Obama
meets with members of his national security team to discuss
developments in the Boston Marathon bombings investigation, in the
Situation Room of the White House on April 19, 2013. Pictured, from
left, are: FBI Director Robert Mueller; Lisa Monaco, Assistant to the
President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism; Attorney General
Eric Holder; Deputy National Security Advisor Tony Blinken; and Vice
President Joe Biden.
Why has the U.S. government called
certain Islamic groups supporters of terror in federal court, and then
turned around and called these same organizations “moderates” and
embraced them as outreach partners? In a number of cases from the
Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations, the leaders of these
organizations (some of whom are now in federal prison) were under active
investigation at the same time they were meeting with senior U.S.
leaders at the White House and the Capitol and helping develop U.S.
policy. Now these same Islamic organizations and leaders have openly
encouraged a purge of counterterrorism training that have effectively
blinded law enforcement, homeland security, and intelligence agencies to
active terror threats as seen in the inaction of the FBI concerning the
Boston bombing suspects and other terror cases. This study poses
serious questions as to the efficacy and even security concerns about
U.S. government outreach to Islamic groups, which often turn out to be
Islamist militants, enemies of Islamic moderation, and even supporters
of terrorism.
The aftermath of the April 15, 2013
bombings in Boston, Massachusetts, has focused attention on the failure
of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) to carry out an adequate
investigation of the suspected bombers despite warnings from Russian
authorities. This failure has partially been attributed to a full scale
campaign of political correctness waged inside the bureau and throughout
the U.S. government under the Obama administration against any attempt
to link jihadi terrorism with anything remotely connected to Islam of
any variety (the most radical versions included).[1] This has extended into other segments of the government as well, particularly the Department of Defense.[2]
One of the primary contributors to this
widespread political correctness campaign has been the U.S. government’s
disastrous Muslim outreach policies extending back to the Clinton
administration and the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. The U.S.
government’s historical outreach program, regardless of whether it has
been a Democrat or Republican in the White House, has been based on a
schizophrenic policy: In many cases federal prosecutors have gone into
federal court and identified American Islamic organizations and leaders
as supporters of terrorism, and no sooner have left court before
government officials openly embrace these same organizations and leaders
as moderates and outreach partners. In several notable cases, the FBI’s
outreach partners have been under active FBI criminal investigation and
were later convicted on terrorism-related charges at the time the
outreach occurred.
In the case of the Cambridge,
Massachusetts, mosque attended by the suspected Boston marathon bombers,
when the plethora of extremist ties to the Islamic Society of Boston
were reported, a mosque spokesman replied that they could not be
extremists since they regularly participated in outreach programs with
the FBI, Department of Justice and Homeland Security.[3]
This exemplifies the chronic failure of the U.S. government’s outreach programs.
OUTREACH FAILURE: THEN AND NOW
When President Obama hosted his annual
Iftar dinner in August 2010 to commemorate the Muslim celebration of
Ramadan, the list of invitees published by the White House was curiously
missing the names of several attendees–all of whom were top leaders of
organizations known to be purveyors of jihadi ideology and implicated by
federal prosecutors in financing terrorism.[4]
Yet it was not like they had crashed the
party. In fact, one of the individuals missing on the official White
House list, Mohamed Majid, president of the Islamic Society of North
America (ISNA), was pictured in a news service photograph sitting at the
front table just a few feet from the president as he spoke.[5] When Majid was hailed by Time Magazine
in November 2005 as a “moderate Muslim cleric” who was helping the FBI
fight terrorists, he quickly published an open letter to his
congregation on the mosque’s website assuring his congregants that he
was doing no such thing, stating that his relationship with the FBI was a
one-way street only to communicate Muslim community concerns–not to
report on individuals suspected of terrorist activity.[6]
It was just a few years ago the attorney
general of the United States was canceling Muslim outreach events for
the sole reason that Majid would be present at the meeting, because the
Department of Justice had just named the ISNA as an unindicted
co-conspirator in the largest terrorism financing trial in American
history.[7]
Majid’s connection to terrorism,
however, goes back even farther than that, since the offices of the
mosque he leads, the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) Center, were
raided by U.S. Customs authorities in March 2002 in a wide-sweeping
terror finance investigation.[8]
In an affidavit requesting a search warrant for the raids, Customs
Agent David Kane testified that Majid’s mosque was being used to launder
hundreds of thousands of dollars for the targeted terror finance
network that shared offices with ADAMS.[9]
An appendix to the Customs Service affidavit also names eleven ADAMS
Center officials as targets of their terror finance investigation.[10] Yet Majid and the ADAMS Center are still considered legitimate outreach partners by the FBI as of the writing of this article.[11]
This was just the most recent episode in
the disastrous attempts at outreach to the Muslim community since the
September 11, 2001, attacks. In addition, with the release in 2011 of
President Obama’s strategic plan to combat “violent extremism” to expand
outreach to these same terror-tied groups, the present administration
seems intent on compounding the disaster wrought by previous
administrations.[12]
Prior to the September 11 attacks, there were two prime examples of how
the government’s Muslim outreach policy failed spectacularly: Abdul
Rahman al-Amoudi and Sami al-Arian.
Al-Amoudi’s case is perhaps the best
example, because he was the conduit through much of the U.S. government
outreach that was conducted following the 1993 World Trade Center
bombing. Not only was he asked by the Clinton administration to help
train and certify all Muslim military chaplains (his organization being
the first to certify such),[13]
he was later appointed by the State Department in 1997 as a civilian
goodwill ambassador to the Middle East, making six taxpayer-funded
trips.[14]
Further, with the assistance and
encouragement of then-First Lady Hillary Clinton, al-Amoudi arranged the
first White House Iftar dinner in 1996, personally hand-picking the
attendees.[15]
Thus, he was regularly invited to the White House during both the
Clinton and Bush (II) Administrations. In 1992 and 1996, al-Amoudi’s
American Muslim Council hosted hospitality suites at both the Democratic
and Republican conventions.[16]
It is fair to say that during this period, Abdul Rahman al-Amoudi was
the most prominent and politically connected Muslim leader in America.
As is now known, and the U.S. government
has admitted, at the time that he was being courted by Democrats and
Republicans alike, he was a major fundraiser for al-Qa’ida according to
the Department of the Treasury.[17]
However, it isn’t as if the U.S. government was not aware of
al-Amoudi’s attachments. As far back as 1993, a government informant
told the FBI that al-Amoudi was funneling regular payments from Usama
bin Ladin to the “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted for
authorizing terror attacks targeting New York landmarks.[18]
In March 1996, al-Amoudi’s association with Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook was exposed in the pages of the Wall Street Journal.[19] Two years later, the State Department came under fire by the New York Post for inviting al-Amoudi to official events despite his known statements in support of terrorism and terrorist leaders.[20] Even then the Post noted the problem with the government’s policy of reaching out to the wrong Muslim leaders:
The problem is that such groups have
been legitimized–both by government and the media–as civil-rights groups
fighting anti-Muslim discrimination and stereotyping. Unfortunately,
their definition of such discrimination consists of anyone who writes
about the existence of–or tries to investigate–radical Islamic terrorist
groups and their allies on these shores.[21]
A more embarrassing episode occurred in
October 2000, when al-Amoudi appeared at an anti-Israeli rally where he
was cheered by the crowd for his support for terrorists. “I have been
labeled by the media in New York to be a supporter of Hamas. Anybody
support Hamas here?” he asked the crowd three times to the roar of
attendees. “Hear that, Bill Clinton?” he continued. “We are all
supporters of Hamas. I wish they added that I am also a supporter of
Hezbollah. Does anybody support Hezbollah here?” Again, he was met with
the cheers of the crowd.
Al-Amoudi wasn’t so bold the following day when asked about his comments by reporters from the New York Daily News,
who had a videotape of the rally to counter his initial claim that he
wasn’t even there: “In a phone interview yesterday, Alamoudi at first
challenged the account of his Saturday speech, which The News
reviewed on videotape. ‘You better check your Arabic,’ he said. Told he
had given the speech in English, Alamoudi replied, ‘It was in English?
Oh my God, I forgot!’”[22]
He then deferred any further media inquiries about his comments to his
attorney, who appealed to the fact that he worked for the State
Department and had just returned from a taxpayer-funded trip to Saudi
Arabia, Bahrain, and Oman as proof of his moderation.
Al-Amoudi’s statements were not made in a
closed-door meeting in the Middle East. Rather, he delivered his speech
supporting two designated terrorist organizations in Lafayette
Park–just steps from the White House. Yet it had no impact on his
standing with the U.S. government nor did it hinder his positions with
the Pentagon, the State Department, or the White House.
No sooner had President George W. Bush
taken office before al-Amoudi was being courted by the new
administration. In June 2001, the Jerusalem Post reported that
al-Amoudi was going to be part of a White House meeting with Vice
President Cheney despite the fact that al-Amoudi was known to have
attended a terror confab in Beirut earlier that year, which featured
representatives from virtually every major Islamist terrorist
organization in the world–including al-Qa’ida.[23]
Yet just days after the September 11 attacks by al-Qa’ida, al-Amoudi
was one of the Muslim leaders asked to appear with President Bush at the
Islamic Center of Washington, D.C.[24]
That same week one of al-Amoudi’s close associates, Muzzammil Siddiqi,
was asked to deliver an Islamic prayer and to represent the entire
Muslim-American community at the national prayer service mourning the
fallen.[25]
The decision to include al-Amoudi and
Siddiqi at the post-September 11 events was highly criticized,
especially since al-Amoudi had been videotaped in October 2000
enthusiastically expressing his support for the Hamas and Hizballah
terrorist organizations at a rally held just steps from the White House.[26]
At that same rally, Siddiqi accused the United States of responsibility
for the “plight of the Palestinians,” parroting Usama bin Ladin, and
warning that “the wrath of God will come.”[27] One former Secret Service agent told Fox News
that “The intelligence Community has known for sometime the association
of Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi, and Mr. Alamoudi and their association with
terrorist organizations.”[28]
Yet Abdul Rahman al-Amoudi was not the
only troubling association for the Bush administration after the
September 11 attacks. When Sami al-Arian, a tenured professor at the
University of South Florida, was indicted on terror support charges and
his leadership role in Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) was revealed, his
connection with Bush and top administration officials also came under
media scrutiny.
In fact, photos of al-Arian and Bush on the campaign trail in Florida during the 2000 election quickly surfaced.[29] The Washington Post also reported that al-Arian had met with Karl Rove in the White House.[30] One law enforcement official told Newsweek
that al-Arian had been flagged by the Secret Service as a possible
terrorist at that June 2001 meeting with Rove, where the Bush advisor
discussed the administration’s “outreach” policy, but he was allowed to
enter to prevent an incident.[31]
Several weeks later while al-Arian was being questioned during the
deportation hearing for his brother-in-law, he had to invoke his Fifth
Amendment right against self-incrimination 99 times to avoid answering
questions about his role in supporting terrorist organizations.[32]
The reasons for al-Arian’s White House
visits during the Clinton and Bush administrations revolved around his
attempts to change the U.S. government’s policy on the use of secret
evidence in terrorism deportation proceedings, a policy that candidate
Bush had promised to change during the 2000 campaign. The Justice
Department had drafted new guidelines revising the use of secret
evidence, and ominously, President Bush was to present these new
guidelines to Muslim leaders at a meeting in the White House scheduled
at 2 p.m. on September 11, 2001.[33]
However, at the time that al-Arian was
meeting with these Clinton and Bush administration officials, he and his
associates had been the subject of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act wiretap order since December 1993, and his home and offices had been
raided by the FBI in 1995.[34]
During that initial raid, FBI agents discovered a document in
al-Arian’s possession that outlined a program to “infiltrate the
sensitive intelligence agencies or the embassies in order to collect
information and build close relationships with the people in charge of
these establishments” and to create a center that would “collect
information from those relatives and friends who work in sensitive
positions in government.”[35]
During his trial, al-Arian’s attorney
asked the government to disclose any wiretapped conversations he had
with then-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, former Speaker Newt
Gingrich, former Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Asa Hutchinson, and
GOP activist Grover Norquist. His attorney also submitted evidence that
al-Arian had been at the White House every year between 1998 and 2001;
he had met with Al Gore in November 1998 and Hillary Clinton in October
1999, and that he had attended a briefing at the Justice Department in
July 2001 as proof that he could not be a terrorist.[36] That fact alone may account for the jury’s deadlocking on a number of counts.
Yet al-Arian’s influence was not
exclusive to political circles. In fact, while he was subject to FBI
wiretaps and serving as a top official on PIJ’s governing shura
council, he was acting as a Middle East advisor to the military’s
Central Command, located in Tampa. Al-Arian not only lectured at
Centcomm and translated materials for the military, but also his
colleague Ramadan Shallah, who would later emerge as the head of PIJ in
Damascus.[37]
Al-Arian and Shallah were able to gain access to Centcomm through their
friendship with Arthur Lowrie, who served as the Centcomm commander’s
Mideast adviser.[38]
Two weeks after speaking at a Centcomm
symposium in May 1993, attended by Centcomm commander Gen. Norman
Schwarzkopf, al-Arian wired $4,776 to the family of convicted PIJ
terrorists in the West Bank. When the FBI executed a search warrant at
Ramadan’s Florida home in November 1995, agents found materials that had
been sent from Centcomm to his residence.[39]
In both al-Amoudi and al-Arian’s cases,
years of warnings about their support for terrorism and public criticism
of their inclusion in government programs and events went unheeded and
ignored. Not only that, but these terrorist leaders were being engaged
by the U.S. government at the very time they were being investigated by
federal law enforcement authorities. In one incredible instance, the
head of the FBI’s civil right division Tom Brekke and the FBI’s top
spokesman John Collingwood appeared at one of al-Amoudi’s conferences
held inside the Hart Senate Office Building, where they shared the
podium not only with al-Amoudi but also al-Arian, despite the FBI
knowing of both men’s direct terror ties and funding years before.[40]
The U.S. government’s success with
Muslim outreach since September 11 hasn’t fared any better. One of the
first Muslim leaders that the government turned to was Anwar al-Awlaki,
the al-Qa’ida cleric who was in direct contact with at least three of
the September 11 hijackers.[41]
Awlaki, who had been placed on the CIA’s “kill or capture” list, was
killed on September 30, 2011 in a CIA-led drone strike on the al-Qa’ida
cleric’s convoy in Yemen, which President Obama hailed as a “milestone”
in the fight against al-Qa’ida.[42]
As the cleanup from the terrorist attack
on the Pentagon continued, Awlaki was invited by the Pentagon’s Office
of Government Counsel to speak at a lunch in the building’s executive
offices as part of the government’s new Muslim outreach policy.[43]
Ironically, one of the September 11 terrorists who had helped hijack
American Airlines Flight 77 that was flown into the Pentagon had
described Awlaki as “a great man” and his “spiritual leader..”[44] Yet concerns had been raised about Awlaki long before the September 11 attacks.
A joint congressional inquiry in the
September 11 attacks found that law enforcement had been investigating
Awlaki’s contacts with terrorism suspects as far back as 1999.[45]
Further, just two days after September 11, Awlaki had described the
terror attacks as an “accident” in an interview with a local television
station.[46] Also prior to his appearance at the Pentagon the New York Times
had noted Awlaki’s fiery anti-American rhetoric prior to the attacks,
and in November 2001, he had defended the Taliban in an online chat
about Ramadan on the Washington Post website.[47]
Thus, despite claims that Awlaki had been “vetted” before the Pentagon
event, abundant evidence of Awlaki’s extremist views was more than
readily available before he appeared at the Pentagon event.[48]
Equally egregious was the invitation by
the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) to Yasir Qadhi to speak on
de-radicalization at a conference in August 2008. At that time too,
Qadhi’s extremist views (such as his statements denouncing “the hoax of
the Holocaust”) were well known.[49]
Even more than that, at a Muslim outreach event in Houston in 2006,
Homeland Security official Dan Sutherland was present when Qadhi openly
admitted that he was on the terror watch list.[50]
Yet no one at the NCTC bothered to
question Qadhi’s “de-radicalization” credentials. By the time he was
invited to speak at the NCTC conference, at least one of Qadhi’s Houston
students, Daniel Maldonado, had been captured by Kenyan forces fighting
with the Somali al-Shabaab terrorist group.[51]
A number of other students from Qadhi’s AlMaghrib Institute program
have gone in to careers in terrorism, including Christmas Day underwear
bomber Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, who attended a two-week training
session in Houston sponsored by Qadhi’s group learning the “nuts and
bolts of Islam” from the cleric. Abdul Mutallab also attended two other
events in the UK sponsored by AlMaghrib.[52] If Yasir Qadhi is an expert in deradicalization, one shudders to think what an expert in radicalization might produce.
The NCTC under the Obama administration
continues this bipartisan policy of Muslim outreach disasters, best
exemplified when they gave Shaykh Kifah Mustapha a tour of their
top-secret facility as part of the FBI’s Citizen Academy civilian
training program in September 2010.[53]
Why was this so catastrophic? In 2007 Kifah Mustapha was named an
unindicted co-conspirator by federal prosecutors in the largest
terrorism financing trial in American history. During that trial FBI
agent Lara Burns testified that Mustapha was part of a singing troupe
that glorified Hamas and encouraged the killing of Jews as part of the
fundraising efforts for Hamas.[54]
Yet months before participating in the
FBI Citizen Academy program and visiting the NCTC, Mustapha was removed
as an Illinois State Police chaplain in the wake of media reports noting
his long-time terrorist support activities.[55]
After Mustapha sued the state police for discrimination, a protective
order was filed by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald that disclosed that
the Chicago FBI’s Special Agent in Charge Robert Grant had warned state
police officials that Mustapha would never be able to pass an FBI
background check.[56] One former FBI official told the Washington Times that Mustapha was “a known senior Hamas guy.”[57]
None of that prevented the FBI Chicago
field office from hosting Mustapha in the six-week Citizen’s Academy
course, which included a guided tour of the NCTC and the FBI Academy at
Quantico. Caught in an embarrassing situation, an FBI spokesman admitted
to Fox News that he had in fact participated in the program, but
defended the decision, saying that he was “a prominent figure in the
community.”[58]
A week later, FBI Director Robert Mueller doubled-down on Mustapha’s
inclusion in the program after he was questioned about it following a
speech he had given, but refused to address the mountain of evidence
that federal prosecutors and the FBI had compiled on the Hamas cleric,
saying, “I am not going to talk about any particular individual.”[59]
Court documents filed in March 2013 in a
federal court by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan asked the judge
for summary judgment against Mustapha’s lawsuit against the Illinois
State Police. In them were revealed more warnings about Mustapha’s
terror ties from the FBI Chicago field office. Ironically, this was the
same office that a few months later invited Mustapha to participate in
the FBI Citizens Academy, even telling Illinois State Police officials
about the imam’s “demonstrable ties to an organization that funded
terrorism” and providing them a video of Mustapha singing lyrics in
praise of Hamas and calling for violence against Jews as children danced
around him carrying guns.[60]
Attorney General Madigan added that the information provided by the FBI
Chicago officials conclusively showed that Mustapha’s activities
“damage Illinois State Police due to its anti-Jewish and un-American
content and manner.”[61]
No matter how embarrassing the Kifah
Mustapha incident was for the FBI and the NCTC, the Department of
Homeland Security has no grounds to fault their colleagues, especially
after Secretary Napolitano appointed Mohamed Elibiary to her Homeland
Security Advisory Council in October 2010.[62]
Elibiary had previously served on the Department of Homeland Security’s
Countering Violent Extremism Working Group, along with Mohamed Majid,
despite his speaking at a December 2004 conference honoring Iranian
Ayatollah Khomeini (an event that the Dallas Morning News editorialized as a “disgrace”).[63]
Recently Elibiary has billed himself as a “deradicalization expert,”
despite clear evidence of his previous defense of terrorist support
organizations, his praise for jihadist authors, and his threats made
against a Dallas journalist who repeatedly exposed his extremist views.[64] His open support for jihadist ideological godfather Sayyid Qutb[65] prompted the Washington Times
to comment, “If Mr. Elibiary is one of his [Qutb’s] disciples, he has
no business being anywhere in government, let alone as an adviser at the
uppermost reaches of an agency that purports to protect the homeland.”[66] Considering Mohamed Elibiary’s track record, it seems he has done more to promote violent ideology than to prevent it.
The State Department under Hillary
Clinton was not immune from such outreach disasters either. In November
2010, U.S. Ambassador to Britain Louis B. Susman stirred international
outrage following his visit to the notorious East London Mosque, well
known as a longtime hotbed of extremism and a prolific terrorist
incubator.[67] In January 2009, the mosque hosted a conference featuring wanted al-Qa’ida cleric Anwar al-Awlaki via telephone.[68]
Just a few weeks before Susman’s visit, the mosque chairman had
defended Awlaki’s participation in the conference, calling it an act of
“fairness and justice.”
The visit by the U.S. ambassador was slammed in the Wall Street Journal
by Shiraz Maher of the International Center for the Study of
Radicalization at King’s College, who described the mosque as “among
Britain’s most extreme Islamic institutions.” Maher concluded that “Mr.
Susman’s visit illustrates the blunders Western politicians often make
by reaching out to the wrong Muslim ‘dialogue partners.’” He added that
the attendance of such a high-ranking diplomat to the mosque “emboldened
robed reactionaries at the expense of their more moderate
counterparts.”[69]
Maher also stated that Susman’s visit to the mosque was such an
egregious blunder that British Prime Minister David Cameron instructed
officials to conduct an “exhaustive review” of the government’s
“Preventing Violent Extremism” program to ensure that all community
partners had been thoroughly vetted.[70]
The U.S. government, however, failed to
even acknowledge the blunder, let alone attempt to reconsider its
long-standing policy of engaging extremists. In fact, the American
Embassy issued a statement explaining that the visit was “a part of
President Obama’s call for a renewed dialogue with Muslim communities
around the world.”[71]
WHO ARE WE DEALING WITH?
In President Obama’s call for renewed
dialogue, isn’t it incumbent upon intelligence, homeland security, and
law enforcement officials to know exactly who they’re dealing with? Yet
in many cases, the U.S. government has known that the Muslim leaders and
organizations they were dealing with were involved in terrorism or
hostile foreign governments and groups.
A case cited earlier, for example,
showed this to be true of Ramadan Shallah, an associate of Sami
al-Arian, who directed the World and Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE), a
think-tank affiliated with the University of South Florida. In addition,
he taught classes in Middle Eastern politics at the university in 1994
and 1995.[72]
He also was a regular fixture along with al-Arian at CENTCOMM
headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base. Shallah was even a speaker at a
January 1995 conference with a former attorney general of the United
States held at the University of Georgia.[73]
Yet just months after suddenly leaving the Tampa area, Shallah
reappeared in October 1995 in Damascus, Syria, as the new head of
Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which had been designated a terrorist
organization by President Clinton. He is currently on the FBI’s most
wanted list and is the subject of a $5 million reward offered by the
State Department.[74]
More recently, the case of Ghulam Nabi
Fai, president of the Kashmiri American Council in Washington, D.C.,
should be noted. Fai was a regular fixture on Capitol Hill, where his
organization hosted conferences supporting the Kashmiri separatist cause
featuring high-ranking members of Congress, including Reps. Dan Burton,
Joe Pitts, Dennis Kucinich, Yvette Clarke, and Jim Moran.[75] Fai also spread around generous amounts of campaign cash to Republican and Democrats alike.
Yet for two decades, Fai had been
operating as a paid agent of influence under the direct control of
Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI.[76]
Senior high-ranking members of the ISI were in attendance at Fai’s
Capitol Hill conferences. According to court documents, Fai and his ISI
handlers would go from the Capitol to his D.C. office to discuss their
plans to influence Congress illegally, the State Department, and other
government agencies toward Pakistan’s views on Kashmir. All of this was
caught on FBI wiretaps and cited in Fai’s indictment. However, it was
years before federal prosecutors put an end to Fai’s influence in
Washington, D.C. spy operations, never informing the members of Congress
who were targeted by Fai. Further, during the two decades that Fai
operated in service to Pakistan’s intelligence service, he was also
serving in senior leadership roles with a number of top Islamic groups
favored by the U.S. government, including serving on the shura council of ISNA–the most prominent Islamic organization involved with the U.S. government’s outreach programs.[77]For
years, federal law enforcement officials knowingly looked the other way
and stood mute as the Holy Land Foundation raised money inside the
United States for the terrorist group Hamas. Their programs were even
registered with the State Department’s USAID program until December
1999, when the agency informed the Holy Land Foundation that it was
officially being deregistered. Defending the organization, a spokeswoman
appealed to their ties with the government as proof of their innocence,
saying, “We’re in close cooperation with A.I.D.”[78]
The U.S. government has not just been
content with turning a blind eye towards their terror-tied outreach
partners, but active financiers of them as well. Such was the case with
the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA), which according to the
Treasury Department had “provided direct financial support to UBL [Usama
bin Ladin].” Yet IARA had received a $300,000 USAID contract to provide
support for a “child survival” program. It was also awarded a $4
million contract by the U.S. Embassy in Mali in 1998, which was only
cancelled in December 1999, when Richard Clarke, chief of
counterterrorism for President Bill Clinton, pressed the matter.[79]
Yet the FBI and the CIA had known of IARA’s ties to al-Qa’ida going
back to 1995 and made no effort to stop taxpayer funds from going to the
group.
One might think that considering these
cases, the U.S. government would have revisited its policies and
scrutinized more carefully who they dealt with in their aid programs.
Yet exactly the opposite occurred–U.S. government agencies appear to
have imposed a policy of institutional blindness when it comes to the
terrorist associations of their aid program partners. Such was the case
in 2008, when the Bush Labor Department funded a three-year contract
with the Charitable Society for Social Welfare (CSSW) based in Yemen to
combat child labor and child trafficking. Even as investigative reporter
J.M. Berger noted, one of CSSW’s former leaders in the United States
was none other than al-Qa’ida cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.[80]
According to tax documents filed with the IRS obtained by Berger,
Awlaki had served as the group’s vice president. Yet at the time that
the Department of Labor issued the grant, Awlaki’s work on behalf of
al-Qa’ida and his ties to CSSW had been widely reported.[81]
It had also been reported that the founder of CSSW and an ongoing
active supporter of the “charity” was Abdul Majid al-Zindani, one of
Usama bin Ladin’s mentors that had been named a U.S. specially
designated terrorist by the U.S. government in 2004.[82]
The Obama administration has continued
this disastrous policy as seen the funding of the Sunni Ittehad Council,
which was ostensibly formed to counter extremism in Pakistan. Yet when a
leading moderate Pakistani governor critical of the country’s use of
Islamic blasphemy laws to punish religious minorities was gunned down by
one of his own bodyguards, the Ittehad Council held rallies and
demonstrations in support of the assassin. The council received $36,607
of U.S. taxpayer money.[83]
Equally as troubling has been the number
of transformations of leaders of American Islamic organizations that
partner with the U.S. government into senior officials with Muslim
Brotherhood fronts around the world. One recent case is Louay Safi, who
up until a few years ago was one of the Pentagon’s top Islamic advisers
and only one of two official ecclesiastical endorsers of the Defense
Department’s Muslim chaplains. In August 2011, however, just weeks after
meeting with officials at the White House, Safi reappeared at a press
conference in Istanbul as a leader in the Syrian National Council, a
group heavily dominated by the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood looking to
overthrow Bashar al-Asad.[84] Safi currently serves as the group’s political director based in Qatar.
However, Safi’s connections to the
Muslim Brotherhood even predate his advising the Pentagon. Back in 2002,
Safi’s offices were raided by the U.S. Customs Service of the Treasury
Department as part of a widespread terror finance investigation into the
SAAR Network, a financial empire funded by Saudi money but controlled
and operated by U.S. Muslim Brotherhood operatives. At the time, Safi
was working for the International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT),
which was one of the primary targets of the raid.[85]
Then in 2005, Safi was named “unindicted
co-conspirator Number 4” in the trial of Palestinian Islamic Jihad
(PIJ) leader Sami al-Arian. As the Tampa Tribune noted during the
trial, conversations between al-Arian and Safi had been caught on
wiretaps authorized by a top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act (FISA) national security warrant. In one conversation, Safi called
al-Arian to ask him how the designation of PIJ as a terrorist
organization by then-President Bill Clinton would impact al-Arian’s
work.[86]
Yet despite his known association with terrorist leaders, as late as
2008, Safi was appearing with senior FBI officials (the same FBI that
had wiretapped his conversations with al-Arian) at “outreach” events.[87]
Safi’s involvement with the Pentagon
became an issue following the Fort Hood attacks, when 13 members of
Congress sent a letter to Defense Secretary Gates complaining that not
only was Safi endorsing Muslim chaplains for the Defense Department on
behalf of ISNA, but also teaching classes on the “Theology of Islam” to
troops departing for Afghanistan at Fort Hood and Fort Bliss under a
subcontract with the Naval Postgraduate School.[88] After Fox News
made inquiries about Safi’s relationship with the Pentagon, they were
informed that Safi was no longer teaching or endorsing chaplains.[89]
Louay Safi is hardly alone in transitioning from American Islamic leader to foreign Muslim Brotherhood leader:
- Ghassan Hitto, a Dallas technology businessman, was selected as the provision premier of the Syrian resistance.[90] According to the New York Times, Hitto was the favored candidate of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.[91] It also reported that he had been an official for the Texas branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). After graduation from Purdue University, Hitto and his wife had both worked for ISNA in Indianapolis for several years in the late 1980s and early 1990s.[92] More recently, he had been on the board of directors of the Muslim American Society, which federal prosecutors had identified as “the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America.”[93] He is also a long-time friend of Homeland Security adviser Mohamed Elibiary, who indicated that Hitto was “broadly respected” by the Muslim community “including Muslim Brotherhood members.”[94]
- Muthanna al-Hanooti, former executive director of CAIR-Michigan and public relations coordinator for the Detroit-based Life for Relief and Development, was indicted in March 2008 for his role in attempting to influence Congress of behalf of Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Intelligence Service. According to the indictment, al-Hanooti paid for and accompanied three members of Congress to Iraq on a five-day trip in the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, with the $34,000 in expenses covered by Iraqi intelligence. In return, al-Hanooti was granted a $2 million allotment of Iraqi oil.[95] Prosecutors said that al-Hanooti had operated on behalf of Saddam Hussein’s government during most of the 1990s and up until the Iraq War. Because LIFE and al-Hanooti was part of the Detroit U.S. Attorney’s Building Respect in Diverse Groups to Enhance Sensitivity (BRIDGES), the entire U.S. Attorney’s office had to recuse themselves from the case, which was handled by DOJ attorneys in Washington, D.C.[96] In a plea deal, al-Hanooti agreed to charges of violating sanctions against doing business with Iraq and was sentenced to federal prison.[97] He is now regional director of the Detroit chapter of the Muslim Legal Fund of America.[98]
- Mahmoud Hussein, secretary general of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, was recruited into the organization while studying in the United States at the University of Iowa. He also served as the president of the Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA) in the United States, a now-defunct subsidiary organization of ISNA.[99] During Hussein’s tenure with MAYA, the group sponsored a number of conferences across the country featuring terrorist leaders affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood from around the world, including Afghan jihad leader and al-Qa’ida co-founder Abdallah Azzam.[100]
- Ishaq Farhan is the head of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm, the Islamic Action Front. However, he has also been a longtime board member of the International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT) based in the Washington, D.C., area.[101] According to congressional testimony on “Terrorist Threat to the United States,” Farhan was also active with MAYA as a conference speaker and as a recruiter of American Muslim youths for Hamas. One student recruited who attended a terror training session in Kansas City noted Farhan as one of the speakers.[102] In 1996, Farhan also sent letters on behalf of the IAF to the U.S. Embassy in Amman demanding the release of Hamas senior leader Mousa Abu Marzook.[103]
- Ahmed Yousef, currently spokesman for Hamas in Gaza and a senior political adviser to Hamas “prime minister” Ismail Haniyeh, was the longtime director of the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR) based in Springfield, Virginia.[104] Article Two of the 1988 Hamas Charter self-identifies the group as “one of the wings of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine.”[105] The supposedly “independent” think-tank held conferences, published studies, and a quarterly journal with an advisory board featuring a number of prominent academics. Yet as early as 1993, UASR had been identified as “the political command of Hamas in the United States” by a captured Hamas operative.[106] Not coincidentally, one of UASR’s founders was Hamas deputy leader Mousa Abu Marzook, and another director of the organization was al-Qa’ida fundraiser Abdul Rahman al-Amoudi.[107] Yousef defended Hamas as “a charitable organization,” and many of UASR’s publications and speakers unashamedly defended Islamist terrorist groups as legitimate resistance.[108] Yousef fled the United States in 2005 to avoid prosecution on terrorism-related charges. He reemerged shortly thereafter as spokesman for Hamas. His departure left many of his defenders flatfooted. This included Georgetown University’s John Esposito, who served on UASR’s editorial advisory board and helped plan joint conferences with UASR, and former CIA official and Muslim Brotherhood apologist Graham Fuller.[109]
It may then be the case that
occasionally some of the U.S. government’s Islamic advisors and leaders
of the very organizations government agencies count as their outreach
partners seem to have the habit of turning up as illegal foreign agents
or leaders of terrorist organizations and Muslim Brotherhood affiliates
across the Middle East. Among the leaders of the Islamic groups favored
by the U.S. government are even wanted international war criminals.
In October 2012, Ashrafuzzaman Khan,
former secretary general of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA)
and president of the North American Imams Federation, was indicted by a
Bangladesh war crimes tribunal for crimes against humanity and genocide
for his role in the abduction, torture, and murder of intellectuals
during that country’s war of independence from Pakistan in December
1971. A State Department spokesman said that they are looking at the
charges.[110]
A prosecutor in the case said that the killings by Khan, who at the
time was a member of the al-Badr student militia wing of
Jama’at-i-Islami, were part of “a master plan” by the Pakistani military
“to kill a specific group of unarmed civilian Benghalis.”[111] Those murdered were pro-independence professors, journalists, and physicians.
Not only has ICNA condemned the international war crimes tribunal, but a spokesman for ICNA reaffirmed their support for Khan.[112]
He also appeared at a rally in New York City in late 2010, with leading
members of the Islamic community and U.S. government outreach partners,
including Obama White House regulars ISNA’s Mohamed Majid, CAIR
executive director Nihad Awad, and Haris Tarin of the Muslim Public
Affairs Council (MPAC).[113]
As has been shown, being under active
FBI investigation has not prevented the U.S. government from counting
terrorist leaders, recruiters, or fundraisers among their closest
Islamic advisers. Such is the case with Abdul Rahman al-Amoudi, Sami
al-Arian, and Anwar al-Awlaki. Moreover, when the U.S. government has
given taxpayer dollars to Islamic groups that support terrorism,
presumably inadvertently, there has never been a systematic review of
the screening system to ensure similar incidents won’t occur in the
future–when, in fact, they repeatedly have.
In the case of Ghulam Nabi Fai’s
two-decade long influence operation on Capitol Hill on behalf of
Pakistani intelligence, the matter passed with barely any notice, let
alone any consideration that Fai had served in leadership positions with
virtually every major Islamic organization in the country. Nor has
there been any reexamination on the part of government agencies of their
policies when a long line of their Islamic advisers and leaders from
the groups they count as outreach partners–including repeated visits to
the Obama White House in the case of Louay Safi–reappear as senior
leaders for Muslim Brotherhood affiliates and fronts in the Middle East.
This lack of acknowledgment, reexamination, or investigation following
the near-universal catastrophic failures in U.S. government outreach in
the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations has led to a corrosive
effect on U.S. domestic and foreign policy.
POLICY IMPLICATIONS
That many of the Islamic groups
identified as outreach partners by the U.S. government were identified
by federal prosecutors in court as fronts for the international Muslim
Brotherhood and supporters of international terrorism has proved
incredibly embarrassing. Extraordinary measures are thus taken to ignore
this situation.[114]
One response has been to ignore the problem altogether. Since March
2012, the FBI has been undergoing a Department of Justice inspector
general investigation for continuing contacts with the Council of
American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), despite a department-wide ban on
formal contacts with the organizations for its long-standing ties to
terrorism.[115]
This outreach contrary to official bureau policy continued to occur as
CAIR officials publicly encouraged the American Muslim community not to
talk to the FBI.[116]
At the same time that the DOJ inspector
general began its investigation of the FBI’s continued contacts with
CAIR in violation of stated policy, the bureau began taking another
approach. In March 2012, the FBI released guidelines it claimed informed
its purge of hundreds of documents and more than 300 presentations from
its counterterrorism training materials.[117]
This “Touchstone document” articulates the FBI’s new policy that
associating with a terrorist organization, if that organization has both
violent and legal elements, does not mean that someone agrees with the
violent ends of that organization:
This distinction includes recognition of
the corresponding principle that mere association with organizations
that demonstrates both legitimate (advocacy) and illicit (violent
extremism) objectives should not automatically result in a determination
that the associated individual is acting in furtherance of the
organization’s illicit objective(s).[118]
Thus, according to this new FBI policy,
if the group supports violence but performs some legitimate functions
(say, for instance, al-Qa’ida, which Sen. Patty Murray [D-WA] infamously
said helped pay to build schools, roads, and day care centers[119]),
associating with that group, according to the FBI, doesn’t mean you
support that group’s violent ends. Thus, the terror support of their
Muslim outreach partners is absolved with a rhetorical sleight-of-hand.
This is why Mohamed Majid, who just a
few years before was treated as a pariah by the Attorney General of the
United States after federal prosecutors named his organization as a
front for the Muslim Brotherhood and a supporter of terrorism in the
largest terrorism financing trial in American history,[120]
can just a few short years later not only be rehabilitated, but can
regularly be found–much as al-Qa’ida fundraiser Abdul Rahman al-Amoudi
who preceded him–a frequent visitor to the White House. Just prior to
President Obama’s March 2013 visit to the Middle East, ISNA openly
trumpeted that Majid had advised the president prior to his trip.[121]
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