---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 14:29:01 -0800
From: radtimes <resist@best.com>
Subject: Domestic Front in the War on Terror
Domestic Front in the War on Terror
<http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm/include/detail/storyid/160238.html>
Dec. 17, 2001
By J. Michael Waller
The brochure warns: "Don't talk to the FBI. The FBI is looking for
information to use against you, your family and/or your community." It has
been posted on the Internet since 1997 by the National Coalition to Protect
Political Freedom (NCPPF).
Many militant groups and their supporters, from the antiglobalist
anarchists to the White Aryan Resistance, have developed their own
variations of this brochure. But it disappeared quietly from prominent
Muslim Websites on Sept. 27 after those groups took heat for not offering
to help in the FBI investigation of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
As President George W. Bush moves the war from Afghanistan to terrorist
networks elsewhere in the world, he likely will encounter increasing
opposition at home, thanks in no small part to organized groups sympathetic
to, or even fronting for, various violent causes. An Insight investigation
has uncovered a network of organizations around the United States that
supports terrorism abroad and at home, with roots that go back decades to
the emergence of the modern Terrorist International.
These groups including fund-raisers for the Irish Republican Army (IRA),
legal defenders of convicted cop-killers, backers of Marxist-Leninist
guerrillas and pistoleros in Latin America, Muslim fanatics and
conspirators in the 1983 U.S. Capitol bombing and the 1993 World Trade
Center bombing have joined forces in an attempt to cripple U.S. law
enforcement and to facilitate terrorist-support activities inside the
country. In the name of preserving civil liberties, some have been
operating for decades to defend terrorists in court and get convictions
thrown out or sentences reduced, to litigate selectively to weaken
national-security legislation, to limit the capabilities of the FBI and to
discredit U.S. law enforcement by labeling it a threat to civil liberties.
Not all condone terrorist violence. Some simply believe they are promoting
constitutional rights at home or fighting political repression abroad.
Collectively, however, they have an influential following that includes a
powerful network of lawyers who hamstring U.S. antiterrorism efforts by
exploiting the judicial system.
The NCPPF says its members oppose "the use of secret evidence to deny bond
or deport immigrants, and criminalization of humanitarian or political
assistance to organizations because of their alleged connection to
so-called foreign terrorist organizations."
NCPPF President Sami Al-Arian, a professor at the University of South
Florida, sent out an e-mail eight days before the Sept. 11 attacks
criticizing President Bush for not dropping the use of secret evidence in
terrorist cases. Small wonder: Al-Arian has been a major supporter of
terrorist causes. The Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilley exposed some of
Al-Arian's activity, and NBC's Dateline aired a video of the NCPPF leader
stating, "Let us damn America. Let us damn Israel. Let us damn their allies
until death."
Insight obtained a copy of a 1995 letter Al-Arian wrote to raise funds for
suicide bombers of the Hamas terrorist group. An FBI translation, in
Arabic, discusses a recent suicide bombing: "The movement's financial
situation is very difficult, and it cannot fulfill its responsibilities
toward the martyrs and prisoners. ^ The link with the brothers in Hamas is
very good and making steady progress. ^ I call upon you to try to extend
true support to the jihad effort in Palestine so that operations such as
these can continue."
Just as the IRA uses Catholic churches from which to raise funds for its
terrorist campaign against the United Kingdom, Arab and Muslim terrorist
groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and al-Qaeda use mosques
across the United States. Bush calls Hamas "one of the deadliest terrorist
organizations in the world today."
To help break the IRA, the FBI had the politically prickly task of
recruiting Irish-Americans and Catholics to inform on terrorist-support
activity within the churches. But, thanks to post-Watergate restrictions on
federal law-enforcement and intelligence services, any group now can
protect itself from surveillance by expediently operating from houses of
worship. Senior FBI agents found their careers ruined in the 1980s when
G-men investigated Central American terrorist-support activity in U.S.
churches.
Arab and Muslim extremists have made a virtual carbon copy of the IRA/
Central-American guerrilla-support system. Now, to help smash the Arab and
Muslim terror networks, the FBI needs the help of Arab-Americans and
Muslims to root out terrorist-support activities in the mosques. This isn't
happening. Instead, many of the best-known Muslim and Arab-American groups
actively have opposed cooperation with the FBI some even after Sept.
11 and have continued to fight legislation that would make it easier for
federal authorities to put terrorists away and prevent future attacks. Even
those who endorsed cooperation have not publicly called on their members to
become part of the antiterrorism effort.
Instead, some spread suspicion and paranoia among Arab and Muslim
immigrants, preying on fears of authority in an apparent effort to ensure
they would not go to the FBI. "It is now against the law to knowingly give
humanitarian, charitable aid to certain foreign organizations, many of them
in the Middle East," the National Coalition warned in its anti-FBI
brochure without mentioning that the FBI was interested only in groups
that aid and abet terrorist attacks.
The brochure sponsor isn't even Muslim. Rather, the NCPPF is a project of a
New York-based outfit called the Interreligious Foundation for Community
Organizations, founded by New Left activists in the 1960s. It says in its
literature that it promotes "political statement, association and due
process for immigrants and citizens alike." A closer look, say specialists,
shows it to be a support operation for terrorism. The coalition's member
organizations include:
--Ad Hoc Committee for Imad Hamad, which has been trying to stop the U.S.
Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) from deporting alleged Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) member Imad Hamad. The PFLP is
a Marxist-Leninist Palestinian group that the State Department classifies
as a terrorist organization.
--American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Washington was founded in
1980 by former U.S. senator James Abourezk (D-S.D.). Throughout the 1980s,
the committee lent its name to political-support campaigns for
Soviet-backed guerrilla organizations around the world from the Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO) and the PFLP to Marxist revolutionaries in
Latin America.
--American Muslim Council and the American Muslim Foundation share the same
Washington offices and attempt to enter into mainstream dialogue with
Christians and Jews. In reality, the groups' key man, former executive
director and current board member Abdurahman Alamoudi, publicly proclaimed
in October 2000, "We are all supporters of Hamas. ^ I am also a supporter
of Hezbollah."
--Basque Congress for Peace is a small New York-based political support
committee for the Basque ETA terrorists of Spain.
--Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) was founded by the late attorney
William Kunstler in 1966. Kunstler once said, "The thing I'm most
interested in is keeping people on the street who will forever alter the
character of this society: the revolutionaries." The CCR's annual Docket
Reports show that it has litigated on behalf of Philip Agee, a CIA
operations officer who defected to Cuba; the Armed Forces of National
Liberation (FALN) and Machetero terrorist groups of Puerto Rico; the
Weather Underground; Black Panther cop-killers Basheer Hameed and Abdul
Majid; letter-bomber Kiko Martinez; and the United Freedom Front, which
bombed the U.S. Capitol building in 1983. The CCR provided or attempted to
provide legal defense to members of the PFLP, the Red Army
Faction/Baader-Meinhof Gang of West Germany, Yu Kikamura of the Japanese
Red Army for an attempted bombing of a Navy recruiting station in
Manhattan, convicted Soviet KGB spy Clayton Lonetree and Leonard Peltier,
an American Indian militant convicted of murdering two FBI agents. In the
1970s and 1980s, the CCR worked with the American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU) on a series of successful lawsuits to weaken U.S. intelligence and
counterintelligence agencies and capabilities, according to an unpublished
1989 Boston University study. Under the previous Bush administration the
CCR fought successfully with the help of Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) to
do away with laws that allowed the United States to deport aliens
affiliated with terrorist organizations.
---Committee for Justice for the "L.A. Eight" is a support effort for
imprisoned PFLP members whom the United States alleges to have provided
"material support to a terrorist organization in conducting its terrorist
activities" by raising money for the Marxist-Leninist Palestinian faction.
The L.A. Eight also received representation from the American Arab
Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Center for Constitutional Rights.
--Committee for Justice for Nasser Ahmed. An Egyptian native, Nasser Ahmed
invited Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman to speak at his mosque and became Rahman's
legal adviser when the "blind sheik" was arrested, tried and convicted for
being behind the 1993 truck-bombing of New York City's World Trade Center.
--Committee to Support the Revolution in Peru. The "San Francisco Bay Area
Progressive Directory" describes the committee as "support[ing] the armed
struggle in Peru as led by the Communist Party of Peru (generally known as
Sendero Luminoso or Shining Path.)"
--Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which maintains an active
media outreach program to promote its own brand of Islam and recently was
cited for solicitation of funds for the Holy Land Foundation, officially
cited as a Hamas front.
--Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) Middle East Project. IPS is a fixture
on the Washington Left and long has promoted international groups that wage
political violence around the world.
--A host of support groups for the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA)
includes Irish-American Families Against Political Deportations; Irish
National Caucus; Irish Northern Aid (NORAID), created specifically to fund
IRA terrorism; and the Matt Morrison Defense Committee.
--Muslim Public Affairs Council, a public-policy lobby allied with AMC and
CAIR, wrote letters to the U.S. government on behalf of the Holy Land
Foundation.
--National Committee to Free Puerto Rican Political Prisoners and Prisoners
of War is a group that has worked for years to free Puerto Rican terrorists
from federal prisons for bombings and other attacks in Puerto Rico and on
the U.S. mainland.
--National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL). "Our mission is to serve as
the legal arm of the movement for black liberation," the NCBL says in its
literature, adding that it represents "political prisoners in the United
States." These are alleged to include Assata Shakur (a cop-killer who broke
out of a New Jersey prison and has been living in Cuba since 1986), Mutulu
Shakur (serving a 60-year sentence in Marion, Ill., for conspiracy as a
Black Liberation Army/Republic of New Afrika terrorist) and Geronimo Pratt
(a former Black Panther later convicted of murder but whose conviction was
vacated with help from celebrity lawyer Johnnie Cochran and others in
1997). NCBL says it "conducts public education on behalf of many other
political prisoners," including Mumia Abu Jamal, on death row for murdering
a Philadelphia police officer (see "Washington in Brief," p. 34); and Peltier.
--National Lawyers Guild (NLG). Long ago cited as the legal bulwark
Communist Party, the NLG seems to have outgrown the party but has continued
its support for violent revolutionary movements. Beginning in the 1970s it
organized in U.S. prisons to recruit what it called "revolutionaries."
Since Sept. 11, the American Muslim Council (AMC) has tried to distance
itself from the anti-FBI movement. It featured anti-FBI material on the
"Secret Evidence" page of its Website until Sept. 27, when it redesigned
the site and featured blanket denunciations of terrorism. The date,
analysts say, is crucial:
AMC and other groups were trying to curry favor with the White House as
"victims" of bigoted backlashes to the Sept. 11 attacks and were under fire
by conservative groups for two weeks afterward for not urging total
cooperation with the FBI. By the second week of October the AMC had
repackaged itself as a pro-FBI group, posting a new Website with titles
such as, "AMC Held Meeting With the FBI and National Muslim Leaders," and
"AMC Urges Muslims to Assist FBI."
A closer look shows that AMC still wasn't urging people to help the FBI
investigate terrorism in the United States. "The AMC called for this
meeting because of the increasing apprehension in the American Muslim and
Arab-American communities of individuals becoming victims of racial and
ethnic profiling," it said. One of the two FBI agents in the meeting was a
civil-rights expert who had nothing to do with fighting terrorism. The AMC
called for the FBI to hire more Muslim and Arab agents. AMC board secretary
Nedzib Sacirbey told the FBI officials, "We are depending on you for
protection. We are concerned about people who receive harassment." FBI
Assistant Director of the Washington Field Office Van Harp replied, "If any
of the officers behave unprofessionally, I want to know about it."
The release titled "AMC Urges Muslims to Assist FBI," dated Sept. 17 but
posted in October, appeared after the AMC and other groups again came under
fire for cloaking themselves in victim status and not offering to help
investigate. However, the statement simply sought "Muslims who are
proficient in Farsi or Arabic" as paid translators.
There was not a word urging Muslims to help the FBI fight terrorist groups.
AMC and other groups were laying the groundwork to cloak themselves as
victims and patriots and to denounce their critics as bigots. Under these
conditions they lobbied Capitol Hill to carve up the Bush administration's
antiterrorism package, urging defeat of the controversial "secret-evidence"
provisions that allow Attorney General John Ashcroft to hold terrorist
suspects for long periods of time while teaming up with the ACLU,
Americans for Democratic Action, the Center for Constitutional Rights and
the Islamic Institute.
Even as the Muslim fronts met with the FBI they were raising money for a
group that U.S. officials call a major source of cash for Hamas suicide
bombers. The AMC has been a tireless supporter of the Holy Land Foundation.
So has the CAIR, whose home page prominently featured an icon called "How
to Aid Victims of Terrorism." A click on the icon took the viewer straight
to the online donation page of the Holy Land Foundation. That icon remained
on the CAIR home page until Dec. 4, when federal agents raided HLF offices
around the country and impounded its bank accounts. CAIR issued a statement
denouncing the U.S. action, but curiously deleted the HLF fund-raising
device from its home page at the same time. "The only specific accusation
made against HLF has been that among the thousands of Palestinians who
received its relief aid were the children of suicide bombers," claimed CAIR.
These groups seem to want things both ways. Three days after the Oct. 5
meeting with the FBI, and a day after the U.S. began attacking enemy
targets in Afghanistan, the AMC gave unequivocal support to the military
operation.
While CAIR and other groups in a joint statement said they support Bush's
crackdown on terrorism, they criticized U.S. objections to their support
for the families of terrorist suicide bombers: "No relief group anywhere in
the world should be asked to question hungry orphans about their parents'
religious beliefs, political affiliations or legal status. Those questions
are not asked of recipients of public assistance whose parents are
imprisoned or executed in the United States, and they should not be a
litmus test for relief in Palestine."
Now comes news that leaders of the Jewish Defense League have been arrested
for alleged terrorism. Cries of bigotry are expected from those arrests, too.
-------
J. Michael Waller is a senior writer for Insight.
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