The Saudi Connection Stephen Schwartz
Spectator (The Dominion 13 Oct 2001)
The first thing to do when trying to understand "Islamic suicide bombers" is to forget the cliches about the Muslim taste for martyrdom. It does exist, of course, but the desire for paradise is not a safe guide to what motivated last month's suicide attacks. Throughout history, political extremists of all faiths have willingly given up their lives simply in the belief that by doing so, whether in bombings or in other forms of terror, they would change the course of history, or at least win an advantage for their cause. Tamils blow themselves up in their war on the government of Sri Lanka; Japanese kamikaze pilots in World War II flew their fighters into United States aircraft carriers.
The Islamic-fascist ideology of Osama Bin Laden and those closest to him, such as the Egyptian and Algerian "Islamic Groups", is no more intrinsically linked to Islam or Islamic civilisation than Pearl Harbor was to Buddhism, or Ulster terrorists - whatever they may profess - are to Christianity. Serious Christians don't go around killing and maiming the innocent; devout Muslims do not prepare for paradise by hanging out in strip bars and getting drunk, as one of last month's terrorist pilots was reported to have done. However, numerical preponderance of Muslims as perpetrators of these ghastly incidents is no coincidence. So we have to ask what has made these men into the monsters they are'? What has so galvanised violent tendencies in the worId's second largest religion (and, in the US the fastest-growing faith)?
For Westerners, it seems natural to look for answers in the distant past, beginning with the Crusades. But if you ask educated, pious, traditional but forward-looking Muslims what has driven their umma, or global community, in this direction, many of them will answer you with one word: Wahhabism. This is a strain of Islam that emerged less than two centuries ago in Arabia and is the official theology of the Gulf states. It is violent, it is intolerant and it is fanatical beyond measure. Wahhabism is the most extreme form of Islamic fundamentalism, and its followers are called Wahhabis. Not all Muslims are suicide bombers, but all Muslim suicide bombers are Wahhabis - except, perhaps, for some disciples of atheist leftists posing as Muslims in the interests of personal power, such as Yasser Arafat or Saddam Hussein.
Wahhabism is the Islamic equivalent or the most extreme Protestant sectarianism. It is puritan, demanding punishment for those who enjoy any form of music except the drum. and severe punishment up to death for drinking or sexual transgressions. It condemns as unbelievers those who do not pray, a view that never previously existed in mainstream Islam. It is stripped-down Islam, calling for simple, short prayers, undecorated mosques and the uprooting of grave- stones (since decorated mosques and graveyards lend themselves to veneration, which is idolatry in the Wahhabi mind. Wahhabis do not even permit the name of the Prophet Muhammad to be inscribed in mosques or his birthday to be celebrated. Above all, they hate ostentatious spirituality, much as Protestants detest the veneration' of miracles and saints in the Catholic Church. Ibn Abdul Wahhab (1703-92), the founder of this totalitarian Islamism, was born in Uyaynah, in the part of Arabia known as Nejd, where Riyadh is today, and which Mohammed notably warned would be a source of corruption and confusion. (Anti-Wahhabi Muslims refer to Wahhabism as fitna an Najdiyyah or "the trouble out of Nejd".)
From the beginning of Wahhab's dispensation, in the late 18th century, his cult was associated with the mass murder of all who opposed it. For example, the Wahhabis fell upon the city of Qarbala in 1801 and killed 2000 ordin- ary citizens in the streets and markets. In the 19th century, Wahhabism took the form of Arab nationalism versus the Turks. The founder of the Saudi kingdom, Ibn Saud, established Wahhabism as its official creed. Much has been made of the role of the US in "creating" Osama bin Laden through subsidies to the Afghan mujahedin, but as much or more could be said in reproach of Britain which, three generations before, supported the Wahhabi Arabs in their revolt against the Ottomans. Arab hatred of the Turks fused with Wahhabi ranting against the "decadence" of Ottoman Islam. The truth is that the Ottoman khalifa reigned over a rhultinational Islamic umma in which vast differences in local culture and tra- dition were tolerated. No such tolerance exists in Wahhabism, which is why the concept of US troops on Saudi soil so inflames bin Laden.
Serious Christians don't go around killing and maiming the innocent; devout Muslims do not prepare for paradise by hanging out in strip bars and getting drunk, as one of last month's terrorist pilots was reported to have done.
Bin Laden is a Wahhabi. So are the suicide bombers in Israel. So are his Egyptian allies, who exulted as they stabbed foreign tourists to death at Luxor not many years ago, bathing in blood up to their elbows and emitting blasphemous cries of ecstasy. So are the Algerian Islamist terrorists whose contribution to the purification of the world consisted of murdering people for such sins as running a movie projector or reading secular newspapers. The Iranians are not Wahhabis, which partially explains their slow, but undeniable, movement toward moderation. The Taleban practise a variant of Wahhabism. In the Wahhabi fashion they employ ancient punishments - such as execution for moral offences - and they have a primitive and fearful view of women. The same is true of Saudi Arabia's rulers. None of this extremism has been inspired by US fumblings in the world, and it has little to do with the tragedies that have beset Israelis and Palestinians.
But the Wahhabis have two weaknesses of which the West is largely, unaware. The first is that the vast majority of Muslims in the world are peaceful people who would prefer the installation of Western democracy in their own countries. They loathe Wahhabism for the same reason any patriarchal culture rejects a violent break with tradition. Bin Laden and other Wahhabis are not defending Islamic tradition; they represent an ultra-radical break in the direction of a sectarian utopia. Thus, they are best described as Islamo-fascists. In the US, 80 per cent of mosques are estimated by the Sufi Hisham al-Kabbani, born in Lebanon and now living in the US, to be under the control of Wahhabi imams, who preach extremism, and this leads to the other point of vulnerability: Wahhabism is subsidised by Saudi Arabia, even though bin Laden has sworn to destroy the Saudi royal family. The Saudis have played a double game for years, more or less as Stalin did with the West during World War II.
They pretended to be allies in a common struggle against Saddam Hussein while they spread Wahhabi ideology,, just as Stalin promoted an "antifascist" coalition with the US while carrying out espionage and subversion on US territory. The motive was the same: the belief that the West was or is decadent and doomed.
ONE key question is never asked in US discussions of Arab terrorism: what is the role of Saudi Arabia? The question cannot be asked because US companies depend too much on the continued flow of Saudi oil, while US politicians have become too eosy with the Saudi rulers. Another reason it is not asked is that to expose the extent of Saudi and Wahhabi influence on American Muslims would deeply compromise many Islamic clerics in the US. But it is the most significant question Americans should be asking themselves today. If we get rid of bin Laden, who do we then have to deal with? The answer was eloquently Put by Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, professor of political science at the University of California at San Diego, and author of an authoritative volume on Islamic extremism in Pakistan, when he said: "If the US wants to do something about radical Islam it has to deal with Saudi Arabia. The 'rogue states' (Iraq, Libya, and so on) are less important in the radicalisation of Islam than Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is the single most import- ant cause and supporter of radicalisation, ideologisation, and the general fanaticisation of Islam."
From what we now know, it appears not a single one of the suicide pilots in New York and Washington was Palestinian. They all seem to have been Saudis, citizens of the Gulf states, Egyptian or Algerian. Two are reported to have been the sons of the former second secretary of the Saudi embassy in Washing- ton. They were planted in the US long before the outbreak of the latest Palestinian intifada; in fact, they seem to have begun their conspiracy while the Middle East peace process was in full, if short, bloom. Anti-terror experts and politicians in the West must now consider the Saudi connection. - The Spectator
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Muslim Group, Leader Charged: Ill.-based charity linked to Bin Laden
Muslim Group, Leader Charged: Ill.-based charity linked to Bin Laden
John Mintz and Robert E. Pierre
Washington Post Wednesday, May 01, 2002
CHICAGO, April 30 -- A large Muslim charity based in Illinois has been intimately connected to Osama bin Laden for years, moving large sums of money to fund the operations of his al Qaeda network around the world, authorities alleged in court papers today.
A portrait of terror connections emerged in an indictment that charges the Benevolence International Foundation and its longtime executive director, Enaam Arnaout, with perjury. The accusations stem from sworn court statements that Arnaout made recently in which he denied that he and his group had ever provided aid to bin Laden or any other terrorists.
U.S. officials said they filed charges against Arnaout and the $4-million-a-year charity today because they feared that Arnaout was planning to flee the country.
A 35-page FBI affidavit outlining the case provides some of the most compelling details of the subterfuges employed to conceal the movement of alleged terrorist cash across international borders. It also alleges that the organization had contacts with terror operatives who tried to obtain weapons of mass destruction for al Qaeda.
"Various persons involved in terrorist activities, specifically including persons trying to obtain chemical and nuclear weapons on behalf of al Qaeda, have had contacts with [Benevolence] offices and personnel," FBI Agent Robert Walker alleges in the affidavit.
Arnaout's lawyer, Matthew Piers, said his client's arrest today is part of the government's continued "heavy-handed" treatmentof the charity. "We are extremely dismayed by the government's conduct not only today but throughout the investigation," Piers said.
The government's affidavit alleges that the affiliation between the Benevolence foundation and bin Laden was demonstrated in 1998, when a top bin Laden associate, Mamdouh Salim, traveled to Bosnia using documents signed by Arnaout that described Salim as a director of the organization, officials said.
Salim, who is awaiting trial in New York on charges of conspiring to kill Americans in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, pleaded guilty last month to the attempted murder of a New York prison guard whom he had stabbed in the eye with a sharpened comb.
"Arnaout has a relationship with Osama bin Laden and many of his key associates dating back more than a decade," Walker says. Benevolence "is an organization that al Qaeda has used for logistical support" and for transferring funds, he alleges.
Arnaout was ordered held without bond after a hearing here today. A preliminary hearing on the case will be held on Tuesday.
Arnaout, 39, and his group were charged after he made two sworn statements in recent weeks. They included assertions that Benevolence had "never provided aid or support to people or organizations known to be engaged in violence, terrorist activities or military operations of any nature."
Arnaout made the statements in a lawsuit filed by the group in January challenging the U.S. Treasury's seizure of the group's assets a month earlier on the grounds that the charity aided bin Laden.
But the FBI affidavit lays out in meticulous detail its findings that a tight connection exits between bin Laden and Benevolence, citing information provided by a number of unidentified al Qaeda associates; documents and computer disks seized in raids of the group's offices in Bosnia last month; and other papers taken in a search of its suburban Chicago headquarters in December.
A "reliable" former al Qaeda member cooperating with the government said that "several al Qaeda members held positions" in Benevolence and that it was "one of the organizations utilized by al Qaeda" to move money, the FBI document says. The source told the FBI that such funds are "untraceable" because the charity fabricates records showing that the money is used to feed the poor or build mosques.
The FBI cites another unnamed source who said that in 1989, while living in Pakistan, Arnaout picked up one of bin Laden's wives at the airport and took her to his home, from where bin Laden and his bodyguards picked her up a week later. The source said that "if Arnaout had not been a trusted associate" of bin Laden, he would not have been entrusted with the task.
Arnaout helped transfer money and equipment -- at times including weapons -- for militant Muslim movements in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya, including some tied to bin Laden, the FBI says. Photographs found at Benevolence offices in Bosnia show him with rifles, a rocket and an antiaircraft gun.
A bin Laden aide named Mohamed Bayazid, who tried to obtain uranium as part of al Qaeda's efforts to develop a nuclear weapon, listed Benevolence's Illinois address as his residence in securing a driver's license, the FBI affidavit says.
Benevolence was founded in the 1980s by a wealthy Saudi national, Sheik Adil Abdul Galil Batargy, who the FBI document identifies as a bin Laden associate. The group set up shop in the Chicago suburb of Palos Hills in 1993, when Batargy transferred control of the group to the Syrian-born Arnaout, the FBI says.
Patrick Fitzgerald, U.S. attorney in Chicago, said that agents acted today because Arnaout was considered "a risk of flight." Last month, an FBI source reported to agents that Arnaout had discussed with him the idea of fleeing to Saudi Arabia.
Piers denied that his client was about to flee.
John Mintz and Robert E. Pierre
Washington Post Wednesday, May 01, 2002
CHICAGO, April 30 -- A large Muslim charity based in Illinois has been intimately connected to Osama bin Laden for years, moving large sums of money to fund the operations of his al Qaeda network around the world, authorities alleged in court papers today.
A portrait of terror connections emerged in an indictment that charges the Benevolence International Foundation and its longtime executive director, Enaam Arnaout, with perjury. The accusations stem from sworn court statements that Arnaout made recently in which he denied that he and his group had ever provided aid to bin Laden or any other terrorists.
U.S. officials said they filed charges against Arnaout and the $4-million-a-year charity today because they feared that Arnaout was planning to flee the country.
A 35-page FBI affidavit outlining the case provides some of the most compelling details of the subterfuges employed to conceal the movement of alleged terrorist cash across international borders. It also alleges that the organization had contacts with terror operatives who tried to obtain weapons of mass destruction for al Qaeda.
"Various persons involved in terrorist activities, specifically including persons trying to obtain chemical and nuclear weapons on behalf of al Qaeda, have had contacts with [Benevolence] offices and personnel," FBI Agent Robert Walker alleges in the affidavit.
Arnaout's lawyer, Matthew Piers, said his client's arrest today is part of the government's continued "heavy-handed" treatmentof the charity. "We are extremely dismayed by the government's conduct not only today but throughout the investigation," Piers said.
The government's affidavit alleges that the affiliation between the Benevolence foundation and bin Laden was demonstrated in 1998, when a top bin Laden associate, Mamdouh Salim, traveled to Bosnia using documents signed by Arnaout that described Salim as a director of the organization, officials said.
Salim, who is awaiting trial in New York on charges of conspiring to kill Americans in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, pleaded guilty last month to the attempted murder of a New York prison guard whom he had stabbed in the eye with a sharpened comb.
"Arnaout has a relationship with Osama bin Laden and many of his key associates dating back more than a decade," Walker says. Benevolence "is an organization that al Qaeda has used for logistical support" and for transferring funds, he alleges.
Arnaout was ordered held without bond after a hearing here today. A preliminary hearing on the case will be held on Tuesday.
Arnaout, 39, and his group were charged after he made two sworn statements in recent weeks. They included assertions that Benevolence had "never provided aid or support to people or organizations known to be engaged in violence, terrorist activities or military operations of any nature."
Arnaout made the statements in a lawsuit filed by the group in January challenging the U.S. Treasury's seizure of the group's assets a month earlier on the grounds that the charity aided bin Laden.
But the FBI affidavit lays out in meticulous detail its findings that a tight connection exits between bin Laden and Benevolence, citing information provided by a number of unidentified al Qaeda associates; documents and computer disks seized in raids of the group's offices in Bosnia last month; and other papers taken in a search of its suburban Chicago headquarters in December.
A "reliable" former al Qaeda member cooperating with the government said that "several al Qaeda members held positions" in Benevolence and that it was "one of the organizations utilized by al Qaeda" to move money, the FBI document says. The source told the FBI that such funds are "untraceable" because the charity fabricates records showing that the money is used to feed the poor or build mosques.
The FBI cites another unnamed source who said that in 1989, while living in Pakistan, Arnaout picked up one of bin Laden's wives at the airport and took her to his home, from where bin Laden and his bodyguards picked her up a week later. The source said that "if Arnaout had not been a trusted associate" of bin Laden, he would not have been entrusted with the task.
Arnaout helped transfer money and equipment -- at times including weapons -- for militant Muslim movements in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya, including some tied to bin Laden, the FBI says. Photographs found at Benevolence offices in Bosnia show him with rifles, a rocket and an antiaircraft gun.
A bin Laden aide named Mohamed Bayazid, who tried to obtain uranium as part of al Qaeda's efforts to develop a nuclear weapon, listed Benevolence's Illinois address as his residence in securing a driver's license, the FBI affidavit says.
Benevolence was founded in the 1980s by a wealthy Saudi national, Sheik Adil Abdul Galil Batargy, who the FBI document identifies as a bin Laden associate. The group set up shop in the Chicago suburb of Palos Hills in 1993, when Batargy transferred control of the group to the Syrian-born Arnaout, the FBI says.
Patrick Fitzgerald, U.S. attorney in Chicago, said that agents acted today because Arnaout was considered "a risk of flight." Last month, an FBI source reported to agents that Arnaout had discussed with him the idea of fleeing to Saudi Arabia.
Piers denied that his client was about to flee.
'Wahhabi Lobby' Takes the Offensive
'Wahhabi Lobby' Takes the Offensive
J. Michael Waller
Insight on the News Friday, July 12, 2002
Totalitarian regimes in the Middle East have targeted the United States with a well-financed influence campaign that is being rooted in American politics. Veteran watchers of the "active-measures" programs of the former Soviet Union say this Islamist propaganda offensive bears an uncanny resemblance to the old Soviet international front operations and the broad parade of fellow travelers who used themes of peace, tolerance and civil liberties to advance Soviet strategic goals by weakening the United States at home and abroad.
"Active measures" is a translation of aktivniye meropriyatya, a term of KGB tradecraft that spans the covert-action spectrum from disinformation and propaganda to assassination and sponsorship of terrorism.
Numerous parallels are visible between the totalitarianism of Soviet communism and that of Wahhabism, a Saudi-funded movement to seize control of global Islam, notes Stephen Schwartz, a former leftist, prolific chronicler of communist strategy and tactics and author of the forthcoming book Two Faces of Islam. "Aside from their ideological similarities and the common elements in the struggle of each power," says Schwartz, "there is a striking matter of their identical tactics in penetration of the United States."
In a column for FrontPageMag.com, Schwartz writes, "The Communist Party U.S.A. claimed to lead and, in effect, represent the entire labor and left movement when its constituency was restricted to a narrow band of fanatics and agents of a foreign regime." The same is true, he says, of campaigns that promote the Saudi brand of Islam, including U.S.-based Muslim political pressure groups he calls the "Wahhabi lobby."
For example, he says, "the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the American Muslim Council (AMC) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) claim to lead and, in effect, represent the entire community of American Muslims. In fact, its constituency is restricted to a narrow band of fanatics and agents of a foreign regime, the Saudi kingdom."
The U.S. government had a means of predicting, identifying and countering Soviet active measures both at home and abroad. But it is poorly equipped to deal with Saudi-sponsored (and smaller, noncentralized) political-influence operations of militant Islamists against U.S. interests overseas and against the public and decisionmakers domestically. Cold War concerns at least led U.S. officials to focus on Soviet fronts and covert operations, but little notice was taken of the Islamist propaganda development that began in the early 1960s.
Now, with the Soviet Union long gone and the information revolution having empowered small, decentralized groups to battle the United States with methods short of all-out military warfare, researchers at the Rand Corporation's National Security Research Division have taken the lead in defining a new phenomenon they call "netwar." Rand's John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, who coined the term "cyberwar" to discuss the military implications of the information revolution on warfare, also have coined the word "netwar" to define conflicts short of war involving actors who might or might not be military or even government.
Netwar's distinguishing element, they write in their new book, Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime and Militancy, takes advantage of the information revolution to empower small, networked organizations to battle hierarchical governments. Netwar, according to Arquilla and Ronfeldt, is "an emerging mode of conflict (and crime) at societal levels, short of traditional military warfare, in which the protagonists use network forms of organization and related doctrines, strategies and technologies attuned to the information age.
"These protagonists are likely to consist of dispersed organizations, small groups and individuals who communicate, coordinate and conduct their campaigns in an Internetted matter, often without a precise central command." The United States barely is beginning to grapple with the problem, intelligence sources say.
In its heyday, according to a CIA estimate provided to Congress, the Soviet Union spent an estimated $3.3 billion annually on active measures, including the Izvestiya, Pravda, New Times, Novosti and Tass propaganda vehicles; Radio Moscow and clandestine radio stations around the world; international Communist parties; more than a dozen international front organizations such as the World Peace Council; and the KGB's entire operating budget for foreign rezidentura outposts. The budget included support for guerrilla and terrorist organizations.
The Saudis are outspending the former Soviet Union in their worldwide influence operations, and much of that money has been spent in the United States, intelligence officials claim. At one point in the 1990s, some $1.85 billion was funneled through a single reputed Saudi front group in Northern Virginia, the SAAR Foundation, to fund Islamist activity, according to SAAR documents reviewed by Insight. Raided by federal agents for suspected terrorist money laundering and now closed, the SAAR Foundation was part of a network of Wahhabi-sponsored political front groups, mosques, charities, educational foundations, youth and student organizations, investment firms and holding companies. Many currently are under federal investigation as part of the Treasury Department's Operation Green Quest to track down alleged terrorist money.
"The Communist Party U.S.A. used labor unions as cover; the Wahhabi lobby uses charities," says Schwartz in his column. "The means and the ends are the same: Each represents the place where the ideological network encounters and seeks to control the masses. Each is used as a recruitment center and cover for terrorists." A leading active-measures expert says that while the Communist Party in the United States was very small and of "limited influence" on policy, "its value to the Soviets was that it provided the cadre to recruit people for front activities to promote Soviet interests."
The most publicized Islamist groups in the post-Sept. 11 federal raids received notoriety for their covert funding of, and even overt political support for, terrorist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and al-Qaeda. So far there have been vocal protests of innocence and no legal proof of guilt, but multiagency investigations are continuing vigorously. Meanwhile, federal officials have yet to reel in a larger web of political and educational groups that are not suspected of funding terrorism but that do appear to be running Saudi propaganda operations under various guises. U.S. officials are more interested at the moment in tracking direct terrorist financial and operational support activity, but the FBI also has a mandate and a legal precedent to investigate covert foreign political-influence operations aimed at government decisionmakers.
That, however, may be a while in coming. It is against the law to be an unregistered foreign agent, and the U.S. intelligence community defines such an individual as having a clandestine relationship with a foreign intelligence officer. However, current law contains loopholes that allow such individuals to operate without being monitored or stopped. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) inserted one such loophole into the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
"Kennedy made it very clear that merely carrying out instructions of a foreign intelligence officer in support of a political objective would not be 'covered' under the law," according to Herbert Romerstein, a former professional investigator with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. "That loophole remains in the USA PATRIOT Act," passed after the Sept. 11 attacks as a tough new legal tool to fight terrorism, Romerstein says.
The Saudis began their modern global propaganda campaign in the early 1960s, founding the Muslim World League (MWL) in 1962. Ten years later, the Saudi regime backed establishment of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) and financed its activities. The MWL has offices around the world, including in New York and Virginia. Wa'il Jalaidan, a cofounder of al-Qaeda, was head of the MWL office in Pakistan. Federal agents raided the MWL Virginia offices in March for alleged ties to terrorism. Abdullah bin Laden, brother of terrorist Osama bin Laden, headed WAMY's Virginia office. Insight sources say that an FBI probe into WAMY's alleged terrorist ties has "mysteriously ended."
At press time, the MWL was sponsoring a high-profile tour of the United States to promote Muslim understanding.
Under the wings of the early Saudi international fronts sprang networks of other organizations sharing interlocking leaderships and responsible for a range of activities: one group to coordinate and recruit students on college campuses nationwide, another for political agitation and others for political lobbying, education, cultural and religious outreach, cadre-building; charities (to include fund raising for terrorist organizations); and holding companies, investment funds and tax-exempt foundations to finance the networks.
Many of these active-measures operations reportedly are run through mosques, where they are not subject to IRS reporting requirements and until passage of the USA PATRIOT Act last autumn were practically off-limits to the FBI. Federal authorities raided or shut down at least 17 of the organizations for alleged financial improprieties since Sept. 11. All the affected organizations maintain their innocence.
Recent years have seen a merger between some old Soviet front organizations and left-wing activist groups and Islamic terrorist causes. The New York-based National Lawyers Guild (NLG) ? officially cited as having been created in the 1930s under Josef Stalin as the foremost legal bulwark for the Communist Party U.S.A., its fronts and controlled organizations ? survived its Soviet sponsors and now is considered by national-security specialists to be the main legal group facilitating terrorists and related causes. Among its projects, the NLG has published brochures advising people how to stand up to the FBI if questioned in terrorist cases. The brochure is available on the NLG Website in several languages, including Arabic, Farsi and Punjabi.
The NLG leadership runs the day-to-day operations of another group, the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom (NCPPF), founded in the 1960s to provide legal support for domestic terrorist groups such as the Weather Underground, Symbionese Liberation Army, Black Liberation Army and Puerto Rican Armed Forces of National Liberation (see "Domestic Front in the War on Terror," Jan. 7).
The NCPPF's current president, Sami al-Arian, has been identified as a leading figure in the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, on the State Department terrorist list. Confronted publicly about his terrorist connections by Fox News' Bill O'Reilly and others, al-Arian said he was "shocked" that some of his friends turned up in the Middle East as terrorist leaders and protested that "We have been involved in intellectual-type activity."
The NLG, NCPPF and other reputedly Marxist operations of long-standing, such as the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), defend their clients as being unjustly accused, condemned through guilt by association or simply as misunderstood individuals whose politically unpopular views and actions must be protected under the Constitution. Critics of their clients, as well as law-enforcement agencies and anyone else acting against them, are labeled "racists and bigots" ? now favorite terms of agents of the Wahhabi netwar.
This apparently is a 21st century adaptation of defense tactics that have served Soviet operatives well since the 1940s.
"Like the Communists before them, the Wahhabis have presented arrestees, detainees and indicted suspects as people persecuted because they are 'foreign-born' or victims of 'ethnic profiling,'" says Schwartz.
"In the long term, the communist juridical operation aimed at protecting their terrorist, treasonous and spying activities was successful," Schwartz adds. "It should therefore surprise nobody that when the Wahhabi lobby came under American investigative scrutiny in the 1990s, their response and that of their defenders (including a considerable number of ultrasecularist and leftist Jews) almost exactly reproduced the effort mounted earlier in American history by Stalinist Communists and their protectors. Aside from the claim that they were victims because they were 'foreign-born' or were 'ethnically profiled,' the Wahhabis have recycled a full range of Stalinist techniques for evading the law."
Indeed, the AMC denounced the Treasury Department's March 20 raids on suspected terrorist fund-raising fronts in Virginia. The raids, AMC said in a news release slamming federal agents for "McCarthy-like tactics" in search of "evidence of wrongdoing that does not exist," were anti-Muslim. AMC exhorted, "Brothers and Sisters, this is YOUR community that has been attacked."
Veteran congressional investigator Romerstein urges federal investigators not to be intimidated or fall further into pander mode: "The FBI should be planting informants in these groups and monitoring them."
U.S. Fails to Expose Islamist Active Measures
The U.S. government is poorly equipped to monitor and evaluate foreign covert political-influence operations against Americans, and especially against U.S. decisionmakers.
"The reason we were successful in exposing Soviet active measures was that we did it in a coordinated way," says Herbert Romerstein, who founded and directed the Office of Counter Soviet Active Measures at the now-defunct U.S. Information Agency (USIA). "We raised the costs to the Soviet Union of spreading their lies, causing problems that snapped back on them, making it more of a problem to spread their propaganda and disinformation."
With no other government agency taking the lead, the Pentagon created an Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) that would, in part, wage the war of ideas in the Muslim world. Insight sources alleged Department of Defense (DoD) spokeswoman Torie Clarke covertly wrecked the OSI by leaking disinformation about the office's mission to the New York Times in February, leaving the government without a single tool for strategic-influence campaigns abroad. Clarke has refused to respond to Insight's many offers to allow her to refute these charges.
U.S. officials, including some supportive of OSI, tell Insight that the Pentagon is not the proper venue for an effort to counter pro-terrorist propaganda abroad on a daily basis, or to deal with Wahhabi and other Islamist covert operations inside the United States.
Looking back on the USIA Office to Counter Soviet Active Measures, Romerstein notes, "We don't have an apparatus now to counter the lies being spread by America's enemies in the Arab world." In fact, the United States has nothing in place to do this at home.
The FBI lacks its own analytical unit and its internal database is so antiquated that agents have to write files in longhand.
The bureau also was stung in the 1980s for investigating communist terrorist activity that operated under the cover of Christian churches, resulting in the famous CISPES case that cost the careers of key senior FBI antiterrorism officials. As for the CIA, with few exceptions it does not collect intelligence on organizations inside U.S. borders. The mandates of other federal law-enforcement and investigative agencies also are extremely narrow, pertaining to tax evasion, immigration violations, undeclared foreign funding, money-laundering and so forth, with no other agency connecting the dots.
Security experts tell Insight that the new Department of Homeland Security, with its planned intelligence-analyses office, must establish a unit dedicated to monitoring and assessing Wahhabi and other foreign-funded influence operations aimed at American citizens and decisionmakers, and to taking appropriate defensive measures.
That's fine, counters Romerstein, but the key to analysis is the actual collection of information. "If you can't gather the data in the first place, you can analyze to your heart's content, but you won't have the information."
FBI Draws Line Between Muslims, Terrorists
FBI Director Robert Mueller heaped praise on those Muslims in America who have helped the bureau crack down on domestic and foreign terrorist groups. But what he didn't say was more revealing.
In a controversial June 28 appearance before the American Muslim Council (AMC), where he thanked American Muslims for their help, Mueller broke protocol and avoided praising the organization hosting his speech. Indeed, he said this: "Unfortunately, persons associated with this organization in the past have made statements that indicate support for terrorism and for terrorist organizations. I think we can, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, justifiably be outraged by such statements."
In the week prior to the speech, various TV personalities, including MSNBC's Alan Keyes and Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, tried to get AMC Executive Director Eric Vickers to denounce terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah and al-Qaeda. While denouncing acts of terrorism, Vickers avoided denouncing these notorious terrorist groups themselves.
The night before Mueller addressed the AMC, guest host Mike Barnicle on CNBC's Hardball asked Vickers to condemn Hamas and Hezbollah. Vickers would not. Barnicle followed, "How about al-Qaeda?"
According to the transcript, Vickers' only response was, "They are involved in a resistance movement."
An Islamic Republic in America?
"I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future."
Ibrahim Hooper, director of communications, Council on American-Islamic Relations.
"I think if we are outside this country, we can say oh, 'Allah, destroy America.' But once we are here, our mission in this country is to change it. There is no way for Muslims to be violent in America, no way. We have other means to do it. You can be violent anywhere else but in America."
The American Muslim Council's Abdurahman Alamoudi.
"The center of gravity of the Muslim world is shifting to this country."
Faiz Rehman, communications director, American Muslim Council. June 27,
J. Michael Waller is a senior writer for Insight magazine.
J. Michael Waller
Insight on the News Friday, July 12, 2002
Totalitarian regimes in the Middle East have targeted the United States with a well-financed influence campaign that is being rooted in American politics. Veteran watchers of the "active-measures" programs of the former Soviet Union say this Islamist propaganda offensive bears an uncanny resemblance to the old Soviet international front operations and the broad parade of fellow travelers who used themes of peace, tolerance and civil liberties to advance Soviet strategic goals by weakening the United States at home and abroad.
"Active measures" is a translation of aktivniye meropriyatya, a term of KGB tradecraft that spans the covert-action spectrum from disinformation and propaganda to assassination and sponsorship of terrorism.
Numerous parallels are visible between the totalitarianism of Soviet communism and that of Wahhabism, a Saudi-funded movement to seize control of global Islam, notes Stephen Schwartz, a former leftist, prolific chronicler of communist strategy and tactics and author of the forthcoming book Two Faces of Islam. "Aside from their ideological similarities and the common elements in the struggle of each power," says Schwartz, "there is a striking matter of their identical tactics in penetration of the United States."
In a column for FrontPageMag.com, Schwartz writes, "The Communist Party U.S.A. claimed to lead and, in effect, represent the entire labor and left movement when its constituency was restricted to a narrow band of fanatics and agents of a foreign regime." The same is true, he says, of campaigns that promote the Saudi brand of Islam, including U.S.-based Muslim political pressure groups he calls the "Wahhabi lobby."
For example, he says, "the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the American Muslim Council (AMC) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) claim to lead and, in effect, represent the entire community of American Muslims. In fact, its constituency is restricted to a narrow band of fanatics and agents of a foreign regime, the Saudi kingdom."
The U.S. government had a means of predicting, identifying and countering Soviet active measures both at home and abroad. But it is poorly equipped to deal with Saudi-sponsored (and smaller, noncentralized) political-influence operations of militant Islamists against U.S. interests overseas and against the public and decisionmakers domestically. Cold War concerns at least led U.S. officials to focus on Soviet fronts and covert operations, but little notice was taken of the Islamist propaganda development that began in the early 1960s.
Now, with the Soviet Union long gone and the information revolution having empowered small, decentralized groups to battle the United States with methods short of all-out military warfare, researchers at the Rand Corporation's National Security Research Division have taken the lead in defining a new phenomenon they call "netwar." Rand's John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, who coined the term "cyberwar" to discuss the military implications of the information revolution on warfare, also have coined the word "netwar" to define conflicts short of war involving actors who might or might not be military or even government.
Netwar's distinguishing element, they write in their new book, Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime and Militancy, takes advantage of the information revolution to empower small, networked organizations to battle hierarchical governments. Netwar, according to Arquilla and Ronfeldt, is "an emerging mode of conflict (and crime) at societal levels, short of traditional military warfare, in which the protagonists use network forms of organization and related doctrines, strategies and technologies attuned to the information age.
"These protagonists are likely to consist of dispersed organizations, small groups and individuals who communicate, coordinate and conduct their campaigns in an Internetted matter, often without a precise central command." The United States barely is beginning to grapple with the problem, intelligence sources say.
In its heyday, according to a CIA estimate provided to Congress, the Soviet Union spent an estimated $3.3 billion annually on active measures, including the Izvestiya, Pravda, New Times, Novosti and Tass propaganda vehicles; Radio Moscow and clandestine radio stations around the world; international Communist parties; more than a dozen international front organizations such as the World Peace Council; and the KGB's entire operating budget for foreign rezidentura outposts. The budget included support for guerrilla and terrorist organizations.
The Saudis are outspending the former Soviet Union in their worldwide influence operations, and much of that money has been spent in the United States, intelligence officials claim. At one point in the 1990s, some $1.85 billion was funneled through a single reputed Saudi front group in Northern Virginia, the SAAR Foundation, to fund Islamist activity, according to SAAR documents reviewed by Insight. Raided by federal agents for suspected terrorist money laundering and now closed, the SAAR Foundation was part of a network of Wahhabi-sponsored political front groups, mosques, charities, educational foundations, youth and student organizations, investment firms and holding companies. Many currently are under federal investigation as part of the Treasury Department's Operation Green Quest to track down alleged terrorist money.
"The Communist Party U.S.A. used labor unions as cover; the Wahhabi lobby uses charities," says Schwartz in his column. "The means and the ends are the same: Each represents the place where the ideological network encounters and seeks to control the masses. Each is used as a recruitment center and cover for terrorists." A leading active-measures expert says that while the Communist Party in the United States was very small and of "limited influence" on policy, "its value to the Soviets was that it provided the cadre to recruit people for front activities to promote Soviet interests."
The most publicized Islamist groups in the post-Sept. 11 federal raids received notoriety for their covert funding of, and even overt political support for, terrorist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and al-Qaeda. So far there have been vocal protests of innocence and no legal proof of guilt, but multiagency investigations are continuing vigorously. Meanwhile, federal officials have yet to reel in a larger web of political and educational groups that are not suspected of funding terrorism but that do appear to be running Saudi propaganda operations under various guises. U.S. officials are more interested at the moment in tracking direct terrorist financial and operational support activity, but the FBI also has a mandate and a legal precedent to investigate covert foreign political-influence operations aimed at government decisionmakers.
That, however, may be a while in coming. It is against the law to be an unregistered foreign agent, and the U.S. intelligence community defines such an individual as having a clandestine relationship with a foreign intelligence officer. However, current law contains loopholes that allow such individuals to operate without being monitored or stopped. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) inserted one such loophole into the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
"Kennedy made it very clear that merely carrying out instructions of a foreign intelligence officer in support of a political objective would not be 'covered' under the law," according to Herbert Romerstein, a former professional investigator with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. "That loophole remains in the USA PATRIOT Act," passed after the Sept. 11 attacks as a tough new legal tool to fight terrorism, Romerstein says.
The Saudis began their modern global propaganda campaign in the early 1960s, founding the Muslim World League (MWL) in 1962. Ten years later, the Saudi regime backed establishment of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) and financed its activities. The MWL has offices around the world, including in New York and Virginia. Wa'il Jalaidan, a cofounder of al-Qaeda, was head of the MWL office in Pakistan. Federal agents raided the MWL Virginia offices in March for alleged ties to terrorism. Abdullah bin Laden, brother of terrorist Osama bin Laden, headed WAMY's Virginia office. Insight sources say that an FBI probe into WAMY's alleged terrorist ties has "mysteriously ended."
At press time, the MWL was sponsoring a high-profile tour of the United States to promote Muslim understanding.
Under the wings of the early Saudi international fronts sprang networks of other organizations sharing interlocking leaderships and responsible for a range of activities: one group to coordinate and recruit students on college campuses nationwide, another for political agitation and others for political lobbying, education, cultural and religious outreach, cadre-building; charities (to include fund raising for terrorist organizations); and holding companies, investment funds and tax-exempt foundations to finance the networks.
Many of these active-measures operations reportedly are run through mosques, where they are not subject to IRS reporting requirements and until passage of the USA PATRIOT Act last autumn were practically off-limits to the FBI. Federal authorities raided or shut down at least 17 of the organizations for alleged financial improprieties since Sept. 11. All the affected organizations maintain their innocence.
Recent years have seen a merger between some old Soviet front organizations and left-wing activist groups and Islamic terrorist causes. The New York-based National Lawyers Guild (NLG) ? officially cited as having been created in the 1930s under Josef Stalin as the foremost legal bulwark for the Communist Party U.S.A., its fronts and controlled organizations ? survived its Soviet sponsors and now is considered by national-security specialists to be the main legal group facilitating terrorists and related causes. Among its projects, the NLG has published brochures advising people how to stand up to the FBI if questioned in terrorist cases. The brochure is available on the NLG Website in several languages, including Arabic, Farsi and Punjabi.
The NLG leadership runs the day-to-day operations of another group, the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom (NCPPF), founded in the 1960s to provide legal support for domestic terrorist groups such as the Weather Underground, Symbionese Liberation Army, Black Liberation Army and Puerto Rican Armed Forces of National Liberation (see "Domestic Front in the War on Terror," Jan. 7).
The NCPPF's current president, Sami al-Arian, has been identified as a leading figure in the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, on the State Department terrorist list. Confronted publicly about his terrorist connections by Fox News' Bill O'Reilly and others, al-Arian said he was "shocked" that some of his friends turned up in the Middle East as terrorist leaders and protested that "We have been involved in intellectual-type activity."
The NLG, NCPPF and other reputedly Marxist operations of long-standing, such as the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), defend their clients as being unjustly accused, condemned through guilt by association or simply as misunderstood individuals whose politically unpopular views and actions must be protected under the Constitution. Critics of their clients, as well as law-enforcement agencies and anyone else acting against them, are labeled "racists and bigots" ? now favorite terms of agents of the Wahhabi netwar.
This apparently is a 21st century adaptation of defense tactics that have served Soviet operatives well since the 1940s.
"Like the Communists before them, the Wahhabis have presented arrestees, detainees and indicted suspects as people persecuted because they are 'foreign-born' or victims of 'ethnic profiling,'" says Schwartz.
"In the long term, the communist juridical operation aimed at protecting their terrorist, treasonous and spying activities was successful," Schwartz adds. "It should therefore surprise nobody that when the Wahhabi lobby came under American investigative scrutiny in the 1990s, their response and that of their defenders (including a considerable number of ultrasecularist and leftist Jews) almost exactly reproduced the effort mounted earlier in American history by Stalinist Communists and their protectors. Aside from the claim that they were victims because they were 'foreign-born' or were 'ethnically profiled,' the Wahhabis have recycled a full range of Stalinist techniques for evading the law."
Indeed, the AMC denounced the Treasury Department's March 20 raids on suspected terrorist fund-raising fronts in Virginia. The raids, AMC said in a news release slamming federal agents for "McCarthy-like tactics" in search of "evidence of wrongdoing that does not exist," were anti-Muslim. AMC exhorted, "Brothers and Sisters, this is YOUR community that has been attacked."
Veteran congressional investigator Romerstein urges federal investigators not to be intimidated or fall further into pander mode: "The FBI should be planting informants in these groups and monitoring them."
U.S. Fails to Expose Islamist Active Measures
The U.S. government is poorly equipped to monitor and evaluate foreign covert political-influence operations against Americans, and especially against U.S. decisionmakers.
"The reason we were successful in exposing Soviet active measures was that we did it in a coordinated way," says Herbert Romerstein, who founded and directed the Office of Counter Soviet Active Measures at the now-defunct U.S. Information Agency (USIA). "We raised the costs to the Soviet Union of spreading their lies, causing problems that snapped back on them, making it more of a problem to spread their propaganda and disinformation."
With no other government agency taking the lead, the Pentagon created an Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) that would, in part, wage the war of ideas in the Muslim world. Insight sources alleged Department of Defense (DoD) spokeswoman Torie Clarke covertly wrecked the OSI by leaking disinformation about the office's mission to the New York Times in February, leaving the government without a single tool for strategic-influence campaigns abroad. Clarke has refused to respond to Insight's many offers to allow her to refute these charges.
U.S. officials, including some supportive of OSI, tell Insight that the Pentagon is not the proper venue for an effort to counter pro-terrorist propaganda abroad on a daily basis, or to deal with Wahhabi and other Islamist covert operations inside the United States.
Looking back on the USIA Office to Counter Soviet Active Measures, Romerstein notes, "We don't have an apparatus now to counter the lies being spread by America's enemies in the Arab world." In fact, the United States has nothing in place to do this at home.
The FBI lacks its own analytical unit and its internal database is so antiquated that agents have to write files in longhand.
The bureau also was stung in the 1980s for investigating communist terrorist activity that operated under the cover of Christian churches, resulting in the famous CISPES case that cost the careers of key senior FBI antiterrorism officials. As for the CIA, with few exceptions it does not collect intelligence on organizations inside U.S. borders. The mandates of other federal law-enforcement and investigative agencies also are extremely narrow, pertaining to tax evasion, immigration violations, undeclared foreign funding, money-laundering and so forth, with no other agency connecting the dots.
Security experts tell Insight that the new Department of Homeland Security, with its planned intelligence-analyses office, must establish a unit dedicated to monitoring and assessing Wahhabi and other foreign-funded influence operations aimed at American citizens and decisionmakers, and to taking appropriate defensive measures.
That's fine, counters Romerstein, but the key to analysis is the actual collection of information. "If you can't gather the data in the first place, you can analyze to your heart's content, but you won't have the information."
FBI Draws Line Between Muslims, Terrorists
FBI Director Robert Mueller heaped praise on those Muslims in America who have helped the bureau crack down on domestic and foreign terrorist groups. But what he didn't say was more revealing.
In a controversial June 28 appearance before the American Muslim Council (AMC), where he thanked American Muslims for their help, Mueller broke protocol and avoided praising the organization hosting his speech. Indeed, he said this: "Unfortunately, persons associated with this organization in the past have made statements that indicate support for terrorism and for terrorist organizations. I think we can, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, justifiably be outraged by such statements."
In the week prior to the speech, various TV personalities, including MSNBC's Alan Keyes and Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, tried to get AMC Executive Director Eric Vickers to denounce terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah and al-Qaeda. While denouncing acts of terrorism, Vickers avoided denouncing these notorious terrorist groups themselves.
The night before Mueller addressed the AMC, guest host Mike Barnicle on CNBC's Hardball asked Vickers to condemn Hamas and Hezbollah. Vickers would not. Barnicle followed, "How about al-Qaeda?"
According to the transcript, Vickers' only response was, "They are involved in a resistance movement."
An Islamic Republic in America?
"I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future."
Ibrahim Hooper, director of communications, Council on American-Islamic Relations.
"I think if we are outside this country, we can say oh, 'Allah, destroy America.' But once we are here, our mission in this country is to change it. There is no way for Muslims to be violent in America, no way. We have other means to do it. You can be violent anywhere else but in America."
The American Muslim Council's Abdurahman Alamoudi.
"The center of gravity of the Muslim world is shifting to this country."
Faiz Rehman, communications director, American Muslim Council. June 27,
J. Michael Waller is a senior writer for Insight magazine.
Wahhabis in Old Dominion: What the federal raids in Northern Virginia uncovered
Wahhabis in Old Dominion: What the federal raids in Northern Virginia uncovered
Stephen Schwartz
Weekly Standard Monday, April 08, 2002
FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT has kicked over quite an anthill in Northern Virginia. A U.S. Treasury task force, Operation Green Quest, has been investigating the funding of Islamic terror. Raids on March 20 struck an extraordinary array of financial, charitable, and ostensibly religious entities identified with Muslim and Arab concerns in this country, most of them headquartered in Northern Virginia.
Reaction to the raids suggests the Feds inflicted serious injury on the Wahhabi lobby, the Saudi-backed extremist network that largely controls Islam in America. Officials of the targeted groups as well as their non-Muslim apologists--notably GOP operative Grover Norquist, the chief enabler of Islamic extremists seeking access to the White House--have condemned the raids as civil rights violations.
The convoluted system of interlocking directorates, global banking transactions, and ideological activities exposed in Northern Virginia will take time to sort out. Operation Green Quest has drawn attention to a previously overlooked aspect of support for extremism in this country: The principal threat comes not from the thousands of working-class Arab immigrants in places like New Jersey and Michigan who contribute modest sums to the so-called Islamic charities, but from the Arab elite.
The Saudis stand behind all of it. The kingdom pledged $400 million last year for the support of "martyrs' families," according to the Saudi Embassy website. At $5,300 per "martyr," that works out to about 75,000 martyrs, suggesting the Saudi princes anticipate a lot more suicide bombings than Israel has yet suffered. The Saudis offered a fraudulent "peace" plan this year intended to divert attention from their involvement in the horrors of September 11.
The keystone of the Saudi-sponsored Northern Virginia network is the Saar Foundation, created by Suleiman Abdul Al-Aziz al-Rajhi, a scion of one of the richest Saudi families. The Saar Foundation is connected to Al-Taqwa, a shell company formerly based in Switzerland, where its leading figures included a notorious neo-Nazi and Islamist, Ahmed Huber. Subsequently moved to the United States, Al-Taqwa was shut down after September 11 and its assets frozen by U.S. presidential order. But operations continued, as the Wahhabi lobby shifted to its backup institutions here.
Saar has also been linked to Khalid bin Mahfouz, former lead financial adviser to the Saudi royal family and ex-head of the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia. Mahfouz has been named by French intelligence as a backer of Osama bin Laden; Mahfouz endowed the Muwafaq Foundation, which U.S. authorities confirm was an arm of bin Laden's terror organization. Muwafaq's former chief, Yassin al-Qadi, oversaw the financial penetration of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania by Wahhabi terrorists in the late 1990s.
Men like al-Rajhi, Mahfouz, and al-Qadi are the big players in the financing of Islamic extremism. And their paths repeatedly lead back to Northern Virginia. They don't play for small stakes: Saar received $1.7 billion in donations in 1998, although this was left out of the foundation's tax filings until 2000. No explanation has been offered for this bit of accounting sorcery.
A major personality on the ground in Virginia is an individual named Jamal Barzinji, whose office in Herndon was a major target of the raids. In 1980, he was listed in local public records as a representative of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), an arm of the Saudi regime with offices in Virginia. WAMY has been deeply involved in providing cover for Wahhabi terrorism. The 2002 entry in the U.S. Business Directory lists the president of the WAMY office in Annandale, Va., as Abdula bin Laden--the terrorist's younger brother.
Barzinji serves as a trustee and officer of the Amana Mutual Funds Trust, a growth and income mutual fund headquartered in Bellingham, Wash., conveniently near the Canadian border. Amana's board also includes Yaqub Mirza, a Pakistani physicist who shares Barzinji's Herndon office address and who is widely described as a financial genius. Another board member and tenant in the Herndon office is Samir Salah. He formerly ran a branch of Al-Taqwa in the Caribbean, heads a financial firm linked to Saar, and directs Dar al-Hijra, a mosque in Falls Church, Va., notable for hardline Wahhabi preaching. Salah is also deeply involved with Taibah International Aid Association, a Virginia charity with a Bosnian branch that is being investigated by authorities in Sarajevo.
Front groups interfacing between the Wahhabi-Saudi money movers under federal suspicion and the broader American public include two institutions active in the religious field: the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) and the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences (GSISS). The involvement of GSISS with the financing of extremism is especially startling in that it alone is credentialed by the Department of Defense to certify Muslim chaplains for the U.S. armed forces. Barzinji has appeared on the boards of both.
The day of the raids, Barzinji appeared on U.S. television news insisting he knew of no questionable behavior by the groups under scrutiny, and promising full cooperation with the authorities. But in a familiar pattern of duplicity, he expressed himself quite differently in the Islamic media. Barzinji told the Internet news service Islam Online (www.islam-online.net) he believed the investigations fulfilled the will not of the Bush administration, but of "elements within the government, media, and [academia] who were unhappy with the positive attention being given to Muslims." This tortured formulation, repeated in several variations, embodies the Islamist fantasy that every doubt cast on the activities of the Wahhabi lobby is the product of Jewish influence.
Speaking to Islam Online, Barzinji spelled out his anxieties. He alleged that the real powers behind the raids were "self-styled Middle East 'experts,'" individuals "who do not want to see Muslims develop such excellent relations with the government, assuming political rights." This line simply dumbs down one peddled by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which condemns any challenge to the Wahhabi lobby as a product of "right-wing commentators."
Barzinji, CAIR, and their cohort give the impression of living in their own conspiratorial world, divorced from reality. For them to imagine that the aftermath of September 11 has been anything but disastrous for the image and credibility of American Muslims is absurd. The presumption that anybody outside government dictates policy to the Treasury, however, is only the classic supposition about alleged Israeli influence that infests the Arab mind.
Perhaps it's to be expected that the Wahhabi lobby would react to a federal investigation with its usual combination of pseudopatriotic protest, claims of innocence, and paranoia. But perhaps the White House might suggest to friends like Norquist that they should stop trying to protect enablers of terrorism.
Otherwise, more and more people will wonder whether the administration really understands the problems afflicting Islam in the United States, and whether it really is united in resisting the influence of the extremists.
Stephen Schwartz's new book, "The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa'ud From Tradition to Terror," is forthcoming.
Stephen Schwartz
Weekly Standard Monday, April 08, 2002
FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT has kicked over quite an anthill in Northern Virginia. A U.S. Treasury task force, Operation Green Quest, has been investigating the funding of Islamic terror. Raids on March 20 struck an extraordinary array of financial, charitable, and ostensibly religious entities identified with Muslim and Arab concerns in this country, most of them headquartered in Northern Virginia.
Reaction to the raids suggests the Feds inflicted serious injury on the Wahhabi lobby, the Saudi-backed extremist network that largely controls Islam in America. Officials of the targeted groups as well as their non-Muslim apologists--notably GOP operative Grover Norquist, the chief enabler of Islamic extremists seeking access to the White House--have condemned the raids as civil rights violations.
The convoluted system of interlocking directorates, global banking transactions, and ideological activities exposed in Northern Virginia will take time to sort out. Operation Green Quest has drawn attention to a previously overlooked aspect of support for extremism in this country: The principal threat comes not from the thousands of working-class Arab immigrants in places like New Jersey and Michigan who contribute modest sums to the so-called Islamic charities, but from the Arab elite.
The Saudis stand behind all of it. The kingdom pledged $400 million last year for the support of "martyrs' families," according to the Saudi Embassy website. At $5,300 per "martyr," that works out to about 75,000 martyrs, suggesting the Saudi princes anticipate a lot more suicide bombings than Israel has yet suffered. The Saudis offered a fraudulent "peace" plan this year intended to divert attention from their involvement in the horrors of September 11.
The keystone of the Saudi-sponsored Northern Virginia network is the Saar Foundation, created by Suleiman Abdul Al-Aziz al-Rajhi, a scion of one of the richest Saudi families. The Saar Foundation is connected to Al-Taqwa, a shell company formerly based in Switzerland, where its leading figures included a notorious neo-Nazi and Islamist, Ahmed Huber. Subsequently moved to the United States, Al-Taqwa was shut down after September 11 and its assets frozen by U.S. presidential order. But operations continued, as the Wahhabi lobby shifted to its backup institutions here.
Saar has also been linked to Khalid bin Mahfouz, former lead financial adviser to the Saudi royal family and ex-head of the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia. Mahfouz has been named by French intelligence as a backer of Osama bin Laden; Mahfouz endowed the Muwafaq Foundation, which U.S. authorities confirm was an arm of bin Laden's terror organization. Muwafaq's former chief, Yassin al-Qadi, oversaw the financial penetration of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania by Wahhabi terrorists in the late 1990s.
Men like al-Rajhi, Mahfouz, and al-Qadi are the big players in the financing of Islamic extremism. And their paths repeatedly lead back to Northern Virginia. They don't play for small stakes: Saar received $1.7 billion in donations in 1998, although this was left out of the foundation's tax filings until 2000. No explanation has been offered for this bit of accounting sorcery.
A major personality on the ground in Virginia is an individual named Jamal Barzinji, whose office in Herndon was a major target of the raids. In 1980, he was listed in local public records as a representative of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), an arm of the Saudi regime with offices in Virginia. WAMY has been deeply involved in providing cover for Wahhabi terrorism. The 2002 entry in the U.S. Business Directory lists the president of the WAMY office in Annandale, Va., as Abdula bin Laden--the terrorist's younger brother.
Barzinji serves as a trustee and officer of the Amana Mutual Funds Trust, a growth and income mutual fund headquartered in Bellingham, Wash., conveniently near the Canadian border. Amana's board also includes Yaqub Mirza, a Pakistani physicist who shares Barzinji's Herndon office address and who is widely described as a financial genius. Another board member and tenant in the Herndon office is Samir Salah. He formerly ran a branch of Al-Taqwa in the Caribbean, heads a financial firm linked to Saar, and directs Dar al-Hijra, a mosque in Falls Church, Va., notable for hardline Wahhabi preaching. Salah is also deeply involved with Taibah International Aid Association, a Virginia charity with a Bosnian branch that is being investigated by authorities in Sarajevo.
Front groups interfacing between the Wahhabi-Saudi money movers under federal suspicion and the broader American public include two institutions active in the religious field: the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) and the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences (GSISS). The involvement of GSISS with the financing of extremism is especially startling in that it alone is credentialed by the Department of Defense to certify Muslim chaplains for the U.S. armed forces. Barzinji has appeared on the boards of both.
The day of the raids, Barzinji appeared on U.S. television news insisting he knew of no questionable behavior by the groups under scrutiny, and promising full cooperation with the authorities. But in a familiar pattern of duplicity, he expressed himself quite differently in the Islamic media. Barzinji told the Internet news service Islam Online (www.islam-online.net) he believed the investigations fulfilled the will not of the Bush administration, but of "elements within the government, media, and [academia] who were unhappy with the positive attention being given to Muslims." This tortured formulation, repeated in several variations, embodies the Islamist fantasy that every doubt cast on the activities of the Wahhabi lobby is the product of Jewish influence.
Speaking to Islam Online, Barzinji spelled out his anxieties. He alleged that the real powers behind the raids were "self-styled Middle East 'experts,'" individuals "who do not want to see Muslims develop such excellent relations with the government, assuming political rights." This line simply dumbs down one peddled by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which condemns any challenge to the Wahhabi lobby as a product of "right-wing commentators."
Barzinji, CAIR, and their cohort give the impression of living in their own conspiratorial world, divorced from reality. For them to imagine that the aftermath of September 11 has been anything but disastrous for the image and credibility of American Muslims is absurd. The presumption that anybody outside government dictates policy to the Treasury, however, is only the classic supposition about alleged Israeli influence that infests the Arab mind.
Perhaps it's to be expected that the Wahhabi lobby would react to a federal investigation with its usual combination of pseudopatriotic protest, claims of innocence, and paranoia. But perhaps the White House might suggest to friends like Norquist that they should stop trying to protect enablers of terrorism.
Otherwise, more and more people will wonder whether the administration really understands the problems afflicting Islam in the United States, and whether it really is united in resisting the influence of the extremists.
Stephen Schwartz's new book, "The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa'ud From Tradition to Terror," is forthcoming.
Sept. 11 Families Join to Sue Saudis: Banks, charities and royals accused of funding al Qaeda terrorist network
Sept. 11 Families Join to Sue Saudis: Banks, charities and royals accused of funding al Qaeda terrorist network
Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Friday, August 16, 2002
Families of 600 people killed in the Sept. 11 attacks filed suit yesterday against Saudi Arabian banks and charities and members of the royal family, accusing them of financially sponsoring the al Qaeda terrorist network and its leader, Osama bin Laden.
Named as defendants in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court here were three Saudi princes, seven banks, the government of Sudan and international charities that the U.S. government has contended are linked to terrorist groups.
Banding together to seek hundreds of billions of dollars in damages, the families asserted in the lawsuit that "terrorists like Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network cannot plan, train and act on a massive scale without significant financial power, coordination and backing. By taking vigorous legal action against the financial sponsors of terror, the plaintiffs will force the sponsors of terror into the light and subject them to the rule of law."
The lawsuit renews the sensitive question of sponsorship of terror by the Saudis that only recently caused friction between the U.S. government and one of its key Middle Eastern allies.
In a controversial briefing to a Pentagon advisory board in July, a Rand Corp. analyst contended that "the Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader." Saudi Arabia was described as an enemy of the United States, in the briefing prepared by Laurent Murawiec.
Pentagon and Bush administration officials quickly distanced themselves from the briefing, insisting that the government does not share that view of the Saudis.
The lawsuit does not allege that the Saudi defendants directly participated in the Sept. 11 attacks, or approved them. That would be a difficult assertion to support because bin Laden, who was banished from the Saudi kingdom in 1991, has declared war on Saudi leaders as well as the United States.
Instead, the plaintiffs contend that some of the leading figures in Saudi society -- top businessmen, charity executives and members of the royal family -- gave money to foundations and front groups that sustained al Qaeda and moved its money.
Officials at the Saudi Embassy did not return telephone calls seeking comment on the lawsuit.
Some families of Sept. 11 victims have split off from this lawsuit in a dispute with the lawyers as a result of what they contend was an unauthorized overture aimed at settlement. About 80 families intend to file a similar suit with new counsel, said Stephen Push, one of those family members, though he said he expects the cases to be consolidated.
In seeking damages for the wrongful deaths of people who perished at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field where United Flight 93 went down, the families are following a strategy previously employed by one of their attorneys against the Libyan government.
Allan Gerson of Washington also represents relatives of passengers who died on Pan Am 103, the aircraft downed by terrorists over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. Gerson is in negotiations with the Libyans, who have tentatively agreed to pay $2.7 billion for its role in the 1988 bombing.
His co-counsel, Ronald Motley, is a prominent South Carolina lawyer who successfully sued tobacco companies for $300 billion on behalf of attorneys general in 36 states.
"This, I think, will be the trial of the century," Gerson said. "Saudi Arabia and others have been involved in a protection racket for many years. The function of the lawsuit is to expose this and to seek damages, not only for its own sake but to serve as a deterrent."
Matt Sellitto, whose 23-year-old son, Matthew, a broker at Cantor Fitzgerald, died in the World Trade Center, said yesterday that "we have to stop the terrorists, and one of the surest ways of stopping them is stopping their access to money.
"I really believe if we didn't do this, there would be something wrong with us," said Sellitto, who lives in Harding Township, N.J. "My son was murdered because he was living the American dream. We have to take every means we can to stop this thing."
Members of the Saudi royal family named in the suit include Prince Turki al-Faisal, former chief of Saudi intelligence; Prince Sultan, Saudi defense minister and a brother of King Fahd; and Mohammed al Faisal al Saud.
Also named as defendants are major financial entities in Saudi Arabia, including the al-Rajhi Banking & Investment Corp., which the plaintiffs contend is the primary bank for a number of charities that funnel money to terrorists.
The suit also alleges that Khalid bin Mahfouz, onetime chief operating officer of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, later operated a bank that funneled millions of dollars to charities controlled by al Qaeda.
The 259-page court filing relies, in part, on assertions by officials of the Treasury and State departments, along with statements from foreign governments. Many of the assertions about the role of the charities and banks, in particular, have been made public before. Some of the new accusations in the lawsuit are based on a variety of sources, including bank records and unpublished intelligence memos from the French government.
The charitable groups include the International Islamic Relief Organization, Sanabel Al Kheer Inc., the Muslim World League, the SAAR Foundation, Rabita Trust, al Haramain Islamic Foundation, Benevolence International Foundation and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth.
The Treasury Department has previously stated that al Haramain has a financial link to al Qaeda. Since Sept. 11, the government has raided or seized the assets of several Muslim charities operating in the United States, including the now-defunct SAAR Foundation in Herndon and Benevolence International of Chicago.
The suit asserts that the world's largest Muslim charity, the Saudi-financed Muslim World League, was formerly funded by bin Laden. It also claims that a League subsidiary, the International Islamic Relief Organization, donated more than $60 million to Afghanistan's Taliban regime.
Staff writers John Mintz and Douglas Farah contributed to this report.
Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Friday, August 16, 2002
Families of 600 people killed in the Sept. 11 attacks filed suit yesterday against Saudi Arabian banks and charities and members of the royal family, accusing them of financially sponsoring the al Qaeda terrorist network and its leader, Osama bin Laden.
Named as defendants in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court here were three Saudi princes, seven banks, the government of Sudan and international charities that the U.S. government has contended are linked to terrorist groups.
Banding together to seek hundreds of billions of dollars in damages, the families asserted in the lawsuit that "terrorists like Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network cannot plan, train and act on a massive scale without significant financial power, coordination and backing. By taking vigorous legal action against the financial sponsors of terror, the plaintiffs will force the sponsors of terror into the light and subject them to the rule of law."
The lawsuit renews the sensitive question of sponsorship of terror by the Saudis that only recently caused friction between the U.S. government and one of its key Middle Eastern allies.
In a controversial briefing to a Pentagon advisory board in July, a Rand Corp. analyst contended that "the Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader." Saudi Arabia was described as an enemy of the United States, in the briefing prepared by Laurent Murawiec.
Pentagon and Bush administration officials quickly distanced themselves from the briefing, insisting that the government does not share that view of the Saudis.
The lawsuit does not allege that the Saudi defendants directly participated in the Sept. 11 attacks, or approved them. That would be a difficult assertion to support because bin Laden, who was banished from the Saudi kingdom in 1991, has declared war on Saudi leaders as well as the United States.
Instead, the plaintiffs contend that some of the leading figures in Saudi society -- top businessmen, charity executives and members of the royal family -- gave money to foundations and front groups that sustained al Qaeda and moved its money.
Officials at the Saudi Embassy did not return telephone calls seeking comment on the lawsuit.
Some families of Sept. 11 victims have split off from this lawsuit in a dispute with the lawyers as a result of what they contend was an unauthorized overture aimed at settlement. About 80 families intend to file a similar suit with new counsel, said Stephen Push, one of those family members, though he said he expects the cases to be consolidated.
In seeking damages for the wrongful deaths of people who perished at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field where United Flight 93 went down, the families are following a strategy previously employed by one of their attorneys against the Libyan government.
Allan Gerson of Washington also represents relatives of passengers who died on Pan Am 103, the aircraft downed by terrorists over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. Gerson is in negotiations with the Libyans, who have tentatively agreed to pay $2.7 billion for its role in the 1988 bombing.
His co-counsel, Ronald Motley, is a prominent South Carolina lawyer who successfully sued tobacco companies for $300 billion on behalf of attorneys general in 36 states.
"This, I think, will be the trial of the century," Gerson said. "Saudi Arabia and others have been involved in a protection racket for many years. The function of the lawsuit is to expose this and to seek damages, not only for its own sake but to serve as a deterrent."
Matt Sellitto, whose 23-year-old son, Matthew, a broker at Cantor Fitzgerald, died in the World Trade Center, said yesterday that "we have to stop the terrorists, and one of the surest ways of stopping them is stopping their access to money.
"I really believe if we didn't do this, there would be something wrong with us," said Sellitto, who lives in Harding Township, N.J. "My son was murdered because he was living the American dream. We have to take every means we can to stop this thing."
Members of the Saudi royal family named in the suit include Prince Turki al-Faisal, former chief of Saudi intelligence; Prince Sultan, Saudi defense minister and a brother of King Fahd; and Mohammed al Faisal al Saud.
Also named as defendants are major financial entities in Saudi Arabia, including the al-Rajhi Banking & Investment Corp., which the plaintiffs contend is the primary bank for a number of charities that funnel money to terrorists.
The suit also alleges that Khalid bin Mahfouz, onetime chief operating officer of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, later operated a bank that funneled millions of dollars to charities controlled by al Qaeda.
The 259-page court filing relies, in part, on assertions by officials of the Treasury and State departments, along with statements from foreign governments. Many of the assertions about the role of the charities and banks, in particular, have been made public before. Some of the new accusations in the lawsuit are based on a variety of sources, including bank records and unpublished intelligence memos from the French government.
The charitable groups include the International Islamic Relief Organization, Sanabel Al Kheer Inc., the Muslim World League, the SAAR Foundation, Rabita Trust, al Haramain Islamic Foundation, Benevolence International Foundation and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth.
The Treasury Department has previously stated that al Haramain has a financial link to al Qaeda. Since Sept. 11, the government has raided or seized the assets of several Muslim charities operating in the United States, including the now-defunct SAAR Foundation in Herndon and Benevolence International of Chicago.
The suit asserts that the world's largest Muslim charity, the Saudi-financed Muslim World League, was formerly funded by bin Laden. It also claims that a League subsidiary, the International Islamic Relief Organization, donated more than $60 million to Afghanistan's Taliban regime.
Staff writers John Mintz and Douglas Farah contributed to this report.
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