., Al-Arian and three co-defendants are charged in a 53-count indictment (Acrobat file) alleging their involvement in a Tampa-based Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) cell. In an attempt to secure the courthouse and deal with expected throngs of media and public attention, the U.S. Marshal Service cordoned off the perimeter of the building, placing large yellow barriers at every juncture. Heavily armed federal police monitored the entrances, creating a tense pre-trial atmosphere.

Although the defendant received abundant support over the years from diverse groups of individuals and organizations, when push came to shove, support for Sami Al-Arian at the scene appeared to be low. One local television reporter candidly revealed that the contingency of about a dozen pro-Al-Arian protesters were the same group that is present at almost every protest from environmental issues to anti-war rallies here in Tampa. Support from the Muslim community was even more underwhelming, save for a few family members and Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) official, Ahmed Bedier.

Before opening statements even began, defense attorneys made an issue of the conspicuous and atypical security measures outside the court, arguing that the barriers would lead the jury to perceive the defendants as being dangerous.

The prosecution initiated its opening statements with a retelling of the January 22, 1995 Beit Lid bombing in Israel by the PIJ. Assistant U.S. Attorney Walter “Terry” Furr told the jury that, pursuant to the bombing, President Clinton designated PIJ, among others, as a terrorist organization. Describing the PIJ as “one of the most deadly terrorist organizations in the world” whose stated aim is the “annihilation of Israel,” the prosecution painted the defendants as a “group of intellectual elitists” who managed and financed the U.S. PIJ cell. Furr also told the jury that the 1994 PBS documentary “Jihad in America” (produced by Steven Emerson) was the “triggering event” that started a greater media inquiry into the affairs of Sami al-Arian and his affairs in Tampa.

Furr spent the next several hours detailing a series of immigration violations, perjury, money laundering, and an overall conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organization. A bombshell revealed during the opening statement involved a letter written by Al-Arian to a Kuwaiti financier praising the Beit Lid bombing as a symbol of what the PIJ could do for the Palestinian cause, soliciting funds for future attacks. Although Al-Arian admitted in recent years to having written the letter, he has maintained that he never “mailed” it. Furr told the jury that evidence will show that Al-Arian in fact had the letter hand-couriered out of the country.

In contrast to the Government’s fact-laden presentation, Al-Arian’s defense attorney Bill Moffitt made an emotional appeal to the jury about First Amendment rights and “our nation’s great heritage” of supporting and tolerating all speech, no matter how unpopular. However, Moffitt seemed to concede that Al-Arian was in fact a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad for a time, citing various wiretap conversations in which Al-Arian discusses “wanting out” if the PIJ would not create a non-violent branch. When later asked about this concession by reporters, Moffitt was coy and evasive.

Day two of the trial began with the opening statements of the remaining three defendants. Strategically, the attorneys went to great lengths to distance their individual clients from both Sami Al-Arian and from the Government’s depiction of a tight-knit terrorist cell. In turn, the attorneys for Sammeh Hammoudeh, Ghassan Ballut, and Hatem Fariz attempted to characterize their clients as scholarly, family men who were very much involved in religious and legitimate charitable endeavors.

The prosecution opened its case with an exhaustive and often mind-numbing lesson on a multitude of immigration forms and regulations, before delving into the analysis of the defendants’ actual immigration forms. The Governments’ first witness, U.S. Immigration official Timothy Shavers, answered a series of questions by Assistant U.S. Attorney Terry Zitek relating to specific immigration violations apparent in the immigration documents introduced as Government exhibits.

The prosecution appeared to be attempting to show that Sami al-Arian and Sameeh Hammoudeh perjured themselves by not listing their affiliations with the Islamic Committee for Palestine (ICP), World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE), and PIJ on their immigration forms. Likewise, Zitek focused on the fact that Sami al-Arian was the signatory on all the immigration forms and visa sponsorships, as the Chairman of WISE, for Sameeh Hammoudeh, Ramadan Abdullah Shallah and Bashir Nafi.

Of particular note, in the process of Zitek’s questioning of Shavers, documents revealed that Bashir Nafi (PIJ founder) and Ramadan Abdullah Shallah (current Secretary General of PIJ) listed the same “foreign address” in London on their immigration forms when petitioning to work for WISE.

The judge and jury appeared frustrated and frankly tired during the Government’s direct examination of Shavers. As the jury was leaving for a break during the questioning, Judge Moody quipped, “And you were wondering how this trial could possibly last six months?” At the end of the day, the Judge urged Zitek to figure out a way to speed things up when he resumes his questioning of Shavers or “bring a supply of No-Doz” for everyone.

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Non-Mexican migrants swamp immigration, border agencies

2005-06-09T10:24:00.000-04:00

By Chris Strohm
cstrohm@govexec.com

Record numbers of non-Mexican migrants are being caught illegally trying to enter the United States, raising national security concerns, overwhelming federal agencies, and leaving legislators and law enforcement authorities grappling with how to handle the situation.

So far this fiscal year, the Border Patrol has apprehended almost 100,000 undocumented migrants from countries other than Mexico - commonly called OTMs. The majority were caught along the southern border. That number is projected to reach about 150,000 by the end of this fiscal year, which is a 200 percent increase compared to fiscal 2004, according to the Border Patrol.

"The numbers are staggering," said Border Patrol spokesman Salvador Zamora.

The Border Patrol is on pace to apprehend about 1.2 million illegal immigrants this fiscal year, which is about the same as last year. Out of that, about 12 percent are OTMs, which represent a small -- but growing -- portion of undocumented immigrants caught illegally entering the country.

The situation has also created a human rights disaster, with hundreds of people dying in the southern desert each year trying to sneak across the border. Citizen groups also are patrolling border lands, contending that the federal government has failed to protect the borders and enforce immigration laws. Organizers of the groups say they will continue their operations until the federal government does more.

Lawmakers, policymakers and federal law enforcement officials are grappling with how to handle the situation. Some now say that an approach based primarily on law enforcement no longer works, and argue that fundamental change in U.S. immigration policy is needed, such as a guest-worker program that legally recognizes migrants who come to the United States for work and pose no threat.

Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., plan to introduce what they say will be "comprehensive immigration reform" legislation by the end of this month. The bill is tentatively titled the Comprehensive Enforcement and Immigration Reform Act. They already have published the first section, which deals with enforcement.

Cornyn is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Citizenship. Kyl is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security.

"The current border crisis has been years in the making, but it now appears to have reached a critical mass," Kyl said during a joint hearing of the subcommittees Tuesday.

Cornyn added: "What we are proposing is we not only enhance border security to deal with people as they come across illegally, but we're also going to provide resources for interior enforcement ... and then we're also going to [create] a workable mechanism for prospective employers to deal with prospective employees who can legally work in the country."

Policy Drift

Enforcement of border and immigration law falls to the Homeland Security Department's bureaus of Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. CBP is responsible for enforcement along the border, while ICE handles interior enforcement.

C. Stewart Verdery Jr., former DHS assistant secretary for border and transportation security policy and planning, said he was skeptical of a guest-worker program when President Bush first announced one in January 2004. "But two years in the trenches has convinced me that I was wrong," Verdery said during the hearing. "It is the passage of a properly developed and properly funded guest-worker program that will bring massive improvements to border security, and thus homeland security."

He added that implementing an effective program will be expensive. Millions of migrants will have to be vetted, placing new requirements on consular officials and ports of entry. The U.S. government also may have to increase resources to help U.S. residents prove their citizenship when applying for jobs.

"This is not going to take some kind of plus-up or shuffling money around," Verdery said. "If you want to build out an expansive system that can handle the influx, it's going to take a massive new amount of money."

CBP Commissioner Robert Bonner told Government Executive in May that the Border Patrol is "overwhelmed." According to Bonner, most people illegally crossing the southern border are "economic migrants" seeking any kind of work. He said a guest-worker program would give those migrants a legal way to enter the country and help the Border Patrol focus on apprehending criminals or those who mean to do the country harm. He added that the country also needs a beefed-up sanctions program for employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers.

National Security Concerns

Concerns about OTMs from special interest countries -- such as Iraq, Syria and Iran -- were amplified, however, when former Homeland Security Deputy Secretary James Loy testified in February before the Senate Intelligence Committee on national security threats to the United States.

"Recent information from ongoing investigations, detentions and emerging threat streams strongly suggest that al Qaeda has considered using the Southwest border to infiltrate the United States," Loy said in written testimony. "Several al Qaeda leaders believe operatives can pay their way into the country through Mexico, and also believe illegal entry is more advantageous than legal entry for operational security reasons."

CBP spokesmen told Government Executive in May that they are concerned terrorists might try to exploit the southern border, but they have no specific information such incidents have occurred.

Mexican nationals caught illegally trying to enter the country are bused back to the border if they do not have a criminal record. OTMs, however, are sent to ICE detention centers, where they are released into the U.S. public if they do not have a felony conviction and do not pose a threat to national security. ICE is required by law to release illegal aliens who pose no threat. Those migrants are given a notice to appear in court. Border Patrol agents call it "a notice to disappear."

ICE has released about 1 million illegal aliens into the country to date. Out of that, about 465,000 never showed up for their court hearing, and about 85,000 have criminal records.

Bonner said releasing illegal immigrants is counterproductive to border security.

"I can tell you that when you do that, the message goes down to El Salvador, to Brazil - frankly, to China - that if you get across the border, surrender yourself to the Border Patrol, because you're going to be released, you're going to get walking papers," Bonner said.

"It's a mindless cycle and we need to break it," he added.

But ICE couldn't hold everybody if it wanted to. The agency's Office of Detention and Removal can only hold up to 22,000 detainees, 85 percent of which are mandatory holds.

"The reality is you cannot lock up every single person who comes across the border illegally because the system was not set up that way," said ICE spokesman Manny Van Pelt. "The reality is there isn't enough prison space in the United States."

Alternative Proposals

Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar testified on Tuesday that his agency wants to expand a process known as expedited removal to all its sectors. The process allows illegal immigrants to be more quickly processed and transported back to their home countries, reducing the amount of time that they are held in U.S. detention centers from more than 80 days to an average of 26 days.

"Agents are frustrated out there," Aguilar said. "But I can tell you that the reason that this is happening is because of the lack of detention space."

The Border Patrol launched expedited removal nine months ago at its sectors in Tucson, Ariz., and Laredo, Texas. Aguilar said expanding the program to other southern border sectors is "coming soon." When pressed, he said "within a matter of months," but added that DHS has to approve expanding the program.

Some also say that major structural changes are needed. The Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Heritage Foundation released a report in December arguing that ICE and CBP should be merged. Janice Kephart, former counsel to the 9/11 commission and author of a staff report on terrorist travel, has been telling Congress that a new Department of Immigration and Border Protection should be created. She says border security remains "woefully inadequate" and gets shortchanged compared to other priorities within DHS.

Organizers of civilian border patrols are trying to stir up a national movement. They plan to establish citizen camps in all southern border states by this fall, as well as some northern border states. They also plan to picket employers in the country who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. They say they will continue the camps until the government orders the military or National Guard to secure the borders. They also want a 400 percent increase in the budgets for ICE and CBP.

Although CBP initially criticized the patrols, Bonner told lawmakers in May that his agency is evaluating whether it can make effective use of citizen volunteers.

Said Bonner: "We want any kind of force multiplier we can get."

Three more arrests in Lodi terrorism case

2005-06-09T08:28:00.000-04:00

U.S. official foresees additional developments before end of week
By Sean Holstege, Michele R. Marcucci, David M. Drucker, STAFF WRITERS
The Argus

Federal prosecutors said Wednesday their investigation of two Lodi men charged with lying to the FBI about involvement in al-Qaida terrorism training camps in Pakistan is widening, with three more arrests.
The FBI arrested Hamid Hayat, 22, and his father, Umer, 47, on Sunday after they failed a polygraph test and later confessed that the younger Lodi man attended training camps in northeast Pakistan, according to a federal affidavit filed Tuesday. Both men are U.S. citizens.

Three Lodi men, all Pakistani, have been arrested sincethe weekend on immigration charges.

According to the FBI affidavit, Hamid Hayat told agents that he attended his grandfather's madrassah religious school and a "jihadist" training camp for six months in 2003 and 2004 near Rawalpindi, a teeming city of 1.4 million people near the Pakistani capital. He described an al-Qaida camp that trained recruits in weapons use, explosives, interior room tactics and hand-to-hand combat, according to the affidavit.

Hamid also confirmed, according to the affidavit, that he was trained on "how to kill Americans," used pictures of President Bush during target practice and requested to return to the United States to attack "hospitals and large food stores."

There are 49 California hospitals and no large food stores on a 2003 state list of terrorist targets obtained by the Oakland Tribune.

Prosecutors downplayed fears of an imminent plot, suggesting Hamid Hayat's testimony is inconsistent with signals from intelligence chatter.

"We do not have information that these or any other sectors in the United States have been primarily targeted or are specifically vulnerable to an attack," FBI Special Agent in Charge Keith Slotter said.

"We did not find these guys in the middle of executing an attack. That did not happen," said McGregor Scott, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California.

Scott said investigators are "still accumulating evidence." He described the investigation as ongoing and evolving, and he suggested that there would be more developments in the case by the end of the week.

Hamid Hayat, a worker at fruit-packing plant, is due in federal court in Sacramento for a bail hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Peter Nowinski on Friday. Nowinski denied bail to his father, Umer, on grounds that he was a flight risk and a danger to the community. Umer, an ice cream truck driver, admitted giving his son $100 a month to attend the training camps, according to the FBI affidavit.

Two Sacramento area attorneys representing the Hayats did not return calls Wednesday.

Hamid Hayat had been under investigation for an "extended period of time" Slotter said. Agents seized videotapes, photographs, mail, prayer books and a computer.

Hayat was first interviewed by the FBI on May 29 in Japan, when he was trying to return from Pakistan. His name was flagged on a federal "no-fly list" and Korean Airlines Flight 23 from Seoul to San Francisco International Airport was diverted to Tokyo, after about five hours over the Pacific Ocean.

Canadian authorities refused to accept the flight, said a Transportation Security Administration source on condition of anonymity. After being questioned in Japan, Hayat was downgraded to a passenger screening list requiring additional security and was allowed to fly to San Francisco, where he arrived early Monday.

Diverted flights due to red flags in the passenger screening system are rare. A French flight to San Francisco International Airport was diverted about Christmas 2003.

Meanwhile, immigration officials confirmed they detained three men linked to a Lodi mosque one block from the Hayat home. Lodi Muslim Mosque imam Shabbir Ahmed and Mohammad Adil Khan were arrested on immigration violation charges. Their attorney, Saad Ahmad, said his clients have not violated the terms of their visas.

"These are prominent members of the mosque, religious clergymen. They are very actively involved in interfaith communities," Ahmad said. "These two law-abiding people have been wronged, and we will prove it. There's no terrorism charges."

His clients are being held separately, one in San Jose and the other in Sacramento.

Also Wednesday, Khan's son, Mohammad Hassan Adil, 19, was arrested on immigration violations, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Virginia Kice told the Sacramento Bee.

The only charges against Hamid and Umer Hayat involve providing false statements to the FBI. News of the arrests are hitting hard the Pakistani community in Lodi, which numbered about 700 in the 2000 U.S. Census.

"We're concerned about people rushing to judgment. We really don't know the details. We'll just have to wait and see how it plays out in the courts," said Basim Elkarra, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations for Sacramento Valley.

A female cousin of Hamid Hayat told the Los Angeles Times that he went to Pakistan with his mother to visit relatives and arrange some marriages.

Another relative, Usama Ismail, 19, told the New York Times the accusations are "total lies," noting that Hamid "did not go to a terrorist training camp."

"Even if they did say that, that's because the FBI made them say what they wanted them to say," Ismail reportedly said.

Still, a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office said the "long-term, ongoing investigation" conducted by the Sacramento Joint Terrorism Task Force involved "several search warrants" in Lodi and involved the mosque. The Sacramento Bee reported that, according to his family, Umer Hayat was wired by the FBI when he met the detained mosque leaders before their arrest.

The mosque has been the cause of a rift in Lodi's Pakistani community.

The mosque run by Ahmed recently sued Khan and other former leaders, claiming they had defrauded it of more than $200,000. According to the lawsuit, the mosque sold 7 acres and gave Khan the proceeds, which he used to set up a new nonprofit, the Farooqia Islamic Center, under his own name. The lawsuit alleges that Khan is in the country illegally.

His attorney, Gary Nelson, called the case "baseless." Financial statements filed with California Secretary of State's Office show that the Farooqia center takes all of its income from contributions and spends one-third of its operating expenses on travel.

Lisa Graves AClU Idiot

2005-06-08T07:57:00.000-04:00

Senate Gives FBI More Patriot Act Power

By LAURIE KELLMAN

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The FBI would get expanded powers to subpoena records without the approval of a judge or grand jury in terrorism investigations under Patriot Act revisions approved Tuesday by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Some senators who voted 11-4 to move the bill forward said they would push for limits on the new powers the measure would grant to law enforcement agencies.

``This bill must be amended on the floor to protect national security while protecting Constitutional rights,'' said Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md.

Ranking Democrat Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., supported the bill overall but said he would push for limits that would allow such administrative subpoenas ``only if immediacy dictates.''

Rockefeller and other committee members, such as Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., also are concerned that the bill would grant powers to federal law enforcement agencies that could be used in criminal inquiries rather than intelligence-gathering ones.

Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said the bill places new checks and balances on the powers it would grant, such as new procedures that would allow people to challenge such administrative orders. He called the Patriot Act ``a vital tool in the war on terror'' and lauded the Democrats who voted for it in spite of misgivings.

Portions of the Patriot Act - signed into law six weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks - are set to expire at the end of 2005. The bill would renew and expand the act.

The bill also must be considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Feinstein and other Democrats planned to again offer amendments.

Overall, Rockefeller said, the committee gave a nod to most of the Patriot Act in its first few years fighting the nation's new enemies.

``We concluded that these tools have helped keep America safe ... and should be made permanent,'' Rockefeller said in a statement.

Still, civil libertarians panned the bill and the closed-door meetings in which it was written.

``When lawmakers seek to rewrite our Fourth Amendment rights, they should at least have the gumption to do so in public,'' said Lisa Graves, the ACLU's senior counsel for legislative strategy. ``Americans have a reasonable expectation that their federal government will not gather records about their health, their wealth and the transactions of their daily life without probable cause of a crime and without a court order.''

---

On the Net:

Senate Intelligence Committee: http://intelligence.senate.gov/

FBI: http://www.fbi.gov/

Still Think Out-of-Control Immigration From Mexico is a Good Idea?

2005-06-07T06:54:00.000-04:00

Islam Is Gaining a Foothold in Chiapas

By Jens Glüsing

Long a bastion of Catholicism, southern Mexico is quickly turning into a battleground for soul-savers. Islam, too, is gaining a foothold and the indigenous Mayans are converting by the hundreds. The Mexican government is worried about a culture clash in their own backyard.

Subcomandante Marcos of Chiapas entered into an alliance with a Muslim movement in the mid-1990s.
Anastasio Gomez, a Tzotzil Mayan from Mexico, fondly remembers his pilgrimage to Mecca. He circled around the Kaaba, the highest sanctuary of Muslims, seven times. At Mount Arafat he prayed to Allah and then he, together with 15 other Indians, sacrificed a sheep before boarding the flight back to their Mexican home.

"In Islam, race plays no role," the young man says joyously. His enthusiasm is understandable. After all, in his home state of Chiapas, Mexico's poorest, the indigenous people are viewed as second class humans, and whites and Mestizos treat the Indian majority as if they weren't there. In the southern Mexican provincial metropolis San Cristóbal de las Casas, the descendants of the Maya even have to move onto the street if a white person approaches them on the sidewalk.

Gomez, 23, converted to Islam eight years ago; ever since then, he has called himself Ibrahim. On his first pilgrimage seven years ago, the Indian was still something of an anomaly. Today, however, Muslim women in headscarves have become a common sight on the streets of San Cristobal.

Conquerors from Spain

About 300 Tzozil-Indians have converted to Islam in recent years and it's a development that is beginning to worry the Mexican government. Indeed, the government even suspects the new converts of subversive activity and has already set the secret service onto the track of the Mayan Muslims. Mexican President Vincente Fox has even gone so far as to say he fears the influence of the radical fundamentalists of al-Qaida.

But the Indians have no interest in political extremism. Rather, they belong to the Sunni, Murabitun sect that was founded by the Scotsman Ian Dallas and is seen as an offshoot of a Moroccan religious order. The Murabitun followers represent a sort of primal Islam: Earning interest profits through money lending is a no-no and they preach a literal interpretation of the Koran.

"The see themselves as restorers of Islam," says the anthropologist Gaspar Morquecho, author of a study of the Muslims of Chiapas. "Their defiance of capitalism is similar in many respects to the critique of globalization espoused by many left-wingers."

DPA
More and more Mayans are finding their way to Mecca.
While the Mayan Muslims in Chiapas have been receiving extra attention of late, the Tzotzil conversion has been underway for some time. In the mid 1990s, a group of Spanish Muslims embarked to Latin America to spread the word; their leader was Aureliano Perez, who is now worshipped by the Maya-Muslims as Emir Nafia. He offered the Zapatista rebels fighting under Subcomandante Marcos, whom Perez supported, an ideological-religious alliance. Marcos was hesitant to enter the odd pact, but the Muslim missionaries were unperturbed: They discovered that the Tzotzil Indians made up the majority of the Zapatista rebels and were quite open to the teachings of the prophet Mohammed.

The battle for the souls of Chiapas is nothing new. In the 16th century, the Spanish conquistadors used brute force to convert the Indians to Catholicism. Half a millennium later, evangelical preachers from the US have turned Latin America into a religious battleground in their efforts to lure Catholics away from the Church. In the town of San Juan Chamula alone -- whose church is seen as something of a spiritual center by the Tzotzil Indians and attracts thousands of tourists a year -- there are 11 different congregations seeking to save the souls of the Indians.

The loss of cultural roots

The Catholics, however, are still, for the most part, in control. They belong to the mafia-esque former state party PRI run the town hall and the lucrative weekly market. In face of the advance of the evangelists, however, they fear that their influence may be waning and they have chased out more than 30,000 protestant Indians out of San Juan Chamula in the last three decades and hundreds have been killed or assaulted. Most of the refugees settled down in the slums on the outskirts of San Cristobal. Cut off from their cultural and religious roots, the Indians are easy prey for all manner of soul-savers.

"In Islam, the Indians rediscover their original values," claims Esteban Lopez, the Spanish secretary general of the Muslim community. "The Christians destroyed their culture." He presents the use and abuse of alcohol as proof. Alcoholism is wide-spread under Tzotzil Indians and the strict ban on spirits in Islam helps many to break the vicious circle of addiction and poverty.

In San Cristobal, the Mayan Muslims run a pizza shop and a carpenter workshop and they are seen by the whites as hard-working and diligent. In a Koran school, children learn Arabic and five times a day they pray in the backroom of a residential building. Empty congregation halls are not a problem for the new Muslims: Converted Muslims vow to witness the teachings of Mohammed among their families.

Anastasio Gomez -- aka Ibrahim -- for example, has managed to convert his entire family. He is especially proud of the conversion of his 100-year-old grandfather who was member of a Christian sect. "He was wandering from religion to religion all his live. Now he has found his peace of mind with Allah," says Ibrahim.

Strategy to Take Down Al Qaida Foot Soldiers

2005-06-07T06:52:00.000-04:00

By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

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The Pentagon is discussing war-strategy changes for defeating Islamic terrorists that would place more emphasis on killing, capturing or discouraging midlevel operators who enable top al Qaeda leadership to function.
Interviews the past week with Bush administration officials show that policy-makers are thinking the only way to ultimately win the war is to take down the lower-level operators who form the networks that support Osama bin Laden and scores of other al Qaeda lieutenants around the world.
President Bush, in assessing progress in the war, often cites the statistic that 75 percent of known al Qaeda leaders have been killed or captured. The strategy has been generally that if you cut off the head of al Qaeda, the body will eventually die.
But more than three years into the war on terrorism, some officials are leaning toward a new policy that would place just as much emphasis on taking foot soldiers off the street.
"DOD is pushing a strategy of going after the al Qaeda network," a well-placed administration official told The Washington Times. "Getting the leadership alone is not going to do it."
The source said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is "putting pressure on the system" to come up with new ideas, but has not endorsed a new plan.
One official, who asked not to be named, said the recent arrests of two American al Qaeda planners are examples of how the United States can methodically disable terrorist cells, leaving chieftains with few to carry out their orders.
Another change being discussed in an ongoing interagency review by the Pentagon, State Department, CIA and White House National Security Council is a strategy that emphasizes this is a war that targets Islamic extremism, not Islam itself.
"We have to convince Muslims that al Qaeda is their mutual enemy," said the administration official.
There is a belief by some officials that the phrase "war on terror" is not specific enough, said a second official.
And a third topic is finding new ways to discourage Muslim clerics from preaching hate and encouraging violence.
The Washington Post first reported last week that the Bush team is re-evaluating its anti-terror strategy. The Times subsequently conducted interviews to learn details of some of the ideas.
Officials told The Times there is some frustration at the review's slow pace. One called it a "complicated process" and blamed the National Security Council staff at the White House for delays in pushing all sides to agree.
"The Pentagon has been trying to overcome a lot of resistance," said the second Bush official. "Anytime they make their case, they get resistance."
That official said the Pentagon wants the intelligence community to put more emphasis on signal intercepts to identify al Qaeda foot soldiers.
The United States is essentially fighting a three-front war: Iraq, Afghanistan and the global theater.
U.S. Special Operations Command, based in Tampa, Fla., was designated by Mr. Rumsfeld in 2003 as the combatant command in charge of global counterterror operations. Socom has set up a relatively new structure, the Center for Special Operations, to do the battle planning.
Two defense sources said Socom has struggled to set up the battle-planning staff and coordinate with regional commands.
"Trust me," said one of the sources. "Changing from supporting to supported and getting cooperation from the regional commands have been difficult, at best." "Supported" refers to a command, such as U.S. Central Command, that plans and carries out its own missions. Until 2003, Socom was a "supporting" command, meaning it carried out missions dictated by others.
Said Col. Samuel T. Taylor, a command spokesman, "I disagree with anyone's assertion that Socom is struggling. A major transition, such as the one we are undergoing, requires extensive planning and coordination. ... We are moving forward in the right way, at an appropriately rapid pace."

From JihadWatch:

2005-06-06T09:45:00.000-04:00

U.S. fears Islamic awakening: Ayatollah Khamenei
No, the U.S. doesn't fear an Islamic awakening. The U.S. is refusing to acknowledge that an Islamic awakening would be anything it would need to fear. The U.S. is tarring with charges of "bigotry" and "racism" anyone who dares point out that people like Khamenei talk this way, and that Islam has a political and violent character that some (not all) Muslims are pressing forward. How far it will allow the jihadists to go before admitting that these so-called "bigots" and "racists" were right is anybody's guess: right now both Left and Right are killing any chances moderate Muslims may ever have had (which were slim at best from the outset) by assuming, and commanding others to assume, that the work they would need to do to neutralize violence within Islam has already been done, and that there is already a strong basis in Islam for pluralism, democracy, and freedom of conscience. How long will it be until the force of events make them admit that they were wrong?

From the Tehran Times, with thanks to Designnut:

TEHRAN -- Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei on Saturday described U.S. movements in the region as passive positions adopted in response to the awakening of Muslim nations.
In a speech at a mourning ceremony marking the 16th anniversary of the death of the late Imam Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khamenei stated that Imam Khomeini made a significant contribution to efforts to weaken U.S. dominance over the region.

He said Imam Khomeini's success in establishing the Islamic Republic in Iran and initiating the awakening movement among Muslim nations had led the United States to take actions to rein in this movement through passive positions.

The U.S. military presence around Iran may appear to indicate its power, but a careful analysis of developments in the region shows that the U.S. has taken passive positions against the Islamic awakening movement, he added.

The Supreme Leader said the failure of the Greater Middle East Initiative is a sign of such positions adopted by the U.S. government to control the struggles of nations fighting against its hegemony.

"The Americans know that they have no future in the Islamic world. For this reason, they have resorted to passive positions to stop the Islamic awakening of nations from becoming revolutionary movements and also to delay the unquestionable triumph of nations," he told participants at the ceremony held at the mausoleum of Imam Khomeini, located just south of Tehran.

This has been acknowledged in the recent remarks of U.S. officials about the war in Iraq, Ayatollah Khamenei said.

"The Americans have said that if they had not attacked Iraq, the religious Iraqi forces would have toppled Saddam in a short time," he said to chants of "Death to America". "This reality shows that their actions in the region are taken out of fear of the consequences of the Islamic awakening."

Ayatollah Khamenei said another approach that the world powers, particularly Britain, have always adopted to confront the Islamic awakening has been attempting to foment disunity between Shias and Sunnis.

"The invisible hand of the Zionists and other foreigners in the bloody incidents and blasts in mosques and religious sites… is completely active," he said. "All Muslim nations, particularly the people of Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, must promote unity and solidarity and be aware of the plots of the enemies of Islam to foment discord among them."...

An Arab preacher, Abu Mahdi Saleh, praised Imam Khomeini as an exemplary leader who never deviated from the path of Islam despite all obstacles and problems that he had to face.

“The Islamic Revolution led by Imam Khomeini was a gift from God,” he noted.

Daniel Pipes Weblog

2005-06-06T08:14:00.000-04:00

Weblog (May 1 - 31, 2005)
The Muslim American Society's Goals I wrote about the Muslim American Society in "The Islamic States of America?" and how it seeks to replace the Constitution with the Koran. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross takes this further today in "MAS's Muslim Brotherhood Problem," where he looks closely at the MAS Minnesota website and notes that it calls on members to fulfill their "duties as outlined in the Message of the Teachings by Imam [Hasan] Al-Banna." Gartenstein-Ross then takes a look at The Message of the Teachings and finds that it instructs Muslims that they must work on reforming their government

so that it may become a truly Islamic government. … By Islamic government I mean a government whose officers are Muslims who perform the obligatory duties of Islam, who do not make public their disobedience, and who enforce the rules and teachings of Islam.

Al-Banna also instructs that Muslims should "Completely boycott non-Islamic courts and judicial systems. Also, dissociate yourself from organisations, newspapers, committees, schools, and institutions which oppose your Islamic ideology." Al-Banna also condones in this book spreading Islam with violence: "Always intend to go for Jihad and desire martyrdom. Prepare for it as much as you can."

The universality of Islamic law comes up repeatedly. MAS requires adjunct members to read To Be a Muslim by Fathi Yakun, which states that: "Until the nations of the world have functionally Islamic governments, every individual who is careless or lazy in working for Islam is sinful." Adjunct members also must read Sayyid Qutb's Milestones, which makes jihad a central obligation of Muslims.

Comment: Those of us who watch the growth of radical Islam in the United States tend to focus on the noisy organizations like CAIR, MPAC, and ISNA. The Muslim American Society, which claims 53 chapters and 10,000 members, tends to go about its work quietly; it is none the less dangerous – and perhaps more so – for that. (May 25, 2005) Permalink

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MSM Criticizes CAIR, CAIR Brazens It Out Just five days ago, Sharon Chadha and I criticized the mainstream media for mindlessly repeating CAIR's bogus statistics (see "CAIR's Hate Crimes Nonsense." Now, to my no little amazement, National Public Radio did a segment (granted, on the "Day to Day" program at 4 a.m., but one has to start somewhere) reported by Mike Pesca. It's titled "Non-scientific approach used by activist groups to obtain statistics supporting their claims about hate crimes" and the transcript is not online, so I am using the one provided at NEXIS.

It starts with host Alex Chadwick noting the "dubious methodology" of statistical reports on hate and bias. He hands the story to Pesca, who picks up with the CAIR annual report and the "fair amount of media attention" it got, mentioning articles in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, and Associated Press. Pesca points out one problem – that "any bias incident, from a Muslim being yelled at from a passing car, to a Muslim being profiled on a plane, can wind up in CAIR's report." He then quotes the CAIR report's author, Arsalan Iftikhar, acknowledging that some cases should not have been included. Alluding to the piece by Chadha and me, Pesca continues:

Soon after it was issued, the report was jumped on by a few conservative commentators who called it inaccurate. Two different men, originally reported as victims, have been charged with setting fire to their own businesses. Iftikhar says the removal of those cases does not affect the overall trend the report documents. Even so, the vagaries in the numbers point to the difficulty of compiling accurate statistics.

Spoken like a true Islamist – never apologize, never retreat. Caught with fraudulent stats, Iftikhar brazens it out, denying that the inaccuracies have any importance. Or, as a New York Times editorial ineffably expressed it in another context, "fake but accurate." Still, the important thing here is that NPR has questioned CAIR's reliability, and that is a major step. (May 23, 2005) Permalink

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Islamist Supremacism in Miniature A recent development at the University of Michigan's Flint campus summarizes the radical Islamic program in small compass. Shena Abercrombie of the Flint Journal reports how the Muslim Student Association took over a small space called the Meditation Room, used for non-denominational prayer services. Starting in November 2004, non-Muslim students began complaining about Muslim students monopolizing the room by filling it with their religious artifacts and also with anti-Israel literature. The room came to be filled with prayer rugs and books, the walls held posters, awards from the Muslim Student Association, and framed Islamic pictures.

Muslim students responded to the non-Muslim complaint with the usual line: "I do think that the current political climate does contribute to Islamophobia. … I do think that the reaction would have been different if the room was used predominantly by Christians or Jews," said Bishr Aldabagh of the MSA. Also, the brave student who initiated the complaint about Islamist aggression, Zea Miller, said he was subsequently stalked, harassed, and insulted. "I did this on behalf of others who were afraid to. It was not bigoted. I would have done this against any group who usurped the room. Now, at every move I'm being accused of anti-Muslim behavior. I am not anti-Muslim."

The Hillel Student Organization supported Miller. "The room is really important to us also, [and] we don't feel comfortable using it the way it is right now," said its president, Katie Segal. "The inside and outside had a lot of anti-Zionist propaganda and pictures and paraphernalia." Segal also denied the "Islamophobia" claim. "I think they're going to use that as their cover."

Finally, in March, the school posted rules for use of the Meditation Room that disallow leaving one's materials behind. Since then, peace apparently has returned.

Comments: (1) Islamists are always aggressive, no matter how small the stakes. (2) Islamists can be beaten back. (May 23, 2005) Permalink

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Does Terrorism Advance the Islamist Cause? The Islamist movement has two wings, one illegal and violent, the other legal and political. I believe the latter enjoys better prospects of success than the former. That's because law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and military forces know how to deal with the illegal and the violent, but the Western world lacks the muscles to defend itself from an insidious radical movement.

For these reasons, I consider the major terrorist assaults – 9/11, Bali, Madrid, Beslan – to be failures. They foul the nest and they rouse Westerners to action. Or, as I put it after the murder of Theo van Gogh, "Islamist terrorism in the West is counterproductive because it awakens the sleeping masses; in brief, jihad provokes crusade. A more cunning Islamist enemy would advance its totalitarian agenda through Mafia-like intimidation, not brazen murders."

Then along comes the irrepressible Mark Steyn who argues in the National Review ("A War Without Polkas") why 9/11 makes sense from the Islamist viewpoint. I am not convinced, but he does make an interesting case. He starts by assuming that Europe will be Muslim:

That being so, why louse things up by flying planes into buildings? Why not just lie low and in the fullness of time everything you want will come your way? The Wahhabists have successfully radicalized hitherto moderate Muslim communities from Albania to Indonesia; they've planted their most radical clerics as in-house padres throughout U.S. prisons and even the armed forces. Why screw things up by doing something so provocative it meets even [former secretary of defense] Bill Cohen's criteria for a response?

Here's why. It's always useful to test the limits of your adversaries, and, though it cost them their camps in Afghanistan and much of their leadership, the 9/11 attacks exposed many useful tidbits about the decadence of the West — the worthlessness of the post-modern NATO "alliance" and the active hostility of many of its key members to the United States, the immense deference accorded not just to Islam but to the most radical Islamic groups, especially when it comes to immigration and other aspects of national security. Many Islamists might have suspected all this, but it's heartening to have it confirmed: If the "sleeping giant" is hard to wake up, his European pals aren't sleeping so much as in irreversible comas. …

But the real battleground is the West itself, the heart of Europe, where bombs in Spain, murders in the Netherlands, "honor killings" in Germany prompt only shrugs or preemptive capitulation from the political class.

In other words, Steyn is saying, successful terrorist attacks boost Islamist morale and provide good intel. True, but this is not worth it. I see these atrocities as radical Islam's indulgences, not its path to victory. (May 23, 2005) Permalink

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Michael Isikoff, Meet Salman Rushdie Though myself critical of the Newsweek reporting about the Koran in the toilet, it is important to keep in perspective who is to blame for the rioting that caused sixteen deaths in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The responsibility lies squarely and uniquely on the radical Islamic movement, not on American reporters or even American soldiers. As many others have pointed out, there are plenty of legitimate responses to blasphemy, but murderous rampage is not one of them.

This incident brings to mind the even larger episode in 1989, when Ayatollah Khomeini sentenced novelist Salman Rushdie to death for his novel, The Satanic Verses, leading to the death of twenty people. I devoted a chapter of my book to the question "Blame Rushdie for the Furor?" In it, I looked at two main topics: Rushdie's own intentions to provoke vs. the prior history of blasphemous writings about Islam, and reached this conclusion:

despite the evident sacrilegious content of … others' writing, none of their works attracted Khomeini's ire. Rather, they continued quietly to be sold and read. This contrast with The Satanic Verses points to the absence of a predictable connection between the writing of sacrilege and retribution by Muslim authorities. These examples confirm the experience of all those who live with censorship; there is no way to guess in advance when the pot will be stirred. Some Muslims have done more than Rushdie and been punished less; others have done less and been punished more. According to strictly logical criteria, the demonstrators and Khomeini could have picked on any number of other books, or ignored Rushdie's. So, while it is true that Rushdie knew what he was doing, he could not have predicted what the Muslim response would be, for ultimately it was capricious.

Just as Rushdie cannot be held responsible for the death and disruption that followed his book's publication, so are Michael Isikoff and John Barry innocent in the current case. (May 20, 2005) Permalink

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How Many Islamists? Germany's interior minister, Otto Schily, spoke today at the release of the 2004 Verfassungsschutzbericht, the annual report by the domestic security agency that surveys Germany's extremist movements, as I have written, in a "frank and constructive way." Schily announced that, at the end of 2004, there were exactly 31,800 Islamist radicals resident in Germany, or 1 percent of the Muslim population of Germany.

This raises, again, that chestnut of a question: how many Muslims support the Islamist project? The current war clearly has very different dimensions depending on whether the answer is 1 percent or 50 percent. I proffered the estimate of 10 to 15 percent days after September 11, 2001; this figure has been questioned but has also been quite widely accepted.

Others have offered a wide range of numbers. Here is a sampling, in reverse chronological order:

Hisham Kabbani, head of Islamic Supreme Council of America: 5 to 10 percent of American Muslims are extremists. (Steven Vincent, "Where Are the Moderate Muslims?" The American Enterprise, April/May 2005, p. 27).

Kamal Nawash, head, Free Muslims Against Terrorism: "as many as 50 percent of Muslims around the world support the goals of the extremists." ("O'Reilly Factor," Fox News Channel, Aug. 5, 2004)

Daniel Yankelovich, pollster: At one extreme of Muslim society "are the hate-America Islamist fundamentalists, who are the most militant and totalitarian. The magnitude and influence of this group varies enormously. For example, in Indonesia this group has doubled, tripled, or quadrupled over the last few years. I would estimate that this group averages about 10% of all Muslims, with enormous variation from one Muslim country to another and particular strength in Arab nations." ("Cutting the Lifeline of Terror: What's Next After Iraq?" July 14, 2004, p. 20) (May 17, 2005) Permalink

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Don't Underestimate the Saudis It is easy to underestimate the Saudi leadership. It was not that long ago that they were predominantly Bedouin, remote from the modern world. They wear clothing that to a Western eye hardly inspires confidence. Their riches beyond avarice permit a self-indulgence that they fully partake of.

But the Saudi monarchy is a formidable institution that should not be sold short, one with many successful innovations to its credit.

I wrote today in "Will the Saudis Blow Up Their Own Oil Infrastructure?" about the extraordinary Saudi plans (revealed by Gerald Posner) to create "a single-button self-destruct system" on their oil and gas infrastructure, thereby rendering it useless for decades to come. This mechanism can serve either as a deterrent or (if it fell in the hands of some of the country's more radical elements) a suicide-bomb of global proportions.

This astonishing plan fits into a tradition of the Saudi leadership thinking outside the box. Other examples include:

The royal nomenklatura: The institution of the monarchy dates back millennia; so far as I know, the Saudis are the first to have expanded the reach of the family from a few individuals to a few thousand. Not only do royals occupy the key positions throughout the kingdom, but their numbers make them impervious to an assassination or other assault.
Naming the country after a ruling family: As the witticism puts it, Saudi Arabia is the only family-owned business with a seat at the United Nations.
Separate armed forces: Not wanting to be hostage to military officers, even royal ones, the monarchy relies on a national force to protect the borders, a tribal force to protect the family, and a mercenary force to guard the oil fields.
Making Wahhabism mainstream: What a century ago ranked as a fringe outlook has become perhaps the most authoritative form of Islam thanks to the dynasty's ideological dedication, its capture of Mecca and Medina, and its use of oil wealth.
Expanding the Wahhabi message worldwide: Through a massive effort, both legal (the "Wahhabi lobby" in the United States) and quasi-legal (Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation), and outright illegal (Al-Qaeda), the Saudis have promoted their brand of Islam to nearly all regions of the globe.
Non-governmental Saudis are also renowned for their imaginative prowess – think of as Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal in finance and Osama bin Laden in terrorism.

The Saudis collectively and individually should not be disdained but respected as a very worthy adversary. (May 11, 2005) Permalink

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In Praise of Routine Traffic Stops News comes today that Sami Ibrahim Isa Abdel Hadi, 39, was stopped for tailgating on Route 46 in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey. Turns out, once the Bergen County police officer called in Abdel Hadi's North Carolina license plates, he learned that Abdel Hadi had been ordered deported to Brazil in December 2001 and is listed in the FBI's National Crime Information Center database. Even more interestingly, Abdel Hadi has a valid temporary I.D. from L & L Painting to paint the George Washington Bridge (a high-profile potential terrorist target).

Michael Wagner

This is hardly the first time that a routine traffic infringement has stopped actual or potential terrorists. In July 2004, Michael Wagner's not wearing a seat belt got him stopped in a SUV near Council Bluffs, Iowa, that had in it "flight training manuals and a simulator, documents in Arabic, bulletproof vests and night-vision goggles, a night-vision scope for a rifle, a telescope, a 9mm semiautomatic pistol and hundreds of rounds of ammunition."

Timothy McVeigh was stopped in April 1995 as he sped away from Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people and injured more than 500 because his car lacked a license plate.

A New Jersey state trooper noticed Yu Kikumura's odd behavior at a New Jersey Turnpike rest stop in April 1988 and thoroughly searched his vehicle, finding three powerful homemade bombs. Kikumura, a member of the Japanese Red Army, was sentenced to thirty years in jail followed by deportation to Japan.

Three members of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (Walid Nicolas Kabbani, Georges Fouad Nicolas Younan, and Walid Majib Mourad) were stopped by Richford, Vermont's only policeman in October 1987, because he was suspicious of their movements. Indeed, they were smuggling a bomb from Canada to the United States.

There are plenty of other examples; I shall record them here as I become aware of them.

Comments: (1) It is remarkable how many criminals, terrorist and otherwise, make elementary traffic mistakes. (2) There is no substitute for law enforcement on the ground. (May 4, 2005) Permalink

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After the Internet … Billboards? Robert Spencer today shows some pictures of a billboard in Los Angeles Los Angeles (at Sunset Blvd. and Fairfax Ave.) that features his website plus the words "Dhimmitude," "Eurabia," and "Bat Ye'or."

That reminds me to note here that, as of January 2005, a billboard has been up, visible from I-95 north of Philadelphia, showing the Middle East Forum's name, logo, and slogan ("Promoting American Interests").

The Forum thanks Terry L. Steen, president of H.A.Steen Industries, Inc., for this excellent new way to make itself known to the general public. (May 3, 2005) Permalink

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An Imam on the Cathedral Staff Next Sunday, Nov. 14, the imam of the Islamic Center of Ahl Al-Beit, Ibrahim Kazerooni, will be installed on the staff of Denver's historic St. John's Episcopal Cathedral. Eric Gorski writes in today's Denver Post that "a new chapter in interfaith relations will be written" with this step, certainly in Denver and perhaps nationally. To which I add: perhaps anywhere on the globe.

Kazerooni, 46, an Iraqi immigrant and a Shiite, will serve as interim director of the church's "Abrahamic Initiative," a project to build bridges among Christians, Jews, and Muslims. He will not receive a salary for of the Abrahamic Initiative, but will have his tuition paid at the Iliff School of Theology, where he is pursuing a master's degree.

Comment: This move by the Episcopal church is ecumenical and constructive. I would, however, feel a lot better about it if some mosque in like spirit hired a pastor – an idea that at this moment borders on the absurd. (November 11, 2004) Permalink

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Mind Control is Here

2005-06-05T06:45:00.000-04:00

UNCHR: PROTECTING RELIGION

By Elizabeth Kendal
World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission (WEA RLC)
Special to ASSIST News Service

AUSTRALIA (ANS) -- In an astonishing move on 12 April 2005, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) moved from promoting respect for human rights (the rights of humans) to promoting "respect for all religions and their value systems".

UNCHR: PROTECTING RELIGION – SPECIFICALLY ISLAM

On Tuesday 12 April 2005, the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR), meeting for its 61st session in Geneva, Switzerland, passed Human Rights Resolution 2005/3 entitled, "Combating Defamation of Religions". The text can be found at:
http://ap.ohchr.org/documents/E/CHR/resolutions/E-CN_4-RES-2005-3.doc

Islam On Line (IOL) reported it this way: "The United Nations Commission on Human Rights adopted on Tuesday, April 12, a resolution calling for combating defamation campaigns against Islam and Muslims in the West." (Link 1)

IOL quotes Cuba's delegate, Rodolfo Reyes Rodriguez, who claimed that Islam has been the subject of a "very deep campaign of defamation". According to IOL, it is this defamation that breeds disharmony, hatred and discrimination.

Ehtasham Khan reports from Geneva for Rediff.com (India), "The resolution was pushed forward by Pakistan on behalf of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC). It was put under Agenda Item 6 that deals with racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and all forms of discrimination." (Link 2)

It took a month of diplomatic lobbying, but the OIC nations managed to gain majority support and the resolution, which failed last year, was passed this year with 31 countries for, 16 against, five abstentions and one delegation absent.

Khan reports that the United States, United Kingdom and Israel were amongst those nations that voted against the resolution on the grounds that it was unbalanced and biased. Russia and China voted in favour while India was among those who abstained.

FLAWED AND DANGEROUS

UNCHR Resolution 2005/3 is flawed and dangerous. It completely fails to address the issue of human rights violations that are legitimised by discriminatory and barbaric religious mandates. Thus it protects the religious mandate above humans' rights.

The resolution was formulated by the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) and specifically seeks that Islam be protected from "defamation".

It is critical to note that "defamation" is normally defined as: "communication to third parties of false statements about a person that injure the reputation of or deter others from associating with that person." (Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law)

Historically, inherent in the charge of defamation is the falsity of the statement. If a person can prove that their statement is true, they cannot be said to have defamed.

So, to echo Pilate, "What is truth?" Well the UNCHR resolution clarifies that for us also, stating, "Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism."

Clearly, accusing Islam of being associated with human rights violations is, according to the UNCHR, an act of defamation of Islam. This presents a serious challenge and threat to human rights advocates and reporters. The UNCHR resolution also guarantees that those who pursue an agenda to defame Islam will be branded "extremists".

The UNCHR resolution calls upon States to "actively combat defamation of religions, Islam and Muslims in particular especially in human rights forums". It also calls upon States to provide constitutional and legal protection of Islam against defamation and its consequences, i.e. lack of respect, or hatred.

The UNCHR resolution requests the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance to continue to examine the situation of Muslims and Arab peoples in various parts of the world and monitor defamation of Islam. The Special Rapporteur will report his findings to the Commission at its 62nd session (April 2006) and make recommendations to improve their situation.

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Links

1) UN Calls for Combating Anti-Islam Campaigns
GENEVA, April 12, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies)
http://islamonline.net/English/News/2005-04/12/article06.shtml

2) UN to monitor defamation of Islam
Ehtasham Khan in Geneva, 13 April 2005
http://in.rediff.com/news/2005/apr/12un2.htm
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Elizabeth Kendal is the Principal Researcher and Writer for the World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission (WEA RLC) www.worldevangelical.org/rlc.html. This article was initially written for the World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty News & Analysis mailing list.

Bynum: Desecrating History

2005-06-05T06:42:00.000-04:00

Jihad Watch News Editor Rebecca Bynum weighs in on Newsweek-Afghan riot controversy.

So, what should we learn from the Great Qur’an Flushing Riots of 2005? Is this a story about the liberal media’s rush to print anything to discredit the military and by extension, the administration? Or is it about the insane overreaction of Muslims to the idea of “desecration” (a word along with apostasy, infidel, and beheading that a mere five years ago, all assumed had fallen from existence). Or is this story about the absurd double standard Muslim countries use in treating non-Muslim faiths and their holy books, especially the Bible, while demanding supreme “sensitivity” from the western world regarding their own beliefs and holy book? Certainly it was about all of those things, but it was also about something else as well. Something missed by the national media. A little something about the distortion and thus the “desecration” of history.
The rioting in Afghanistan seems to have started with demonstrations by students in the in Afghan capital on Tues. May 10. “Hundreds of students marched from a university campus into the eastern city of Jalalabad and blocked the main road toward the capital, Kabul, intelligence chief Sardar Shah said. There were no reports of violence. Television footage showed students chanting and calling for an apology for the alleged abuse of Islam's holy book. An object which witnesses said was an effigy of Bush could be seen burning.” These initial demonstrations were later reported to have been pre-planned long before the Qur’an flushing story broke.

The next day, Wednesday, May 11, the violence seems to have escalated with four people reported to have been killed and 70 injured in Afghanistan and it was also reported that the violence was spreading to Pakistan. The following day, Thursday the 12, the Turkish Press reported seven people had been killed in the rioting. By Friday, ABC News was reporting that the riots had spread to parts of Indonesia, Gaza and Hebron, and that nine more people had been killed in Afghanistan bringing to total number of people killed to 16. On Sunday, the day Newsweek retracted the Gitmo Qur’an flush part of the story, Reuters reported 16 dead as well.

Come Monday morning, conservative journals and talk show hosts nationwide gleefully jumped on the chance to further discredit still another major news media organization, whose already tarnished reputation slipped yet another notch in the public’s estimation (which was hard to do, because the public already trusted the media about as much as they trust used car salesmen). A slew of other news reports chocked up the death toll variously as 17, 18 or even 19 Afghanis dead, and yet on Wednesday, May 25, Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin reported that not a single name of even one victim had been released. “No details of the circumstances of the riots were released from any official sources – either U.S. or Afghan."

Well, surely it seems to me, if there had been funerals, those funerals would have turned into major media events. The entire world was watching as events unfolded, but those reporters who may have rushed to the scene in anticipation of the usual great funeral footage, filled with thousands of excited young men waving big guns and shouting along with the obligatory three or four fully draped females usually wailing, weeping and pointing to pictures (these people can really act out their grievances, both real and imagined) anyway, those reporters were left twiddling their thumbs.

“G2B has examined every English-language news story about these deaths through Lexis Nexis. G2B has scoured the Internet, including foreign and non-English-language news sources for any details of these deaths. And G2B has queried both U.S. and Afghan official sources for any details about these alleged deaths.

"No U.S. officials contacted can provide any corroboration for any deaths. And Afghan officials uniformly clam up with apprehension at the mere asking of questions.” And apparently, G2B is the only news organization that pressed it.

But must we scrape off our "Newsweek lied, people died" bumper stickers so soon? Mine hasn't even arrived yet. Or should we file this story along with the file on “what Yasser Arafat died from” along with the file on the “Jenin massacre,” along with the file on the "tragic killing of little Mohammed Al-Dura?" All this makes me wonder how much of the reporting that comes to us from the Arab press is reliable at all, and more importantly, how much of it that is, in fact, quite unreliable sails right through regardless. How do our fact checkers check facts, anyway? Do we need another, more rigorous standard of fact checking for reports coming from Muslim countries before we rush those screaming bumper stickers into print? Perhaps so.

Said a certain Jewish carpenter, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath,” (Mark 2:27) which pretty well sums up the western world’s entire attitude towards authority, religious and governmental alike. In the universe of the western world, both government and religion are thought to exist only in order to serve mankind. Governments are instituted among men for their benefit, not the other way around. Muslims, on the other hand, believe they are actually born in order to serve Islam, God’s perfect system for man. Muslim morality is judged according to one and only one criterion: does it, or does it not promote Islam? All means to that end are justified by the Qur'an and are deemed moral, or more precisely, these actions are "permitted."
Westerners continually make broad assumptions based on “universal ideals.” Ideals, we think are so self-evident that everyone agrees. Secretary of State Rice has said, "Islam is a peaceful religion and so the notion that somehow flying airplanes into buildings or strapping a belt on yourself and blowing up other people is in the service of Islam is something, I think, that clearly perverts the religion and is resented by most respected Islamic scholars for very good reason -- by the way, I think probably rejected too by most people because who wants that to be the future for your children? Nobody." Which left me scratching my head wondering why she hadn't read the copious media reports from all over the Muslim world where any and all human sacrifice in the name of Islam is not only justified, but encouraged and routinely celebrated. In the Muslim world, human beings exist to serve and promote Islam, not the other way around. Why can’t we get that straight?

Maybe what we have here is a fear-inspiring fetish doctrine (Islam) born from a fear-inspiring fetish book (the Qur’an), in which not only is every word thought to be true, but also it is thought that ALL TRUTH is contained within this book. Predictably, this fetish “piety” leads directly to bigotry, fanaticism, superstition, intolerance, and the most atrocious of barbarous cruelties. Other than that, it’s a “beautiful” religion (cue scenes of Shangi-La and the Taj-Mahal from memory bank) and heaven help you if you say otherwise.

The Qur’an, like the Bible, is thought to contain history. The only problem with the history contained in the Qur’an is that isn’t actually history at all. Muslims will say it is “revealed” history, but nonetheless, by the traditional standard of recording events as they actually happen, or shortly thereafter, and then preserving that record over time, the Qur’an cannot be thought to contain any history except that of Muhammad and his immediate associates. Yet, the western world routinely accepts the notion of the “three Abrahamic faiths” just as though this Qur’anic history was actually, well, history. By doing so, we betray the historical Hebrew prophets, the very personages we are all supposed to “revere.”

The fact that Muslims are playing fast and loose with modern history then, should not surprise us. If a few extra bodies are thrown into a news report, if the cause of death of a major Muslim political figure is obscured, if atrocities are manufactured, well, we shouldn’t be surprised. We should be wary instead.

Jerry Seper of The Washington Times Wins Immigration Reporting Award

2005-06-03T16:03:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON (June 3, 2005) -- Jerry Seper of The Washington Times has been awarded the 2005 Eugene Katz Award for Excellence in the Coverage of Immigration. The award, presented since 1997 by the Center for Immigration Studies, is intended to promote informed and fair reporting on this most contentious and complicated issue.

Newspapers typically have not assigned immigration as a separate beat, often simply tacking it on to coverage of racial and ethnic issues. Mr. Seper represents an exception to this rule: He is a dogged reporter assigned by his paper to devote his full time to coverage of immigration news. His work covers the full spectrum of issues arising from our dysfunctional immigration system, from national security to bleeding state budgets to Capitol Hill back room dealings. He has filed literally hundreds of stories on immigration for the Times since his assignment to the beat less than two years ago. The Center is delighted to honor his (and his employer's) diligent commitment to shining light into the dark recesses of this vital -- but often neglected -- policy issue.

Mr. Seper's, and the Times', commitment to coverage of immigration beyond the Beltway is illustrated most plainly by the travels demanded of him on the beat. Over the past two years he has spent months traveling the northern and southern border states pursuing stories of real Americans on the receiving end of our dysfunctional immigration system.

Mr. Seper's reporting illuminates the gamut of immigration's contemporary conditions: In the same week that he wrote of Arizona residents protesting the lawlessness enveloping their state by passing Proposition 200, he also wrote of the appalling violence perpetrated with increasing frequency in the Washington area by the MS 13 gang. There is a big picture portrait Mr. Seper offers readers, and it's very much in the public interest.

Mr. Seper's work, and that of previous Katz Award winners, is on line at http://www.cis.org/articles/Katz/katzintro.html

The inspiration for the award was Eugene Katz, a native New Yorker who started his career, after Dartmouth and Oxford, as a reporter for The Daily Oklahoman. In 1928 he joined the family business, working as an advertising salesman for the Katz Agency, and in 1952 became the president of Katz Communications, a half-billion-dollar firm which not only dealt in radio and television advertising but also owned and managed a number of radio stations. Mr. Katz was also a member of the Center for Immigration Board until shortly after his 90th birthday in 1997. The Center benefitted greatly from his wise counsel, and the Board and staff developed an affection for him that extended well beyond business matters. He passed away in March 2000 at the age of

Europe battles young terrorists

2005-06-03T08:38:00.000-04:00

By Shaun Waterman
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
LONDON -- European counterterrorism officials say they are facing a new, more dangerous generation of Islamic extremists, who are younger and more radical than their forebears, and in some cases trained and battle-hardened in Iraq.
Judge Balthazar Garzon, an investigating magistrate who is leading Spain's effort to prosecute Islamic terrorists, said at a conference in Florence, Italy, that this was the "second generation."
Some, he said, are as young as 16 and in many cases have no history of affiliation with al Qaeda or other established terror groups.

Judge Garzon described the group that carried out the Madrid railway bombings in March last year as "a whole network based on personal contact, where a single person was a kind of catalyst."
His comments echoed remarks from officials in other European countries, who discussed concerns over terror cells formed by grown-up children of Muslim immigrants, recruited in jails or over the Internet.
For these new networks, Judge Garzon said, "al Qaeda is an ideological reference point, not a real articulated structure with a command chain."
Because these youngsters often have no history of connection to extremist groups, intelligence and law-enforcement agencies are not aware of their existence, he said.
As citizens of European nations, they can travel to the United States without a visa.
"They are unknown people," said one senior European law-enforcement official, who asked for anonymity.
Fears about what al Qaeda and its affiliates might have "metastasized" into are included in a high-level interagency review of counterterrorism policy in Washington.
"We are looking at ways to strengthen our global counterterrorism strategy," one White House official said.
As the enemy adapted, the official said, the White House initiated the review "to improve on the progress we've already made [and make] sure we are doing everything we can to protect the American people."
Recent investigations by authorities in several European countries have discovered networks of Islamic extremists recruiting and making travel arrangements for young radicals, who want to go to fight the U.S. military in Iraq.
Cofer Black, who until recently was the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, said at the conference that despite U.S. successes in killing or capturing foreign insurgents, the capabilities the survivors are acquiring are changing the odds.
"Not many have to get past you when they are trained so well in explosives," he said, referring to skills needed to make suicide-bomb belts and car bombs.
Mr. Black said protection against such a threat might entail significant changes in the U.S. way of life.
"I predict that the quality of all our lives will change to a certain extent, as measures previously considered needed in forward areas will increasingly be ... adopted in our home countries," Mr. Black said.

The Public Debate on Kuwait's School Curricula: To Teach or Not to Teach Jihad

2005-06-02T06:34:00.000-04:00

By Y. Yehoshua*

To view this Inquiry & Analysis in HTML, visit http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=IA22405

Introduction

The terror attacks that occurred in Kuwait this year have intensified the public debate in the country on the extremist nature of the school curricula and on the need for curricular reform. Kuwaiti educators and intellectuals claim that Kuwait's curricula include extremist messages encouraging terrorism, and that members of the Muslim Brotherhood movement who emigrated from Egypt to Kuwait played a central role in devising the country's Islamic education curricula.

Other educators, who occupy positions in the Kuwaiti Education Ministry, argued that blaming the Kuwaiti curricula for extremism and terrorism is not only false but is part of an overall attack on Islam.

At the center of this debate is the question whether the subject of Jihad should be part of the state Islamic education curricula, and the extent to which teaching it contributes to extremist ideology.

The Kuwaiti government has not taken a clear stand on the matter. While Kuwaiti Education Minister Dr. Rashid Al-Hamad has stated many times that the school curricula include no message of extremism, Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sabah Al-Ahmad and the Kuwaiti cabinet have called for reexamining the curricula, acknowledging that they do include extremist content that they consider contradictory to the nature of the Kuwaiti state. The following report reviews the public debate currently underway in Kuwait.

A Kuwaiti MP's Study: The Kuwaiti Curricula Include Extremist Ideas

One of the more prominent Kuwaitis to demand curricular reform was the Shiite MP and former lecturer at Kuwait University Dr. Yousef Al-Zalzala. He called for "quickly changing the curricula" after researching them and finding that they encouraged extremism and sectarianism.(1)

Al-Zalzala, who presented his findings to senior Kuwaiti Education Ministry officials, told the London Arabic-language daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat: "I wanted to point out the existence of defective curricula that need to be reexamined because they call for a distortion of inter-Muslim relations. Similarly, [I wanted] to clarify to senior Education Ministry officials that most of the [curriculum] authors have well-known inclinations towards takfir [accusing other Muslims of apostasy], and that this exists in the Islamic education curricula and in the Arabic-language and social sciences curricula."

Al-Zalzala's findings showed that "11 of the Islamic education textbooks preach in some places to takfir and extremism" and that in certain materials there is "takfir of some individuals," and that "a large segment of Muslims is presented as polytheist." He says, "Because there are jurisprudent schools of thought that differ in their interpretations, Education Ministry officials must reexamine some of the curricula."

Al-Zalzala presented several examples of the extremist messages found in the textbooks: "The Koran study material for the 11th grade includes great confusion regarding the term 'infidels.' Anyone reading it is likely to think that most of the people in the world are infidels... Similarly, Booklet No. 74 of the text Studies in Islamic Law for High School calls for a one-ruler [system] and one caliph now. Kuwait is but one of many Islamic states, and there is not one but many Islamic states- [but] the book nevertheless calls for the establishment of a single caliphate and a single Islamic state and demands that every Muslim bear arms [in order to achieve this goal]. On page 63 the book says: 'This weakness will not exist on the day when all the Muslims are in a single country under a single ruler'... Then it quotes the Koran, praising 'a group from my nation [which] is still fighting for the truth, until Judgment Day' - that is, all the Muslims are required to fight for the establishment of a single Islamic state."(2)

Kuwaiti Intellectuals: The Curricula Encourage Violence and Extremism

Other intellectuals and educators argued for change in the curricula because, they said, these curricula include extremist messages encouraging terrorism and violence. Dr. Shamlan Yousef Al-'Issa, a political science lecturer at Kuwait University, wrote: "The official government institutions- that is, the elementary, middle, and high schools, and even the vocational institutes and the universities- are spreading religious thought by means of children's books full of lessons about Jihad in Islam, and of repeated calls to expel foreigners from the lands of the Arab Gulf countries... The Jihad-waging youth in the Gulf... attended the state schools in Riyadh and Kuwait, and also the public universities... Most of the Kuwaiti Jihad fighters in Falluja are either young students who attended school in Kuwait or [former Kuwaiti] Security Ministry or Interior Ministry clerks. What does the Kuwaiti government expect when its students' textbooks are full of calls to Jihad?..."(3)

Kuwaiti women's rights activist Lulwa Al-Mulla said at a symposium organized by the National Democratic Alliance of Kuwait: "Following the liberation of [Kuwait from the Iraqi occupation] we hoped to be rid of the mistakes of the past. But unfortunately we did not learn our lesson from this stage, and we repeated the same mistakes. The greatest mistake of all was that the streams and parties opposed to the liberation of Kuwait - arguing that it was being liberated by infidels - continued to empty the curricula of their content in the sciences and humanities, [and to transform them] into religion lessons. Thus, for example, religious [content] was introduced into Arabic-language study. Likewise, physical education classes were cancelled because they were considered forbidden [by religion], and their place was taken by religion education...

"The religious parties even interfered in the foreign schools, in order to force Koran reading lessons as a basic lesson, at the expense of the other, scientific curricula... Those who say that the terrorism in Kuwait is imported are deceiving themselves, or covering up their helplessness. Had the terrorism been imported, Taliban spokesman Suleiman Abu Gheith would not have come out [of Kuwait]. And how come Khaled Al-Sheikh, the mastermind behind the September 11 attack, learned [in Kuwait]?... The terrorist danger facing Kuwait is that the education that created these criminal terrorists - who have spilled the blood of our sons, the security personnel - is not imported, and that it is plausible that it will create many [more] terrorists."(4)

Progressive Kuwaiti author and lecturer Ahmad Al-Baghdadi, who teaches political science at Kuwait University, said in an interview with the Kuwaiti weekly Al-Tali'a that the Kuwaiti curricula "focus on the Jihad verses and the war verses [of the Koran], and teach that "the infidel must be cursed, and that anyone who does not pay [the Islamic] charity levy is murtadd [apostate in Islam] to whom the punishment for ridda [capital punishment] must be applied." According to Al-Baghdadi, in certain schools "[studying] music is banned, and the [Education] Ministry does nothing. There are schools that [even] object to the music of the national anthem. All this leads to what? If not to terror operations, then to religious extremism... If only the curricula [could be] purely civil - and not raise controversial issues in ridda, Jihad, and other matters, but focus only on moral affairs - it would be possible to solve this problem."(5)

Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassa columnist Dhiya Dhiya Al-Din wrote that extremism was encouraged by religious education in Kuwait in general, and by the Faculty of Shari'a at Kuwait University in particular. In his article, "Close Down the Faculty of Shari'a," he wrote: "Close down the Faculty of Shari'a, or reform it. The criminal operations carried out by the [terrorist] gang in Kuwait are the product of the religious studies, which seem to be the reason for this minority's deviation from the path... For half a century now, a certain religious and political trend has prevailed in religious education, and at the Kuwait University's Faculty of Shari'a and in religious departments of the Kuwaiti government. [This trend] acted to sow takfir thought in the curricula, chose teachers belonging to this trend, and prevented ideological and [Islamic] religious pluralism. Thus, inevitably, the consequences are not compatible with the needs and aspirations of the tolerant Kuwaiti society. As a result, many deviant phenomena have inevitably been created, drawing [inspiration] from the takfkir ideology."(6)

Education System Officials: There is No Extremism in the Curricula, the
Accusations Are Part of the Attack on Islam

Education system officials rejected the claim that the curricula encouraged extremism. Dr. Fahd Al-Dhafiri, a lecturer in Islamic curricula and education at the Elementary Education College, said: "I reviewed all the Islamic curricula, from the first grade through high school, and I found no expression calling for violence or the rejection of the other... Similarly, I found no call to hatred of the other, or of rejecting him. Rather, I found [messages of] tolerance and encouragement of peaceful relations with non-Muslims."

Al-Dhafiri interpreted demands to change the curricula as part of an attack on Islam: "There are external pressures to change the curriculum... The demand to change them, with the claim that they encourage extremism and terrorism, is not an honest demand. This is because we, the Islamic education curriculum experts, found in them no call to terrorism or extremism. I think that this [accusation is being raised] in the framework of the blatant attack on Islam from all sides...

"The growth of extremism is not connected to the curricula. Extremism is human behavior... It would be unjust to lay the causes of extremism on the curricula or on the teachers themselves; these causes stem from man himself and from the problems he encounters."(7)

Further rejection of the accusations came from Kuwaiti Teachers Union Chairman Abdallah Al-Kandari: "Our curricula do not call for hatred of the other, or hostility or war with them. We all grew up on these curricula... So did the members of the present government, and all the country's leaders and senior officials. If the curricula lead to violence and terrorism, why haven't these leaders become terrorists?"(8)

Senior Education Ministry official Khawla Al-'Atiqi also rejected the accusations as "false accusations by a few corrupt people... who are not interested in society being religious, and who, after the events that took place in America and in other places, found fertile [ground] to attack the religion and the curricula in hopes that all the Islamic education material would be abolished."(9)

Former Deputy Education Minister and education expert Dr. Mansour Ghaloum, who was once in charge of curricula, explained that the extremism was not the fault of the curricula but of the teachers: "We must focus on the teacher. The religious curricula must be taught by teachers who believe in Islam as it should be - a tolerant, peace-seeking religion whose motto is peace. Islam requires us as Muslims to be brothers and to cooperate with one another. Likewise, Islam instructs us to act with grace towards the other religions. Therefore, I say that the curricula as such contain no call to violence. But perhaps some of the teachers have adopted violence... I demand that the Education Ministry supervise who is teaching these curricula."(10)

The Debate on Teaching Jihad

At the center of this debate was the question of studying the topic of Jihad in the schools. This discussion arose following a news item in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Ra'i Al-'Aam about the mention of Jihad in fourth-grade curricula. On p. 61 of Islamic Education - Part I, pupils were asked:

"In their war against the enemies of Islam, the Jihad warriors need:

A) Aid in lives, money, and weapons.

B) Submission of complaints to the superpowers.

C) Spreading the news about them in newspapers, radio, and magazines."

According to the textbook, the correct answer is A.

The newspaper quoted an educator who said the question was aimed at "brainwashing" the pupils, explaining that: "The problem here is that this question was directed at eight- and nine-year-old children in a country that owes its very survival to the superpowers."(11)

Former senior Education Ministry official Dr. Hamoud Al-Hattab, who participated in drawing up the Kuwaiti curricula, harshly criticized this question's inclusion in the curricula: "They are demanding that fourth-grade pupils have Jihadist sentiments, in the sense of sacrificing life and giving money and weapons to the Jihad warriors. This type of education is brainwashing... No one can ignore the fact that there is Jihad in Islam. But is this the kind of Jihad that should be taught in the fourth grade?"

Al-Hattab, whose name is on the list of those who revised this textbook, said: "I am opposed to this book, on which my name appears. I drew up an amendment to this book, and wanted to revise it entirely, but I was not given a chance - because influential [people] applied pressure... The [Education] Ministry has always imposed its opinion so that I cannot revise the textbook. That is why my name only appears in the list of those who made revisions, not in the list of authors."12

Other educators, however, were opposed to removing the topic of Jihad from the curricula, saying that those who think that the inclusion of Jihad in the curricula means encouragement of violence are misinterpreting the term "Jihad." Education Ministry official Khawla Al-'Atiqi said: "When a question about Jihad [appears in the textbook], it does not mean that boys or girls are being called to wage Jihad. Rather, it is clarified to the pupils that Jihad is one of the foundations of the religion and of the faith. It is explained to them in a simple way, not as to a high-school or university student... I do not think that any Muslim would order the removal of the word 'Jihad' from the Koran or the Hadith. Do they want us to distort our religion? Or must we let the children discover the word 'Jihad' for themselves, and act in a mistaken way because they did not learn the true meaning of Jihad from childhood?..."

"[The meaning] of the word 'Jihad' is broad, and does not mean that we should brandish swords and go to fight. If [the word] 'Jihad' is in the sense of protecting the religion, this is obvious. Every religion wages a Jihad war for the sake of its survival - why deny it?... If there is a minority that has misunderstood 'Jihad,' it is because he learned it by [reading] books of jurisprudence, the books of the Sira [namely, the history of the Prophet] [and other Islamic] sources, but not from the Islamic textbooks published by the Education Ministry... Whoever is interested in waging a Jihad war and in finding justification in the Jihad verses for war against anybody can find these verses in many books not included in the curriculum of these pupils - but commonly found in libraries and on the Internet."(13)

Former Deputy Education Minister Dr. Yaakoub Al-Sharrah said: "If we study Jihad in a different sense from its [sense] in the religion, a great problem will be created. 'Jihad' does not mean fighting against people's beliefs, or fighting anyone who disagrees with me or believes another religion. Jihad does not call to participate in defending any country subject to any [danger]... But unfortunately there are those who exploit Islam and force on it all the mistaken senses of Jihad, and therefore meanings of Jihad that do not exist in Islam are mistakenly learned."(14)

Kuwaiti Teachers Union Chairman Abdallah Al-Kandari said: "Jihad must continue to be taught, as long as it is taught in its proper sense - and not in its distorted sense, inspiring the attackers of innocent civilians here and there... Those who hold mistaken views on Jihad did not learn these in school, but got this extremist ideology elsewhere. Accordingly, the curricula must not be blamed for things that do not exist in them...

"We in the Kuwaiti Teachers Union call for [curricular] development in general... [but] are opposed to this development taking the form of the removal of verses from the religious curricula."(15)

Dr. Mansour Ghaloum said: "We must not neglect, marginalize, abolish, or ignore what appears in the Koran... Jihad is indeed in the curricula, but... the Koran limits Jihad in terms of time. Islam has commanded us to wage Jihad if our land is attacked. Then, we must wage Jihad for the homeland... Islam does not tell us to wage a Jihad war without reason... Jihad is not aimed at killing people, but is for the sake of humanity, and in order to defend the land. Is it logical for us to abolish the word 'Jihad' because some people misinterpret it?"(16)

Muslim Brotherhood Involvement in Devising the Kuwaiti Curricula

The Kuwaiti intellectuals who criticized the Islamic education curricula attributed its extremism to the presence of Muslim Brotherhood members in the Kuwaiti Education Ministry. At the National Democratic Alliance symposium, former Kuwaiti Oil Minister Dr. Abd Al-Mohsin Al-Mud'ij said: "Until 1976, the Kuwaiti curricula were moderate and professional... After the parliament was disbanded the curricula were changed because they fell into the hands of the Islamic trend. Those who got [control of] education in general are the leaders of this trend... Matters of takfir were added, encouraging divisiveness..."(17)

Dr. Hamoud Al-Hattab made a similar argument: "Kuwait's Islamic education was combined with Arabic language education, and they constituted a single [study] material. Then we wanted there to be special religious study material. The late Muhammad Abd Al-Halim Al-Sheikh led this demand. Most of those supervising Islamic education in the Ministry at that time were old people, fanatical supporters of Islamic education... Muhammad Abd Al-Halim Al-Sheikh was from the Muslim Brotherhood, who left Egypt [for Kuwait] when pressure was exerted on the movement in the days of Gamal Abd Al-Nasser.

"Al-Sheikh had the ideology of Jihad, like Sayyed Qutb, Hassan Al-Bana, and Abd Al-Qader 'Odah. For them, Jihad was not limited, and they called for internal and external Jihad... When [the Muslim Brotherhood] devised the Islamic education curricula, they wanted to paralyze the pupils' minds with it, and were against the pupils conducting any discussion on religious matters. They focused on [making the study of] Islam a process of rote learning, not of comprehension..."(18)

Others rejected this argument. Dr. Salwa Al-Jassar, former director of the Education Ministry Department of Curricula and lecturer on curricula at Kuwait University, said that Al-Hattab's claim "that the Muslim Brotherhood had taken over the curricula is false. As the director of the Department of Curricula and an expert on this subject, I say that I have never felt there to be any control on the part of the Muslim Brotherhood. On the contrary, they have cooperated with us and acted according to the national interest."(19)

Further, senior Education Ministry official Khawla Al-'Atiqi said: "I say to whoever claims that the Muslim Brotherhood is controlling the Education Ministry: 'Give us their names.' I am familiar with the curricula personnel from start to finish, and there is no Muslim Brotherhood member in it."(20)

Kuwaiti Government Denies Extremist Content but Sets up Investigative Committee

Based on the conclusions of a ministerial committee, Education Ministry officials rejected statements that the curricula contain messages encouraging extremism.

Education Minister Dr. Rashid Al-Hamad said: "The ministry conducted a comprehensive examination of the curricula after the September 11 events, so as to be certain that the curricula do not contain a call to extremism. It was proven to the ministry that the curricula have no connection with the phenomenon of extremism, and that it does not contain a call to the terrorism which [Kuwaiti] society has recently witnessed."(21)

Al-Hamad pointed out that the ministry would be introducing "new curricula such as democracy and human rights... It is incorrect to accuse the ministry of terrorism. If this were true, we would all have turned out to be terrorists."(22)

Nevertheless, other senior government officials called for a reexamination of the curricula. PM Sabah Al-Ahmad said that he had given Education Minister Al-Hamad "several comments [on subjects] existing in the curricula that should be examined, particularly those calling for divisiveness and for rejecting the other."(23)

Al-Siyassa also reported that the cabinet had submitted a 25-page document to Education Minister Al-Hamad, which included comments on and criticism of curricula that "called for extremism and for fighting other religions." According to a senior education official, this report placed the ministry in an embarrassing position, because only a short time earlier, senior ministry officials had denied that the curricula encouraged extremism and terrorism.(24)

In the wake of this report, Minister Al-Hamad decided to form an additional committee to reexamine the curricula - a decision interpreted as proof that the first committee had failed at its task.(25)

In statements about the new committee, Minister Al-Hamad said: "The ministry will take the recommendations extremely seriously. If it turns out that any paragraph of the curricula needs to be changed, the ministry will not hesitate to do so... Some think that there are controversial issues in the curricula, and we hope that these things do not exist. From my knowledge of the reports by the Department of Curricula, I am confident that our curricula are good and that they do not preach things that do not comply with the nature of Kuwaiti society."(26)

Senior Education Officials: We Will Not Permit Jihad to Be Removed from the Curricula

Senior Education Ministry officials did not consider the study of Jihad to be extremism, and rejected the possibility of removing it through curricular reform. Deputy Education Minister Dr. Hamoud Al-Sa'adoun said, in response to a question on terms such as Jihad, fighting the infidels, and others that appear in the curricula: "Yes, they are still there. They are considered fundamental principles that cannot be harmed." He said the topic of Jihad "will remain [in the curricula] for years to come, because it is a principle part of our belief. But [we are talking about] Jihad in its proper sense, not about Jihad as some people think. If you talk of Jihad as it appears in the Hadiths of the Prophet, you will find it in the curricula...

"It is difficult to talk about Islamic education study material without mentioning the concept of Jihad. Jihad is a principle part of the material. But we must present this concept in its proper form, by talking about Jihad of the soul and Jihad against Satan."(27)

Senior ministry official Khaled Al-Qattan said: "The Islamic curricula will be developed, and in all the textbooks there will be essential changes. But this does not mean that a new book will not include a discussion of the concept of Jihad and questions about it." He said the question about Jihad in the fourth-grade textbook is "routine," and "there is nothing in it."(28)

Education Experts: Essential Change to the Curricula is Impossible

These positions by high-ranking Education Ministry officials led some commentators to believe that curricular reform would be all but impossible. Dr. Hamoud Al-Hattab claimed that Education Minister Al-Hamad "will change nothing in education" because "he is incapable of making decisions."(29) Similarly, MP Yousef Al-Zalzala pointed out that although "there is a program for reform that began within the [Education] Ministry, it is moving ahead by turtle steps."(30)

Shamlan Yousef Al-'Issa made similar statements in Al-Siyassa, in which he cited his personal attempt at devising curricula: "The question is whether the education minister can change the curricula. Who will carry out the change, and how [will he do it]? And, most important, who will teach the new material that is to be developed?... In my opinion, the current situation in the Education Ministry does not make it possible to carry out essential changes, because [the Education Ministry] is controlled by the Islamic parties...

"I remember that in the early 1990's I was summoned to the Education Ministry to devise new nationalism education curricula. During the first meeting, I was surprised to discover that most of the people appointed by the ministry were [members of] political Islamic groups... A dispute sprang up between myself and them regarding the nature of the new curricula. They insisted that [Islamic] spiritual education should be part of this material, and I insisted that such material [already] existed in the religious [curricula], and that therefore there was no need for it [in the nationalism education curricula]. The new material came out defective and boring, and had no connection with education to nationalism.

"What we are trying to say is simply that change in our society will not be easy as long as these groups control education, and as long as the government does not take a serious approach to the necessary reforms..."(31)

*Y. Yehoshua is Director of Research at MEMRI.

Endnotes:
(1) Al-Ra'i Al-'Aam (Kuwait), April 20, 2005.
(2) Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), February 22, 2005.
(3) Al-Ittihad (UAE), January 16, 2005.
(4)Al-Tali'a (Kuwait), February 23, 2005.
(5) Al-Tali'a (Kuwait), March 16, 2005.
(6) Al-Siyassa (Kuwait), February 13, 2005.
(7) A-Ra'i Al-'Aam (Kuwait), March 19, 2005.
(8) Al-Siyassa (Kuwait), January 25, 2005.
(9) Al-Siyassa (Kuwait), January 26, 2005.
(10) Al-Siyassa (Kuwait), January 23, 2005.
(11) Al-Ra'i Al-'Aam (Kuwait), December 11, 2004.
(12) Al-Siyassa (Kuwait), January 22, 2005.
(13) Al-Siyassa (Kuwait), January 26, 2005.
(14) Al-Siyassa (Kuwait), January 24, 2005.
(15) Al-Siyassa (Kuwait), January 25, 2005.
(16) Al-Siyassa (Kuwait), January 23, 2005.
(17) Al-Tali'a (Kuwait), February 23, 2005.
(18) Al-Siyassa (Kuwait), January 22, 2005.
(19) Al-Siyassa (Kuwait), January 27, 2005.
(20) Al-Siyassa (Kuwait), January 26, 2005.
(21) Al-Furqan (Kuwait), March 21, 2005.
(22) Al-Ra'i Al-'Aam (Kuwait), March 20, 2005. Similar statements were made by Deputy Education Minister Dr. Hamoud Al-Sa'adoun in an interview with the Kuwaiti daily Al-Watan: "When we examined the curricula [taught] for many years, we found no call to disrespect other opinions, or to hate someone who does not [believe] in your religion. Our curricula are devoid of any type of extremism or hatred of the other." Al-Watan (Kuwait), October 24, 2004.
(23) Al-Ra'i Al-'Aam (Kuwait), February 8, 2005.
(24) Al-Siyassa (Kuwait), March 30, 2005.
(25) Al-Siyassa (Kuwait), March 30, 2005.
(26) Al-Watan (Kuwait), March 31, 2005.
(27) Al-Watan (Kuwait) October 24, 2004.
(28) Al-Siyassa (Kuwait), December 20, 2004.
(29) Al-Siyassa Kuwait), January 22, 2005.
(30) www.elaph.com, April 5, 2005.
(31) Al-Siyassa (Kuwait), October 28, 2004.

*********************
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is an independent, non-profit organization that translates and analyzes the media of the Middle East. Copies of articles and documents cited, as well as background information, are available on request.

MEMRI holds copyrights on all translations. Materials may only be used with proper attribution.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI)
P.O. Box 27837, Washington, DC 20038-7837
Phone: (202) 955-9070
Fax: (202) 955-9077

Expert: Al-Qaida Has Presence In South Florida

2005-06-02T06:11:00.000-04:00

Some Predict 'Second Wave' Of U.S. Terrorism
MIRAMAR, Fla. -- Despite the massive federal, state and local law enforcement effort to stop terrorists from entering the United States, there is no strong evidence of how well it is working.

Many experts are concerned that there are plenty of terrorists or sympathizers already in the country who have been here for years. Some are even citizens.

The Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers were the first wave and now the increasing number of arrests seems to signal a second wave of terrorism in South Florida.

Boca Raton physician Rafik Sabir is accused of conspiring to help al-Qaida. If this is true, terrorism analysts such as Walid Phares fear there is a second wave of al-Qaida terrorists operating in South Florida

"The first wave that did 9/11 had a presence here. Between 9/11 and most recently, there have been many arrests in South Florida and Florida as a whole of elements who are allegedly involved," Phares said.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, the Miami FBI has investigated and apprehended dozens of al-Qaida suspects up and down the Gold Coast.

"Al-Qaida has had a presence in South Florida and continues to have a presence," terrorism analyst Steve Emerson said.

In his bookAmerican Jihad, Emerson identifies longtime terrorist cells in Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton, where Sabir lives and was a member of the Islamic Center of Boca Raton.

Just after Sept. 11, 2001, NBC 6 discovered hate articles on its Web site attacking Jews, NBC 6's Ike Seamans reported. After our investigation, they were quickly removed.

In 1986, members of a Palestinian terrorist organization working at Broward convenience stores were arrested for selling stolen property and sending the money to the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

Could South Florida be in the midst of the second wave of international terrorism?

"The second wave will be more dangerous than the first wave because it is a piece of our society, people who've been recruited by al-Qaida and recruited themselves to al-Qaida. This model may be duplicated in many places in South Florida and around the nation," Phares said.

Experts said South Florida is so attractive to terrorists because it is international and ethnically diverse, which makes it the perfect place to blend in.

Iranian is held as people-smuggler

2005-06-02T06:08:00.000-04:00

By Michael Marizco
ARIZONA DAILY STAR

An Iranian man is accused of trying to smuggle three of his countrymen into Arizona through Nogales, Sonora, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

Zeayadale Malhamdary, 39, a Mesa tailor, was arrested Thursday after a nine-month undercover operation by the Southern Arizona Joint Terrorism Task Force. He is being held on attempted-migrant- smuggling charges, said Sandy Raynor, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office.

The FBI, which heads the terror task force, has no reason to believe this is any more than a smuggling case, said Deborah McCarley, spokeswoman for the bureau's Phoenix office.

According to the affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix:

Last September, Malhamdary told an FBI informant posing as a migrant smuggler that he had already sneaked in a group of 20 Iranians through Sonoita, Ariz. Wiretaps recorded Malhamdary asking the informant to help him obtain Mexican visas to be placed into Iranian passports so more Iranians could fly into Mexico City then slip through Arizona with a smuggler's help.

In a later phone call, he asked for a supply of Mexican visas because he already had one group turned away from a flight into Mexico after they were discovered with improper visas.

In March, Malhamdary flew back to Tehran, Iran, telling the FBI source he needed to gather the passports of three Iranians. He returned three weeks later with the passports and handed them over to the informant. The informant noticed several other passports in Malhamdary's possession that were not handed over.

At the same meeting, Malhamdary told the informant he previously had 60 more Iranians smuggled into the United States.

Two weeks ago, Malhamdary called the informant and told him that as soon as the three visas were created for the passports, he would bring $12,000 and eight more passports to be doctored, the affidavit stated.

On May 26, Malhamdary was arrested at his Mesa home. He told the agents he was trying to bring the Iranians into the United States so they could seek refugee status. Earlier, he told the FBI informant he'd successfully had his sister smuggled into the country.

Federal officials are treating the case as an attempted-smuggling investigation, McCarley said.

"Right now there's no information to suggest any of the individuals he was bringing in had any kind of terror plots," she said. "However, the border is one of our vulnerabilities. Anyone coming over the border illegally and using false identifications to do so - we don't know always what their intentions are."

In Arizona, very few of the illegal entrants the Border Patrol captures are from countries beyond the Western Hemisphere. The agency doesn't give a breakdown of people from countries not in this hemisphere because it uses that data to track what other countries people try to come in from, said Tucson Sector spokeswoman Andrea Zortman.

This year, 172 people have been captured since Oct. 1 who were not from Central or South America, she said. In all of the fiscal year prior, 484 others were apprehended in the Tucson Sector.

In a report released by Colorado Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo last year, 132 people from countries including Iran, Pakistan and Egypt were arrested at the U.S.-Mexican border.

In March, FBI Director Robert Mueller reported to Congress that people from countries with ties to al-Qaida had already crossed into the United States from Mexico, using Brazil as a conduit.

But the U.S. government has yet to prosecute anybody on terrorism charges stemming from an illegal entry through the U.S.-Mexican border.

● Contact reporter Michael Marizco at 573-4213 or at mmarizco@azstarnet.com

Captives told to claim torture

2005-06-01T06:41:00.000-04:00

Finally somebody has the sense to read the Al Qaida manual and understand the propaganda war--it's time to treat the ACLU like a terrorsist organization--

By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

An al Qaeda handbook preaches to operatives to level charges of torture once captured, a training regime that administration officials say explains some of the charges of abuse at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
The American Civil Liberties Union last week posted on its Web site 2002 FBI documents regarding accusations from suspected al Qaeda and Taliban detainees at the detention center. The organization had won a court decision that forced the administration to release scores of e-mails between agents who had interviewed captives.
U.S. Southern Command, which oversees the prison, is investigating interrogation techniques at "GTMO," as the naval base in Cuba is called, as well as the FBI-conveyed, unsubstantiated complaints. The U.S. Justice Department inspector general has begun a separate probe.
One investigator, Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood, said last week that the most explosive charge so far -- that guards flushed the Koran Muslim holy book down a toilet -- is not true. The Pentagon tabbed Gen. Hood to conduct a probe into how Islam is treated at the prison in the aftermath of a since-retracted report by Newsweek on the Koran claim.
U.S. officials think the Koran story -- told by a detainee who did not see the purported event -- might be part of an al Qaeda campaign to spread disinformation.
"There have been allegations made by detainees," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters. "We know that members of al Qaeda are trained to mislead and to provide false reports. We know that's one of their tactics that they use. And so I think you have to keep that in mind."
In a raid on an al Qaeda cell in Manchester, British authorities seized al Qaeda's most extensive manual for how to wage war.
A directive lists one mission as "spreading rumors and writing statements that instigate people against the enemy."
If captured, the manual states, "At the beginning of the trial ... the brothers must insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them by state security before the judge. Complain of mistreatment while in prison."
The handbook instructs commanders to make sure operatives, or "brothers," understand what to say if captured.
"Prior to executing an operation, the commander should instruct his soldiers on what to say if they are captured," the document says. "He should explain that more than once in order to ensure that they have assimilated it. They should, in turn, explain it back to the commander."
An example might have occurred in a Northern Virginia courtroom in February.
Ahmed Omar Abul Ali, accused of planning to assassinate President Bush, made an appearance in U.S. District Court and promptly told the judge that he had been tortured in Saudi Arabia, including a claim that his back had been whipped. He is accused of meeting there with a senior al Qaeda leader.
Days later, a U.S. attorney filed a court document saying physicians had examined Ali and "found no evidence of any physical mistreatment on the defendant's back or any other part of his body."
Larry Di Rita, spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said two Guantanamo commanders told him that al Qaeda detainees are experts in circulating false charges among the more than 500 fighters captured in Afghanistan.
"There are elements within the detainee population that were very effective at getting other detainees agitated about the Koran by making allegations," Mr. Di Rita said. "They particularly focused on the practice of their faith and the Koran being kept from them. So people should not be surprised when detainees come out and make these kinds of allegations. It causes the reactions we've seen."
He added, "None of this is meant to excuse the situation we found when individuals were unfortunately abused at Abu Ghraib. That was wrong."
There already has been one Pentagon review of accusations of abuse at Guantanamo. Vice Adm. Albert T. Church III, the Navy inspector general, released a report in March that found three substantiated closed cases of "minor" abuse in 24,000 interrogations -- one assault and two female guards' making sexually suggestive gestures to detainees.
"It bears emphasis that the vast majority of detainees held by the U.S. in the global war on terror have been treated humanely and that the overwhelming majority of U.S. personnel have served honorably," Adm. Church wrote.

Jihad through History

2005-06-01T06:39:00.000-04:00

by Daniel Pipes

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2664
http://www.nysun.com/article/14621

In his just-released, absorbing, and excellent book, Understanding Jihad (University of California Press), David Cook of Rice University dismisses the low-grade debate that has raged since 9/11 over the nature of jihad – whether it is a form of offensive warfare or (more pleasantly) a type of moral self-improvement.

Mr. Cook dismisses as "bathetic and laughable" John Esposito's contention that jihad refers to "the effort to lead a good life." Throughout history and at present, Mr. Cook definitively establishes, the term primarily means "warfare with spiritual significance."

His achievement lies in tracing the evolution of jihad from Muhammad to Osama, following how the concept has changed through fourteen centuries. This summary does not do justice to Cook's extensive research, prolific examples, and thoughtful analysis, but even a thumbnail sketch suggests jihad's evolution.

The Koran invites Muslims to give their lives in exchange for assurances of paradise.

The Hadith (accounts of Muhammad's actions and personal statements) elaborate on the Koran, providing specific injunctions about treaties, pay, booty, prisoners, tactics, and much else. Muslim jurisprudents then wove these precepts into a body of law.

During his years in power, the prophet engaged in an average of nine military campaigns a year, or one every five to six weeks; thus did jihad help define Islam from its very dawn. Conquering and humiliating non-Muslims was a main feature of the prophet's jihad.

During the first several centuries of Islam, "the interpretation of jihad was unabashedly aggressive and expansive." After the conquests subsided, non-Muslims hardly threatened and Sufi notions of jihad as self-improvement developed in complement to the martial meaning.

The Crusades, the centuries-long European effort to control the Holy Land, gave jihad a new urgency and prompted what Cook calls the "classical" theory of jihad. Finding themselves on the defensive led to a hardening of Muslim attitudes.

The Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century subjugated much of the Muslim world, a catastrophe only partially mitigated by the Mongols' nominal conversion to Islam. Some thinkers, Ibn Taymiya (d. 1328) in particular, came to distinguish between true and false Muslims; and to give jihad new prominence by judging the validity of a person's faith according to his willingness to wage jihad.

Nineteenth century "purification jihads" took place in several regions against fellow Muslims. The most radical and consequential of these was the Wahhabis' jihad in Arabia. Drawing on Ibn Taymiya, they condemned most non-Wahhabi Muslims as infidels (kafirs) and waged jihad against them.

European imperialism inspired jihadi resistance efforts, notably in India, the Caucasus, Somalia, Sudan, Algeria, and Morocco, but all in the end failed. This disaster meant new thinking was needed.

Islamist new thinking began in Egypt and India in the 1920s but jihad acquired its contemporary quality of radical offensive warfare only with the Egyptian thinker Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966). Qutb developed Ibn Taymiya's distinction between true and false Muslims to deem non-Islamists to be non-Muslims and then declare jihad on them. The group that assassinated Anwar El-Sadat in 1981 then added the idea of jihad as the path to world domination.

The anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan led to the final step (so far) in this evolution. In Afghanistan, for the first time, jihadis assembled from around the world to fight on behalf of Islam. A Palestinian, Abdullah Azzam, became the theorist of global jihad in the 1980s, giving it an unheard-of central role, judging each Muslim exclusively by his contribution to jihad, and making jihad the salvation of Muslims and Islam. Out of this quickly came suicide terrorism and bin Laden.

Mr. Cook's erudite and timely study has many implications, including these:

The current understanding of jihad is more extreme than at any prior time in Islamic history.
This extremism suggests that the Muslim world is going through a phase, one that must be endured and overcome, comparable to analogously horrid periods in Germany, Russia, and China.
Jihad having evolved steadily until now, doubtless will continue to do so in the future.
The excessive form of jihad currently practiced by Al-Qaeda and others could, Mr. Cook semi-predicts, lead to its "decisive rejection" by a majority of Muslims. Jihad then could turn into a non-violent concept.
The great challenge for moderate Muslims (and their non-Muslim allies) is to make that rejection come about, and with due haste.

Europe has become a hiding place for terrorists

2005-05-31T05:46:00.000-04:00

Mark Houser/Tribune-Review
By Mark Houser
TRIBUNE-REVIEW

Editors note: To find out what governments and courts are doing to stop the growing threat of Islamic terrorist groups in Europe, reporter Mark Houser visited Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Spain in March and April on a journalism fellowship from the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Today's stories are the first in a series of reports on what he discovered.
Europe, the cradle of Western Civilization, also is a hiding place for enemies plotting its ruin.

The most infamous, Mohammed Atta, e-mailed U.S. flight schools and devised the airliner hijackings that would kill nearly 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11, 2001, while living in an apartment in Hamburg, Germany. A Spanish court is now deciding if an al-Qaida cell in Madrid helped Atta's group with money and a safe house.

To a small but growing number of angry young men in Europe, Atta was a martyr in a holy war.

Some of them hope to be next.

Across the continent, police are racing to round up networks of militant Islamic terrorists before they can strike. Italy arrested nine North African men on Wednesday who were allegedly planning attacks. Those arrests were the latest in a crackdown that has put hundreds of suspects in Europe behind bars awaiting trial. Courts with a tradition of leniency increasingly have to weigh the rights of the accused against national security.

The train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people in March 2004 showed that radical Islamic fundamentalists -- jihadists -- also consider Europe their enemy.

America remains a prime target. In the apartment of one Madrid suspect still at large, Spanish police found detailed diagrams of Grand Central Station.

Another suspect had a map of Pittsburgh in his apartment. Investigators don't know why.

Europe has an estimated 23 million Muslims -- about 10 times as many as America -- mostly from the Middle East and North Africa. Some are recent immigrants; others were invited by the host governments in the 1960s to provide cheap labor and stayed.

Most are trying to make a life there, but a few yearn for a glorious death.

Al-Qaida wants to recruit jihadists with European passports to infiltrate America, said terrorism analyst Robert Leiken of the Nixon Center in Washington, D.C.

"They're familiar with Western societies. Many speak English. So they're a much bigger danger than a Middle Easterner trying to cross the Mexican border," Leiken said.

Leiken studied 373 suspected Muslim terrorists caught in North America or Western Europe from 1993 to 2004 and found more than a quarter had European citizenship.

A European passport holder can come to the United States without first getting a visa from an American consulate, bypassing a potentially crucial screening tool, he said.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff today begins his first official trip to Europe, where he will discuss sharing airline passenger data and strengthening law enforcement contacts.

Europe and the United States have to cooperate to counter the jihadist danger, said Gijs de Vries, counterterrorism coordinator for the European Union.

"We cannot fight terrorism unless we work together. That's the bottom line," de Vries said.

Once the fight reaches a courtroom, however, it is in the hands of only one nation's judges. Several high-profile terrorism trials in Europe are testing how well the justice system can handle the threat of violent conspiracies.

In the Spanish trial, which opened in April and is expected to last well into the summer, two dozen men are accused of involvement with an al-Qaida cell in Madrid. Three central figures are charged with helping the 9/11 plotters.

A British man pleaded guilty last month to planning a shoe bomb plot similar to Richard Reid's and got a 13-year sentence. More terrorism trials are under way in Italy, Germany and elsewhere.

Some cases have ended in acquittals that have embarrassed authorities and sparked public anger.

Dutch judges last month cleared Samir Azzouz of terrorism charges, even after he was found in possession of chemicals useful for making bombs, a silencer and gun cartridges, night vision goggles and a bulletproof vest, jihadist literature and videos, and maps of the Dutch parliament and other potential targets along with notes on their security.

"It's ridiculous," said Dutch railroad conductor Wytze Vos, 45, of the Azzouz trial. "He must go to prison for life. When you're planning such crimes, you don't deserve to be out on the streets. But that's Holland -- too weak."

A German court in Hamburg cleared one alleged co-conspirator in the 9/11 attacks, while another man is being retried after his conviction was overturned. Eight of nine men charged in a plot to poison Londoners with ricin were acquitted or released last month.

Earlier this year Italian government ministers reacted furiously when a judge in Milan ruled that recruiting jihadists for Iraq is not terrorism but supporting a foreign guerrilla action, which is not a crime. Italy has 3,000 troops in Iraq.

"The struggle against terrorism is not to get a lot of terrorists convicted. It's to prevent bombings," said Bart Nieuwenhuizen, the Dutch prosecutor overseeing terrorism trials in his country.

After the bombings in Madrid, the European Union began pushing for better counterterrorism cooperation among its members' intelligence agencies, police and prosecutors. One major change was a new European arrest warrant intended to speed up extraditions.

The warrant is designed to avoid long delays, such as the one that has kept a suspect in the fatal 1995 Paris metro bombings in British custody for almost a decade despite persistent French efforts to extradite him.

In one of the first uses of the new warrant, last June Spanish authorities asked Britain to hand over a Moroccan they say made cryptic phone calls about 9/11 to an accused terror planner on trial in Madrid. The man, Farid Hilali, is still in London appealing the extradition.

De Vries said alleged terrorists have a right to due process.

"It is critical that in the fight to preserve the rule of law, we continue to use the instruments that are compatible with the rule of law," he said.

"Europe and the United States have never worked more closely in law enforcement than we have since September 11, 2001," U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said during a visit to Spain in March.

But the relationship still is undercut with tension.

Jorge Bento Silva, a counterterrorism administrator in the European Council's Directorate for Justice, Freedom and Security, criticized Washington for announcing last spring -- with almost no warning -- that all European visitors must have their faces and fingerprints electronically scanned at U.S. airports. Europe has no such requirement for visiting Americans.

Now the European Parliament is trying to scuttle a deal for Europe to share airline passenger data with U.S. border security.

"There is still the notion in Washington that ... 'We are fighting terrorism and you are either with us or you are against us. And if you are a European sissy and you don't want to cooperate in the war on terror, then screw you,'" Bento Silva said.

Besides America, de Vries stressed that Europe needs the help of moderate Muslims to isolate the "small, extremist murderous fringe."

"We are not engaged in a war of civilizations between Muslims and non-Muslims. That is what bin Laden is trying to make us believe," de Vries said.

As he spoke, the amplified voice of a man chanting in Arabic rose from the streets of downtown Brussels and floated through de Vries's open window.

Mark Houser can be reached at mhouser@tribweb.com or (412) 320-7995.

Critics want probe of Alexandria Islamic school

2005-05-31T05:44:00.000-04:00

By Matthew Barakat
ASSOCIATED PRESS

The Islamic Saudi Academy in Alexandria is an outpost of militant Islam, say critics who point out that the school's 1999 valedictorian is charged with joining al Qaeda and plotting to assassinate President Bush.
Two other persons connected to the academy also have been linked to terrorism-related cases, and a U.S. senator has asked the Justice Department to investigate the school.
But the academy's teachers, students and administrators say suspicion of the school ? serving nearly 1,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade at two campuses just beyond the Capital Beltway ? is based on misperceptions.
Female students recently celebrated their induction into the National Honor Society. Most but not all of them wore a hijab, the head scarf that some Muslims believe is required for females.
Essays and artwork share space on the walls with pictures of the Saudi royal family. One essay was about the TV show "Fear Factor."
The school was founded in 1984, primarily to serve children of the Saudi diplomatic corps. Today, the student body is more diverse, with nearly three dozen countries represented, but much of the funding still comes from the Saudi government.
In recent years, the academy has been at the center of debate over the religious curriculum in Saudi schools and whether it fosters radicalism. Those questions resurfaced when the former valedictorian, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, was charged in February. He pleaded not guilty and argued that Saudi authorities extracted a false confession from him through torture.
School officials are frustrated about some perceptions of the school, saying two-thirds of the teachers are American and non-Muslim. They also say promoting a specific strain of Islam would be impossible because students come from across the Muslim world.
School officials also say the religious curriculum shows no favoritism, though critics say the Saudi curriculum is biased against Shi'ites.
Abdalla I. Al-Shabnan, the school's director general, acknowledged some of the religious curriculum that comes from Saudi Arabia needs to be modified. "If there is anything ... that we feel is offensive, we ask the teachers not to teach that kind of subject here," he said.
Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, has asked the Justice Department to investigate the school, saying that Abu Ali is not the only former academy student to engage in questionable activities.
A federal indictment in Chicago last year named a former treasurer of the school, Ismael Selim Elbarasse, as a high-ranking official within the militant group Hamas, though Mr. Elbarasse is not charged with a crime. Mohamed Osman Idris, an academy graduate, pleaded guilty in 2002 to lying on a passport application, following an investigation into whether he was supporting Hamas. The Justice Department told Mr. Schumer it could not comment on whether the academy itself was under investigation.
Abdullah Hijazi, a senior from Mitchellville, Md., said he and other students have not been exposed to extremism, adding: "We never really reach that depth in Islamic studies. Shi'ites and Sunnis, they differ about little things."

2 Accused of Conspiring to Aid Terrorists

2005-05-30T13:42:00.000-04:00

LARRY NEUMEISTER
Associated Press Writer

FBI agents in Florida and New York arrested two men who prosecutors said were secretly recorded during a two-year sting operation pledging their support and loyalty to al-Qaida.

Authorities said Sunday that Rafiq Abdus Sabir, 50, a Boca Raton physician, and Tarik Shah, 42, a self-described martial arts expert in New York, conspired to treat and train terrorists. Both are American citizens.

Both men were scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday in federal court, Shah in New York and Sabir in Florida, according to a news release from U.S. Attorney David Kelley in Manhattan.

It was not immediately clear who would represent them in court. If convicted, each man faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

The one-count complaint claims the men allegedly took an oath pledging their allegiance to al-Qaida. The government said the men engaged in multiple recorded conversations with a confidential source and an FBI agent posing as an al-Qaida operative.

During the conversations, Shah also described how he and Sabir in 1998 tried to get to training camps in Afghanistan and said they were a "package" deal, Kelley said in the release.

Police Department Commissioner Raymond Kelly said, "It is particularly gratifying that someone using New York City as a base for terrorist support is now in custody."

As recently as May 20, during a meeting at a New York City apartment, Sabir indicated he would travel shortly to Saudi Arabia to treat the wounds of jihadists at a Saudi military base, prosecutors said. Travel records showed he was scheduled to leave Thursday.

During recorded conversations, Shah also repeatedly indicated his desire to train Muslim "brothers" in the martial arts and hand-to-hand combat, the release said.

Shah took steps to find secret locations for jihad weapons training, at one point inspecting a Long Island warehouse, and described previous efforts to recruit others, prosecutors said.

Sabir was being held at the Palm Beach County Jail; it was not immediately known where Shah was being held. There was no phone listing for Sabir in Boca Raton, Fla. A phone number listed for Shah in Poughkeepsie, N.Y, rang unanswered Sunday evening.

Shah's mother, Marlene Jenkins, called the charges against her son "ridiculous."

"He's no terrorist," Jenkins, of Albany, N.Y., told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in Monday's editions.

Sabir is a licensed medical doctor in Florida, New York and Pennsylvania, according to the Florida Department of Health Web site. He received his medical degree from Columbia University in 1981 and his bachelor's degree from City of New York College.

Daniel McBride, spokesman for the Islamic Center of Boca Raton, said Sabir lived in a Boca Raton gated community with Arleen Morgan, a registered nurse, and their two young sons.

"While we were married he was a lovely father and husband, and nothing if not a hardworking man," Sabir's former wife, Ingrid Doyle, of New York City, told the newspaper. "I'm still reeling from this, and my daughter has been crying all day."

___

Associated Press Writer Lisa Orkin Emmanuel contributed to this report from Miami.

From FAIR: Fight the Amnesty/Guestworker Juggernaut

2005-05-30T08:46:00.000-04:00

Urge your Elected Officials to Oppose H.R. 2330/S.1033

It is now time to begin mobilizing to defeat a nightmarish amnesty/guestworker bill designed to legalize virtually all 12 million plus resident illegal aliens and create a new open-ended "guestworker" program that lets "guests" stay permanently.
This bill, backed by cheap labor interests and the open-borders lobby, seeks to let big business dictate immigration policy, while hanging a "for sale" sign on visas, green cards, and U.S. citizenship. It has been introduced in both bodies of Congress and has significant support in the Senate.

If enacted, this would drive down American wages and working conditions, place an enormous strain on our health care and educational systems, and make immigration levels completely unmanageable. Cheap labor interests would win a free flow of foreign indentured servants and American taxpayers would be forced to foot the bill.

ACTION NEEDED
FAX your Legislators. Click here then type your zip code in the take action box to send free, pre-written, cosponsor-based editable faxes and emails opposing H.R. 2330/S.1033.

CALL your Legislators. Reiterate your opposition and ask them to comment on their position regarding the bill. Call the Capitol Switchboard (Senate: 202-224-3121, House: 202-225-3121) or get direct numbers from the elected officials section of our web site. See below for some suggested arguments against the bill.
***Tips on Being Effective - Interested in learning more about how to be effective when contacting Congress? Check out the Capitol Hill Basic section of our legislative action center for advice on making phone calls, sending letters, and information on the legislative process.

BILL DETAILS
This legislation is deceivingly titled the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act. The Senate version, S. 1033, was introduced on May 12 by Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Edward Kennedy (D-MA). Reps. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), and Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) introduced the House companion, H.R. 2330.
It would vastly liberalize our immigration system by creating two new guestworker visa categories: one for currently resident illegal aliens, another for future legal participants. After a period of indentured servitude, these so-called "guestworkers" could buy green cards and inevitably U.S. citizenship.

H-5A Visas for New "Guestworkers:"

A new H-5A visa program would be established to provide 3 year work visas to all foreign nationals wishing to work in the U.S. for a minimal fee of $500, provided they find initial employment in the U.S. in occupations other than those considered agricultural or highly skilled. These visas could be renewed for an additional three years, during which point the applicant could apply for a green card.

H-5A visa holders would be eligible for adjustment of status to legal permanent resident immediately through employer-based petitions, or, after they have accumulated four years of work within the United States, through self-petition.

The initial annual cap on this category is set at 400,000 but is designed to automatically increase if that number is reached before the end of the fiscal year. There is no limit on how high the cap may be raised over time.
H-5B Visas for Currently Resident Illegal Aliens:

A new H-5B visa program would be established for nearly all 12 million plus currently resident illegal aliens. Illegal aliens working in the U.S. and their spouses and children could buy a three year visa for $1000, which could be renewed for an additional three years.

After six years of work under the H-5B program they could buy a green card for an additional $1,000, and eventually gain U.S. citizenship.

There is no cap on this visa category, nor is there a cap on the number of individuals that could apply for legal permanent resident status.
TALKING POINTS
Amnesty is Not the Solution:

Amnesty (in any form) is not a solution to the illegal immigration problem. It certainly didn't work when last tried in 1986. It sets a dangerous precedent, encourages more illegal immigration, and is a slap in the face to people who wait in line to come here legally.

Even talking about amnesty intensifies the problem by encouraging more illegal immigration, as demonstrated by increased border apprehensions immediately following the president's announcement of his amnesty/guestworker proposal.

Not only is this an amnesty for illegal aliens, it's an amnesty for employers who illegally hire them. It shield employers from civil or criminal penalties related to unlawfully employing illegal aliens. Nothing in the bill prevents employers from continuing to hire illegal aliens.
There are No Jobs Americans Won't Do:

There are no jobs Americans won't do, only wages and working conditions that are below livable standards.

Flooding the labor market with cheap foreign labor will further depress wages and working conditions not only in lower-skilled occupations but, under this proposal in occupations throughout our economy.

We have the most generous immigration policy in the world, taking in nearly a million legal immigrants each year. It's inconceivable to argue that there aren't enough workers here to fill labor needs.
American Taxpayers Pay the Price for Cheap Labor:

This is a win for cheap labor interests and a loss for American taxpayers forced to fund health care, education, and other public service costs incurred by illegal aliens who would qualify for this amnesty and "guestworkers" who never have to go home.
The Real Solution:

The real solution to the illegal immigration problem is to remove the job magnet by requiring employers nationwide to participate in the employment eligibility verification system and enforcing laws against employers who hire illegal aliens.
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From Jihad Watch: 2 Men, in New York and Florida, Charged in Qaeda Conspiracy

2005-05-30T08:43:00.000-04:00

I have written on numerous occasions that there is no distinction in the American Muslim community between peaceful Muslims and jihadists. While Americans prefer to imagine that the vast majority of American Muslims are civic-minded patriots who accept wholeheartedly the parameters of American pluralism, this proposition has actually never been proven. And evidence continues to come in that jihadists view the aggregate of peaceful Muslims not as a challenge, but as a recruiting ground -- and make copious use of the Qur'an and Sunnah in that recruitment. Stateside jihad alert from the New York Times, with thanks to all who sent this in:

A martial arts expert from the Bronx and a doctor from Florida have been arrested on charges that they conspired to train and provide medical assistance to Al Qaeda terrorists, federal and local authorities said yesterday.
The men, United States citizens who were identified by the authorities as Tarik ibn Osman Shah of the Bronx and Rafiq Sabir of Boca Raton, were captured in early morning raids in the Bronx and in Boca Raton on Friday, according to Paul J. Browne, a New York City police spokesman.

The arrests came as part of a two-year sting operation that ended with each man facing a single conspiracy charge. While the authorities said that they had no evidence that either man had actually provided support to terrorists, they said they had taped each man swearing his allegiance to Osama bin Laden, Mr. Browne said.

According to a statement released by David N. Kelley, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, and John Klochan, the acting assistant director in charge of the New York office of the F.B.I., the complaint contends that between 2003 and sometime this month, the men met with a law enforcement informant and an F.B.I. agent who was posing as a Qaeda operative and recruiter.

The complaint said that in those meetings, which were recorded, Mr. Shah agreed to provide training in martial arts and hand-to-hand combat to Qaeda members and associates, while Dr. Sabir agreed to provide medical assistance to wounded jihadists in Saudi Arabia, the statement said.

"During these conversations, Mr. Shah repeatedly indicated his desire to train Muslim 'brothers' in the martial arts in order to wage jihad and also regularly discussed his desire to find people who were willing to press the fight," it said....

Cue the usual protestations of innocence and discrimination:

A report yesterday in The Sun-Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale quoted a friend of Dr. Sabir's saying that the charges were absurd. "He is a quality guy and a quality physician," the friend, Dr. Daniel McBride, a spokesman for the Islamic Center of Boca Raton, told the newspaper. "He's about helping others."
Mr. Browne said that Dr. Sabir attended City College of New York and received his medical degree from Columbia medical school. Last night, Lisa Kozan, a neighbor who lives across the way from Dr. Sabir in Villa San Remo, a gated community in Boca Raton, said she believed that Dr. Sabir had rented there for about four years.

She said that the doctor stood out from other neighbors by his Muslim dress and that the doctor and his family lived quietly in the community. "Other than that, we didn't talk to him, and they didn't talk to us," she said.

Mr. Browne said that Mr. Shah, who public records show lived in Beacon, N.Y., and Poughkeepsie before moving to the Bronx, was the son of an aide to Malcolm X.

Militant Islamism lures teenage recruits in Europe

2005-05-27T05:04:00.000-04:00

By Mark Trevelyan, Security Correspondent
BERLIN (Reuters) - Some European Muslims are being drawn towards militant Islamism while still in their teens, in a trend which is increasingly worrying security services.

Police and intelligence officials say they are concerned about evidence that disaffected young Muslims, born and bred in Europe as children of immigrant families, are easy targets for radicalisation.

Examples include the radical Dutch "Hofstad Group" linked to the accused killer of film maker Theo van Gogh, and a group of young Muslims recruited in France to fight in Iraq.

"Radical Muslims are becoming younger," said a Dutch security source who said some youths were being drawn into militant circles as early as the age of 14.

"We think these young people are not feeling at home here in this country. They are outsiders in our society, in our culture, and they also do not feel at home with their parents, who are guest workers from the 1960s and 1970s," he told Reuters.

"Radical Islam gives them a perspective they can be important, they can have a role, and gives them a feeling they can have a stronger identity."

'BRAINWASHED AS CANNON FODDER'

In France, intelligence chief Pierre de Bousquet told Le Monde newspaper in an interview this week that alongside experienced militants, there was a new danger from "boys with no combat experience" who were nevertheless radicalised and ready to take part in jihad, or holy war.

He said five young men from a single Paris district had already died in Iraq, one in a suicide attack. A handful were jailed in Iraq or Syria and around 10 others were missing.

"The French jihadist is more unpolished, younger, but more radicalised and committed than a few years ago. The ease with which these young people can be brainwashed to go and serve as cannon fodder is worrying," de Bousquet said.

Officials and analysts cite schools, mosques, prisons, youth associations and above all Internet sites and chatrooms as forums where militant ideas can be spread.

Max-Peter Ratzel, head of the European Union's police agency Europol, noted the trend in an interview with Reuters this month and said it reflected the "vulnerability of young people".

In testimony last month to a U.S. Congressional subcommittee, European security analyst Claude Moniquet said the latest generation of militants was radicalising much faster than its predecessors.

NEW GENERATION

"Where (previously) security services faced terrorist structures mostly made up of experienced jihadists, often with Afghan experience in common, between 25 and 40 years old, more and more we now find very young people, who by definition have no 'past' in Islamist circles," he said.

"What we are now awaiting is the emergence of a new generation of terrorists: kids who were 12 to 15 years old on Sept. 11, 2001, and who have taken a year or two to make the same ideological progress that leads to violence, and which took their elders 10 years or more."

The need to better understand the climate in which disenchanted youngsters turn towards violence -- what a senior British official called "the sea in which the terrorists swim" -- is a frequent refrain among security officials.

The murder of Dutch film maker Van Gogh, shot and stabbed as he cycled to work last November, provided a case study of how a young home-grown group can emerge with deadly effect.

Dutch-Moroccan Mohammed Bouyeri, 26, was charged with the killing and 12 other men, aged 18 to 27, have been arrested as suspected members of the militant Islamist "Hofstad Group".

Another youth with alleged links to the group, 18-year-old Samir Azzouz, was acquitted in April of planning attacks on Schiphol airport, a nuclear reactor and government buildings. But the judge said Azzouz, found with machinegun cartridges, mock explosive devices and electrical circuitry, had "an above-average interest in religious extremist violence".

With the arrests of the Hofstad group, Dutch authorities believe they have removed an important threat but remain concerned about the wider trend of radicalising Muslim youth.

"They seem integrated in our society but still they have the feeling they don't really belong here ... At this age you want to revolt, you want to be radical sometimes," the Dutch security source said. "They can become dangerous. We see some developments and we do not exactly know where it will end."

Former counterterrorism czar cites creeping complacency

2005-05-27T05:01:00.000-04:00

By Chris Strohm
cstrohm@govexec.com

Former U.S. counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke said Thursday he fears the government and public are falling into a false sense of complacency about security needs while Iraq is becoming a new breeding ground for terrorism against the United States. He also believes another wave of attacks will eventually hit the country.

"It's been 44 months since 9/11 and there is, in some locations around the country and in popular opinion, a growing sense of complacency," Clarke said during a keynote speech at the 2005 Government Security Conference in Washington. "We can't get back to normal. We can never get back to normal."

Clarke cited several examples of how he believes the government and public are letting down their guard, including resuming general aviation at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, allowing airports to replace federal passenger and baggage screeners with private workers, and failing to adopt regulations for chemical plants that have lethal gases.

Clarke said the main reasons for complacency are that there has not been another attack in the United States and the government consistently talks about how many senior al Qaeda leaders have been captured or killed.

"Someday they will come back; there will be a second wave," he said. "And if we are complacent -- if we think because we've [crossed] out all the names on our chart, if we think that we don't have to reduce our vulnerabilities and improve our security here at home -- we will suffer another major attack."

He cited four main indicators to gauge whether the terrorist threat still exists: the number of attacks in the world; the number of terrorists; the amount of money they have; and the amount of support they receive in Islamic countries. He said all of these indicators are on the rise, proving that the terrorist threat is growing.

"If you believe that we're destroying al Qaeda and its related organizations, I think you're wrong," he said. "If you believe that even if we succeeded in doing that we'd be OK because there are no other threats in the world, I think you're wrong."

He also said he is worried that a second generation of terrorists is growing up in Iraq while the U.S. government focuses on capturing or killing known insurgents like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who is the most wanted man in Iraq.

"What I fear happening today is that while we are all happily crossing out al-Zarqawi and others on our organizational chart of al Qaeda, we have alienated the Islamic world, our popularity is at an all-time low [and] we have destroyed whole cities in Iraq like Fallujah."

He said if 1 percent of people in grow to hate America, then that would be enough "to pose a major threat."

"Whether you think we should have gone into Iraq or not, I think you need to accept the reality that we may be converting parts of Iraq into a new breeding ground for terrorism. There are over 40,000 insurgents now in Iraq," he said.

Clarke also said some actions by federal agencies and Congress are encouraging complacency.

The Homeland Security Department announced this week that it plans to reopen Reagan National Airport to certain precleared general aviation aircraft. The airport was closed to general aviation after the 9/11 attacks, mainly at Clarke's request, he said.

"I don't think it should reopen for general aviation," Clarke told reporters after his speech. "I think that if the Defense Department or the Secret Service sees a general aviation aircraft now going toward the White House ... they know it's a problem because no general aviation aircraft should be there."

"If, in the future, general aviation aircraft are allowed in that zone ... then you won't be sure when you see an aircraft whether it's hostile or not," he added. "By the time you figure out whether or not it actually did go through the security procedures, it could hit the White House."

Clarke objected to the use of private screening companies, saying the creation of the Transportation Security Administration represented "the one great thing that we have done since 9/11 to increase security" and "an example of how the government can work."

TSA is accepting applications from airports to replace federal screeners with a privatized workforce. Congress required the agency to give airports the option of using private screening companies again, as long as those companies provide screening services that are at least as good as the federal workforce.

Clarke noted that the government has yet to mandate security improvements at chemical plants, and a report this week from the Government Accountability Office shows that federal efforts to secure cargo coming into U.S. ports are lacking.

"There's complacency when people see the federal government not responding to obvious threats," Clarke said.

Terrorist missile threat prompts officials to inspect Canadian airports

2005-05-26T07:06:00.000-04:00

Jim Bronskill
Canadian Press

OTTAWA (CP) - The threat of an airliner being destroyed by a shoulder-fired missile has prompted federal security officials to quietly survey the country's airports to gauge the risk.

Transport Canada teamed up with the U.S. Transportation Security Administration to conduct the "vulnerability assessments" at major Canadian air facilities. The agencies are concerned about possible terrorist use of Man-Portable Air Defence Systems, or MANPADS - small missile launchers long found in conflict zones.

"It's a potential threat, and that's enough for us to take it seriously," said Vanessa Vermette, a Transport Canada spokeswoman.

The international teams began visiting airports early last year and Canadian officials continue to carry out the studies, Vermette said. She declined to reveal what facilities, or how many, were involved.

"We can't really confirm which airports have had assessments because that would just leave it open to which airports have not."

Officials visited Halifax International Airport for briefings and inspections on the MANPADS issue last December, said Gina Connell, a spokeswoman for the city's airport authority.

Citing security reasons, she declined to provide details.

The missile devices, about two metres in length and weighing some 15 kilograms, can be bought on the black market for anywhere from a few hundred dollars for older models to upwards of a quarter-million dollars for newer ones, says a recent U.S. Congressional Research Service report.

It is believed that dozens of aircraft have been hit by the portable weapons.

The U.S. report cites six possible incidents in which large turbojet airliners came under attack. In two cases the planes were destroyed, killing a total of 171 people.

Jacques Duchesneau, president of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, underscored the concern about MANPADS in a speech last November.

"These weapons can be cheaply obtained, are easily carried and easily concealed."

Duchesneau noted that some suggest commercial aircraft, whose engines give off much less heat than military jets, are much harder for MANPADS to target, and question whether even a direct strike could take out a large plane.

"Honestly, though, I hope we never have to learn the hard way whether this is true," Duchesneau said.

"The fact that this past August two men were arrested and charged in New York State in a plot to purchase a shoulder-fired missile from an undercover agent demonstrates that we must exercise constant vigilance."

The Congressional Research Service report says most believe "no single solution exists" to the emerging problem.

It lists several options, including installation of defensive devices on planes, improving airport security and strengthening efforts to keep the missile launchers from spreading.

Transport Canada has worked with American counterparts on "a number of security initiatives," Vermette said.

"It's very much a knowledge-sharing kind of environment. And they've been doing their own research into things like anti-missile technology."

Canada is also working with other G-8 countries to develop means of countering the potential MANPADS threat.

Vermette declined to say whether any changes had been made to Canadian airports as a result of the evaluations done to date

Interpol says world should prepare for bioterrorism

2005-05-26T07:04:00.000-04:00

By Michele Kambas
NICOSIA (Reuters) - Bioterrorism is a credible threat which authorities worldwide have underestimated, the world's top law enforcement agency warned on Wednesday.

Interpol says the world is largely unprepared for the possibility of attacks with crude biological agents -- some of which can be developed in a kitchen -- that militant groups have developed a heightened interest in.

"We, as police, cannot afford to be unprepared for the eventual use of biological agents by terrorist groups," Interpol president Jackie Selebi told a regional conference in Cyprus.

The world intelligence community has long warned that the militant group al Qaeda could try to use biological weapons such as anthrax, ricin, smallpox, plague or Ebola.

Al Qaeda manuals on preparation of biological agents were discovered at the group's training camps in Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion in 2001.

"I do not want to scare everybody to say there is going to be a bio-terrorist attack. I am simply saying that, dealing with the issue of terrorism, you must deal with the issue of terrorism in its totality, including the possible use of biological agents," Selebi told journalists.

HIDDEN KILLERS

Biological agents are easy to make, carry and conceal but do not, at the moment at least, have the capacity to claim large numbers of casualties at once.

Interpol has a dedicated unit working on raising awareness of the threat, developing training programs and encouraging new legislation in jurisdictions where a prosecution for using bio-agents is possible only once the agent is actually deployed and therefore far too late.

"Failing in this area is not an option. The consequences of such failure are far to dire to contemplate," he said.

Asked if Interpol members were now prepared to counter the threat, Selebi replied: "They are being prepared."

The devastating effects of deliberate use of biological agents to inflict harm manifested itself with the anthrax scare of 2001, in which five people died in the United States after exposure to barely-visible flecks of the bacteria.

Last month, a British court jailed a man with suspected links to al Qaeda on charges of plotting bomb or poison attacks in London. Police believed the poison that would have been deployed was ricin, extracted from castor beans and fatal even in doses of less than a milligram.

In March, a U.S. presidential commission suggested al Qaeda had made advances in developing a virulent biological warfare agent they called Agent X.

The commission also said U.S. intelligence had long believed that al Qaeda had trained its members in producing toxins obtained from venomous animals and botulinum, a toxin more commonly known for its association with improperly canned food.

Nicaragua on Alert for al-Qaida Suspects

2005-05-25T07:33:00.000-04:00

By FILADELFO ALEMAN
Associated Press Writer

MANAGUA, Nicaragua -- El Salvador and Nicaragua said Tuesday they were on the alert for two al-Qaida terror suspects, but U.S. and Interpol officials downplayed the reports.

Officials in El Salvador and Nicaragua said they were on the lookout for a Yemeni man known only as Altuwiti and Ahmed Salim Swedan, a 36-year-old Kenyan on the FBI's list of most-wanted terrorists.

But they said there was no evidence that the suspected al-Qaida figures were within their borders. Salvadoran Immigration Department spokesman Ramon Hernandez said there was no evidence they were even in Central America.

U.S. Homeland Security official Marc A. Raimondi said the agency "has no hard information at this time about the whereabouts of these individuals."

Angel Miguel Barquero, in charge of Interpol in San Salvador, said no new warnings had been issued recently on the two men.

Nicaragua's Interior Ministry, which is in charge of internal security, announced earlier Tuesday that it had alerted all border posts because the two suspected terrorists were "possibly" in Central America.

Nicaraguan Deputy Interior Minister Avil Ramirez said his country received the report from El Salvador, the only Latin American nation with troops in Iraq and which in the past has received al-Qaida-type threats.

Hernandaz said El Salvador issued a similar alert based on information from "international intelligence organizations, and since Monday, all immigration officials have been alerted and have their photos and their names to avoid that they enter the country."

He declined to name which organization had supplied the information.

The spokeswoman for Guatemala's immigration department, Lorena Rosales, said her agency had checked the report and said "it's a false alarm."

Swedan was indicted on Dec. 16, 1998, for alleged involvement in the 1998 bombings of U.S. Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. The U.S. State Department has offered a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to his arrest.

There have been repeated rumors, but only a few glimmers of hard, public evidence of terrorist suspects passing through Central America.

In the only known confirmed case, U.S. and Panamanian officials said Saudi native and alleged top al-Qaida operative Adnan El Shukrijumah was in Panama for 10 days in April 2001, five months before the Sept. 11 attacks.

FAIR Legislative Round Up

2005-05-24T16:13:00.000-04:00

House Approves Department of Homeland Security Funding Bills
Last week, the House approved two measures critical to funding Department of Homeland Security (DHS) operations for fiscal year 2006.

The House overwhelmingly passed the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2006, H.R. 2360, last Tuesday by a vote of 424-1. Last Wednesday, the House approved the Department of Homeland Security Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006, H.R. 1817, by a vote of 424-4.

The authorization bill (H.R. 1817) establishes or continues programs within the Department of Homeland Security and permits funding up to a certain level for specific programs and activities. The appropriations bill (H.R. 2360) decides the actual spending.

Senate action on these measures is uncertain at this point.

Immigration-related Amendments:
Several immigration-related amendments were offered and adopted during consideration of these measures. Follow the vote links in this update to see how your representative voted and to send free pre-written vote-based messages!

Border Security Funding Increase - The appropriations bill (H.R. 2360) provides $19.4 billion to fund border security operation for 2006, which is an 11 percent increase over 2005 spending. Included in that figure is funding for 1,000 additional border patrol agents, 200 immigration enforcement agents, 150 criminal investigators, and 1,920 detention beds.

Funding Approved to Implement REAL ID Driver's License Requirements - The House approved (226-198) an amendment by Rep. David Obey (D-WI) to H.R. 2360 providing $100 million to fund grants under the REAL ID Act to assist states in conforming with minimum driver's license standards. These standards will help keep licenses out of the hands of illegal aliens and the terrorists among them.

State/Local Immigration Enforcement Encouraged - By voice vote the House approved an amendment by Homeland Security Chairman Chris Cox (R-CA) and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) to H.R. 1817 authorizing up to $40 million to be appropriated for FY 2006 to reimburse states and localities for costs associated with having state and local law enforcement trained and certified by DHS' Immigration and Customs Enforcement to enforce federal immigration laws.
The House also approved (242-185) Rep. Charlie Norwood's (R-GA) amendment to H.R. 1817 to clarify the existing authority of state and local enforcement personnel to apprehend, detain, remove, and transport illegal aliens in the routine course of duty. Norwood's amendment also requires DHS to establish a training manual on this matter and set forth simple guidelines for making that training available.

Tancredo Amendment to Discourage Illegal Alien Sanctuary Policies Gains New Support - For the third year in a row, Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) offered his amendment to withhold homeland security funding from states and localities that refuse to share immigration-related information with federal authorities. His amendment to the appropriations bill (H.R. 2360) failed by a 165-258 vote. While it was defeated, this vote represents a gain of 17 yea votes since last considered in 2004, and 63 more yea votes since first consideration in 2003.
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Unite to Fight Against Illegal Immigration Summit - Las Vegas, Memorial Day Weekend
Mark your calendars and attend the Unite to Fight Against Illegal Immigration Summit this Memorial Day weekend (May 27-28) in Las Vegas, Nevada.

This will be a huge event with dozens of speakers, brainstorming, and planning for victory! Meet and hear the best speakers and activist in the country.

FAIR's Western Field Director Rick Oltman will be there, as will representatives from other groups including 9-11 Families for Secure America, American Immigration Control Foundation, California Coalition for Immigration Reform, American Patrol, The Arizona Minutemen, The Yuma Patriots, Latino-Americans for Immigration Reform, American Resistance, Defend Colorado Now, and many others!

Visit the Wake Up America Foundation web site for details!

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New Cosponsors of Key Bills
The following members recently signed on to good immigration reform legislation. Click on the bill numbers to learn more about the legislation and to send FREE faxed messages in support of these bills to your legislators. If your legislators are listed below, please follow your faxes up with phone calls to thank them.

Thank these members for supporting good reform legislation!

H.R. 1219 - Legislation to Eliminate the Diversity Visa Lottery Program

Rep. John Sullivan (R-OK)
H.R. 1986 - Military Assistance on the Border

Rep. Richard Baker (R-LA)

Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA)

Rep. Jeb Bradley (R-NH)

H.J.RES.46 - Citizenship Reform Amendment

Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA)
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Recent Floor Statements

On May 16, Rep. Bob Filner (R-NC) commented on A Smarter Approach To The Border
On May 17, Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) commented on Border Patrol And Illegal Aliens
On May 18, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) commented on Providing For Consideration Of H.R. 1817, Department Of Homeland Security Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2006
On May 19, Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) commented on Department Of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2006
Upcoming Events

The House Homeland Security Committee will hold an oversight hearing on "Training More Border Patrol Agents: How the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Can Increase Training Capacity Most Effectively." When and Where: May 24, 2:00 p.m., 210 Cannon House Office Building.

The House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims Subcommittee will hold a hearing on "Diversity Visa Program." When and Where: May 25, 2:30 p.m., 2141 Rayburn House Office Building.

The Senate Judiciary Committee Immigration, Border Security and Citizenship Subcommittee will hold a hearing on "The Need for Comprehensive Immigration Reform: Serving Our National Economy." When and Where: May 26, 2:30 p.m., 226 Dirksen Senate Office Building.

The House Judiciary Committee Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security Subcommittee will hold an oversight hearing on the "Implementation of the USA PATRIOT Act: Sections 505 and 804," addressing national security, jurisdiction over crimes at U.S. facilities abroad, and material witness provisions of the Criminal Code. When and Where: May 26, 2:00 p.m., 2141 Rayburn House Office Building.
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* For breaking immigration news, visit the Stein Report.
* Fax your legislators for free from FAIR's Legislative Action Center.
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Qaeda Letters Are Said to Show Pre-9/11 Anthrax Plans

2005-05-24T07:17:00.000-04:00

Written by New York Times
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON, May 20 -Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan began to assemble the equipment necessary to build a rudimentary biological weapons laboratory before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, letters released by the Defense Department show.

The operatives were not immediately able to obtain a sample of the deadly anthrax strain that they wanted to reproduce in their laboratory, according to the letters.

The letters are among the documents recovered in late 2001 after the invasion of Afghanistan that United States intelligence officials have frequently cited as evidence that Al Qaeda was working to develop biological weapons.

The letters, recently made public as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request, detail a visit by an unnamed Qaeda scientist to a laboratory at an unspecified location where he was shown "a special confidential room" with thousands of samples of biological substances.

The scientist tried to buy anthrax vaccines, which would be necessary to protect any Qaeda members working with the material. He also bought a sterilizer, a respirator and an air-contamination detector, one letter said.

"The conference was found to be highly beneficial for our future work," the letter said. "I finalized all the accessories required for the smooth running of our bioreactor."

A separate handwritten letter includes a detailed list of additional equipment that would be necessary, like an incubator and a centrifuge, as well as a crude layout of a four- or five-room laboratory.

The letter specifies a training program for the staff, lasting six to eight months for senior workers and two to four months for technicians.

The letters appear to be the same documents referred to in the report of a special presidential commission on intelligence failures and unconventional weapons led by former Senator Charles S. Robb of Virginia and Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the federal appeals court.

The report, released in March, describes a biological weapons program that "was extensive, well organized and operated two years before the Sept. 11."

Two biological weapons experts who have read the letters said in interviews Friday that the letters suggested that the laboratory construction was at an early stage and that it would have most likely been at least two to three years, if not more, before the Qaeda team would have been able to produce enough anthrax to use as a weapon.

"They were moving to try to get the right stuff," said D. A. Henderson, an expert on biological weapons who is a former top scientific adviser to the Health and Human Services Department. "But not in a very sophisticated way."

The second of the two experts, Dr. Milton Leitenberg, a senior research scholar at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, said many of people who were involved in the effort had been arrested or, in one case, killed.

"It is not likely that anything is going on right now," said Dr. Leitenberg, author of "The Problem of Biological Weapons" (2004). "And in the three years they were working on this, as best as is known, they did not succeed in obtaining a pathogen or reach the stage of growing the pathogen in the laboratory."

The writer of the two letters is widely believed to be Abdur Rauf, a Pakistani microbiologist who is known to have attended a conference before 2001 sponsored by the Society for Applied Microbiology, said a biological weapons researcher who insisted on anonymity because of his work investigating Al Qaeda.

One letter was written on a notepad from the Society for Applied Microbiology, a prominent British organization of microbiologists.

All the names on the letters are blacked out on the copies that were released to Ross Getman, a lawyer from Syracuse who filed the Freedom of Information Act request.

At the same camp where the letters were found, officials recovered articles from medical journals that detailed an approach to isolating, culturing and producing bacteria, including anthrax.

The second letter says that so far no toxic sample of anthrax needed for the laboratory had been secured.

"Unfortunately," it says, "I did not find the required culture of b. anthrax, i.e. pathogenic. However, I have started correspondence with [name blacked out] for the supply of the culture."

Terror suspect claims Osama bin Laden and others will soon set up Muslim caliphate state

2005-05-24T05:59:00.000-04:00

By JAMAL HALABY Associated Press Writer

(AP) - AMMAN, Jordan-An alleged militant on trial for a terror conspiracy targeting the U.S. and Israeli embassies claimed Monday that terror masterminds Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would soon set up a Muslim caliphate state.

Abed al-Tahawi's made the statement in brief remarks to reporters before the military court convened to hear the prosecution sum up its case in his trial.

"Although they accuse them of being terrorists, the heroes Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab Zarqawi will come back to the scene soon to set up an Islamic caliphate state," he said.

Al-Tahawi, 50, and 15 other men - including one at large who being tried in absentia - are charged with conspiring to carry out terrorist attacks and possessing automatic rifles. If convicted on both counts, the defendants could face the death penalty.

Saudi-born bin Laden has long advocated the creation of a caliphate, where Islam would be the source of the law and the state ruled by a religious leader, known as the caliph - a title taken by the successors of the prophet Muhammad.

Al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, is al-Qaida's top man in Iraq. He is believed to be directing anti-U.S. attacks and kidnappings in Iraq, and his group has beheaded several hostages. He has been sentenced to death in Jordan for the 2002 killing of a U.S. aid worker in the kingdom.

At the outset of the trial in March, the 15 men in police custody refused to speak when asked to enter their pleas - a sign which the court interpreted as plea of not guilty. The defendants later argued that their guilty confessions were extracted by force by the military prosecution, and demanded chief prosecutor Lt. Col. Mahmoud Obeidat take the witness stand.

Court president Col. Fawaz Buqour rejected the demand during Monday's hearing, but did not give a reason why.

The hearing was adjourned until next Monday when the defense begins.

Obeidat's indictment claims al-Tahawi pursued the ideology of "takfiri" - a policy of killing anybody considered to be an infidel. He recruited his accomplices while preaching in mosques in Irbid, 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of the capital.

The indictment claims the group planned to target a hotel in Irbid favored by Israeli tourists, the Amman home of the director of an annual Jordanian cultural event which hosts western artists and Americans performing at the festival.

The festival usually takes place in July at the Roman ruin city of Jerash, 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of Amman.

It did not say how or when the accused planned to carry out the attacks. They were apprehended in August and September before the attacks were launched

MAN ARRESTED IN PLOT TO SELL BOMB TO TERRORISTS

2005-05-24T05:57:00.000-04:00

(HOUSTON) United States Attorney Michael Shelby announced that Ronald Allen Grecula, 68, of Bangor, Pennsylvania, was arrested on May 20, 2005, in Houston, Texas, and faces federal felony charges of attempting to provide material support and resources to a Designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, namely, Al-Qaida, in violation of Title 18 U.S.C. Section 2339B. That statute carries a possible penalty of up to fifteen (15) years in prison and a fine not to exceed $250,00.00.

Grecula has been charged for his involvement in attempting to build and sell an explosive device to an undercover officer who was posing as a member of Al-Qaida.

According to pleadings filed in this case, in April 2005, through approximately May 20, 2005, Ronald Allen Grecula, negotiated with a confidential source, and later undercover officers, to build and sell an explosive device to terrorists groups targeting the United States.

Beginning on May 11, 2005, while working under supervision of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in Houston, the confidential source recorded several telephone calls where Grecula discussed his willingness and ability to build and sell a powerful explosive device.

During several conversations, Grecula and the undercover agent discuss Grecula's technical knowledge regarding how to build an explosive device, Grecula's willingness to put on a demonstration, and the need for Grecula and the undercover agent to “be careful” as they planned the venture.

On May 20, 2005, Grecula traveled to Houston, Texas, and attended a one-hour meeting with the undercover agents during which he indicated that he was willing and able to build and sell an explosive device to a group he believed was affiliated with Al-Qaida. The device was to be used against Americans.

Grecula is scheduled for an initial appearance today at 2:00 p.m. in the courtroom of United States Magistrate Judge Calvin Botley.

Following the proceedings, Mr. Shelby will be available to respond to questions from the media outside the courthouse.

This case is the result of a Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation conducted by the Houston office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Abe Martinez and Jeff Vaden.

A criminal complaint is an accusation of criminal conduct, and is not evidence. A defendant is presumed innocent unless and until convicted through due process of law.

U.S. Border Security at a Crossroads

2005-05-23T06:33:00.000-04:00

Technology Problems Limit Effectiveness of US-VISIT Program to Screen Foreigners

By Robert O'Harrow Jr. and Scott Higham
Washington Post Staff Writers

The race to tighten the nation's borders began just after the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Authorities learned that hijackers had lived illegally in the country, renting apartments, taking flying lessons and moving around freely.

Congress demanded changes in border controls and tight deadlines for building a computer network that would screen foreign visitors as they seek to enter or leave the country by scanning their fingerprints and matching them against databases of suspected terrorists.

Pressing to meet that goal, the Homeland Security Department last year awarded one of the most ambitious technology contracts in the war on terror -- a 10-year deal estimated at up to $10 billion -- to the global consulting firm Accenture. In return, the company and its subcontractors promised to create a "virtual border" that would electronically screen millions of foreign travelers.

Documents and interviews with people familiar with the program, called US-VISIT, show that government officials are betting on speculative technology while neglecting basic procedures to ensure that taxpayers get full value from government contractors.

"There's no question we could end up spending billions of dollars and end up with nothing," said Steven A. Camarota, the director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonprofit group that has been monitoring efforts to improve border controls. "It creates an illusion of security that doesn't exist."

Although the government has already spent or budgeted about $1 billion for the US-VISIT program, the new system is being built on top of aging computer databases and software that government scientists concluded two years ago are out of date, poorly coordinated and ineffective. Among them is a fingerprint system that does not use the government's state-of-the-art biometric standard. As a consequence, millions of dollars are budgeted this year for upgrades, according to budget documents.

The technology problems diminish the current effectiveness of US-VISIT, according to audits and government documents. Today, only a small fraction of foreign visitors -- fewer than 1 percent -- is fully screened by the existing system.

US-VISIT director James L. Williams defended the program's strategy, saying officials plan to phase in new technology over the next decade while taking steps in the next several years to maintain security with current technology. He said people should understand that US-VISIT is in its infancy.

"We're not even close to having a full biometric entry-exit system," he said. "It's an archaic system of technology."

Williams said he is relying heavily on Accenture because the government cannot undertake the complex technological assignment without the expertise of private industry. He said he is proud that the losing bidders have not challenged the award to Accenture and its subcontractors, known as the Smart Border Alliance.

"Accenture was clearly the best value," Williams said.

Accenture was in a strong position even before the bidding began, according to documents and interviews. Its contracting team played a role in shaping the competition. "Limit the number of bidders, and streamline the procurement approach," Accenture officials recommended to Williams in August 2003, three months before the government began requesting bids, according to documents and interviews.

The US-VISIT contract with Accenture and its subcontractors exemplifies a fundamental shift in the arcane world of government contracting, said Steven L. Schooner, a procurement specialist at George Washington University. Increasingly, government is entering into "partnerships" with private companies.

Such partnerships can blur the lines between the government and corporations, Schooner and other contract specialists said.

In this case, the contractor and the government are working together without a clear idea of how the final virtual-border system will work or when it will be completed over the next decade. Such an arrangement is known as an "indefinite delivery-indefinite quantity contract." The government can cancel the project at any point. The contractor is paid for specific tasks along the way, even if the overall system ultimately does not work.

For all those reasons, no one is certain of the final cost.

"Who knows what it will end up being, because the system hasn't been defined yet," said Accenture spokeswoman Roxanne Taylor, adding that the government has the final say. "Isn't that the system of checks and balances?"

Tightening the Borders

The US-VISIT program office, officially known as the United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology, started in July 2003. The network it is trying to build is being sold to the public by homeland security officials as the ultimate solution to the nation's chronic border problems.

The US-VISIT system must eventually cover nearly 7,000 miles of borders along Mexico and Canada, including more than 300 land, air and sea ports where travelers make more than 450 million crossings a year.

Copies of an Accenture presentation to US-VISIT officials obtained by The Washington Post describe a futuristic surveillance and intelligence network. The system they envision could rely on databases, digital cameras, face- and voice-recognition systems and electronic-fingerprint readers, all linked by computer. Homeland security officials promised that US-VISIT would communicate quickly and easily with other computer systems.

Eventually all foreign visitors will be required to electronically register their fingerprints and photographs at U.S. embassies and consulates, along with other personal details. That information will then be matched against terrorist, criminal and intelligence files to determine whether the travelers pose threats.

Prospective visitors who flunk the screening process will be denied visas. Those who pass will be allowed into the country and then checked when they leave to make sure they did not overstay their visit. US-VISIT must accomplish its mission without impeding commerce or tourism, according its mission statement.

For now, US-VISIT is relying on several aging and ineffective computer systems that were designed in the 1990s by contractors for the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, which was merged in 2003 into the new Homeland Security Department.

Not long after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Senate Judiciary Committee asked the Justice Department's inspector general, Glenn A. Fine, to assess the state of INS's technology programs. Fine told Congress he questioned close to $3 billion worth of projects, saying that his review "revealed significant problems that leave gaps in the INS's attempts to secure the nation's borders." At about the same time, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative branch of Congress, came to a similar conclusion about the INS technology.

Today, some of the same officials who were in charge of that flawed technology are in key positions at the US-VISIT program.

One of the programs targeted for criticism was a computer network known as IDENT, which requires travelers to submit prints of both index fingers at U.S. consulates and embassies overseas. IDENT then collects two index fingerprints from those visitors at the U.S. border and matches them against a database to determine whether they are allowed into the country.

Fine's auditors concluded that the system was flawed because it did not effectively link to such fingerprint databases as FBI files or government terrorist watch lists that rely on state-of-the-art, 10-fingerprint systems.

Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, under congressional mandate to develop biometric standards for screening foreign visitors, recommended the government use 10 fingerprints. Using all 10 prints provides better matching capabilities and interoperability with other databases, the scientists said in their 2003 report.

US-VISIT officials did not heed the scientists' advice. Officials later told Congress they relied on the old fingerprint technology as a stopgap while they overhauled the entire border-security system. They promised to upgrade the two-fingerprint IDENT system.

Last fall, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert C. Bonner said authorities had made improvements to the IDENT system so it could communicate more effectively with the FBI's database.

IDENT has fingerprints on 15,000 suspected terrorists and their alleged associates and about 1 million known criminals or deportees overall; the FBI keeps fingerprint records on 47 million people.

"Before, we had a flashlight, and we were only able to see into small areas with IDENT," Bonner said at a press conference on Oct. 7, 2004. By integrating with the FBI system, Bonner said, "we've turned on the overhead, and we can see it all."

But the government's own studies show IDENT is not fully integrated with the FBI system. One study by the Justice Department's inspector general's office, released three months after Bonner's remarks, concluded that progress toward making IDENT fully interoperable with other systems, including the FBI's, has "stalled."

The technology's limits and the government's desire to avoid long delays curbs the number of people who can be thoroughly screened. This year, homeland security officials expect to check about 800 people out of the roughly 118,000 visitors a day who should be screened against the FBI database, the Justice Department's inspector general said.

"The lack of immediate access to the FBI's full criminal master file creates a risk that a terrorist could enter the country undetected," the inspector general found.

Last fall, Stanford University researcher Lawrence M. Wein testified before Congress that US-VISIT, using IDENT, had no more than a 53 percent chance of catching a terrorist who had altered his or her fingerprints, even if that person was on a terrorist watch list. Wein said authorities should not assume the current two-fingerprint system is sufficient to stop terrorists. "It would be naive to think that these people are not trying to defeat the system," he said.

Rep. Norman D. Dicks (D-Wash.), who has repeatedly questioned IDENT's effectiveness, said homeland security officials should have listened to their experts rather than trying to upgrade the old fingerprint technology. Dicks said homeland security officials opted to use the flawed technology already in place to demonstrate they were making progress.

"They wanted to show they were getting something done," Dicks said. "The problem is, they made a mistake."

US-VISIT also incorporates another technology with interoperability problems: border-crossing cards that have been issued for years to Mexicans who want to visit and work in the United States. The cards are designed to encode the visitors' personal data electronically, but they do not work well with the IDENT system because the two technologies were not designed to interact, US-VISIT officials said.

The cards are manufactured at a six-year-old government plant run by a company called Datatrac Information Services Inc. in the congressional district of Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Ky.), the chairman of the House Appropriations homeland security subcommittee.

In the late 1990s, Rogers had urged government officials to build the card-manufacturing facility in his district, one of the poorest in the nation, according to a congressional aide who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Then, in June 2003, Rogers added language to an appropriations bill emphasizing that new card technology should not be adopted in a TSA pilot program as long as the existing technology is "good enough."

The next month, Datatrac received a 10-year contract extension worth up to $200 million, according to a company press release.

"The cards produced at facilities like the one in Corbin, Ky., are on the cutting edge of technology," Rogers was quoted as saying in the release. "I am pleased the Department has chosen to continue the use of these proven products."

A congressional aide said Rogers did not weigh in on Datatrac's behalf over the contract extension but considered it a "victory" because of the jobs it protected in the district Rogers represents.

The decision to stick with the cards comes with costs. This year, US-VISIT officials requested another $51 million for new technology, including equipment needed to study whether the cards can eventually work well with IDENT, Williams said.

Datatrac's border-crossing cards are often not used as intended, the homeland security department's inspector general reported this year. Border agents are supposed to run the cards through machines that can verify the visitors' identity. Instead, the agents often only eyeball the cards. The machines usually are installed away from the crossing points and used only with visitors who are pulled aside for additional screening.

Datatrac declined to discuss details of its contract.

Rogers declined to be interviewed for this article. He said in a prepared statement: "While the long-term future of the cards is unknown, they currently provide a vital security service along our borders."

'Industry Day'

Datatrac was one of dozens of companies seeking homeland security work on the borders. In 2003, it was part of the Accenture team seeking the contract to create the US-VISIT system.

Homeland security officials running that competition declared their intentions to rely heavily on the private sector. Speaking at a US-VISIT "Industry Day" in July 2003, they called on scores of corporate representatives gathered in suburban Virginia to form teams to address the government's ambitious goals.

US-VISIT officials told the companies they would welcome "direct and candid" comments in the coming months before the formal requests for bids were scheduled to be issued, according to documents that US-VISIT distributed at the session. Those comments could include recommendations for constructing the bid request itself, the document said. The winner would be a government "partner," and together the government and contractor would have shared accountability.

Within weeks, three bidding teams emerged: Computer Sciences Corp., Lockheed Martin Corp. and Accenture. Each had more than a dozen potential subcontractors. The US-VISIT team maintained contact with all three teams over the next few months. But it was Accenture that captured the attention of US-VISIT program director Williams, according to documents and interviews with people involved in the process.

Accenture had once been associated with the now-defunct Arthur Andersen LLP accounting firm. The company, then operating as Andersen Consulting, blossomed during the high-tech boom of the late 1990s, in part by offering governments and businesses solutions to their technology problems.

In 2001, the company renamed itself Accenture. It employed 75,000 people in 47 countries and had revenue of more than $11 billion. Based in Hamilton, Bermuda, the company called itself a "global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company."

Before long, it was also fashioning itself into a homeland security specialist. In its first three years under its new name, Accenture rose to 24th from 59th in the rankings of the government's prime information technology contractors, its contracts surging to $427 million from $81 million, according to Eagle Eye Publishers Inc., a private company that sells data on federal contracts.

In August 2003, at the same time Accenture executives were offering advice to Williams, they were lobbying Rogers, the chairman of the House Appropriations homeland security subcommittee, documents and interviews show. That committee has a strong say over funding for US-VISIT and other homeland security programs.

Accenture, with help from its subcontractor, Datatrac, secured a meeting with Rogers's chief of staff, according to officials at Rogers's office and Accenture. The Accenture officials downplayed the importance and timing of the meeting, saying in an e-mail "that all the bidders were actively lobbying members of Congress on US-VISIT, so our actions were not unique."

Accenture also raised its profile by hiring former government officials who had personal or professional ties to US-VISIT managers. One of the people Accenture hired as a lobbyist and consultant was Steve Kelman. As chief of procurement policy for the Clinton administration, he helped create rules that eased the outsourcing of government work to private companies. Kelman had worked closely on that project with Williams, who was then at the Internal Revenue Service.

In his role as a consultant, Kelman helped Accenture draft a document urging Williams's US-VISIT team to give contractors great latitude in designing the system and to limit the number of bid competitors to "2 or 3" as a way to speed the process of choosing a victor. Kelman said his advice focused on linking the winning bidder's pay to its performance.

Williams, who was one of several officials responsible for awarding the contract, recently said he was unaware of Kelman's role. Kelman said in an interview: "I would have thought [Williams] would have known" about Kelman's involvement.

The lines between the government and Accenture continued to blur. On Nov. 28, 2003, the US-VISIT program requested bids from the three teams. Two months later -- and four months before the contract was awarded -- Accenture's team moved into the 13th-floor of a Rosslyn office building, just below the floors occupied by US-VISIT officials.

"The space came available, and someone on the team saw it and realized this would be convenient space if we eventually won the project," said Taylor, the Accenture spokeswoman.

In February 2004, Accenture's team put on a demonstration for Williams in the suburban Virginia parking lot of another Accenture subcontractor. Accenture set up a make-believe checkpoint to simulate a border-crossing post. Williams was told to drive through to test Accenture's technical savvy. He accelerated to 40 miles per hour and passed through electronic sensors.

As Williams drove past the sensors, playing the role of foreign visitor, the system scanned a chip embedded in a mock passport. Moments later, an electronic sign proclaimed that "James Williams" was the man behind the wheel of the car. The show was a rousing success, Williams said.

But Accenture said that the demonstration had little to do with what will eventually be built.

Peter Soh, another Accenture spokesman, said in an e-mail that the "simulation Accenture staged was for demonstration purposes only. It was not a recommended solution or a technology offering, and in no way did it represent what the final US-VISIT solution will look like."

Accenture's team won the contract in May 2004. Company officials said the division working on US-VISIT is Accenture LLP, based in Northern Virginia.

Williams said Accenture officials are playing an important role in shaping the vision for US-VISIT by helping him and his team understand how to buy and organize such a complex system. He said such a role is increasingly common in federal contracting. Of the three bidders, he said, Accenture was consistently the most helpful and convincing.

"Accenture listened well to the approach the government wanted to take and said: 'You're taking the right approach,' " Williams said.

Oversight From Afar

In each of the past three years, numerous questions have been raised about US-VISIT's management, oversight and costs.

In 2003, GAO auditors reported that the costs could rise far above the official $7.2 billion estimate -- likely "in the tens of billions." The report concluded that US-VISIT was a financially "very risky endeavor" because there were not enough government officials to properly manage the program.

In 2004, another GAO analysis said the government's US-VISIT team had not moved quickly enough on its earlier findings, chiding the government for failing to correct "fundamental limitations in the program office's ability to manage US-VISIT." That was in part because the US-VISIT office had only about half the 115 employees that officials said were needed to run the project.

In February, another audit reported that the current US-VISIT system has trouble tracking "the entry and exit of persons entering the United States at air, land, and sea ports of entry." The report said the homeland security department "has not employed rigorous, disciplined processes typically associated with successful programs."

Last week, homeland security officials said the fledgling system has blocked the admission of nearly 600 people and led to the arrest of 39.

"US-VISIT works," Williams said. "The results have shown that it works. We are working hard to meet the congressional and presidential mandates to complete the system."

The US-VISIT program now has 100 government employees.The program has turned to contractors for administrative and clerical support -- 94 people from Mitre Corp. and PEC Solutions Inc.

Today, an official responsible for oversight of the US-VISIT contract works out of an office in her home in Bradenton, Fla.

Dana Schmitt is the director of the Office of Acquisition and Program Management for US-VISIT -- which is responsible for "support, oversight, and control" of Accenture and its subcontractors. Schmitt, a former immigration service official who earns $114,344 a year, said she visits the US-VISIT offices in Rosslyn once every six weeks or so.

She and her supervisors said she can capably handle the job from about 950 miles away. But she said that her program management office has only nine of the 40 government employees she deemed necessary.

US-VISIT officials were interested in Schmitt because of her experience working with large technology projects at the immigration service. She agreed to work on US-VISIT, she said in an interview, as long as she could stay in Florida.

She said she has become good at working with contractors and her colleagues from afar, using conference calls and e-mails. She said she has no trouble monitoring the contract and overseeing the work of her colleagues.

"I can actually tell by tone of voice if people are getting agitated," she said. "It's basically an oversight function. . . . Being in Florida doesn't hamper it."

D. Kent Goodger, a veteran contracting officer for several federal agencies who now teaches procurement rules to government officials, said oversight managers need regular, face-to-face interaction to do their jobs.

"I don't see how she can have such a very important, visible role without having daily contact," he said.

Williams, the US-VISIT program director and Schmitt's boss, described her as immensely talented and an important asset to the project. He said he initially had doubts about allowing her to work from Florida.

"I absolutely had those worries," Williams said. "To me, it became kind of an experiment. So far, it is an experiment that's working very well."

Contracting Rush For Security Led To Waste, Abuse

2005-05-23T06:31:00.000-04:00

By Scott Higham and Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writers

After the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the U.S. government rushed to secure the nation. Billions of dollars were spent to protect Americans with improved passenger screening, bomb-detection machines at airports, radiation monitors at ports and computer networks to identify suspected terrorists at the borders.

Government leaders say the nation is safer than it was before Sept. 11, 2001. But the government's internal audits have repeatedly questioned the cost and effectiveness of the equipment and security systems bought from corporations that received a torrent of money under loosened regulations, limited oversight and tight congressional deadlines.

In February, the Office of Management and Budget found that only four of the 33 homeland security programs it examined were "effective." In March, the Homeland Security Department's inspector general noted "the lack of improvement" in the performance of passenger screeners. In April, the Government Accountability Office reported that "the implementation and transformation of DHS remains high-risk."

Scores of government reports, congressional testimony and interviews with dozens of government and business officials document rising costs and specific flaws in some of the major systems underway:

· The contract to hire airport passenger screeners grew to $741 million from $104 million in less than a year. The screeners are failing to detect weapons at roughly the same rate as shortly after the attacks.

· The contract for airport bomb-detection machines ballooned to at least $1.2 billion from $508 million over 18 months. The machines have been hampered by high false-alarm rates.

· A contract for a computer network called US-VISIT to screen foreign visitors could cost taxpayers $10 billion. It relies on outdated technology that puts the project at risk.

· Radiation-detection machines worth a total of a half-billion dollars deployed to screen trucks and cargo containers at ports and borders have trouble distinguishing between highly enriched uranium and common household products. The problem has prompted costly plans to replace the machines.

"Whenever you try to spend a billion dollars in a hurry, you're vulnerable to people who come to the plate and sell you some things that aren't really well prepared," said Paul J. Werbos, a computer expert at the National Science Foundation who advises U.S. government agencies. "The biggest concern is that we're going to spend a whole lot of money without getting something useful out of it."

Since fiscal 2001, annual spending on contracts managed by the Homeland Security Department or its precursor agencies has more than doubled, to $5.8 billion, according to data from Eagle Eye Publishers Inc., a company that analyzes government contracting data. The beneficiaries include Unisys Corp., Boeing Co., Lockheed Martin Corp., General Dynamics Corp. and Accenture Ltd., along with such lesser-known companies as Veritas Capital Inc. and Datatrac Information Services Inc.

At a recent gathering of contractors in Northern Virginia, the chief contracting officer for one Homeland Security division said he wasn't sure how his agency had spent $700 million -- more than one-third of its budget last year was listed under "other."

John Ely, executive director for procurement at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said he was confident that the money could be tracked.

"Don't think because we don't know what that is, we couldn't find out," Ely said on March 31.

Ely said he needed to triple his contracting staff. "There's not enough of us," he said.

Agency officials last week blamed the confusion about the spending on the integration of a new computer system and chronic data-entry mistakes that will be fixed.

Contracting specialists say the push on homeland security came at a time when the government was engaged in a broad effort to turn over key functions to corporations. The trend, begun during the Clinton administration to streamline government, included deep cuts to the federal workforce responsible for contracting and oversight.

Today, government officials often refer to corporations as "partners" rather than contractors. In some cases, companies are even hired to oversee the work of other companies.

"We have allowed the contractors to totally take over the process, and as a result, the costs are getting totally inflated," said D. Kent Goodger, a federal contracting official for 38 years who now teaches federal procurement courses for the Agriculture Department and other agencies. "Right now, it's out of control."

Three years ago, the man whose department was then responsible for leading the efforts to secure the nation's airports questioned whether it was wise to attempt so much in so little time.

"Well, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out you're not going to get from here to there given that kind of production scheme," Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta said in a television interview.

He was roundly criticized for those remarks by the White House and Congress. The deadlines came with consequences.

"Because of the congressional deadlines, it cost a lot more money," said corporate lawyer Angela B. Styles, chief of the OMB's procurement division under President Bush from 2001 to 2003.

"If you had an infrastructure in place with people who knew how to do things quickly, like people from the Department of Defense, you would have had more success," she said. "With the deadlines and the poor acquisition workforce and the public pressure, it was a recipe for disaster from the very beginning."

In an interview Friday, the deputy secretary of homeland security, Michael P. Jackson, said government leaders deliberately chose to team up with companies to jump-start the country's defense against terrorism, an approach he continues to support. He praised government employees and said their efforts have made the country safer. But Jackson acknowledged that "there were problems, and significant ones," with some of the contracts.

Jackson, who was confirmed in March, said he and recently appointed Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff have made it a top priority to enhance oversight and correct the problems.

"It's good government, and it's what we owe the taxpayers," said Jackson, who was the deputy transportation secretary at the time of the attacks. "It's what we have a core responsibility to do."

Deadline-Driven Culture

Two months after the planes struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Bush and Congress took steps toward creating a new security infrastructure. On Nov. 19, 2001, Bush signed a bill directing the government to hire and deploy a federal workforce to screen airline passengers and baggage. The act also called for the creation of the Transportation Security Administration.

To speed up the contracting process, the act exempted government officials from Federal Acquisition Regulation guidelines, long the standard for contracting oversight. Congress also gave the government a series of deadlines for putting improvements in place.

To help meet the deadlines, the TSA awarded a contract to NCS Pearson Inc. to hire 30,000 federal screeners within 25 weeks to replace a patchwork of private security firms at the nation's 429 major airports.

After the federal screeners began their work, reports started to circulate that some had criminal records. Federal auditors later discovered that TSA managers did not have reliable databases to conduct background checks. Employment files were disorganized and kept in hundreds of unsecured boxes.

The cost of the Pearson contract rose to $741 million from $104 million. Auditors blamed much of the increase on the deadlines, the lack of TSA supervisors to manage the contract, poor management by Pearson and weak financial controls at the agency.

Auditors later found that TSA managers lacked their own contract officers or a system to monitor companies. The managers routinely relied on information that was "out-of-date, incomplete, inaccurate, or otherwise unreliable," the GAO reported.

Another federal audit questioned $124 million in spending on the Pearson contract, and the government initially withheld $90 million from the company. The auditors also said that from $6 million to $9 million in spending by a subcontractor appeared "to be attributed to wasteful and abusive spending practices," and cited "the complete breakdown of management controls" at Pearson.

Mac Curtis, the president of what is now called Pearson Government Solutions, said in an interview last week that all issues had been resolved and all money had been paid. Curtis said the contract grew largely because the TSA ordered major modifications, including a doubling of the number of screeners hired, to 62,901. The government also requested that an additional 66,219 be pre-certified for immediate hiring.

The TSA also demanded that the job interviews take place at hotels and conference centers rather than at the company's 2,500 assessment centers, which added significantly to the cost, said Curtis, who noted that his company was responsible for hiring the screeners but not training them.

"We met the mission," Curtis said. "We met the mandates."

TSA officials acknowledged that government decisions drove up the cost of the Pearson contract. "We did not properly identify the requirements," said Lee R. Kair, assistant TSA administrator for acquisition. "There was a real sense of speed on this. That's what led to many of the changes."

The Homeland Security Department's inspector general deployed undercover agents to test the new screeners. Such agents try to smuggle weapons or simulated explosive devices through airport checkpoints. Officials use the results to test vulnerabilities in the system.

Last month, the inspector general said that "the lack of improvement since our last audit [a year ago] indicates that significant improvement in performance may not be possible without greater use of new technology."

Jonathan J. Fleming, the TSA's chief operating officer, said the undercover agents are able to evade screeners and their systems at about the same rate as shortly after Sept. 11, 2001. But he and other government officials said the comparison is unfair because the agents testing the screeners are using more sophisticated techniques.

'A Reasonable Profit'

When Clark Kent Ervin began his work as the Homeland Security Department's first inspector general in early 2003, he quickly realized that the department was about to become one of the top contracting bureaucracies in Washington without the infrastructure to handle the task. Ervin, a Bush supporter from Texas, found that the new department had poorly staffed contracting offices spread across the 22 agencies that were about to be merged to form the department, the largest federal reorganization since World War II.

Ervin said he tried to alert Tom Ridge, who had recently been confirmed to head the Homeland Security Department.

"Two areas that DHS needs to get control of early to minimize waste and abuse are the procurement and grant [federal assistance] management functions," Ervin wrote in the memo on March 18, 2003, 17 days after the department opened its doors.

The memo urged Ridge to train and supervise the department's contract officers and establish a "robust and effective" program to monitor contractors.

"Early attention to strong systems and controls," the previously undisclosed memo said, "will be critical both to ensuring success and maintaining integrity and accountability."

A few weeks later, Ervin said he was told that Janet Hale, the homeland security undersecretary for management, had held up the delivery of the memo. Ervin said he was told that Hale did not want to give Ridge the news that the systems and controls were not in place. Hale said Friday that she did not recall the episode but that she strongly supports efforts to bolster the department's contracting oversight.

"I would not stop a memo from the IG," she said. "It's just not in my disposition."

Ervin said that he then faxed the memo himself to Ridge's office, but that he never heard back from the secretary.

Ridge said in an interview yesterday that he did not recall receiving the memo but that his department addressed the kinds of issues Ervin raised. "I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that he sent it," Ridge said. "Clark raised a lot of alarm bells. It was his responsibility."

Before long, Ervin was investigating a contract the TSA awarded to Boeing that included the delivery and installation of 1,100 explosive detection systems -- stand-alone, minivan-size machines designed to examine passenger baggage. Even though Boeing's bid was the highest, the company won the contract because TSA officials said they thought Boeing had the expertise to best manage such a complicated federal contract under the deadline pressure.

Boeing subcontracted 92 percent of the work, much of it to two firms that made the machines: L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. and InVision Technologies Inc. Boeing hired other companies to install and maintain the devices.

Ervin's auditors would later find Boeing's contract with the TSA to be extremely favorable to the company.

The TSA guaranteed that all of Boeing's costs would be covered. The agency further guaranteed that Boeing's profit would be based on a percentage of those expenses, the auditors found. Such an arrangement, cited in the inspector general's report as a "cost-plus-a-percentage-of-cost" contract, is banned by federal law, Ervin's office later said in a report.

The contract structure removed an important incentive to hold costs down, Ervin said in an interview. The TSA initially estimated the Boeing contract to be worth $508 million. Within 18 months, the cost more than doubled, to $1.2 billion, auditors found.

In September 2004, Ervin's office issued its critical report, saying the TSA failed to meet its obligation to ensure that Boeing got only "a reasonable profit" on its contract.

As the manager of the contract, Boeing received about $82 million in profit from 2002 to 2003, the report said. That was a 210 percent return on the investment the company had made in the project, Ervin's office found; $49 million of the profit was deemed to be "excessive."

The inspector general also found that the TSA gave the company at least $44 million in award fees without evaluating the company's performance. Ervin described those fees to The Washington Post as "bonuses."

In a written statement to The Post, Boeing disputed the inspector general's findings. The company denied that it received a 210 percent profit or that it had received a prohibited "cost-plus-a-percentage-of-cost" contract. A TSA contracting official on Friday said agency officials "do not believe" they used an inappropriate contract.

The company said the contract grew because it and its subcontractors had to remodel airport lobbies and other areas to accommodate the new machines.

Boeing said the TSA recognized this problem and agreed to adjust the contract accordingly. The contract was modified 54 times, Boeing said.

"This was a very challenging program to execute," Boeing said. "Timelines were very tight and Boeing met all of them."

Boeing noted that the TSA, in its response to the inspector general, said the company was "appropriately compensated."

Elaine C. Duke, who was then the TSA's deputy assistant administrator for acquisition, defended the contract and the agency's handling of it. Duke cited the high-risk nature of the work, the technical complexity of the job, competitive market pressures, the congressional mandate and the lack of staff resources -- there were only five employees in the TSA's acquisition office when the contract was awarded.

"One should recognize that these are unique circumstances that have not and will not be repeated," Duke wrote in her response to the inspector general.

Ervin took a different view.

"The bulk of the work was done by subcontractors. Boeing could have been cut out entirely," he said in a recent interview. "They took advantage of a very good deal they got for themselves.

"The government was just inept," he said. "TSA didn't know what they were doing, or they didn't exercise due control over the contract."

At the time of the Boeing contract, the TSA was handling more than $4 billion worth of contracts without enough staff members to ensure the work was being properly supervised, according to federal auditors. Last year, GAO auditors examined 21 contract files at the TSA. They found that several of the contract files, including one covering work by a subcontractor on the bomb-detection machines, "did not contain evidence of government surveillance to ensure cost efficiency," said Bill Woods, who directed the audit.

The GAO later cited a 2003 TSA internal study estimating that the agency needed as many as 628 employees to run its Office of Acquisition, which awards and monitors contracts. A year later, the office still had only 61 people, the GAO found.

Ron Endicott, a former federal contracting official hired as a consultant in 2003 to help assess the TSA's acquisition workforce, said more contracting officials were needed to watch the money.

"The workforce over there was dying on the vine," said Endicott, who retired from the federal government after nearly four decades. "People were working 16 hours a day, six and seven days a week, and a lot of talented people were leaving. It was dangerously understaffed."

Kair, the TSA contracting official, said he now has 83 acquisition employees and plans to hire more.

After the bomb-detection machines were put in airports across the country, some of them began to register false alarms. Screeners were forced to open and hand-check bags. Lines backed up, infuriating passengers and airline managers.

The false-alarm rates have since come down, according to counter-terrorism experts and government scientists familiar with the machines. They say the reason is that the machines have been calibrated to be less sensitive, cutting the false alarms but also making the machines less effective.

"When used the way they're supposed to be used, they're almost as good as a dog," said a government technology expert intimately familiar with the machines, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. "The big machines have a very high false-alarm rate. As a result, as anybody in counter-terrorism knows, U.S. officials set the standard way too high, and that's bad." The TSA's Fleming disputed that the machines have been made less sensitive, but he said the agency has upgraded the software to improve their effectiveness.

Last month, the GAO issued a report documenting a series of problems with the bomb-detection machines, including poor contract oversight, and said the stand-alone machines were hampered by "operational inefficiencies." The report also faulted TSA officials for not conducting an analysis that might have led them to a better method: installing machines "in-line" with baggage conveyer belts, speeding up and simplifying the process.

Members of Congress are now calling for a new generation of "in-line" machines, which are considered better at detecting explosives because they rely on the latest technology. The cost: an additional $3 billion to $5 billion.

The TSA was forced to choose the lesser technology primarily because of deadline pressure, government scientists and aviation experts said.

"Congress was frustrated. They said, 'We're going to give you a deadline, and you're bloody well going to meet it,' " said Cathal Flynn, associate administer for civil aviation security at the Federal Aviation Administration between 1993 and 2000 who had been working to install bomb-detection machines in airports for years. "Now they have to spend billions of dollars to get these machines out of the lobbies and put the new ones in the baggage lines."

David M. Stone, assistant secretary in charge of the TSA, said the agency is addressing the problems of the past and has made improvements in all areas. "The TSA of today is not the TSA of 2003," he said in an interview Friday.

A High Risk of Failure

Last year, in a confidential report prepared for the House Homeland Security Committee by a GAO auditor on loan to the panel, the entire Homeland Security Department was deemed to be at "high risk" of failure. The auditor noted in his report, a copy of which was obtained by The Post, that without a stronger management system, "the agency will not have the ability to effectively protect our homeland."

Financial controls were so lax, auditor Glenn Davis found, that DHS officials were unsure whether a $1.2 billion budget shortfall was real or simply an "accounting irregularity." The confusion prompted the DHS to impose a hiring freeze last spring on new customs and border agents. A few weeks later, budget managers concluded that the shortfall was an accounting error, the report said.

"The ambiguity about staffing levels calls into question whether the department can be confident that there is sufficient manpower at our borders to prevent the unwanted entry of terrorist factions into this country," Davis wrote in his report. "Weaknesses in DHS financial systems also could expose the agency unnecessarily to excess waste, fraud and abuse."

The report noted that contracting officers were too overwhelmed to track and supervise billions of dollars worth of contracts. "DHS still struggles to compile a detailed and accurate listing of its contracts and to keep track of spending by its agencies," the report concluded. Davis declined to discuss his report.

A GAO report released last month found that the Homeland Security Department's Office of Procurement Operations, which monitors many of the department's contracts, had 19 employees supervising an average of $101 million in contracts each. By comparison, 332 employees at the U.S. Coast Guard, a Homeland Security division that runs its own contracting office, averaged $6.3 million.

"If you don't have controls over major programs, chances are increased you're going to waste a lot of money and waste a lot time and keep doing the same things over and over again," said Michael J. Sullivan, a GAO analyst who directed the Homeland Security Department procurement study. "They need to get staffing up. They need to get training up. They need to get a handle on oversight."

Further limiting oversight: No single official has been given clear responsibility for all of the department's procurement spending, Sullivan's report said. The lower-level managers are often poorly trained. In the past year, only 22 percent of homeland security contracts and programs were being supervised by managers who had the necessary training and certification, the GAO auditors said.

As a result, relatively inexperienced government workers are required to monitor corporations armed with highly skilled contract specialists and lawyers, who increasingly work side-by-side with the government workers.

"What's developed over the last decade is a new culture that has put [contracting officials] in a very vulnerable position," said Goodger, the veteran government procurement official.

"From a contracting perspective, it's not a healthy situation," he said. "Contractors typically will take advantage of government employees."

Homeland Security officials acknowledged that their contract oversight staff has been understrength and said they are working to bolster it. They now have 60 people in their procurement office, and they plan to more than double that number.

"You just have to rebuild the workforce," said Hale, the undersecretary for management. "This is terribly important."

Making 'His Displeasure Known'

As chief of the Homeland Security Department, Ridge grew frustrated by the drumbeat of bad news contained in the audits, particularly from his department's own office of inspector general, according to Ervin. Twice last year, Ridge summoned the inspector general to his office to complain about his reports, according to Ervin.

Ridge was particularly upset with one report documenting problems with a visa-waiver program and another describing difficulties with terrorist watch lists, Ervin said.

"He said he regarded the reports as being unduly critical," said Ervin, whose political appointment expired in December and who now works at a District think tank. "He was trying to make his displeasure known."

Ridge said he never asked Ervin to "modify or mollify" his reports. But he objected to Ervin's methods.

"I said, 'Do you feel obligated to send every report to the Hill? Does everything you do have to end up in a press release?' "

Ervin said he responded that inspectors general do not answer to agency chiefs but to Congress and the public. "His view was, I wasn't part of the team," Ervin said. "I told him that I thought the team was supposed to be the American people."

Database editor Sarah Cohen and researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.

EQUAL TIME: Mark Krikorian calls 'Secure America' the last stand of the open borders lobby

2005-05-21T07:23:00.000-04:00

Problem offered as solution in new 'old' plan

Like the telemarketer who bilks a widow then comes back in different guise to "help" her get her money back, the anti-borders crowd that created today's immigration crisis is offering as a solution the policies that got us in this mess in the first place.

The essence of the John McCain-Ted Kennedy bill is the same as the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act: amnesty up front for millions of illegal aliens and paltry promises of future enforcement - promises that will quickly be abandoned.

But in 1986, many people didn't know that yet. There was a sense then that the law was a grand bargain - closing the back door by prohibiting the employment of illegal immigrants (for the first time ever), but tying up prior missteps with an amnesty.

The proposed amnesty in McCain-Kennedy works this way: The former illegal aliens are re-labeled legal workers; after six years of indenture, payment of some fines, criminal and security background checks and an English and civics test, they (and their families) get green cards.

This is similar to how the last amnesty worked, except for the term of indenture; the 1986 law amnestied those who entered the country before a certain date, about four years prior to the law's passage. Thus McCain/Kennedy is prospective amnesty, as opposed to retrospective amnesty.

The guest worker part of the bill provides for 400,000 new foreign workers a year, with an escalator clause if businesses snap up the cheap, docile labor faster than expected. These "temporary" workers would have to serve only four years of indenture before they, too, would get green cards. To accommodate them, legal immigration quotas would rise nearly half-million a year.

The enforcement sections of the bill are laughably thin. The part on border security is almost a parody of a Washington cop-out: It orders up yet another "National Strategy for Border Security." How about picking a previous strategy and just enforcing it?

Plus there's an advisory committee, two coordination plans, and various reports and programs and partnerships. It's like John Kerry going duck hunting: He's wearing the right outfit, but he's obviously insincere.

And the interior enforcement provisions seem intended to actually hobble enforcement. Though the law provides for a system to verify employment eligibility, it instructs the Social Security Administration to reinvent the wheel rather than expanding on the successful pilot system the immigration service has been developing for over a decade.

The job of auditing firms for compliance with the immigration law would also be taken away from immigration agents, and given instead to the Labor Department, perhaps the only agency even less capable of doing its job. And the bill specifically says it does not give state and local cops any new authority to enforce immigration law.

The public is becoming increasingly concerned about immigration. The issue is seldom among the top two or three issues for voters, but that seems to be changing. Recurrent reports of terrorists and super-violent gang members exploiting our broken immigration system are finally getting people's attention.

The way the Minuteman Project border-watch program in Arizona resonated on talk radio, its spread to other states, and its adoption by politicians as California Gov. Schwarzenegger are all signs the McCain/Kennedy amnesty bill may well be the last gasp of the anti-borders crowd.

Mark Krikorian is executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington. He wrote this for the Star. Contact him at center@cis.org.

The Minutemen's success

2005-05-21T07:21:00.000-04:00

By Steven Camarota and Mark Krikorian

Last month's border-watch program in Arizona called the Minuteman Project is likely to be only the first of many such efforts by frustrated Americans. Its endorsement by many congressmen, and especially by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, virtually guarantees that more private citizens will volunteer to help monitor our neglected border with Mexico in an effort to shame Washington into action.
What have we learned from the initial effort in Arizona?
First of all, we can safely dismiss the scare tactics of opponents of immigration enforcement. From the ACLU "observers" sent to intimidate the Minutemen, to the Mexican government's lies about "immigrant hunters," to President Bush's shameful smear of these volunteers as "vigilantes," every prediction of extremism has proven false. The Minutemen (and Minutewomen) were exactly what they claimed to be — responsible patriots simply reporting illegal crossers to the Border Patrol. These ordinary people, untrained in the ways of political theater, nonetheless showed themselves to be sober and disciplined, guarding the integrity of their efforts against fringe elements and never succumbing to the provocations of their opponents. We should be proud to live in a country that produces such citizens.

Amazon.com's Koran Desecration Problem

2005-05-20T11:47:00.000-04:00

by Daniel Pipes

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2634
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=18139

As the Koran-flushing-in-Cuba episode becomes old news, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) has helpfully found a way to keep Koran desecration in the public eye. It does so – and I draw on MPAC's two press releases (here and here), plus reports from the Associated Press and Los Angeles Times – by promoting the story of one Azza Basarudin, who bought a copy of the Koran, Oxford University Press edition.

A doctoral candidate at the University of California at Los Angeles specializing in Middle East studies, Basarudin ordered the volume in early May from Bellwether Books, a used book store in McKeesport, Penn. that distributes its wares via amazon.com. She opened the Koran on arrival and says she found written on the inside cover a profanity along with "Death to all Muslims." Basarudin recalls her response:

I dropped the book because I didn't know what to do. I was paralyzed after 9/11 — I couldn't leave my house for a couple of weeks — and I realized that fear was coming back. I couldn't even go near this book for a couple of days. I feel like I'm being violated all over again because I'm a Muslim.

Basarudin asked MPAC, Los Angeles' contribution to the radical Islamic lobby, for assistance. It agreed and duly contacted Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, to whom it laid down the usual Islamist strictures: an investigation, a public condemnation, "a policy of zero tolerance toward this type of behavior," and (of course) financial support for MPAC.

Amazon at first only apologized for "distress caused by incident," so MPAC turned up the heat by holding a press conference on May 18 (at the Islamic Center of Southern California, no less).

The publicity worked. Patty Smith, director of corporate communications for Amazon, responded by calling the matter "appalling" and distanced her company from it. She noted that the Koran was purchased from Bellwether Books, not Amazon itself. She explained, "This was not our inventory, it was nowhere in our order or fulfillment process. It was a used book purchased through a third party." Still, she apologized, offered Basarudin reimbursement, a gift certificate, and promised to fire any employee who defaces Korans. She also – the kicker – indefinitely suspended Bellwether from selling Korans through Amazon and said that if the problem recurred, Bellwether would be banished from Amazon.

That meant Richard Roberts, owner of Bellwether, had to respond, and he did, denying that his employees defaced the book and pointing out that used books frequently have markings. He explained how the staff gives a cursory check to the four hundred books it sends out each day without closely inspecting them. He apologized to Basarudin, said any employees found desecrating the Koran would be fired, and offered to replace the book. He also promised to assign, in the Los Angeles Times's wording, "a quality-control officer to rigorously check incoming and outgoing books."

The head of MPAC responded unenthusiastically to these concessions: "We are gratified to learn that Amazon.com has suspended its relationship with Bellwether, but they have a responsibility to loudly condemn such hateful rhetoric and take pro-active measures to enhance educational programs that foster religious tolerance." MPAC instructed its acolytes to contact Amazon and urge it decisively "to resolve this case and ensure it is not repeated." That meant:

Publicly condemn such desecration of a sacred text with hateful speech targeting Muslims,
Terminate relations with Bellwether Books …,
Support and fund educational programs that foster religious tolerance.

Azza Basarudin and her Koran.

Comments: This incident, far quieter than the Newsweek flap, is in its own way no less instructive or important.

(1) MPAC did not mention that the customer in question, Azza Basarudin, 30, is an Islamist affiliated at one time with the Islamic Institute of Human Rights, headed by Wissam Nasr. (Nasr now heads the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) office in New York.) For an example of her thinking, note above, how she presents 9/11 not as an occasion when Muslims violated Americans but when Americans violated Muslims. In other words, this is no average customer.

(2) MPAC also neglected to mention that Basarudin bought a used Koran, not a new one. Used books buyers do not normally expect vendors to clean their purchases of markings by former owners.

(3) Is it pure coincidence that this Koran episode is so perfectly times to follow the Newsweek and Guantánamo controversy? One can't but wonder if Basarudin, like at least seven other U.S. Muslims, is faking her own persecution. Or if, like its colleague CAIR, MPAC stokes anti-Muslim hate even where it does not exist.

(4) If Muslims succeed in requiring that Korans undergo inspection for impurities before being sold, booksellers might well cease handling Korans.

(5) The idea that a Muslim has the right, without proof, to accuse a non-Muslim of blasphemy, as Basarudin and MPAC have done, brings to mind the notorious anti-blasphemy laws in force in Pakistan. There, as the World Council of Churches explained in 2000, those laws "have become a major tool in the hands of extremists to settle personal scores against members of the religious minorities particularly Christians." In the United States, the blasphemy accusation serves as the basis for a Jesse Jackson-like corporate shakedown (note MPAC's demand for Amazon to fund its programming).

(6) That Amazon suspended Bellwether from selling Korans via Amazon is a symbolic punishment rather than a substantive one, but it matters nonetheless. Can one imagine any other book's defacement leading to such a penalty?

(7) This episode is yet another instance of Islamist organizations relentlessly seeking special privileges for Islam. At a time when American Catholics must endure "art" that consists of the crucifix in urine and a Virgin Mary made in part of elephant dung, why should American Muslims be indulged in their exquisite sensibilities? As Stephen Schwartz keeps repeating, if Islam is to flourish in America, it must adapt to America.

(8) Amazon should answer MPAC firmly in the negative, reinstituting Bellwether's right to sell Korans at Amazon, making no public condemnations, and not giving money to MPAC. If you agree with this conclusion, let Patty Smith at Amazon (psmith@amazon.com) know your thoughts.

Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me

2005-05-20T08:38:00.000-04:00

The McCain/Kennedy amnesty.

By Mark Krikorian

The McCain/Kennedy amnesty bill has been unveiled, and it’s the same hoax we’ve fallen for before.

Like the telemarketer who bilks a widow and then comes back in a different guise to charge a fee to “help” her get the original money back, the anti-borders crowd created today’s immigration crisis and is now offering as a solution the very policies that got us in this mess in the first place.

Ordinarily the introduction of one more bill wouldn’t warrant much attention on Capitol Hill. Each year, congressmen introduce thousands of pieces of legislation, often merely to spark discussion on an issue or placate a noisy constituency. Few ever make any progress.

But the McCain/Kennedy bill (called the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act) has a good deal of muscle behind it, and in any case is the only amnesty-guestworker bill that will have a significant coalition pushing it. Yesterday’s press conference included not only senators McCain and Kennedy, but also Brownback and Lieberman, plus Republican representatives Flake and Kolbe from Arizona, and Illinois Democrat Gutierrez. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce backed it, as did the National Restaurant Association, the Service Employees International Union, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the National Immigration Forum, as well as writer Tamar Jacoby.

The essence of the bill is the same as the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act: amnesty up front for millions of illegal aliens in exchange for paltry promises of future enforcement — promises that will quickly be abandoned. But in 1986, many people didn’t know that yet. There was a sense then that the law was a grand bargain — closing the back door by prohibiting the employment of illegal immigrants (for the first time ever), but tying up the loose ends of prior policy missteps with an amnesty.

But in the words of the old Russian saying, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

The amnesty part works this way: The former illegal aliens are re-labeled as legal workers; after a six-year period of indenture, payment of some fines, criminal and security background checks, and an English and civics test, they (and their families) get green cards. This is similar to how the last amnesty worked, except for the term of indenture; the 1986 law amnestied those who had already entered the country before a certain date, some four years prior to the law’s passage. Thus the McCain/Kennedy proposal is a prospective amnesty, as opposed to the 1986 measure, which was a retrospective amnesty.

The guestworker part of the bill provides for 400,000 new foreign workers a year, with an escalator clause if businesses snap up the cheap, docile labor faster than expected. These “temporary” workers would have to serve only a four-year period of indenture before they, too, would get green cards. To accommodate them, legal immigration quotas would be increased by close to half a million a year.

The enforcement sections of the bill are laughably thin, making the amnesty-in-exchange-for-enforcement claim even less plausible than it would be otherwise. The part on border security is almost a parody of a Washington cop-out: It orders up yet another “National Strategy for Border Security” (how about picking one of the previous strategies and just enforcing it?), plus an advisory committee, two coordination plans, and various other reports and programs and multilateral partnerships. It’s like John Kerry going duck hunting: He’s wearing the right outfit, but he’s obviously insincere.

And the interior enforcement provisions seem intended to actually hobble enforcement. Though the law provides for a system to verify employment eligibility, it instructs the Social Security administration to reinvent the wheel rather than simply expand on the successful pilot system the immigration service has been developing for over a decade. The job of auditing firms for compliance with the immigration law would also be taken away from immigration agents, and given instead to the Labor Department, perhaps the only agency even less capable of doing its job. And the bill specifically says that it does not give state and local cops any new authority to enforce immigration law.

Despite the long list of interest groups behind the legislation, the McCain/Kennedy amnesty’s odds aren’t good. John Cornyn, chairman of the Senate’s immigration subcommittee, doesn’t like it, and the Senate recently defeated a more narrow amnesty proposal from senators Craig and Kennedy (funny how that name keeps popping up). On the House side, there’s a new pro-borders majority among Republicans, energized by their victory with the Real ID Act, that will fight the amnesty tooth and nail. And the White House is uttering sweet nothings, standing back out of concern that supporting this bill, which is an amnesty even by the president’s slippery definition, could cause a “read my lips”-style blowup among conservatives.

Perhaps most important, the public is becoming increasingly concerned about immigration. The issue is seldom among the top two or three issues for voters, but that seems to be changing. Recurrent reports of terrorists and super-violent gang members exploiting our broken immigration system are finally getting people’s attention. The way the Minuteman Project border-watch program in Arizona resonated on talk radio, its spread to other states, and its adoption by prominent politicians like California Gov. Schwarzenegger are all signs that the McCain/Kennedy amnesty bill may well be the last gasp of the anti-borders crowd.

Center for Immigration Studies.

Immigrant Job Gains and Native Job Losses 2000 to 2004

2005-05-20T08:36:00.000-04:00

Testimony Prepared for the House Judiciary Committee
Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims

Steven A. Camarota
Director of Research, Center for Immigration Studies

This testimony is drawn directly from a Center’s October 2004 report entitled A Jobless Recovery? Immigrant Gains and Native Losses.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee: Thank you for inviting me to testify on the impact of immigration on the labor market during the recent economic slow down. My name is Steven Camarota, and I am Director of Research at the Center for Immigration Studies, a non-partisan think tank here in Washington.

Prior to the economic slowdown that began in 2000, I had generally assumed that the primary impact of immigration would have been to reduce wages and perhaps benefits for native-born workers but not overall employment. An important study published in 2003 in the Quarterly Journal of Economics showed that immigration reduces wages by 4 percent for all workers and 7 percent for those without a high school education.1 A significant effect to be sure.

However, after a careful examination of recent employment data, I have become increasingly concerned that immigration may also be reducing employment as well as wages for American workers. A study by the Center for immigration Studies published last year shows that between March 2000 and March 2004 the number of unemployed adult natives increased by 2.3 million, but at the same time the number of employed immigrants increased by 2.3 million.2 By adults I mean persons 18 and older. About half the growth in immigrant employment was from illegal immigration. And overall the level of new immigration, legal and illegal, does not seem to have slowed appreciably since 2000. By remaining so high at a time when the economy was not creating as many new jobs, immigration almost certainly has reduced job opportunities for natives and immigrants already here.

Of course, it would be a mistake to assume that every job taken by an immigrant is a job lost by a native, but the statistics are striking. And they should give serious pause to those who want to legalize illegal aliens instead of enforcing the law and reducing the supply of workers. Not only did native unemployment increase by 2.3 million, but we also found that the number of working-age natives who said they are not even looking for work increased by 4 million. Detailed analysis shows that the increase was not due to early retirement, increased college enrollment, or new moms staying home with their babies.

Our analysis also shows little evidence that immigrants only take jobs Americans don’t want. For one thing, immigrant job gains have been throughout the labor market, with more than two-thirds of their employment gains in jobs that require at least a high school degree. However, it is true that immigration has its biggest impact at the bottom end of the labor market in relatively low paying jobs typically occupied by less-educated workers. But such jobs still employ millions of native-born workers.

In job categories such as construction labor, building maintenance, and food preparation, immigration added 1.1 million adult workers in the last 4 years, but there were nearly 2 million unemployed adult natives in these very same occupations in 2004. About two-thirds of the new immigrant workers in these occupations are illegal aliens. Those arguing for high levels of immigration on the grounds that it helps to alleviate the pressure of tight labor markets in low-wage, less-skilled jobs are ignoring the very high rate of native unemployment in these job categorizes, averaging 10 percent in 2004.

Not only is native unemployment highest in occupations which saw the largest immigrant influx, the available evidence also shows that the employment picture for natives looks worst in those parts of the country that saw the largest increase in immigrants. For example, in states were immigrants increased their share of workers by 5 percentage points or more, the number of native workers actually fell by about 3 percent on average. But in states where the immigrant share of workers increased by less than one percentage point, the number of natives holding a job actually went up by 1.4 percent. This is exactly the kind of pattern we would expect to see if immigration was adversely impacting native employment.

Of course, businesses will continue to say that, "immigrants only take jobs Americans don’t want." But what they really mean is that given what they would like to pay, and how they would like to treat their workers, they cannot find enough Americans. Therefore, employers want the government to continually increase the supply of labor by non-enforcement of immigration laws.

I would argue forcefully that one of the best things we can do for less-educated natives, and legal immigrants already here is strictly enforce our immigration laws and reduce the number of illegal aliens in the country. We should also consider reducing unskilled legal immigration.

This would greatly enhance worker bargaining power vis-a-vis their employers and would result in lower unemployment rates and increased wages and better working conditions for American workers, immigrant and native alike.

Jihad by Satellite

2005-05-20T08:35:00.000-04:00

By Steven Stalinsky
FrontPageMagazine.com

Rep. Steven Rothman, a Democrat of New Jersey, and Rep. Joe Knollenberg, a Republican of Michigan, yesterday sponsored a MEMRI briefing on Arab and Iranian satellite channels available in America. Their broadcasts have the potential to incite viewers to jihad and contain messages of hate against Jews and Christians. As the content of such programming is exposed, it is hopeful that the Federal Communications Commission - which answers directly to Congress and the mission of which includes regulating international television in America - would consider legal proceedings against American companies that air Arab and Iranian TV channels spewing hatred.

Programs on these channels include statements clearly directed at Americans. During an official Friday sermon on August 27 aired on Sudanese TV, for example, a preacher stated that Jews engineered the attacks of September 11, 2001. He cited a quote fabricated by the Nazis and inaccurately attributed it to Benjamin Franklin: "The malaria microbe known as the Jews, which the U.S. carries in its stomach, will kill it sooner or later." He added, "These Jews hasten America's death. The U.S. must be aware. We offer this advice via the TV channels."

Similar Nazi falsehoods have resurfaced of late on other Arab and Iranian TV stations available in America, such as Al-Jazeera and Al-Manar. Tuning into those channels can be strikingly similar to watching Nazi propaganda. Programming includes shows devoted to distortions in Jewish religious texts, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," Jewish corruption throughout history, and the blood libel. On a UAE/Saudi channel Al-Majd program of March 22, 2004, the secretary-general of the Islamic Action Front Party of Jordan, Sheikh Hamza Mansour described the "sick psychological nature" of the Jews, adding that they make "matzoth out of innocent children's blood."

In August on Saudi Arabia's MBC TV, Saudi Sheikh Abd al-Qader Hammad said, "From the day civil strife began in Islam, the Jews were behind it. There is no evil in the world that the Jews are not behind. Search in the depths of history ... and you will find the finger of the Jews behind it."

"Jewish treachery is the nature of this race. It runs in their blood and passes from generation to generation," 'Adnan abu Al-Qattam said in an official Friday sermon that aired on Bahrain TV July 30. "The Jews proved to history ... they are a corrupting people ... History clearly attests to their... despicable behavior," he said. He then cited a Koranic verse calling Muslims "to kill Jews."

Saudi professor Walid al-Shuzi explained that according to Islam and the Koran, Muslims "have a duty to hate Jews and Christians," during an Al-Majd TV broadcast of March 18.

Mr. al-Shuzi's topic? "So-called" anti-Semitism.

"The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is often cited as proof of the Jews' evil nature. A Danish cleric, Nabel Shaker Al-Taleqani, appeared on Iran's Al-'Alam TV on October 30. While speaking of Jewish involvement in terrorism, he said, "Go back to the book 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.' We must return to the 24 protocols, to these secret documents." The secretary-general of the Islamic Universities' Association, Dr. Ja'far Abd Al-Salim, cited "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" on Al-Manar TV on April 22, 2004. Mr. Al-Salim said it proved that Zionist-Jews "main goal is to humiliate the human race." He also said that only Jewish companies make drugs and pornography. Egypt's Al-Ahzar Sheikh Muhammad Al-Mussayar appeared on Iqraa TV on July 12 to speak about a global campaign against Islam and the need to "confront our enemies ... expose their secret beliefs" - which he said are laid out in "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion."

Arab and Iranian TV also leap to prove the vileness of the Jews through distortions of religious texts such as Talmud and also the Torah. Prominent Muslim religious figures are not above taking this tack. For example, the leading Palestinian Authority religious figure, Mufti Ikrima Sabri, appeared on Al-Majd TV on February 20. During the program he said, "Anyone who studies 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion' and specifically the Talmud will discover that one of the goals of these protocols is to cause confusion of the world."

These examples are but a few of the dozens that appear on satellite TV beamed daily into America. There is no doubt that such programming ought not be accessible in America.

Mr. Stalinsky is the executive director of The Middle East Media Research Institute

Ten Points for a Successful Presidential Candidate

2005-05-19T06:55:00.000-04:00

By Mark Krikorian

National Review
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next presidential election may be years away, but potential candidates are already staking out positions on issues that should figure prominently. One of these is certain to be immigration, and one likely candidate for 2008 is already working to develop a tough, pro-enforcement image.

Unfortunately, that candidate is Hillary Clinton.

Her grade of F from Americans for Better Immigration, a group lobbying for stricter immigration rules, hasn’t stopped her from dropping comments to reporters like “I am, you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants,” and “People have to stop employing illegal immigrants.” Of course, the only reason Hillary thinks she has a chance of outflanking the GOP on the right is that the president’s immigration policies are terrible. It is therefore an opportune time to outline an immigration agenda for the 2008 presidential candidates. Here is a ten-point package, which includes both measures that a candidate should pledge to undertake on his own, and legislative changes that he should promote, as president.

1. Unambiguous commitment to enforcement. No candidate for chief executive can be taken seriously unless he enunciates a clear and unequivocal determination to execute the immigration law, whatever it happens to be. Presidential contenders don’t come out and say they oppose enforcement, of course, but experience shows that’s exactly what they mean when they offer the usual mealy-mouthed generalities.

It’s not just a matter of pledging to pursue specific policies; rather, given the long history of government-ignored lawbreaking, the whole enforcement environment needs to change. A strong candidate will promise to end the climate of impunity for border-jumping, and illegal employment, and fake documents, and immigration fraud. In other words, apply to immigration the lessons of “broken windows” policing, learned from New York and elsewhere. (Under this policing, you crack down on all infractions, no matter how small, to reduce crime overall.) Equally important, the
candidate should pledge that when the inevitable complaints come in from the many beneficiaries of illegal immigration, the White House will support those charged with enforcing the law, rather than hanging them out to dry, as has been the practice up to now.

2. No Hobson’s choice. Comprehensive enforcement is a tactic; a candidate also needs to articulate a strategy for success. This entails rejecting the false choice between mass roundups and amnesty. Since everyone agrees that mass roundups like the ill-named Operation Wetback of the 1950s aren’t going to occur, the anti-enforcement camp says that amnesty, and an unending stream of “temporary” workers, is the only alternative.

But a third way, and the only workable approach, is to use consistent, across-the-board enforcement as part of a strategy of attrition, causing fewer illegals to come and more of those already here to leave, so that the total illegal population declines from year to year, instead of continually rising. This is the same approach that worked so well with welfare reform, where the GOP rejected the Democratic vision of ever-growing welfare rolls, but didn’t just throw all the recipients out on the street. A long-term, strictly enforced policy can stem the tide of immigration without resorting to mass roundups and without throwing in the towel with mass amnesty.

3. Take amnesty off the table. Amnesty should not even be a legitimate topic for discussion until after we regain control of the immigration system. Terms like “legalization,” “normalization,” and the ever-popular “phased-in access to earned regularization” are simply euphemisms for amnesty, i.e., giving legal status to illegal aliens. Having an amnesty at the front end of any immigration initiative guarantees failure. In 1986, nearly 3 million illegals were legalized, while promises of enforcement to prevent future illegal immigration were quickly abandoned. As a result, today’s illegal population is twice as large as it was before the 1986 amnesty.

There is one kind of amnesty, however, that a presidential candidate could endorse — one modeled after parking-ticket or tax amnesties, giving illegal aliens 90 days to get right with the law by leaving the country. Those who left would face no penalty if they later applied to immigrate or visit; those who did not leave would be, when caught, barred permanently from future reentry.

4. No illegal workers. Employment is the chief draw for most illegals to the United States, and denying them jobs must be the centerpiece of any attrition strategy. Although the employment of illegal aliens was prohibited by Congress in 1986, opponents of that bill neutered it by disallowing any workable verification system. Several voluntary online pilot programs for employers to check their employees’ statuses were subsequently authorized, and have proven popular with businesses, but they expire in 2008. A pro-enforcement candidate should pledge not only to renew the programs, but also to make them a universal, mandatory part of the normal hiring process.

A candidate should also pledge an immediate, simple fix that would help deny employment to illegals. The IRS and the Social Security Administration should be instructed to stop accepting fake Social Security numbers or numbers that don’t match the employees’ names — most, if not all, of these cases are illegal aliens using fake or stolen numbers. For nearly 20 years, the two agencies have been facilitating illegal employment by looking the other way, and refusing to notify employers of fake numbers. (They cite privacy concerns and a lack of jurisdiction as grounds for staying quiet.) The one exception that proves the rule is a Social Security initiative that sent 1 million “no match” letters to employers in 2003; it was so effective in revealing illegal aliens that business and ethnic lobbying groups, which adamantly oppose any tightening of immigration rules, had the administration shut it down. Ending this absurd situation — immediately, right after the parade on January 20, 2009 — must be a top priority for a pro-enforcement candidate.

5. Work with states and localities. The nation’s 700,000 state and local police encounter immigration violators every day in the course of their duties. Some jurisdictions prohibit police from working with federal immigration authorities, while others that do try to turn over illegal aliens in their custody are often rebuffed by the feds, who point to a lack of resources. A presidential candidate should promote better cooperation by supporting legislative measures such as the CLEAR Act, which aims to systematize the relationship between local law and federal immigration officials, as well as administrative measures, like encouraging immigration-law training for police, and enforcing the federal ban on local “sanctuary” policies that prohibit police from using immigration law as a tool to fight crime. The point is not to turn cops into immigration officers, but to give local authorities enhanced law-enforcement abilities and to make sure that, when illegals come their way, local police can turn them over to the feds.

6. Document security. Ensuring that documents are legitimate and are issued only to the deserving is an indispensable tool of immigration enforcement. Congress may already have begun to deal with this by the next election, since it is now considering a bill that would set minimum standards for state driver’s licenses. But perhaps even more problematic than inconsistent license rules is the spreading acceptance of consular registration cards, chiefly Mexico’s “matricula consular” card, which functions as an illegal-alien ID; when accepted by U.S. jurisdictions as a valid ID for everything from bank accounts to air travel, it represents a de facto amnesty. (Anyone in the U.S. legally will have at least some form of U.S.-issued identification, whether a Social Security card or a travel visa.) The administration has been sending mixed messages about the matricula consular, with the FBI highlighting its security risks while the Treasury department explicitly approves its use by banks. Any candidate claiming to support immigration control must send a clear message that such documents have no validity in the United States.

7. Check in/check out. The administration is slowly phasing in the US-VISIT program, which will track the arrival and departure of foreign visitors. Unfortunately, a decision was made to exempt from the program nearly all Mexicans and Canadians. Since these countries account for the vast majority of foreigners coming here (85 percent), such a policy is clearly a violation of Congress’s intent in mandating this check-in/check-out system in the first place. A pro-enforcement candidate must pledge to end these exemptions.

8. Streamline legal immigration. The Department of Homeland Security is choking on immigration. There is a bewildering array of legal-immigration categories, extending far beyond the goals of admitting world-class geniuses, nuclear families of Americans, and people certain to be persecuted if they return home. A sign of the system’s dysfunction is that some 4 million people are on waiting lists to immigrate under one category or another, often with decades-long waits in store — and the list never gets any shorter. In fact, it might be more accurate not even to call it “legal” immigration, since so many in the queue are already living here illegally and are merely using the system to launder their status from illegal to legal.

We can’t expect the Augean stables to be cleaned overnight. But at a minimum, a candidate who is serious about reforming immigration can pledge to end the legal-immigration program’s two most egregious elements: the visa lottery and the admission category for adult brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens. The lottery was concocted as a way to give green cards to Irish illegal aliens who did not meet the criteria of the 1986 amnesty, but has morphed into an immigration program that benefits regions it was never intended to, like Africa and the Middle East; it has no constituency, no
rationale, and survives mainly out of inertia. As to the second, there’s no “family unification” argument justifying immigration rights for naturalized immigrants’ adult siblings, who have their own families and their own lives. This category is responsible for some of the worst backlogs and is also largely responsible for endless chain immigration — an immigrant brings his brother, whose wife then brings her sister, and so on.

Any change of this kind would have to pass Congress. But there are administrative measures a future president could take to introduce some rigor into the “legal” immigration system, chief among them a new approach to immigration fraud. Both the written rules and management practice now send the clear message to our immigration adjudicators here and to our visa officers overseas that fraud should not be a serious concern. (For example, immigrants are not punished for lying on some parts of the application, provided it doesn’t affect the final decision.) The result is predictable: a profusion of fraud, from bogus family relationships to fake home-country diplomas. A new environment of zero tolerance for lies is an essential part of any effort to have the immigration law taken seriously again.

9. “Temporary” visas. These visa programs are among the most offensive. Roughly one-third of the illegal-alien population — some 3 million people — are believed to have come in on “temporary” visas and then never left. In addition, perhaps one fourth of each year’s “new” permanent immigrants already live here on temporary visas, even though they swore to our consular officers that they had no intention of staying.

The different types of visas are designated by letters (F for students, H for workers, etc.), and they’re proliferating at such a rate that we’re almost out of letters, with Congress inventing T, U, and V visas in the past few years to bring the total number to over 20 — excluding the numerous sub-categories. And, naturally, the numbers are rising much faster than the growth of our economy or any other yardstick. In just a four-year period in the late 1990s, the number of B visas for tourists and business travelers grew 26 percent, J visas for foreign exchange (or rather “foreign exchange,” since many are really here to work) went up 40 percent, intracompany transferees (the L visa) jumped 51 percent, and the H category skyrocketed 116 percent.

The issue is large and complicated — that is to say, it is not conducive to extensive discussion in a political campaign. But a candidate who is genuinely interested in reasserting control over the immigration system must commit to certain principles: “Temporary” should actually mean temporary, and the visa system should never be used to bypass American workers or to create a market-distorting dependency on guest workers. As a first step, a candidate should pledge to oppose any expansion of numbers or categories pending a bottom-up reexamination of the rationale and functioning of the entire system.

10. Actively discourage dual citizenship. A new citizen swears that “I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen.” Of course, like everything else in immigration policy, this no longer means what it says. Dual citizenship — what Teddy Roosevelt called “a self-evident absurdity” — is now formally acknowledged by the federal government. Almost all immigrants presently come from countries that permit some form of dual citizenship, for a total potential number of at least 50 million, and, pragmatic considerations aside, dual citizenship undermines the very principle of U.S. citizenship — that one’s entire “allegiance and fidelity” is to the United States.

No conservative presidential candidate can let this stand. There are a number of immediate, symbolic measures that could reinforce the exclusivity of American citizenship; my favorite is to prepare a list of newly naturalized citizens each quarter, deliver it to the embassy of the immigrant’s original country, and inform that government that these people are no longer their concern.

But beyond symbolic gestures, a candidate should offer legal proposals as well. The problem here is not dual citizens who do nothing with their other citizenship — or are unaware that they even are citizens of another country — but those who take advantage of their dual status. The old practice of
stripping U.S. citizenship from a person who commits an “expatriating act” (e.g., voting in a foreign election) was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1967 and is not worth reviving. Instead, expatriating acts should simply be reclassified as federal offenses; thus, if an American citizen, native-born or immigrant, were to run for office in a foreign country — or serve in the government, or vote, or just use a foreign passport while traveling — he would remain secure in his American citizenship, but would be subject to civil and/or criminal penalties.

A SURE WINNER
Immigration isn’t a natural phenomenon like the weather. It is a government program, and the reforms suggested above represent conservative goals for any government program: order, fairness, predictability, transparency, and consequences for those who break the rules. Not only are these recommendations sensible, they are also very popular with the public. It is an ideal issue for solidifying the Republican base and for reaching out to Reagan Democrats. Politicians often make the mistake of thinking there’s a risk in supporting tight controls on immigration, because the people they most frequently hear from are lobby groups or members of the elite, but immigration is an issue where the gap between public and elite views could not be wider. The true risk is in not addressing immigration. As David Frum wrote in these pages at the end of last year, “Immigration for Republicans in 2005 is what crime was for Democrats in 1965 or abortion in 1975: a vulnerable point at which a strong-minded opponent could drive a wedge that would shatter the GOP.”

The silent majority on immigration is becoming increasingly restive and vocal, and this issue will only intensify as the next election approaches. Aspiring GOP candidates should capitalize on the current disquiet and seize the political high ground before their opponents beat them to it. Anyone desiring conservative support, and the Republican nomination, would be wise to adopt the above plan. It would be a shame to have to get used to saying “President Clinton” again. Wouldn’t it?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mark Krikorian is Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

Key Note Address of Under Secretary Stuart Levey

2005-05-19T06:49:00.000-04:00

California & Florida Bankers Associations’
Business Leaders Luncheon

I would like to thank Janet Lampkin (CBA CEO) and the California Bankers Association and Alex Sanchez (FBA CEO) and the Florida Bankers Association for the opportunity to speak with you today.

Your organizations are vitally important to this nation's efforts to combat terrorist financing and financial crime, and it is a pleasure for me to be speaking before you.

I have the honor of serving as the first ever Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence at the Department of the Treasury. My job is to marshal Treasury's resources to combat national security threats, such as proliferation and terrorism, and to safeguard our financial system from terrorist financing and money laundering. Many facets of my role, I am sure, are important to your institutions – that is, oversight of both the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), which administers the Bank Secrecy Act, and the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which administers U.S. sanctions imposed upon terrorists, drug kingpins and rogue countries.

Before I begin my remarks today, I would like to take a moment on behalf of both Secretary Snow and myself to thank you for the terrific support you and your institutions have provided us in our efforts. Before I came to Treasury, I worked at the Justice Department for the Deputy Attorney General. I knew then of the assistance financial institutions all over the country were giving to help make our country safer. Since I have come to Treasury, I have seen many more examples. I want you to know that we appreciate your assistance and great corporate citizenship very much. The partnership between the government and the financial industry established after September 11th must continue to grow as we make our country safer.

In some ways, our partnership has been codified in the USA PATRIOT Act in which the Congress recognized a new national security paradigm brought about by 9/11: information is key to the security of the nation. There are many critical provisions in the PATRIOT Act, but perhaps the most important ones deal with information sharing. The PATRIOT Act broke down walls that prevented the sharing of information between law enforcement and the intelligence community. Significantly for those of us here today, the PATRIOT Act provided us new tools to share information both between the government and financial institutions and among financial institutions themselves. These tools – when used effectively – can add immeasurably to our national security for one key reason: financial information, unlike some other types of intelligence, is highly reliable and valuable to identifying, locating and disrupting terrorist networks and others that mean to do us harm.

I am often asked how we are doing in the fight against terrorist financing. It is a difficult question, because, frankly al Qaida and other terrorist groups do not publish financial statements. Instead, we must rely on various proxies to give us a sense of our progress. In my mind, the most useful of these proxies is the intelligence information we receive. While I am limited in what I can say about it, I can tell you that the information we have been receiving lately is encouraging. We have seen intelligence suggesting that terrorists are having trouble raising, moving and storing money. We are also seeing terrorist groups avoiding formal financing channels, and instead resorting to riskier and more cumbersome financial conduits like bulk cash smuggling. Because of aggressive action by the Departments of Treasury and Justice and other agencies to shut down corrupt charities and to hold individuals who fund terrorism personally accountable as terrorists – just like terrorist operatives – we are seeing that once willing donors are being deterred from sending money to terrorist groups.

We have also used financial information to identify and disrupt terrorist networks and operations. Most importantly, we have indications that terrorist groups like al Qaida and Hamas are feeling the pressure and are hurting for money. During this same time period, we have also made our financial system's infrastructure more resilient. In short, through our partnership, we have made a difference.

I am keenly aware that this partnership has meant significant investment on your part. The Bank Secrecy Act and the burden that it places on financial institutions have gotten a great deal of attention recently. I think that attention is healthy and appropriate. Those of us charged with responsibilities in this area realize there are problems that must be resolved. We want to do a better job defining your obligations and helping you meet them, and we need to hear your ideas about the implementation of the Act for us to do this correctly. We have no desire to impose unnecessary burdens on industry and we certainly do not have all of the answers in Washington.

In the spirit of that candid dialogue, I would like to make a couple of points to keep in mind as we discuss the compliance burdens being placed upon you.

First, the threat against us continues to be real. The enemy we face is motivated, patient and ruthless. Our terrorist enemies do still want to attack us and they are very focused on our economy and financial systems in particular. We know that al Qaida targeted our nation's financial sector on September 11th with the attack on the World Trade Center, and the financial sector continues to be a favored target. We are reminded of this on a regular basis. Just last month, indictments were handed down in New York charging Issa al-Hindi and two others with conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction and providing material support to terrorists. According to the indictment, they conducted surveillance of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) headquarters in Washington, the Prudential Financial headquarters in New Jersey, and the New York Stock Exchange Building and Citigroup Centre in New York. I am sure that you find this as chilling as I do. I am sure you will recall the heightened threat level in August of 2004 in response in part to these matters. The further we get from September 11, 2001, the harder it may be to keep our sense of urgency, but we must never let our guard down.

It is not just terrorism that we have to guard against. Many national security threats have a sophisticated financial underpinning that we can work together to degrade, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction for example. We must stay vigilant and continue to improve our capabilities to identify and act on financial information.

The second item I would like to address is the assertion made by some that the BSA reports you file are useless or at the very least unused. This is, quite frankly, a myth. To the contrary, the importance of these reports cannot be overstated. I had lunch last week with the terrorist financing section of the FBI, and they were shocked when I mentioned this assertion was being made. They were able to show me statistics suggesting that BSA data is by far the most valuable source of leads in terrorism investigations and in other sophisticated investigations being conducted by the Bureau.

I am constantly receiving examples of criminal investigations initiated by BSA reporting. Each of the federal law enforcement agencies routinely reviews suspicious activity reports, often with dedicated SAR review teams. Recently, the Drug Enforcement Administration, conducting a routine SAR review by zip codes, followed leads that uncovered a violent street gang using a money remitter to move drug proceeds both domestically and internationally. Also recently, the FBI, using SAR analysis, initiated an investigation that resulted in federal felony charges filed against seven people associated with an organization that purported to be a charity raising money for needy people in the Middle East. Four people have already pled guilty and are cooperating with the ongoing investigation.

The list of such cases is virtually endless. I hope you are as pleased as I am that the SARs and CTRs your institutions have been filing are so valuable, and understand that we take them very seriously.

We are also well aware that we need to do better on our end of the partnership, and you should know we are committed to doing that. I believe that Bill Fox, FinCEN's director, has demonstrated that he is committed to meeting you halfway in this partnership and to engage in the open dialogue I mentioned before. Let me just say a few words about how we are trying to do better.

First, we have recognized that there is a need for a single, clear voice about what is expected from the industry. We have heard the complaints about conflicting and mixed messages from various agencies, and we are taking steps to do something about it. We are now acting to coordinate the bureaucracies with responsibilities under the Bank Secrecy Act to ensure that we are implementing the BSA in a reasonable and consistent way that achieves the Act's policy goals. FinCEN is doing an outstanding job in endeavoring to direct and harmonize the government's guidance on BSA compliance. As the administrator of the Bank Secrecy Act, FinCEN must ensure that when one of the delegated examiners takes action, it is consistent with the policy goals of the BSA. Also, FinCEN must ensure that policy set in Washington translates into action by the line examiners. The federal banking regulators have shown great commitment and cooperation in working with FinCEN to bring coherence to the enforcement of the BSA. We are starting to see a change already.

I have also begun a dialogue with the Department of Justice to see what can be done to improve coordination with respect to prosecutorial decisions to seek, or even to threaten, criminal charges under the Bank Secrecy Act. I know this is something the industry is very concerned about, and I think we will be seeing significant improvements in the very near future.

Finally, we are making it a high priority to improve the flow of information to the private sector. Section 314 of the USA PATRIOT Act envisioned a robust flow of sensitive information to the private sector – a flow that we are working to create. In the past few weeks FinCEN has finalized a secure web site that can be used for this purpose, and we will now endeavor to make that real. This is a critical step because it will enable us to help you help us in identifying the types of suspicious activity that pose real dangers.

We are also working hard to ensure that your counterparts all over the world are being asked to do their part in this fight. International cooperation in combating money laundering and terrorist financing is more important than ever. As this audience well knows, the U.S. financial system does not exist as an island, which is why I spend a great deal of my time reaching out globally, working with multinational organization and regional bodies, and bilaterally with other countries to encourage the adoption of fundamental anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing policies and procedures.

One of the most significant advances we have seen in recent weeks is foreign banks adopting OFAC's Specially Designated Nationals, or SDN, list even for transactions that do not touch the U.S. This is a momentous event in terms of multiplying the effects of our domestic sanctions authorities. In countries that lack the infrastructure to establish sanctioning bodies like OFAC, we are working directly with the private sector at the invitation of national governments and central banks. Our goal is to engage the private sector as our partners against money laundering and the financing of terrorism just as we are doing here at home.

Our continued success requires building bridges across governmental departments, between the regulatory agencies and to you, the private sector. It is a big project and it is ongoing. We are keenly aware of the mixed messages you have received and the growing pains we have all endured. However, I want to leave you with the thought that our efforts against terrorist financing and to protect our national security are a shared responsibility.

The old paradigm of governments defending their citizenry from outside threats vanished on 9/11. The threats to our security are no longer purely external, but can come from within, and require that we all think about the threat differently. In short, the government cannot do it alone. We need your help. We will work tirelessly to fulfill our obligations in this partnership. Working together, we have made great progress, and only by working together can we build upon that success.

Thank You.

2005-05-18T13:58:00.000-04:00

by Daniel Pipes and Sharon Chadha

http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2627
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=18109

Should you read Unequal Protection: The Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States 2005, an annual report issued last week by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), you'll learn how the Muslim experience in America is worsening. Specifically, the number of "anti-Muslim hate crimes in the United States" has gone up dramatically: from 42 cases in 2002, to 93 cases in 2003, to 141 in 2004.

This news prompted headlines in the mainstream media. "Muslims Report 50% Increase in Bias Crimes," announced the New York Times; "Crimes, Complaints Involving Muslims Rise," broadcast the Washington Post; and "Muslims Cite a Rise in Hate Crimes," echoed the Los Angeles Times. That these leading newspapers treated the CAIR study as a serious piece of research served as an important endorsement.

But CAIR is part of the Wahhabi Lobby, so (unlike the mainstream media reporters) we thought it a good idea to take a closer look at the report. We examined in detail some "examples of anti-Muslim hate crime reports received by CAIR in 2004," on p. 43, plus some "samples" on p. 53 and discovered a pattern of sloppiness, exaggeration, and distortion:

CAIR cites the July 9, 2004 case of apparent arson at a Muslim-owned grocery store in Everett, Washington. But investigators quickly determined that Mirza Akram, the store's operator, staged the arson to avoid meeting his scheduled payments and to collect on an insurance policy. Although Akram's antics were long ago exposed as a fraud, CAIR continues to list this case as an anti-Muslim hate crime.

CAIR also states that "a Muslim-owned market was burned down in Texas" on August 6, 2004. But already a month later, the owner was arrested for having set fire to his own business. Why does CAIR include this incident in its report?

CAIR lists the March 2005 lawsuit filed by the Salmi family for the firebombing of their family van as one example of a hate crime reports it received in 2004. However, the crime named in the lawsuit occurred in March 2003, was already reported by CAIR in 2003, and should not have been tabulated again in the 2004 report.

CAIR reports that "a home-made bomb exploded outside of the Champions Mosque in the Houston suburb of Spring, Texas," staking its claim on eyewitness reports that on July 4, 2004, "two white males" were seen placing the bomb. We inquired about the incidents and found that Spring's sheriff department could not locate any police files about an explosion. Further inquiries to the mosque and an e-mail to CAIR both went unanswered. There is scant evidence that any crime even occurred.

CAIR notes that "investigators in Massachusetts are still investigating a potential hate-motivated arson against the Al-Baqi Islamic Center in Springfield." However the case was long ago ruled a simple robbery, news that even CAIR's own website has posted. The Associated Press reported on January 21, 2005, that prosecutors determined the fire was set by teen-age boys "who broke into the Al-Baqi mosque to steal money and candy, then set the fire to cover their tracks." The boys, they clarified, "weren't motivated by hatred toward Muslims."

CAIR describes what happened to a Muslim family in Tucson, Arizona: "bullet shots pierced their home as they ate dinner in October 2004" and two months later their truck was smashed and vandalized. But the only evidence that either incident was motivated by hate of Muslims is the Dehdashti family itself, not the police. Detective Frank Rovi of Pima County Sheriff's Department, who handled the shooting investigation, said that according to the neighbors, the desert area by the Dehdashti house was often used for target practice. Neither incident was classified as a hate crime and both cases were closed by February 2005, long before the CAIR report went to press.

Of twenty "anti-Muslim hate crimes" in 2004 that CAIR describes, at least six are invalid – and further research could likely find problems with the other fourteen instances.

Nor is this the first unreliable CAIR report; earlier ones were just as bad. Speaking about the 1996 CAIR report, terrorism expert Steven Emerson noted in congressional testimony that "a large proportion of the complaints have been found to be fabricated, manufactured, distorted or outside standard definitions of hate crimes." The 1996 report included the arrest of Musa Abu Marzouk, a Hamas leader, and the trial of Omar Abdul-Rahman, the blind sheikh and ringleader of the foiled "Day of Terror" plot to blow up New York City landmarks.

Even more absurdly, CAIR classified as an American hate crime the shooting of Ahmed Hamida in Jerusalem on February 26, 1996, as he fled after driving his car into a crowd of Israeli civilians, killing one and injuring twenty-three others. One wonders why the killing of a terrorist in Israel would be classified as an American issue; more of CAIR's sloppiness?

Indeed, very little of what CAIR asserts checks out. CAIR's significant inaccuracy has potentially great consequence. Note what happened after Newsweek reported in its May 9 issue that the Koran had been desecrated at the U.S. military prison in Guantánamo, Cuba. Protests raged in the Muslim world, including demonstrations that turned violent in Afghanistan and killed at least sixteen people. Newsweek eventually retracted the story, but a bit late. Had things turned out otherwise, CAIR's erroneous report could have provoked similar violence.

The staff at CAIR does not divulge to us its reasons for not retracting at least the provably false incidents embedded in its inflated "hate" figures, but we can think of two reasons: to scare its constituency, thereby raising more money; and to put the American public on the defensive, thereby winning more privileges for Islam, such as the 2000 U.S. Senate resolution inveighing against the "discrimination and harassment" suffered by the American Muslim community.

But why do journalists report the results of CAIR's survey – as though it came from a source without a viewpoint bias, as though past studies had been reliable, as though its polls are scientific, as though it has not been party to threats against an American Muslim dissident, and as though it has not protected Osama bin Laden's image, as though five of CAIR's staff and board members have not already been associated with terrorism, and as though it is not named as a defendant in 9/11 terror lawsuit?

One wonders what it will take for old media to ignore CAIR's unreliable research and instead start reporting the words of Steven Pomerantz, a former chief of the FBI's counterterrorism section, that CAIR's activities "effectively give aid to international terrorist groups."

The Real Lesson of Newsweekgate

2005-05-18T10:10:00.000-04:00

By Robert Spencer

When in April EBay offered a consecrated host for sale, imagine if Catholics had rioted and seventeen people were killed.
The media would have been full of stories about the dark side of the “Christian Right.”

Imagine if, when Muslims desecrated the Tomb of Joseph in Nablus in 2000, destroying it with hammers, rampaging Jewish mobs had killed dozens of Palestinians.

The establishment media response would again have inundated us with stories about the heroic Palestinians and their Israeli oppressors.

Neither of those things really happened. But seventeen people have been killed and hundreds wounded in riots by Muslims since Newsweek published its story about an American interrogator flushing a Qur’an down the toilet at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.

And yet the media establishment seems preoccupied only with the fact that Newsweek, in publishing a false story that it has since retracted, has done a very bad thing. And that the Bush Administration must do something to calm tempers and soothe feelings in the Islamic world.

There is no excusing Newsweek’s irresponsibility in this. But this is not really a story about media bias or carelessness at all. There is a much larger story that is getting hardly any attention at all. The gorilla in the living room that no one wants to notice, is that flushing a Qur’an down the toilet should not be grounds to commit murder.

This aspect of the story is being ignored by spokesmen on both the Left and the Right. After the initial reports of rioting, Juan Cole sputtered, “Whatever goddam military genius came up with the bright idea of flushing the Koran down the toilet at Guantanamo should be court-martialed, and Bush had better get out there apologizing before this thing spirals further out of control.” On the other side of the political spectrum, Paul Marshall wrung his hands in National Review: “Even if Newsweek publishes a full retraction, the damage is done. Much of the Muslim world will regard it merely as a cover-up and feel reconfirmed in the view that America is at war with Islam.”

Neither Cole nor Marshall, however, made any moral judgment about the rioters. Marshall was furious with Newsweek: “It would be charitable to think that if Newsweek had known how explosive the story was it may have held off until it had more confirmation. If this is true, it is an indication that the media’s widespread failure to pay careful attention to the complexities of religion not only misleads us about domestic and international affairs but also gets people killed.” Cole, for his part, directed his anger at the Bush Administration: “As a professional historian, I would say we still do not have enough to be sure that the Koran desecration incident took place. We have enough to consider it plausible. Anyway, the important thing politically is that some Muslims have found it plausible, and their outrage cannot be effectively dealt with by simple denial. That is why I say that Bush should just come out and say we can’t be sure that it happened, but if it did it was an excess, and he apologizes if it did happen, and will make sure it doesn’t happen again (if it did).”

Neither one says anything whatsoever about a culture that condones — celebrates —wanton murder of innocent people, mayhem, and destruction in response to the alleged and unproven destruction of a book.
The question here is one of proportionate response. If a Qur’an had indeed been flushed, Muslims would have justifiably been offended. They may justifiably have considered the perpetrators boors, or barbarians, or hell-bound unbelievers. They may justifiably have issued denunciations accordingly. But that is all. To kill people thousands of miles away who had nothing to do with the act, and to fulminate with threats and murder against the entire Western world, all because of this alleged act, is not just disproportionate. It is not just excessive. It is mad. And every decent person in the world ought to have the courage to stand up and say that it is mad.

I suspect that even Juan Cole and Paul Marshall, somewhere in the back of their minds, know that it is mad too. But why don’t they say so? Because Rule #1 in the establishment (Left and Right) view of this present conflict is that it has nothing to do with Islam. To bring a moral judgment to bear upon Muslim people, or to explore the ways in which Islam fuels the conflict, is therefore absolutely forbidden.

This kind of analysis, dominant as it is in the media, does the Western world an enormous disservice. The reaction to the Newsweek story in the Muslim world only shows how critical it is that the elements of Islam that give rise to fanaticism and violence be examined and confronted. Lives are at stake. But Cole and Marshall, and many others like them on both the Left and the Right, can’t see this necessity through the enveloping fog of political correctness.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch; author of Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West (Regnery), and Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World’s Fastest Growing Faith (Encounter); and editor of the essay collection The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: Islamic Law and Non-Muslims (Prometheus). He is working on a new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (forthcoming from Regnery).

Transcripts of Fox News Interviews With Steven Emerson:

2005-05-18T06:53:00.000-04:00

1. Fox News The O'Reilly Factor, 5/16/05
2. Fox News Dayside w/ Linda Vester, 5/17/05

May 16, 2005
THE O'REILLY FACTOR

BILL O'REILLY: "Impact" segment tonight, the trial of accused terrorist helper Sami Al-Arian began today in Tampa. He's charged with a variety of federal offenses. And you may remember "The Factor's" investigation of him in 2001, where we spotlighted his fund-raising for killers.

There is also an interesting twist to the story. Al-Arian may have been helped by The St. Petersburg Times newspaper. That's the same newspaper we believe is in the tank for Brad King, the prosecutor who will not charge three adults who may have helped the killer of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford.

Joining us now from Washington is terrorism expert Steve Emerson, who was investigating Al-Arian very early and ran up against The St. Petersburg Times.

You know, you were the first one, I think, to pinpoint that Al-Arian was helping terrorist groups, Islamic jihad primarily, kill people, by raising money and propaganda efforts. And every turn, St. Petersburg Times contradicted you and helped Al-Arian, correct?

STEVEN EMERSON, INVESTIGATED SAMI AL-ARIAN'S TIES WITH TERROR GROUPS: No, not only did they help Al-Arian, they helped his brother-in-law. And they consistently downplayed, denigrated, and actually tried to neutralize the government's case, I think, Bill, by a pattern of such overwhelming intellectual dishonesty that it really, I think, now requires some type of internal investigation.

Let me add one thing, however. In a quote that I was quoted in this morning's New York Sun paper, I should have added one thing. There was one reporter at The St. Petersburg Times who tried and successfully was able to turn around the reporting for the time that she was there. Mary Jacoby.

But she was beaten back. And ultimately the reporting reverted back to its same intellectual dishonesty.

O'REILLY: Now what is the problem with this paper? They're sympathetic to Al-Arian, who I believe will be convicted of terrible crimes and may serve life in prison. They're sympathetic to the three people who enabled this terrible killer to, you know, snuff out the life of a 9-year- old girl.

Is it ideology there? Is it incompetence? What's going on at The St. Petersburg Times?

EMERSON: Well, I think that in the case at least of misreporting the Al-Arian Islamic jihad episode for years, it was definitely an aversion to facts and an unwillingness to report what really -- in the evidence that was coming out from the courts and what was available in the public record.

Look, when the reporters refer to five radical Islamic conferences where the top terrorists in the world are attending, and they referred to them as "political conferences for simple discussions of politics and legitimate topics" were basically exchanged, you know something is wrong because the record shows that these were terrorist conferences.

I think that they were co-opted. That's the term used by the FBI in their internal memo in 1996. Ideologically, I think they fell in love with the "victims" to the point that one of the reporters actually referred to the suspects in the Islamic jihad case in the same way that the Jews were the victims of the Holocaust. What an obscene comparison.

O'REILLY: Yes. I mean, there's something very wrong with that newspaper. And as you mentioned, the FBI did actually discuss that the newspaper's support was very questionable -- very questionable.

Now this was before 9/11. Do you think they have changed their tune? I don't think so because they attacked me when I investigated Al-Arian. And -- but maybe they've changed their tune toward terrorism. Have they?

EMERSON: Well, there was just a piece the other day called "Growing Up Al-Arian." And it was these -- a tear-jerker piece focused on Al- Arian's family.

And the bottom line was that he was made to be this poor victim. And his family was suffering because here's this father, who is in isolated jail serving, you know, a -- at least waiting to be tried, a trial starting today.

They made him to be such a victim, not in just this one article, but since 1995. The question is why.

O'REILLY: Yes, that's...

EMERSON: And I don't really have a full answer to that.

O'REILLY: Well, we're trying to get at this guy. Paul Tash is the publisher. He doesn't respond to direct questions.

We know that paper is very far left, The St. Petersburg Times. Historically it has been that way. It looks like they're anti-Israel. Anything that I say, they're against.

I think that's what's going on there, but I'm not sure.

Real quick, do you think Al-Arian's going to get convicted? Jury selection began today. Do you think he's toast?

EMERSON: I think the evidence is pretty overwhelming. And despite his -- the efforts of his defenders, Bill, I don't think they're going to succeed. The wire taps are absolutely incontrovertible.

O'REILLY: Right.

EMERSON: The wire transfers are amazing. This guy was involved directly as...

O'REILLY: They got him.

EMERSON: ...the head of the network in the United States.

O'REILLY: All right. Mr. Emerson, thanks as always. One footnote. As we said, the head guy at the St. Pete Times, Paul Tash, issued a statement denying any wrongdoing by his newspaper, but in my opinion, there is something very, very wrong there.

May 17, 2005
Dayside with Linda Vester

MIKE JERRICK (substitute host): Have the arrests of several terrorists in Pakistan reported to be top Al-Qaeda leaders and aides to Osama bin Laden crushed the terrorist network? Steve Emerson is a terrorist analyst and Executive Director of The Investigative Project. And Steve, you know where this report is coming from. It's the Pakistani's Interior Minister saying, 'Oh my gosh, we got a couple of top guys in Al-Qaeda that we've kind of broken this network, especially in Pakistan', do you believe it?

STEVEN EMERSON: Usually these types of reports come when there's an appropriations bill for foreign aid.

JERRICK: There you go.

EMERSON: The bottom line is there's no way you could declare this type of victory, it's too premature. This is a war that is not going to be won this year, or next year or in the next 10 years. And the fact of the matter is bin Laden still remains at large and so does Ayman Al-Zawahiri as well as five other members of the top 20 leaders of the Al-Qaeda network.

JERRICK: So, what was your opinion when you heard of the two guys, Al-Yemini and Al-Libbi? Are they really that high up on Al-Qaeda's list?

EMERSON: Remember that there are people coming up on the list who are basically being forced up as the people ahead of them are being taken out or they're being arrested. So people who were number 15, or number 20, or number 25, are suddenly becoming number five. Reality is that these are victories, there is no doubt about that. And the victories have greater resonance and they may still -- if they can pursue the active leads and roll up others, and that clearly was the result of the arrest last year of Khan in Pakistan when they looked at his computer. The only question whether they are going to get any closer to bin Laden. They were saying within the Muslim world, and are basically given safe haven or are not really scrutinized by the host regimes despite what those regimes are saying in terms of cracking down on the Islamic fighters. Saudi Arabia clearly would rather have these guys fighting against the Americans in Iraq then launching attacks on their own soil.

JERRICK: You got to weigh in on this "Newsweek" article. Islamic extremists looking for any reason to demonstrate and burn the American flag. How important do you think this story is, I mean it's getting so much coverage?

EMERSON: Look I'm going to play the anti-conventional wisdom here. I don't think the problem is "Newsweek," I think the problem is the militant Islamic conspiratorial culture that is pervasive that believes anything and anything said anytime about the evil intent of the Crusaders or the Americans or Christian world or Jews. And The fact remains as a friend of mine, Andy McCarthy wrote in the National Review Online today in a brilliant article, the fact remains that is this issue crystallizes a major problem we face: a fanatical culture that is unfortunately pervasive and exists beyond just Afghanistan or Pakistan that we have not come to terms with, and suddenly we believe somehow that this is a legitimate reaction to a report. If that report, as you know, was true, what would we be saying? That it wasn't justified? The fact remains that these types of incidents show that there's a conspiratorial fanatical culture that we have not yet acknowledged the existence of.

JERRICK: And so the President says, 'Newsweek you need to come out with a very aggressive campaign to rectify this problem', what could be done to possibly rectify the damage?

EMERSON: I'm sorry, but that's absolutely, you know, illogical. The reality is that nothing "Newsweek" does or even the United States does -- the whole PR campaign at the State Department, I would rather them take that money and put it into something in the United States. Nothing is going to convince the vast majority of people in that part of the world if they get all their information from al-Jazeera, from the Islamic radical schools, from their own leaders, from their own web sites that constantly re-enforce the notion that the West is out to get them. That is what bin Laden has been saying for 15 years and they are getting variants of that message. Nothing that "Newsweek" does or the U.S. Government does is going to change that. And we have to deal with that and we have to understand this is an implacable enemy.

JERRICK: Good to see you again.

EMERSON: Sure

McCarthy Weighs in on Newsweek Fiasco--Reminds us it's Militant Islam

2005-05-18T06:49:00.000-04:00

The Smug Delusion of Base Expectations
Count me out of the Newsweek feeding frenzy.

Andrew C. McCarthy

We're in the grips of a pathology. And it's not media bias.

Here's the late-breaking news (you'll want to be sitting down for this): The mainstream media is ideologically liberal and instinctually hostile to George W. Bush, U.S. foreign policy, and the American military.

No kidding. Really. If you want to throw the off-switch for the cognitive part of your brain — as many conservatives seem only to happy to do this week — then, by all means, that is the story you want to run with in this latest media scandal.

Newsweek, in reckless pursuit of a scoop that might score the daily double of embarrassing the Bush administration while heaping more disrepute on the Left's favorite punching bag, Guantanamo Bay, falsely reported a martial toilet-flushing of the Koran. Oops, I'm sorry, I mean the Holy Koran — after all, I don't want to be left out of the new, vast right-wing "we can be just as nauseatingly pious as they can" conspiracy.

The false report, according to the New York Times, instigated "the most virulent, widespread anti-American protests" in the Muslim world since...well, since the last virulent, widespread anti-American protests in the Muslim world — particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where at least 17 people have been killed.

That's right. The reason for the carnage is said — again and again, by media critics and government officials — to be a false report of Koran desecration. The prime culprit here is irresponsible journalism.

Is that what we really think?

Here's an actual newsflash — and one, yet again, that should be news to no one: The reason for the carnage here was, and is, militant Islam. Nothing more.

Newsweek merely gave the crazies their excuse du jour. But they didn't need a report of Koran desecration to fly jumbo jets into skyscrapers, to blow up embassies, or to behead hostages taken for the great sin of being Americans or Jews. They didn't need a report of Koran desecration to take to the streets and blame the United States while enthusiastically taking innocent lives. This is what they do.

The outpouring of righteous indignation against Newsweek glides past a far more important point. Yes, we're all sick of media bias. But "Newsweek lied and people died" is about as worthy a slogan as the scurrilous "Bush lied and people died" that it parrots. And when we engage in this kind of mindless demagoguery, we become just another opportunistic plaintiff — no better than the people all too ready to blame the CIA because Mohammed Atta steered a hijacked civilian airliner into a big building, and to sue the Port Authority because the building had the audacity to collapse from the blow.

What are we saying here? That the problem lies in the falsity of Newsweek's reporting? What if the report had been true? And, if you're being honest with yourself, you cannot say — based on common sense and even ignoring what we know happened at Abu Ghraib — that you didn't think it was conceivably possible the report could have been true. Flushing the Koran down a toilet (assuming for argument's sake that our environmentally correct, 3.6-liters-per-flush toilets are capable of such a feat) is a bad thing. But rioting? Seventeen people killed? That's a rational response?

Sorry, but I couldn't care less about Newsweek. I'm more worried about the response and our willful avoidance of its examination. Afghanistan has been an American reconstruction project for nearly four years. Pakistan has been a close American "war on terror" ally for just as long. This is what we're getting from the billions spent, the lives lost, and the grand project of exporting nonjudgmental, sharia-friendly democracy? A killing spree? Over this?

In the affirmative-action context, conservatives have written trenchantly about the "soft bigotry of low expectations" — the promotion of a vile dependency-ethos that says "you don't need to strive for better," as a result of which many people who might, don't. Our cognate sense of the Islamic world has become the smug delusion of base expectations.

Someone alleges a Koran flushing and what do we do? We expect, accept, and silently tolerate militant Muslim savagery — lots of it. We become the hangin' judge for the imbeciles whose negligence "triggered" the violence, but offer no judgment about the societal dysfunction that allows this grade of offense to trigger so cataclysmic a reaction. We hop on our high horses having culled from the Left's playbook the most politically correct palaver about the inviolable sanctity of Holy Islamic scripture (and never you mind those verses about annihilating the infidels — the ones being chanted by the killers). And we suspend disbelief, insisting that things would be just fine in a place like Gaza if we could only set up a democracy — a development which, there, appears poised to empower Hamas, terrorists of the same ilk as those in Afghanistan and Pakistan who see comparatively minor indignities as license to commit murder.

"Minor indignities? How can you say something so callous about a desecration of the Holy Koran?" I say it as a member of the real world, not the world of prissy affectation. I don't know about you, but I inhabit a place where crucifixes immersed in urine and Madonna replicas composed of feces are occasions for government funding, not murderous uprisings. If someone was moved to kill on their account, we'd be targeting the killer, not the exhibiting museum, not the "artists," and surely not Newsweek.

I inhabit a world in which my government seeks accommodation with Saudi Arabia and China and Egypt, places where the practice of Christianity results in imprisonment...or worse; in which Jews have been driven from almost every country in the Middle East, and in which the goal of destroying their country, Israel, is viewed by much of the globe as legitimate foreign policy; and in which being a Christian, an animist, or the wrong kind of Muslim in Sudan is grounds for genocide — something the vaunted United Nations seems to regard as more of a spectator sport than a cause of action.

In my world, militant Muslims, capitalizing on the respectful deference of others, have been known tactically to desecrate the Koran themselves: by rigging it with explosives, by using it to secrete and convey terrorist messages, and, yes, even by toilet-flushing parts of it for the nuisance value of flooding the bathrooms at Guantanamo Bay. Just as they have used mosques as sanctuaries, as weapons depots, and as snipers' nests.

There's a problem here. But it's not insensitivity, and it's not media bias. Those things are condemnable, but manageable. The real problem here is a culture that either cannot or will not rein in a hate ideology that fuels killing. When we go after Newsweek, we're giving it a pass. Again.

— Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

Bahraini Author and Journalist: The Proponents of the Suicide Ideology Have Taken Advantage of Global Communications

2005-05-17T05:38:00.000-04:00

In an article that appeared in the Saudi daily Al-Yawm, titled "The Globalization of Islamic Suicide" author and journalist Sawsan Al-Sha'er wrote that the extremist Islamist groups are taking advantage of global communications to recruit suicide bombers, and predicted the spread of the suicide bomber phenomenon to Britain as well. The following are excerpts from the article:(1)

"The Proponents of the Suicide Ideology Have Taken Advantage of Global Communications"

"One of the most conspicuous manifestations of globalization is communication technology, which has made communication between people easy, available, cheap, and accessible to all, large and small, with no need for a license or oversight, via open skies and without geographical or political borders.

"The proponents of the suicide ideology have used global communications in the best possible way, taking advantage of all available and accessible means for disseminating their ideology and writings, with no borders or obstacles to prevent them from doing so.

"Evidence of this is the effectiveness of recruitment of suicide bombers in all Islamic areas, with no need for central leadership to carry out the recruitment, or for a base to take them in. They carry out their suicide operations in many areas on all continents, with no political borders...

"All that is needed for recruiting [suicide bombers] is mass communications, to spread the Islamist slogan. Today, the centers for recruiting [suicide bombers] are no more than websites or satellite television channels, to which the youth connect from internet cafis, scattered throughout our Arab world, that have boosted the still-active traditional recruitment centers concealed in the mosques in far-flung villages.

"Further, perpetrating [suicide attacks] needs no leadership. Any group even if it is small and limited in capability, and with primitive means can carry out what it sees fit, as did the group that recently [perpetrated] the recent attacks in Cairo.

"I myself have visited many Jihad websites, and I have seen the extent of the degradation of the minds and lives of the youth, and I see how adults are profiteering from them. Things became worse when the websites began disseminating emails with murderous pictures and ideas that turn a man into a ticking bomb as if these websites are stores selling weapons without [restriction] by laws or regulations...

The Recruitment Centers are Heard From Preachers' Pulpits and Satellite Channels - Can We Then Ask Where These Murderers Come From?

"...In the Islamic section of a Bahrain paper, one writer published a series of over 20 articles, over the course of an entire year, in which he called on the youth to wage Jihad, cursed the [Arab] regimes and governments, and claimed that in today's societies there is apostasy and sin ... and all this happened within earshot of and before the eyes of the paper's editor-in-chief and director without them doing a thing to prevent the crime of selling this murderous weapon. This selling is still continuing, and the paper is still raking in the profits.

"The public recruitment centers do not need to call on the youth directly to commit suicide bombings it is enough for them to create the enemy, and the enthusiasm of the youth takes care of the rest. The pulpits of our mosques are disseminating propaganda to the point where those who hear it say 'Enough.' The teachers in our schools are suckling our children on hatred of the other, and so on and so forth. All these are recruitment centers selling licenses to murder, to anyone who wants...

"Imagine that all these various centers spoken and heard from the preachers' pulpits or on the satellite channels, and written in books or [posted] on websites sell licenses [to murder]. Can we then ask where these murderers come from?...

"The sellers of licenses to kill have effectively taken advantagae of global communications to serve their purposes. And why not? After all, their activity is not subject to legislation or oversight... After we read about three English youths of Asian background breaking into one of the mosques in London to prevent the worshipers from voting in the [recent] elections, on the grounds that [Muslims] should not vote in these elections, expect the English 'Islamist' version of exploding suicide bombers soon.

"This is the globalization of the suicide culture."

Endnote:
(1) Al-Yawm (Saudi Arabia), May 12, 2005.

*********************
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is an independent, non-profit organization that translates and analyzes the media of the Middle East. Copies of articles and documents cited, as well as background information, are available on request.

MEMRI holds copyrights on all translations. Materials may only be used with proper attribution.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI)
P.O. Box 27837, Washington, DC 20038-7837
Phone: (202) 955-9070
Fax: (202) 955-9077
E-Mail: memri@memri.org
www.memri.org

This Week's Palestinian Authority Sermon: We (Muslims) Will Rule America; Israel is a Cancer; Jews are a Virus Resembling AIDS; Muslims Will Finish Th

2005-05-16T16:35:00.000-04:00

To view this Special Dispatch in HTML, visit http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD90805

The following are excerpts from this week's official Friday sermon on Palestinian Authority (PA) TV.(1) The preacher is Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris, a paid employee of the PA. To view the sermon visit http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=669 .

"Allah has tormented us with 'the people most hostile to the believers' the Jews. 'Thou shalt find that the people most hostile to the believers to be the Jews and the polytheists.' Allah warned His beloved Prophet Muhammad about the Jews, who had killed their prophets, forged their Torah, and sowed corruption throughout their history.

"With the establishment of the state of Israel, the entire Islamic nation was lost, because Israel is a cancer spreading through the body of the Islamic nation, and because the Jews are a virus resembling AIDS, from which the entire world suffers.

"You will find that the Jews were behind all the civil strife in this world. The Jews are behind the suffering of the nations.

"Ask Britain what it did to the Jews in the early sixth century. What did they do to the Jews? They expelled them, tortured them, and prevented them from entering Britain for more than 300 years. All this was because of what the Jews did in Britain. Ask France what it did to the Jews. They tortured them, expelled them, and burned their Talmud, because of the civil strife the Jews wanted to spark in France, in the days of Louis XIX. Ask Portugal what it did to the Jews. Ask Czarist Russia, which welcomed the Jews, who plotted to kill the Czar - so he massacred them. But don't ask Germany what it did to the Jews. It was the Jews who provoked Nazism to wage war against the entire world, when the Jews, using the Zionist movement, got other countries to wage an economic war on Germany and to boycott German merchandise. They provoked Russia, Britain, France, and Italy. This enraged the Germans toward the Jews, leading to the events of those days, which the Jews commemorat today.

"But they are committing worse deeds than those done to them in the Nazi war. Yes, perhaps some of them were killed and some burned, but they are inflating this in order to win over the of the media and gain the world's sympathy. The worst crimes in history were committed against the Jews, yet these crimes are no worse than what the Jews are doing in Palestine. What was done to the Jews was a crime, but isn't what the Jews are doing today in the land of Palestine not a crime?!

"Look at modern history. Where has Great Britain gone? Where has Czarist Russia gone? Where has France gone - France, which almost ruled the entire world? Where is Nazi Germany, which massacred millions and ruled the world? Where did all these superpowers go? He who made them disappear will make America disappear too, God willing. He who made Russia disappear overnight is capable of making America disappear and fall, Allah willing.

"We have ruled the world before, and by Allah, the day will come when we will rule the entire world again. The day will come when we will rule America. The day will come when we will rule Britain and the entire world except for the Jews. The Jews will not enjoy a life of tranquility under our rule, because they are treacherous by nature, as they have been throughout history. The day will come when everything will be relived of the Jews - even the stones and trees which were harmed by them. Listen to the Prophet Muhammad, who tells you about the evil end that awaits Jews. The stones and trees will want the Muslims to finish off every Jew."

Endnotes:
(1) Palestinian Authority TV, May 13, 2005.

For more information on the subject: See "Palestinian Authority Sermons 2000-2003," December 26, 2003, http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sr&ID=SR2403

*MEMRITV Clip No. 647, "Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris in a PA Friday Sermon: Muslim Prisoners Are Forced to Convert to Christianity in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine," http://memritv.org/Search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=647

*MEMRI TV Clip No. 608, "Palestinian Authority Friday Sermon: The Time Has Come for the 'Great Jihad,'" http://memritv.org/Search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=608

*MEMRI TV Clip No. 563, "Sermons on Palestinian TV," http://memritv.org/Search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=563

*********************
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is an independent, non-profit organization that translates and analyzes the media of the Middle East. Copies of articles and documents cited, as well as background information, are available on request.

MEMRI holds copyrights on all translations. Materials may only be used with proper attribution.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI)
P.O. Box 27837, Washington, DC 20038-7837
Phone: (202) 955-9070
Fax: (202) 955-9077
E-Mail: memri@memri.org
www.memri.org

FAIR Legislative Update

2005-05-16T13:36:00.000-04:00

May 16, 2005

In this update:
President Signs REAL ID into Law!

New Guestworker Amnesty Legislation Hangs a "For Sale" Sign on Citizenship

McCain/Kennedy Expected to Unveil New Guestworker/Amnesty Legislation

Minuteman Vows to Continue Efforts

Border Patrol Ordered to Keep Arrests Down in Arizona

House Hearing Praises Dreier Social Security Bill

Recent Floor Statements

Upcoming Events

President Signs REAL ID into Law!
Congratulations on a job well done! Last Wednesday, President Bush signed the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act containing the REAL ID provisions into law, making it Public Law 109-13.

This new law will help keep driver's licenses out of the hands of illegal aliens and the terrorists among them, will close dangerous loopholes in our asylum laws, will bolster border security, and will increase funding for immigration enforcement.

This significant victory would not be possible without your tremendous efforts. You sent the message home to Congress with countless phone calls, faxes, and emails. Many of you even met with your legislators in person to stress the importance of enacting these homeland security/immigration enforcement reforms. You gave it your all, and we succeeded! Thank you.

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New Guestworker Amnesty Legislation Hangs a "For Sale" Sign on Citizenship
Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) reintroduced his military on the border bill on April 28 with 34 original cosponsors. H.R. 1986 would authorize the Secretary of Defense to assign members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps to assist the Department of Homeland Security in the performance of border protection functions.

Help build support for putting troops on the border! Send FREE faxes from our web site urging your legislators to cosponsor H.R. 1986.

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McCain/Kennedy Expected to Unveil New Guestworker/Amnesty Legislation
On May 12, Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Representatives Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ) introduced companion guestworker amnesty bills, S. 1033 and H.R. 2330.

The text of this legislation is not yet available, but here's what we've learned this legislation entails.

Millions of currently resident illegal aliens would be permitted to buy guestworker status for a fee of $1,000. After the first three year term they could apply for three year extensions (for another $1000), and in the meantime, apply for green cards. After six years they would be eligible for permanent residency, which could ultimately lead to full U.S. citizenship.

New foreign workers would be permitted to buy three year renewable visas for $500, provided they can find an employer that will hire them. They too could apply for green cards after three years, and ultimately U.S. citizenship.

This bill creates a new H-5A visa category which permits 400,000 new guestworkers each year.

Nothing in the legislation prevents employers from continuing to hire illegal aliens. In fact, the sponsors of this legislation recently stated that they didn't think employers should be punished for hiring illegal workers.

Selling citizenship to illegal aliens and new foreign workers is NOT a legitimate immigration policy.

Once the details of this legislation become clearer we will update you further and request your assistance in opposing this outrageous guestworker amnesty by sending free faxes through our website to your legislators expressing strong opposition to S.1033 and H.R.2330.

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Minuteman Vows to Continue Efforts
Minuteman organizer Chris Simcox told members of the House Government Reform Committee that Americans are tired of waiting for the government to secure the borders and that he and others with continue their efforts to stem the tide of illegal aliens crossing the border illegally. Simcox said Congress should put the National Guard or U.S. military troops on the border, and increase the border patrol to deal with illegal aliens, drug smugglers, and terrorists crossing the border. Read more.

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Border Patrol Ordered to Keep Arrests Down in Arizona
The Washington Times reports that U.S. Border Patrol agents have been ordered not to arrest illegal aliens along the 23-mile section of the Arizona border monitored last month by Minuteman volunteers. More than a dozen border patrol agents, who wish not to be identified, said orders relayed by Border Patrol supervisors at Naco, AZ made clear that arrests were not to go up because an increase in apprehensions there would prove the effectiveness of the Minuteman project.

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House Hearing Praises Dreier Social Security Bill
The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration held a hearing last week on H.R. 98 by Rep. David Dreier (R-CA), which would upgrade Social Security cards by making them tamper resistant, machine readable and would require employers to verify social security numbers of all employees. The bill would also steeply increase fines for employing illegal aliens.

The hearing was a start toward drawing badly needed attention to the fact that we need to strengthen enforcement of employer sanctions laws that have been on the books for 19 years now.

Visit our Stein Report for comments by FAIR's Director of Government Relations on the hearing.

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Recent Floor Statements

On May 11, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) commented on Securing America's Borders And Combating Illegal Immigration
On May 11, Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) commented on Correcting The Enrollment Of H.R. 1268
On May 9, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) commented on the Conference Report On H.R. 1268, Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act For Defense, The Global War On Terror, And Tsunami Relief Act, 2005
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Upcoming Events

The Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Citizenship and the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security will hold a joint hearing on "The Need for Comprehensive Immigration Reform: Strengthening Our National Security." When/Where: May 17, 2:30PM, 226 Dirksen Senate Office Building.
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How a Fire Broke Out

2005-05-16T06:21:00.000-04:00

The story of a sensitive NEWSWEEK report about alleged abuses at Guantánamo Bay and a surge of deadly unrest in the Islamic world.
By Evan Thomas
Newsweek
By the end of the week, the rioting had spread from Afghanistan throughout much of the Muslim world, from Gaza to Indonesia. Mobs shouting "Protect our Holy Book!" burned down government buildings and ransacked the offices of relief organizations in several Afghan provinces. The violence cost at least 15 lives, injured scores of people and sent a shudder through Washington, where officials worried about the stability of moderate regimes in the region.

The spark was apparently lit at a press conference held on Friday, May 6, by Imran Khan, a Pakistani cricket legend and strident critic of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf. Brandishing a copy of that week's NEWSWEEK (dated May 9), Khan read a report that U.S. interrogators at Guantánamo prison had placed the Qur'an on toilet seats and even flushed one. "This is what the U.S. is doing," exclaimed Khan, "desecrating the Qur'an." His remarks, as well as the outraged comments of Muslim clerics and Pakistani government officials, were picked up on local radio and played throughout neighboring Afghanistan. Radical Islamic foes of the U.S.-friendly regime of Hamid Karzai quickly exploited local discontent with a poor economy and the continued presence of U.S. forces, and riots began breaking out last week.

Late last week Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita told NEWSWEEK that its original story was wrong. The brief PERISCOPE item ("SouthCom Showdown") had reported on the expected results of an upcoming U.S. Southern Command investigation into the abuse of prisoners at Gitmo. According to NEWSWEEK, SouthCom investigators found that Gitmo interrogators had flushed a Qur'an down a toilet in an attempt to rattle detainees. While various released detainees have made allegations about Qur'an desecration, the Pentagon has, according to DiRita, found no credible evidence to support them.

How did NEWSWEEK get its facts wrong? And how did the story feed into serious international unrest? While continuing to report events on the ground, NEWSWEEK interviewed government officials, diplomats and its own staffers, and reconstructed this narrative of events:

At NEWSWEEK, veteran investigative reporter Michael Isikoff's interest had been sparked by the release late last year of some internal FBI e-mails that painted a stark picture of prisoner abuse at Guantánamo. Isikoff knew that military investigators at Southern Command (which runs the Guantánamo prison) were looking into the allegations. So he called a longtime reliable source, a senior U.S. government official who was knowledgeable about the matter. The source told Isikoff that the report would include new details that were not in the FBI e-mails, including mention of flushing the Qur'an down a toilet. A SouthCom spokesman contacted by Isikoff declined to comment on an ongoing investigation, but NEWSWEEK National Security Correspondent John Barry, realizing the sensitivity of the story, provided a draft of the NEWSWEEK PERISCOPE item to a senior Defense official, asking, "Is this accurate or not?" The official challenged one aspect of the story: the suggestion that Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, sent to Gitmo by the Pentagon in 2001 to oversee prisoner interrogation, might be held accountable for the abuses. Not true, said the official (the PERISCOPE draft was corrected to reflect that). But he was silent about the rest of the item. The official had not meant to mislead, but lacked detailed knowledge of the SouthCom report.

Given all that has been reported about the treatment of detainees—including allegations that a female interrogator pretended to wipe her own menstrual blood on one prisoner—the reports of Qur'an desecration seemed shocking but not incredible. But to Muslims, defacing the Holy Book is especially heinous. "We can understand torturing prisoners, no matter how repulsive," says computer teacher Muhammad Archad, interviewed last week by NEWSWEEK in Peshawar, Pakistan, where one of last week's protests took place. "But insulting the Qur'an is like deliberately torturing all Muslims. This we cannot tolerate."

NEWSWEEK was not the first to report allegations of desecrating the Qur'an. As early as last spring and summer, similar reports from released detainees started surfacing in British and Russian news reports, and in the Arab news agency Al-Jazeera; claims by other released detainees have been covered in other media since then. But the NEWSWEEK report arrived at a particularly delicate moment in Afghan politics. Opponents of the Karzai government, including remnants of the deposed Taliban regime, have been looking for ways to exploit public discontent. The Afghan economy is weak, and the government (pressed by the United States) has alienated farmers by trying to eradicate their poppy crops, used to make heroin in the global drug trade. Afghan men are sometimes rounded up during ongoing U.S. military operations, and innocents can sit in jail for months. When they are released, many complain of abuse. President Karzai is still largely respected, but many Afghans regard him as too dependent on and too obsequious to the United States. With Karzai scheduled to come to Washington next week, this is a good time for his enemies to make trouble.

That does not quite explain, however, why the protest and rioting over Qur'an desecration spread throughout the Islamic region. After so many gruesome reports of torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, the vehemence of feeling around this case came as something of a surprise. Extremist agitators are at least partly to blame, but obviously the reports of Qur'anic desecration touch a particular nerve in the Islamic world. U.S. officials, including President George W. Bush, are uneasily watching, and last week Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pointedly remarked that any desecration of the Qur'an would not be "tolerated" by the United States. (As a legal matter, U.S. citizens are free to deface the Qur'an as an exercise of free speech, just as they are free to burn the American flag or tear up a Bible; but government employees can be punished for violating government rules.)

After the rioting began last week, the Pentagon attempted to determine the veracity of the NEWSWEEK story. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers told reporters that so far no allegations had been proven. He did appear to cryptically refer to two mentions found in the logs of prison guards in Gitmo: a report that a detainee had used pages of the Qur'an to stop up a crude toilet as a form of protest, and a complaint from a detainee that a prison guard had knocked down a Qur'an hanging in a bag in his cell.

On Friday night, Pentagon spokesman DiRita called NEWSWEEK to complain about the original PERISCOPE item. He said, "We pursue all credible allegations" of prisoner abuse, but insisted that the investigators had found none involving Qur'an desecration. DiRita sent NEWSWEEK a copy of rules issued to the guards (after the incidents mentioned by General Myers) to guarantee respect for Islamic worship. On Saturday, Isikoff spoke to his original source, the senior government official, who said that he clearly recalled reading investigative reports about mishandling the Qur'an, including a toilet incident. But the official, still speaking anonymously, could no longer be sure that these concerns had surfaced in the SouthCom report. Told of what the NEWSWEEK source said, DiRita exploded, "People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?"

In the meantime, as part of his ongoing reporting on the detainee-abuse story, Isikoff had contacted a New York defense lawyer, Marc Falkoff, who is representing 13 Yemeni detainees at Guantánamo. According to Falkoff's declassified notes, a mass-suicide attempt—when 23 detainees tried to hang or strangle themselves in August 2003—was triggered by a guard's dropping a Qur'an and stomping on it. One of Falkoff's clients told him, "Another detainee tried to kill himself after the guard took his Qur'an and threw it in the toilet." A U.S. military spokesman, Army Col. Brad Blackner, dismissed the claims as unbelievable. "If you read the Al Qaeda training manual, they are trained to make allegations against the infidels," he said.

More allegations, credible or not, are sure to come. Bader Zaman Bader, a 35-year-old former editor of a fundamentalist English-language magazine in Peshawar, was released from more than two years' lockup in Guantánamo seven months ago. Arrested by Pakistani security as a suspected Qaeda militant in November 2001, he was handed over to the U.S. military and held at a tent at the Kandahar airfield. One day, Bader claims, as the inmates' latrines were being emptied, a U.S. soldier threw in a Qur'an. After the inmates screamed and protested, a U.S. commander apologized. Bader says he still has nightmares about the incident.

Such stories may spark more trouble. Though decrepit and still run largely by warlords, Afghanistan was not considered by U.S. officials to be a candidate for serious anti-American riots. But Westerners, including those at NEWSWEEK, may underestimate how severely Muslims resent the American presence, especially when it in any way interferes with Islamic religious faith.

With Sami Yousafzai in Peshawar, Ron Moreau and Zahid Hussain in Islamabad and Eve Conant and Andrew Horesh in Washington