Tag Archives: Osama Bin Laden

Tehran’s Terror Master

by Patrick Devenny

Early on the morning of March 16th, 1984, William Buckley left for work at the American embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. Officially, Mr. Buckley, a decorated veteran of the Special Forces, served as the political officer at the embassy. In reality, however, Mr. Buckley was the embassy’s CIA station chief. On his way to the compound, Buckley’s car was stopped by a group of masked men, who forced him from his car at gunpoint. His assailants would later be identified as terrorists from the group Islamic Jihad, which served as an alias for the real perpetrators, Hezbollah. The circumstances surrounding the next 15 months of William Buckley’s life remain mysterious to this day. Hints of his plight were provided in disturbing video tapes, in which he appeared worn down and brutalized. It was later revealed that additional tapes were shot showing the CIA station chief being viciously tortured and beaten by Islamic Jihad members. Finally, sometime in October of 1985, Buckley died of pneumonia, no doubt stemming from the lengthy torture sessions. His main interrogator and tormentor was a 21 year old Lebanese terrorist named Imad Mugniyah.
Twenty years later, the butcher of William Buckley still plagues the free world. Imad Mugniyah is the current military commander of the terrorist group Hezbollah, overseeing an international organization which some American officials have dubbed “the A-team of terrorism.” Far less well known than his compatriot and sometimes partner Osama Bin Laden, Mugniyah is arguably more dangerous. Indeed, before the 9-11 attacks, Mugniyah was the prime focus of American anti-terror efforts, not Bin Laden. Comfortable in his anonymity, Mugniyah has successfully carried out some of the most professional terrorist attacks of the last two decades against a wide array of international targets. With Hezbollah currently flexing its muscle as a political force inside Lebanon, it would behoove Americans to remember that the leadership of this so-called “political” organization remains in the hands of dangerous extremists who think nothing of slaughtering hundreds of people at the behest of their masters in Tehran. Mugniyah’s very existence casts doubt on the idea that Hezbollah could ever be an honest participant in a future Lebanese democracy.
Origins

While the face of Bin Laden has been prominently featured in every world publication of note and is almost instantly recognizable, the real face of Imad Mugniyah is elusive. Only two or three photographs of the Hezbollah operative are known to exist. Further accentuating the mystery around Mugniyah is the fact that the picture that currently serves as the U.S. Government’s official wanted poster is almost 20 years old. This lack of information stems from the designs of Mugniyah himself, who has methodically erased all records of his existence, including his high school transcripts. What we do know is that Mugniyah was born to a prominent Shiite religious family in southern Lebanon in 1962. Some years later, his family moved to the suburbs of southern Beirut, a region long associated with Shiite radicalism. With the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, Mugniyah joined Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organization, which operated numerous terror training camps throughout Lebanon. Mugniyah, still a teenager, rose through the ranks of the PLO quickly, soon becoming a member of its elite commando wing, Force 17, which carried out assassinations at the personal behest of Arafat. This kind of specialized training represented expertise unavailable to most young Islamic militants at the time.

In 1982, an Israeli military offensive expelled most of the PLO infrastructure from Lebanon. Mugniyah chose to stay, serving as a bodyguard to Sayyid Muhammad Fadlallah, the spiritual head of Hezbollah and a key ally of Iran. Then, together with fellow terrorist Hassan Nasrallah, Mugniyah formed the group Islamic Jihad, which served as a convenient cover for the greater Hezbollah organization. That close personal relationship would continue to the present day, as Nasrallah is the current secretary general of Hezbollah. One of the few existing photographs of Mugniyah shows him walking alongside Nasrallah ten years ago in Lebanon. The two fellow terrorists and their group would quickly gain the attention of the West.

Lebanon

The first shot fired in Mugniyah’s war against the West was fired on April 18th, 1983, in Beirut. On that day, a van packed with 2,000 pounds of explosives slammed into the front of the U.S. embassy and exploded with such tremendous force that the front of the building collapsed. The attack killed 63 people, including most of the CIA’s Middle East leadership. Within hours of the attack, Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility. A clue concerning the real perpetrators of the suicide bombing was picked up by U.S. intelligence a month later, when it was revealed that a pre-attack cable from the Iranian foreign ministry had been sent to the Iranian embassy in Syria approving funding for a terrorist attack in Beirut.

The suicide attack against the Beirut embassy was followed up later that year by an even more devastating assault. On the morning of October 23rd, most of the 300 Marines stationed in a compound near Beirut’s airport were sleeping in their barracks, having been deployed to the country to serve as a stabilization force. Then, at 6:33 am, the driver of a Mercedes truck drove straight through the front gate of the compound, past Marine sentries with unloaded weapons, and smashed into the four story concrete barracks. The driver, who reportedly was smiling, then detonated the explosive, estimated to equal the force of 12,000 pounds of TNT. The effects of the massive truck bombing were horrific, killing 220 Marines and 21 other U.S. service members. Again, Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.

In one day, the entire situation in Lebanon had been drastically altered. The foreign forces would soon leave, wary of further terrorist attacks. With the abandonment of Lebanon by the international community, Islamic Jihad had carried out a virtual terrorist coup d’etat. Over the next ten years, Mugniyah and Hezbollah went on a rampage, taking dozens of Westerners hostage and murdering several others. Major operations included the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in 1985, where Mugniyah’s men shot a US Navy diver in the head and threw his body on the tarmac of Beirut International Airport. In a case that recalled the horrors of William Buckley, US Marine Lt. Colonel William Higgins was abducted in 1988 by a Hezbollah linked group known to be under the direct command of Mugniyah. Two years later, a ghastly video was released showing a man, thought to be Colonel Higgins, hanging from a ceiling after being tortured. Shortly thereafter, the dead body of Colonel Higgins was dumped on the side of the road in front of the US embassy in Beirut.

Numerous hostages, such as American Kurt Carlson, recall seeing Mugniyah supervise their imprisonment and brutal interrogations. He spoke fluent English, and commanded slavish devotion from his agents. At the same time, the CIA believes Mugniyah was in frequent contact with Iranian intelligence officials, who were directly involved in the murders and the hostage takings. It is a relationship that blossomed in Lebanon and continues to this day.

Hezbollah International

While Imad Mugniyah’s attacks had concentrated on foreigners, his campaign of terror had stayed geographically constrained to Lebanon and the rest of the Middle East. The American authorities could still regard him and his group as “over there”, limited to the perennially tumultuous region. Unfortunately, they were missing a critical development. Imad Mugniyah was about to defy the oceans that security officials naively assumed held him back. The impetus for this new strategy of offensive terrorism was the 1992 Israeli assassination of Sheik Abbas Musawi, a Hezbollah leader and close associate of Mugniyah.

The Israeli embassy in Argentina was located in a bustling downtown neighborhood of Buenos Aires. On March 17th, 1992, a pickup truck loaded with plastic explosive drove up to the front of the embassy and exploded. The embassy building was destroyed, along with the nearby retirement home and Catholic Church. 28 people were killed, and over 220 wounded. The next target was a seven story building in Buenos Aires that housed two Jewish business organizations. On the morning of July 18th, 1994, a white Renault van pulled up in front of the building and detonated. The building collapsed, killing 85 people. While confusion marred the initial investigations, it became clear to all parties involved that Hezbollah was the culprit, through its subsidiary Islamic Jihad, headed of course by Mugniyah. The smoking gun may have been delivered by an Iranian defector named Abdolghassem Mesbahi, a former senior member of the Iranian Revolutionary Council. In testimony to Argentinean authorities, the defector claimed that Mugniyah had been one of the senior planners behind the attack in Buenos Aires, along with Iranian intelligence.

The twin bombings in Argentina highlighted Mugniyah’s campaign to develop an infrastructure within South America. In 1994, the Hezbollah leader personally visited the “Triple Frontiers”, an area forming the border nexus of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil that has historically sheltered smugglers and criminals. As many as 30,000 Arab Muslims, who celebrate the anniversary of September 11th, inhabit the small region. Nearby, Hezbollah holds weekend training camps, indoctrinating Arab youth in the extremist literature of the Ayatollah Khomeini. The main mosque in the area was blessed by none other than Imad Mugniyah’s old boss, Sayyid Muhammad Fadlallah. Hezbollah agents regularly extort money and “donations” from various businesses and Muslim organizations, sending the substantial funds back to Lebanon. Mugniyah personally operates a powerful network of operatives inside the region, who help facilitate Hezbollah’s drug smuggling operations throughout South America. In addition, the bombing of Jewish targets inside Argentina were almost certainly connected to the Hezbollah presence in the Triple Frontiers. Telephone records show increased call traffic from Iranian officials to the frontiers region around the time of the bombing.

Mugniyah has also sought to extend Hezbollah’s reach to North America. In 2000, federal authorities arrested 18 men in North Carolina for smuggling cigarettes and other financial crimes. The FBI later revealed that the smuggling ring, led by Lebanese immigrant Mohamad Hammoud, had made 7.9 million dollars, profit which was then sent to Hezbollah. Through a series of associates, Hammoud worked for a man named Mohamad Dbouk, a senior Hezbollah asset who helped run Hezbollah’s extensive criminal operations in Canada. Testifying before the U.S. Senate, U.S. Attorney Robert J. Conrad confirmed that Mugniyah directly oversees the Canadian operations and, by extension, the American division. This reasoning stems from the fact that Dbouk was in direct contact with Hassan Hilu Laqis, a Hezbollah agent operating out of Lebanon who managed many of the procurement projects in North America. In a fax intercepted by Canadian intelligence, Dbouk assures Laqis that he is doing all he possibly can to help Hezbollah. In addition, Dbouk says he will do “anything”, and “he means anything”, to help the “father”. The Canadian prosecutor involved in the case, Kenneth Bell, stated that the father is in fact a codename for Imad Mugniyah. In addition, a recent report in the Washington Times suggested Hezbollah currently runs active cells in at least 10 U.S. cities. Mugniyah has never attacked a target in North America, but with tensions rising between the United States and Iran over the issue of nuclear proliferation, his terrorist network could rapidly become Iran’s weapon of choice against American targets. It would be a familiar role for the veteran terrorist, who, lest we forget, has the blood of over 250 Americans on his hands.

Mugniyah and Al-Qaeda

In 1998, American authorities captured former Green Beret advisor Ali A. Mohamed for his role in the twin terror attacks against U.S. embassies in Africa. Having been a relatively close associate of Bin Laden himself, Mohamed proved to be a treasure trove of information for American investigators. One of his statements, however, proved particularly troubling. In testimony delivered during his court case, Mohamed admitted that in 1994, he had arranged security for a momentous meeting in Sudan. There, Osama Bin Laden met Imad Mugniyah. He also stated that Hezbollah provided training for Al-Qaeda operatives in exchange for weapons and explosives. Indeed, this testimony corresponded with statements made by other Al-Qaeda officials, who told American investigators that the two had met several times in the mid 1990s, where they had discussed a greater degree of cooperation.

The two terrorist leaders may have also coordinated the attack on the Khobar Towers barracks complex in 1996. American investigators have long suspected Iran’s involvement in the bombing that killed 19 American servicemen in Saudi Arabia. The group that supposedly carried out the attacks, Saudi Hezbollah, was led in the 1990s by a close lieutenant of Mugniyah and was trained in Mugniyah run camps in Lebanon. Additionally, the explosives used in the barracks bombing originated in Lebanon. The 9-11 Commission, however, recently suggested that Al-Qaeda may have also played a role in the bombing, suggesting some degree of operational cooperation between the two groups.

The influence of Imad Mugniyah with regards to the Al-Qaeda network has continued, and has strengthened as of late. It appears that at least part of the formal leadership of Al-Qaeda has shifted to Iran, where they stay in close contact with the group’s disparate assets. Men such as Saad Bin Laden and Saif al-Adel continue to plan attacks from Iranian territory, such as the massive Casablanca bombings in 2003. Other Al-Qaeda leaders and fighters have escaped through Iran following the war in Afghanistan. Hamid Zakiri, a former member of the Iranian terrorist coordination command, stated that Mugniyah was the liaison officer to Dr. Ayman Zawahiri and various other international terrorist groups. In addition to this relationship, Mugniyah personally oversaw the escape of dozens of Al-Qaeda figures to Iran, including one of Bin Laden’s wives and her infant child. Apparently, Al-Qaeda leaders have enough trust in Mugniyah’s abilities and intentions as to place their family members into his care.

“The Master Terrorist”

“He is the most dangerous terrorist we’ve ever faced. He’s a–he’s a pathological murderer. Mugniyah is probably the most intelligent, most capable operative we’ve ever run across, including the KGB or anybody else. He enters by one door, exits by another, changes his cars daily, never makes appointments on a telephone, never is predictable, will show up–he only uses people that are related to him that he can trust. He doesn’t just recruit people. He is the master terrorist, the grail, we are after since 1983.”

No small praise coming from Robert Baer, a 20 year veteran of the CIA’s clandestine services who once constructed a plan to kill Mugniyah in Lebanon. Imad Mugniyah, unrecognizable and relatively unknown, poses a serious asymmetrical threat to the United States and its allies. He has successfully avoided numerous American and Israeli attempts to capture or kill him. He has access to the massive amount of funding, estimated at 100 million dollars, that Iran annually provides Hezbollah annually. The secrecy surrounding Mugniyah allows him to travel relatively freely, especially in friendly nations such as Iran and Syria. His role in Hezbollah should chasten the Bush administration’s hopes that Hezbollah could eventually transform itself into a purely political organization. With terrorists such as Imad Mugniyah in charge, the idea that Hezbollah could accept a democratic Middle East is dubious to say the least. It should also be made clear to Lebanon’s Shiite population that national democratic reform cannot be sustained over the long term if an armed group like Hezbollah is involved. Instead of awaiting reform that will never come, the American government, with the help of our allies in the region, should seek to isolate this dangerous and inherently anti-democratic terrorist organization.

An African Vortex: Islamism in Sub-Saharan Africa

From the Editor’s Desk

In October 2003, the government of Kano State in Nigeria stopped an ongoing polio vaccination program and did not allow it to resume until August 2004. As a result, a polio epidemic which originated in Kanohas now spread to 22 African countries, including ten who had been previously free of the disease. There are already more than a thousand registered cases and, with thousands of unregistered infections, experts fear that tens of thousands of African children may be crippled before the epidemic is brought under control.  What made that government act in such blatant, indeed criminal disregard of the children’s health? The explanation given by Kano officials was as straightforward as it was preposterous and paranoid. The US-provided (but produced in France) vaccine,Kano’s hardline Islamist regime claimed, was designed to infect Muslim children with AIDS and make women infertile.

How such medieval religious obscurantism could come to the fore in Africa at the beginning of the 21st century is detailed in this paper by Center for Security Policy research associate David McCormack. While African Islamism has been much in the news of late with the genocidal events in Darfur, much less attention has been paid to the dramatic spread of radical Islamism in sub-Saharan Africa which is home to 250 million Muslims. Yet, asDavid McCormack shows persuasively, Wahhabi ideology and massive infusions of Saudi cash are rapidly transforming the once syncretic and peaceful Sufi-inspired sub-Saharan Islam into militant Islamism.  The likely result, argues the author, is “unmanageable inter-communal strife between Muslims and non-Muslims,” and a “hospitable environment for terrorists with an international agenda.”

Alex Alexiev is Editor of the “Occasional Papers” series and CSP’s Vice President for Research. He could be reached at alexiev@centerforsecuritypolicy.org.

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Why U.S. Intelligence is Inadequate, and How to Fix It

From the Editor’s Desk

With President Bush himself now expressing strong support for the intelligence reform bill, its passage in early December 2004 would appear very likely. This would be unfortunate, because, as Prof. Angelo Codevilla argues persuasively in the essay below, this “reform” consists of little more than “rearranging bureaucratic wiring diagrams” and does nothing to address the systemic problems that have been dogging US intelligence for decades and are currently hindering America’s war on terror.  While most observers now agree that 9/11 was the result of a monumental intelligence failure, neither the 9/11 Commission nor the elected officials now clamoring for reform have delved seriously into the real reasons for this failure. Yet, in the absence of a critical reappraisal of what ails our intelligence, any “rewiring” reform of the kind suggested is likely to do more harm than good.

Where to begin such a reappraisal is exactly the focus of Mr. Codevilla’s essay. Armed with three decades of experience as a foreign service officer, key Senate Intelligence Committee official and an academic gifted with a keen analytic acumen, Dr. Codevilla zeroes in with characteristic clarity on CIA’s failings. These include but are not limited to the agency’s politicization and preference for influencing policy rather than providing impartial analysis, its abject failure in the humint collection area by a clandestine service that is “clandestine in name only” and largely incapable of covert action and its “groupthink” predisposition and lack of meaningful quality control. If his analysis is correct and it is difficult to argue with most of it, it is easy to understand why we are in the intelligence predicament in which we are and why bureaucratic reshuffling is not going to do much good.

One wishes that our elected officials will read Prof. Codevilla’s analysis before casting their votes for an intelligence reform that isn’t.

Alex Alexiev is Editor of the “Occasional Papers” series and CSP’s Vice-President for Research. He could be reached at alexiev@centerforsecuritypolicy.org.

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October surprise: Latest bin Laden tape confirms effectiveness of Bush War on Terror

(Washington, D.C.): According to yesterday’s New York Post, there was considerably more to the videotape featuring Osama bin Laden that al-Jazeera broadcast on the eve of the U.S. presidential election. It could hardly be an accident that what was left on the cutting room floor when the satellite network that serves at the moment as the principal mouthpiece for enemy propaganda edited the 18-minute original was a testament by bin Laden to the efficacy of the war George W. Bush unleashed against al Qaeda in the wake of 9/11.

The Post reported:

    Osama bin Laden’s newest tape may have thrust him to the forefront of the presidential election, but what was not seen was the cave dwelling terror lord talking about the setbacks al Qaeda has faced in recent months.

    Officials said that in the 18-minute long tape – of which only six minutes were aired on the al-Jazeera Arab television network in the Middle East on Friday – bin Laden bemoans the recent democratic elections in Afghanistan and the lack of violence involved with it.

    On the tape, bin Laden also says his terror organization has been hurt by the U.S. military’s unrelenting manhunt for him and his cohorts on the Afghan-Pakistani border. (Emphasis added throughout.)

If this report is correct, the tape would arguably have been the biggest pre-election surprise of all (apart, that is, short of actually capturing or killing the al Qaeda kingpin): The American electorate would have received confirmation from bin Laden himself that Senator Kerry’s charges that the Bush campaign against the 9/11 perpetrators has been incompetently conducted and hampered by operations against Iraq are unfounded. They might reasonably have concluded that it is, instead, Mr. Kerry whose competence to lead the Nation in this war is open to serious question.

One thing should certainly come as no surprise: Neither al-Jazeera nor most of its American media counterparts have any interest in acquainting their audiences with facts the Kerry campaign might find inconvenient. Even in a race already marked by an extraordinary willingness on the part of the United States’ “mainstream” media (in particular, the New York Times and CBS News) to intervene directly in a presidential campaign on behalf of one of the contenders, such a refusal to provide the public other than that which al-Jazeera wishes them to know is as insidious as it is irresponsible.

Hatchet job

For most of the 2004 campaign, Senator John Kerry has been trying to obscure the true nature of his proclivities on defense and foreign policy matters. Voters have been given a timely reminder, however, by one of the Democratic candidate’s colleagues and ideological soul-mates: Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

After all, Mr. Kerry has, according to the Wall Street Journal, indicated that Sen. Levin might be his choice for Secretary of Defense should he gain the White House next week. In this light, the virulently partisan attack launched last Thursday by the Michigan Democrat on the President and his administration – in the form of a preposterous screed against Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith – should be seen not only as a disqualifier for Mr. Levin’s candidacy as a successor to Donald Rumsfeld. It is also speaks volumes about Mr. Kerry’s judgment that he would contemplate entrusting the Pentagon to such a left-wing ideologue.

Smearing Doug Feith

The essence of a report issued by Sen. Levin on October 21st is that the Bush Administration engaged in the "politicization of intelligence, or, stated another way, the shaping of intelligence to support administration policy." It purports to "show that in the case of Iraq’s relationship with al Qaeda, intelligence was exaggerated to support Administration policy aims primarily by the Feith policy office, which was determined to find a strong connection between Iraq and al Qaeda, rather than by the IC, which was consistently dubious of such a connection."

Lest the partisan purpose of this slander be lost on anyone, the New York Times hyperventilated in an editorial on Saturday that, "The Levin report is a primer on how intelligence can be cooked to fit a political agenda….Together with the 9/11 panel’s findings and the Senate intelligence report, [it] show[s] that those claims were all cooked up by Mr. Feith’s shop, which knew that the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency had already shown them to be false."

Setting the Record Straight

As it happens, the aforementioned Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) report issued earlier this year arrived at a strikingly different conclusion. After investigating whether pre-war intelligence had been "cooked" by "Mr. Feith’s shop" when it raised questions with the intelligence community about evidence of ties between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and al Qaeda, the Committee unanimously declared: "The Committee found that none of the analysts or other people interviewed by the Committee said that they were pressured to change their conclusions related to Iraq’s links to terrorism." (Emphasis added.)

Elsewhere, the SSCI went so far as to note that, "In some cases, those [intelligence community analysts] interviewed stated that the questions had forced them to go back and review intelligence reporting, and that during this exercise they came across information they had overlooked in initial readings. The Committee found that this process – the policymakers probing questions – actually improve the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) products." (Emphasis added)

Interestingly, Sen. Levin joined every other member of the Intelligence Committee in endorsing this report.

Equally peculiar is the Levin charge that "the intelligence community was consistently dubious" about a connection between Iraq under Saddam and al Qaeda. In a letter sent on October 7, 2002 by the CIA’s director to the then-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Bob Graham, George Tenet wrote, in part:

    Our understanding of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda is evolving and is based on sources of varying reliability….We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda going back a decade. Credible information indicates that Iraq and al Qaeda have discussed safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression. We have credible reporting that al Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire weapons of mass destruction capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs.

In short, Doug Feith’s staff did in the run-up to war precisely what one would expect a policy organization to do: Evaluate and, where appropriate, challenge available intelligence about the threat that might make military operations necessary. In fact, Mr. Feith’s subordinates found some fifty examples of intelligence reports (including both unevaluated "raw" collection and "finished" products) that were suggestive of cooperation, if not more formal ties, between the Iraqi regime and Osama bin Laden’s organization. And, having done so – as the SSCI found, through established channels – the Feith organization contributed accordingly to the development of policy.

Facts on the Ground Further Discredit Levin

If anything, information that has emerged from liberated Iraq has made the Levin critique even more untenable. In the October 19 edition of the New York Sun, Dr. Laurie Mylroie noted, for example, that "an 11-page document [found in Iraq and] dated January 25, 1993, lists various organizations with which Iraqi intelligence maintained contacts. It recommends ‘the use of Arab Islamic elements which were fighting in Afghanistan and now have no place to go and who are currently in Somalia, Sudan, and Egypt.’ Saddam approved the suggestion, with the order to ‘concentrate on Somalia.’" At the time, the network that would become known as al Qaeda was among the "Arab Islamic elements" operating in these countries.

The danger associated with allowing Saddam’s ties to such terrorist organizations to metastasize further is now clear, as well. In the Wall Street Journal on October 14, Richard Spertzel, a former UN weapons inspector and member of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), noted that the ISG uncovered a plan concocted by Iraqi intelligence’s M16 directorate "to bottle sarin [a lethal nerve agent] and sulfur mustard in perfume sprayers and medicine bottles which they would ship to the United States and Europe."

The Bottom Line

The effort to smear conscientious public servants who, thankfully, did their jobs to protect this country may fit with John Kerry’s anything-goes campaign for the White House. It does not inspire confidence, however, about either his ability to prosecute the war on terror or to select competent people to help him do it.

The Iranian bomb

(Washington, D.C.): One could be forgiven, in light of recent headlines and press accounts, for wondering precisely who the enemy is in this war on terror. For some people, it clearly seems that the list should include – if not be headed by – a democratic ally that has been subjected, per capita, to considerably more sustained and deadly terrorist attacks than the United States: Israel.

This argument requires Israel to be seen not for what it is – namely, a longstanding U.S. partner in a strategically vital region of the world where few exist, one that shares America’s values and is a bulwark against the rising tide of anti-Western Islamist extremism. Israel must, instead, be portrayed as perfidious, pursuing an international agenda divergent from (if not actually at odds with) that of the United States and a liability, rather than an asset.

Those who would portray Israel in such an unflattering light doubtless are gleeful over leaks claiming the Jewish State surreptitiously obtained state secrets from a U.S. government employee working for the Pentagon. At this writing, no evidence has been provided to support such charges. Nor has anyone been apprehended – although, for several days, the FBI has been described as poised to arrest someone employed by the Defense Department’s policy organization. Only time will tell whether anyone actually is taken into custody, the type of charges and whether he is actually found guilty.

A Bonafide Enemy

In the meantime, these leaks have already served to divert attention from a nation that genuinely should head the list of America’s foes: the terrorist-sponsoring, nuclear-arming and ballistic missile-wielding Islamist government of Iran. This effect has been all the more ironic insofar as, according to press accounts, the classified information the FBI thinks was improperly purveyed to Israel involved documents shedding light on America’s evolving policy towards the Iranian mullahocracy.

Strategic analyst Steven Daskal recently offered a reminder of the peril posed by Iran: “While the Islamic Republic of Iran as a state is technically not at war with the U.S., Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa calling for total war by all Shi’ites, regardless of citizenship, against the ‘Great Satan America’ remains in effect – it has never been rescinded, and in fact was expanded to include killing Americans as being a necessary part of a defensive jihad to make the world safe for Islam. Khomeini’s pioneering pseudo-theology was later picked up by Sunni extremists, including Osama bin Laden.”

In a thoughtful article in the August 23rd New York Post, Amir Taheri recounted how Khomeini and his successors have translated that fatwa into a twenty-five-year-long war against the United States – waged asymmetrically, both directly (for example, in attacks against U.S. embassies and personnel) and indirectly (through terrorist proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq and Shi’ite warlords in Afghanistan). Taheri correctly observes that “the Khomeinist revolution defines itself in opposition to a vision of the world that it regards as an American imposition….With or without nuclear weapons, the Islamic Republic, in its present shape, represents a clear and present threat to the kind of Middle East that President Bush says he wants to shape.”

Will America Act?

Therefore, for the United States, stopping the Islamist government in Tehran before it obtains the means to carry out threats to attack Americans forces in Iraq and elsewhere should be an urgent priority. For Israel, however, denying the ruling Iranian mullahs nuclear arms is literally a matter of national life and death.

Israel’s concern about the growing existential threat from Iran can only be heightened by overtures Senator John Kerry and his running mate have been making lately to Tehran. In remarks Monday [August 30], Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards said a Kerry administration would offer the Iranians a “great bargain”: They could keep their nuclear energy program and obtain for it Western supplies of enriched uranium fuel, provided the regime in Tehran promised to foreswear nuclear weapons. According to Sen. Edwards, if Iran did not accept this “bargain,” everyone – including our European allies – would recognize the true, military purpose of this program and would “stand with us” in levying on Iran what are described as “very heavy sanctions.”

There is just one problem: Based on what is known about Iran’s program and intentions – let alone its history of animus towards us – only the recklessly naive could still believe that such a deal is necessary to divine the mullahs’ true purposes. While it may be inconvenient to say so, Iran is clearly putting into place a complete nuclear fuel cycle so as to obtain both weapons and power from its reactor and enrichment facilities. And a deal like that on offer from Messrs. Kerry and Edwards failed abysmally in North Korea.

The Bottom Line

If the United States is unwilling to take concrete steps to prevent the Iranian Bomb from coming to fruition, its Israeli ally will likely feel compelled to act unilaterally – just as it did with the 1981 raid that neutralized Saddam Hussein’s nuclear infrastructure. At the time, the Reagan Administration joined the world in sharply protesting Israel’s attack. A decade later, however, the value of the contribution thus made to American security was noted by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, who said he thanked God every day during Operation Desert Storm that Israel had kept Iraq a nuclear-free zone. If such a counterproliferation strategy becomes necessary once again, it will be in all of our interests to have Israel succeed.

Ending tolerance of Islamism

In his National Review Online column, Center for Security Policy Academic Council Member Victor Davis Hanson observes that "the genius of bin Ladenism is that to either applause or silent approval it promulgates lies that make Hitler’s best perfidies seem mild. And such untruths do seem to galvanize an Arab world that is increasingly guilty of an inability to sort truth from fiction. The receptive Arab Street lives in a perpetual world of asymmetrical thinking – nursing fantasies, inventing false grievances, and above all demanding from the West what it would never offer to others. But, after all, the Middle East once was furious at Baghdad Bob not because he lied daily but because his lies were proven ludicrous and then humiliating on the world stage by the U.S. military."

Hanson goes on to note, however, that "the American message of religious tolerance, equality of women, democracy, and secularism is too well known – and it is no more welcome to Islamicists than the idea of tolerating Jews was to an SS Panzer division. Yet, like Hitler’s young minions, the masked men in bathrobes and machetes have not yet learned to fear the power of Western democracy that could, if it so wished – as the 10,000 resting at St. Avold have so proved – put a stop to their cowardly murdering rather quickly and thus end the Arab tolerance of these beheading fanatics."

To read the complete story click here.

The bad old days

Democratic partisans, notably Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, are howling about the timing of the revelation that Clinton National Security Advisor Samuel “Sandy” Berger is under criminal investigation.  They contend the sensational allegation that he was observed by National Archives personnel stuffing highly classified documents into his clothing, and then "accidentally disposing” of some of them, is coming out now for a cynical political reason: In order to divert attention from the criticisms of the Bush Administration expected in the 9/11 Commission report due to be released today.   

In fact, far from distracting the public from the factors that contributed to the deadly attacks that cost nearly 3,000 American lives that day in September 2001, the disclosure of Sandy Burger’s misconduct would be the perfect introduction to a theme that surely will be a central theme of its report:  The considerable contribution made to the worst attacks on this country in its history by the lax attitude towards national security secrets that pervaded the executive branch during the eight years that preceded the Bush presidency.  Surely, that is, if the presence as one of the Commissioners of a top Clinton policy-maker, former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, has not precluded an objective and unstinting analysis of the facts.

Consider a few examples of this insidious and predictably dangerous attitude: Sandy Berger was not the first senior Clinton official to have been investigated for serious breaches in the classified information.  Former Director of Central Intelligence John Deutch was forced to resign and ultimately received a presidential pardon after he was found to have exposed very sensitive information to compromise by putting it on a home computer used for accessing notoriously insecure pornographic web sites.  Interestingly, Berger and Deutch formed a consulting firm in 2001 called "Stonebridge International."  Former Assistant Secretary Tobi Gati, who headed the Clinton State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), was also investigated for a number of security violations. During John Deutch’s tenure at the CIA, the hiring for its Directorate of Operations – the clandestine operational side of the house – was cut dramatically and morale in the organization plummeted, resulting in a significant number of resignations among “human intelligence” professionals. Staff reports prepared for the 9/11 Commission have established serious failures with respect to the timely sharing of relevant information between U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies.  We now know that this impediment to “connecting the dots” was due, in part, to the insistence of the then-Number 2 person in the Justice Department, none other than Ms. Gorelick, that “the wall” between such agencies be maintained in an even more exacting way than was otherwise required. 

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence established that a contributor to the problems with America’s understanding of the true state of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction programs was a similar the failure of various intelligence agencies to share such information as they had.

These institutional problems are all the more remarkable given the insistence that senior members of the Clinton Administration’s national security team – notably, National Security Advisor Sandy Berger and his predecessor, Anthony Lake, and UN Ambassador-turned Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and her INR chief, Secretary Gati – that highly classified American intelligence be routinely shared with foreign governments and multilateral institutions.   This practice continued even in the face of evidence that such sharing was compromising U.S. intelligence sources and methods.The Clinton team’s lax attitude towards sensitive information was also evident in its determination to engage in the wholesale declassification of previous administrations’ documents, with scant concern for – or even careful review of – the continued sensitivity of the information they contained.  Nuclear weapons-relevant documents that could still be dangerous in the wrong hands were among those declassified wholesale. On the Clinton team’s watch and with its acquiescence, the job of recruiting human agents in critical target areas and organizations became infinitely more difficult.  At the instigation of a close Clinton associate, then-Senator Bob Torricelli, the CIA was barred from using spies who had unsavory records.  Since just about anybody who had access to the likes of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-Il and their secrets would have such a record, the negative impacts of other Clinton policies and practices on human intelligence were greatly exacerbated. Even physical security was a nightmare during the Clinton years.  In 1999, a Russian spy planted eavesdropping devices in the Albright State Department.  We still don’t know who gained access to and stole top secret documents from her office in Foggy Bottom.  Nor is the identity yet known of the person who made off in January 2000 with a laptop computer kept in a conference room used by INR – a computer whose hard-drive contained a wealth of top secret intelligence. As with fish, the rot started at the top.  President Clinton virtually refused to see his CIA Director and almost never read the Presidential Daily Briefing prepared to ensure he was aware of emerging threats and other priority intelligence developments.For his part, Vice President Gore famously abused intelligence professionals and capabilities.  He scrawled “bull….” on a classified assessment that reported his favorite Russian interlocutor, Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, was corrupt – a response that had a chilling effect on analysts’ readiness to convey information that would be seen as “politically incorrect” or otherwise  inconvenient.  Some analysts who failed to self-censor were subjected to retaliation.Isn’t it curious that Mr. Gore has been so ready to take his successor and others in the Bush Administration to task for manipulating or pressuring the Intelligence Community to lie about Iraq?Vice President Gore also insisted that intelligence assets be diverted to serve his pet environmental interests.  Spy satellites and anti-submarine sensors were used to monitor sea-life.  Millions of dollars were spent by the CIA on a "DCI environmental center."  Intelligence assessments were tasked concerning volcanic eruptions and global warming.  The Veep’s environmental preoccupation even resulted in an annual "Earth Day" edition of the PDB being produced for his attention. Those who claim the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq was the product of political pressure – despite the Senate Intelligence Committee’s unanimous finding to the contrary – have chosen to forget a truly egregious example of Clinton politicization of intelligence.  An NIE was generated and delivered to the Senate in September 1996, just in time to influence a vote on missile defense adamantly opposed by administration ideologues.  It arrived at the astounding conclusion that there would be no threat of ballistic missile attack against the United States for at least fifteen years.  To arrive at this preposterous finding, of course, the CIA had to come up with three remarkable assumptions: For the purpose of the analysis, 1) Russian and Chinese missiles didn’t count; 2) no one with long-range ballistic missile technology would help others who didn’t have it yet to get such equipment and know-how; and 3) Alaska and Hawaii wouldn’t be considered part of the United States, since they were likely very shortly to be within striking distance of North Korean medium-range missiles.  The CIA diverted millions of dollars to a "Balkans Taskforce" which in the 1990s consumed much of agency’s analytic talent and a considerable amount of money.  Meanwhile, during this period, the DCI Counterterrorism Center was sorely neglected.  Assignment to it was viewed by intelligence professionals as a bad career move.

In short, Sandy Berger’s alleged theft of classified documents from the National Archives is no more a diversion from the 9/11 Commission’s subject than it is an anomaly.  Rather, it bespeaks an indifference to, if not actual hostility towards, the fundamentals of sensitive national security policy-related information and tradecraft that should feature prominently in the Commission post-mortem on the September 11th attacks.  Assuming, that is, such a focus was not too embarrassing for Jamie Gorelick – or too inconvenient for the Clinton-Kerry team that hopes the American people will not be reminded of the “bad old days,” and invite a reprise by returning that team to high office.

Islamist penetration of Homeland Security?

For over two years, the Center for Security Policy has been warning that organizations and individuals sympathetic to or otherwise supportive of the radical, intolerant and jihadist subset of the Muslim faith known as "Islamists" have mounted a sophisticated political influence operation against the Bush Administration. Today’s Washington Times contains a column by Center President Frank Gaffney entitled "Dubious Company" that describes a meeting Secretary of State Colin Powell held with representatives of four such groups just last Thursday.

Unfortunately, it now seems clear that this influence operation has succeeded in getting more than meetings with senior officials. According to the on-line magazine Salon.com, a seemingly unqualified individual nonetheless secured a position as the policy director for the Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence division, thanks to his ties to a well-connected political activist named Grover Norquist.

Norquist’s activities on behalf of, and together with, Islamist sympathizers and associates has been documented by numerous publications — including a detailed analysis by Mr. Gaffney which appeared last December in FrontPageMagazine.com ("A Troubling Influence"). Norquist’s apparent role in the case of Faisal Gill is particularly interesting, however, insofar as it seems unlikely that Mr. Gill would have been considered for – let alone actually secured – his Homeland Security post but for the Norquist connection.

The nature of that connection is all the more troubling insofar as Mr. Gill was, according to Salon’s Washington correspondent, Mary Jacoby, "briefly removed from his job in March." Ms. Jacoby cites unnamed officials as saying the temporary removal occurred when "the FBI raised concerns with Homeland Security officials…after discovering that Gill had failed to list on security clearance documents his work in 2001 with the American Muslim Council." (The AMC and its operations feature prominently in a lengthy investigative article concerning Islamist activities centered in Herndon, Virginia that appeared on the front-page of yesterday’s Wall Street Journal.)

Ms. Jacoby goes on to report that:

    The advocacy group, which was controlled by [Abdurahman] Alamoudi, has been under scrutiny in an investigation of terrorism financing. [Jacoby notes elsewhere in the article: "Alamoudi was indicted last year on terrorism-related money-laundering charges and now claims to have been part of a plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Abdullah."] The lead agent in that investigation works for an arm of Homeland Security. Gill’s omission of the information on his "Standard Form 86" national security questionnaire is a potential felony violation.

While Salon states that "There is no evidence…that Gill has taken any action to compromise national security," his failure to disclose a troubling association with an indicted terrorist conspirator raises serious questions about the circumstances and appropriateness of his placement in a position with access to some of the Nation’s most sensitive secrets. These include information about vulnerabilities associated with U.S. ports, airports, transportation systems, refineries, chemical and nuclear facilities, etc.

Even though Mr. Gill has been reinstated by his superiors at Homeland Security following what is said to have been "a thorough investigation," it is not obvious how someone who withheld information about his employment history could be "cleared" – especially given how troubling that information is.

As Ms. Jacoby reports: "Gill’s placement in the sensitive intelligence job has alarmed government officials because it fits the operating theory of prosecutors and investigators that Alamoudi was part of a long-term scheme by Islamic extremists to place friendly, if perhaps unwitting, associates in key U.S. government positions."

The bottom line is that it is past time for a rigorous review of the extent and implications of the evident Islamist influence operation in official Washington and the troubling role that Grover Norquist has appeared to play in facilitating, if not actually enabling it. If the Bush Administration can or will not conduct such an examination, Congress should undertake to do so.

How Secure is the Department of Homeland Security?

By Mary Jacoby

Salon.com, 22 June 2004

The policy director for the Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence division was briefly removed from his job in March when the Federal Bureau of Investigation discovered he had failed to disclose his association with Abdurahman Alamoudi, a jailed American Muslim leader. Alamoudi was indicted last year on terrorism-related money-laundering charges and now claims to have been part of a plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Abdullah.

After a flurry of interagency meetings, however, Homeland Security decided to leave the policy director, Faisal Gill, in place, according to two government officials with knowledge of the Alamoudi investigation. A White House political appointee with close ties to Republican power broker Grover Norquist and no apparent background in intelligence, Gill has access to top-secret information on the vulnerability of America’s seaports, aviation facilities and nuclear power plants to terrorist attacks.

The FBI raised concerns with Homeland Security officials in March after discovering that Gill had failed to list on security clearance documents his work in 2001 with the American Muslim Council, the officials said. The advocacy group, which was controlled by Alamoudi, has been under scrutiny in an investigation of terrorism financing. The lead agent in that investigation works for an arm of Homeland Security. Gill’s omission of the information on his "Standard Form 86" national security questionnaire is a potential felony violation. There is no evidence, however, that Gill has taken any action to compromise national security.

A Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman would not comment on Gill or when he was hired, except to say that a "thorough investigation" by the department’s Office of Security found no basis to deny the 32-year-old lawyer a security clearance. Among Gill’s political patrons is Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform and a key ally of the White House. Gill listed Norquist as a reference on employment documents, the government officials said. Gill also worked in 2001 for a Muslim political outreach organization that Norquist co-founded with a former top aide to Alamoudi. Norquist did not respond to phone calls, a fax and an e-mail seeking comment.

The Homeland Security spokeswoman, Michelle Petrovich, declined to say what qualifications or background Gill has for his senior position in the department’s Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection division. Citing privacy concerns, Petrovich also declined to make public any of the documents Gill submitted for government employment, including his Standard Form 86, the questionnaire Gill had to fill out to receive a security clearance. "It’s standard procedure across the government not to release personal background information on employees. I did check on that," Petrovich told me.

In response, I read to her the Privacy Act statement that is printed on the front of the form, which can be downloaded from government Web sites. It says: "We may share this information … with the news media and the general public when the disclosure would be in the public interest."

Petrovich said: "OK, but I also have to tell you that that is trumped by Freedom of the Information Act. There’s a special exception. That’s a federal law."

"What is trumped?

"The Freedom of Information Act."

"Trumps what?"

"Well, I can’t see what you’re reading from, so I just really don’t know."

Through Petrovich, Gill sent word that he would speak with me "on background," meaning I could not identify him by name unless he was allowed to approve his quotes before publication. I did not agree to the conditions, and Gill declined to answer questions otherwise. The people with knowledge of the matter have been granted anonymity because they risk being fired if they are identified.

Mark Zaid, a lawyer in private practice in Washington who specializes in security clearance cases, said it would be unusual for an agency to overlook omissions on a security clearance application. "Most agencies get really upset and suspicious and act antagonistically toward applicants if they find they withheld information," he said, adding that a minor violation might be forgiven. But he said if the issue concerned failing to list employment at "a terrorist organization or one that’s being investigated, all sorts of red flags would go up."

Gill’s placement in the sensitive intelligence job has alarmed government officials because it fits the operating theory of prosecutors and investigators that Alamoudi was part of a long-term scheme by Islamic extremists to place friendly, if perhaps unwitting, associates in key U.S. government positions.

A document seized in a 1995 raid of a close Alamoudi friend and political ally, former University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian, outlined a plan to "infiltrate the sensitive intelligence agencies or the embassies in order to collect information and build close relationships with the people in charge of these establishments." The unsigned document, which authorities believe was authored by Al-Arian in part because it was found among his papers, added: "We are in the center which leads the conspiracy against our Islamic world … Our presence in North America gives us a unique opportunity to monitor, explore and follow up." It instructed members of the "center," thought to refer to an Islamic think tank that Al-Arian founded, to "collect information from those relatives and friends who work in sensitive positions in government."

Al-Arian is in a Florida prison awaiting trial next year on charges he was the North American leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a group that has targeted Israel with suicide bombings. He denies all the charges. But investigators believe Al-Arian and Alamoudi were part of a broader political Islamic movement in the United States that connects sympathizers of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and al-Qaida.

This movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, is the umbrella under which terror groups have forged "a significant degree of cooperation and coordination within our borders," former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke told the Senate Banking Committee last year. "The common link here is the extremist Muslim Brotherhood — all of these organizations are descendants of the membership and ideology of the Muslim Brothers." Alamoudi, for example, has spoken openly of his admiration for the anti-Israeli Hamas, which evolved from a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Al-Arian’s circle of associates, meanwhile, overlaps with members of the Brooklyn, N.Y., precursor to al-Qaida that was responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

The ties among Alamoudi, the Muslim Brotherhood and Gill help explain why officials are concerned about whether Gill was adequately vetted. These relationships are difficult to understand without immersion in the indictments, court transcripts and case exhibits; the concerned officials said they fear that busy political operatives in the administration simply do not grasp the national-security issues at stake.

"There’s an overall denial in the administration that the agenda being pushed by Norquist might be a problem," one official said. "It’s so absurd that a Grover Norquist person could even be close to something like this. That’s really what’s so insidious."

In 1999, a group of reformers ousted Alamoudi as AMC executive director amid questions about the group’s opaque finances and mysterious Middle Eastern funding sources. Alamoudi took a position at the affiliated American Muslim Foundation but remained in control of the AMC through friendly board members, the reformers said. "I had concerns about the reluctance to reveal information about the finances. They said they’re not doing well, that they needed more money, but I looked at their office [in Washington], and it was very big," said one of the would-be reformers, Ikram Khan, a surgeon in Las Vegas. Khan said he resigned from the AMC board when his friend, Nazir Khaja, a Pakistani-American physician from California who was trying to open the group’s books, told him that Alamoudi was not cooperating. "I said, ‘If this is the case, I cannot continue to serve in the group,’ and I sent in my resignation letter," Khan said.

Then, last August, a man with a Libyan accent left a suitcase with $340,000 in cash for Alamoudi outside his hotel room in London, according to the October 2003 indictment of the American Muslim leader. Alamoudi was then arrested upon his return to the United States, the indictment said. The Alamoudi mystery deepened on June 10, when the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal reported that he had told authorities he was part of an alleged plot by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to assassinate Crown Prince Abdullah, the Saudi leader. Now, the U.S. Justice Department is examining whether Alamoudi was conspiring with a London group the Saudi government says is linked to Osama bin Laden.

"Who is Abdurahman Alamoudi? We really don’t know," one of the concerned government officials said. "So how can we say there is not a problem with his former aide? He [Gill] has access to information about all our vulnerabilities — aviation, ports. He knows what is protected and what is not."

The Homeland Security spokeswoman, Petrovich, declined to discuss these issues. Instead, she released this statement: "Prior to Faisal Gill’s employment with the department, the [internal] Office of Security went to great lengths to investigate his background and ensure there were no potential conflicts or inappropriate activities in relation to Mr. Gill. Following a thorough investigation, we found that Mr. Gill exceeded all requirements set forth by the department’s Office of Security for access to classified information, as prescribed by the intelligence community, that allows him to conduct his day-to-day duties for the department."

Yet some officials remain concerned that Gill apparently enjoys the political protection of Norquist, the architect of the 1994 Republican election sweep that brought Georgia Republican Newt Gingrich to power as House speaker. Norquist speaks of "crushing" his political opponents and dismisses those who don’t agree with his anti-tax, anti-government agenda as "Bolsheviks." His power derives from a formidable coalition of evangelical, business and other conservative groups that he controls to push favored GOP issues, as well as from his close relationship with White House political chief Karl Rove.

In 1998, Norquist and a former deputy to Alamoudi at the AMC co-founded the nonprofit Islamic Institute as part of a drive to win Muslim voters for Bush in 2000. Alamoudi donated $35,000 to the institute, records show. Soon, the Islamic Institute, the AMC and Al-Arian were all working together on a top priority for American Muslims: an end to the use of classified intelligence to jail noncitizens as national-security threats. Al-Arian’s brother-in-law had been jailed on the basis of such secret evidence linking him to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Al-Arian lobbied heavily on Capitol Hill to end the practice. In October 2000, through the efforts of Norquist and Rove, Bush came out against secret evidence in a debate with Al Gore, and the AMC endorsed Bush for president. Al-Arian would later claim that the Muslim votes he rounded up for Bush in Florida helped decide the election.

Gill was in the middle of these advocacy efforts. As director of government affairs at Norquist’s Islamic Institute, Gill lobbied against the use of secret evidence, according to a May 2001 release on the institute’s Web site. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Gill was quoted in news articles as a spokesman for the AMC. A Washington Post article from May 2001, meanwhile, identified Gill as a spokesman for the "fledgling" Taxpayers Alliance of Prince William County, Va., which is affiliated with Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform. According to the Post article, Norquist was slated to appear with Gill at an anti-tax rally.

Gill is one of several former Alamoudi associates who have shuffled in recent years among Norquist’s operations, the AMC, and government and politics. They include Abdulwahab Alkebsi, a former executive director of the Islamic Institute and a spokesman for the AMC who is now a program director for the National Endowment for Democracy, where he is responsible for administering millions of dollars in grant money for Iraq. What’s more, in 2003 Norquist held a fundraiser at his Capitol Hill home for Alamoudi’s former lawyer, Kamal Nawash, who was running for a Virginia state Senate seat. And Norquist’s co-founder of the Islamic Institute, former AMC deputy director Khaled Saffuri, works closely with the White House on Muslim outreach issues.

These outreach efforts have put Norquist in an unusual defensive position. Former Bush speechwriter David Frum, conservative investigative journalist Kenneth Timmerman, and Center for Security Policy president Frank Gaffney, among others, have criticized Norquist’s alliances.

Gaffney did not respond to my request for an interview. But his feud with Norquist spilled into public view in January 2003 at the Conservative Political Action Conference near Washington. According to an account in the National Review, Gaffney told the conference-goers: "I’m sorry to say there is an active and, to a considerable degree successful, [radical Muslim] political operation aimed not least at the Bush White House." Norquist responded by calling Gaffney a bigot and barring him from an influential meeting of conservatives that Norquist holds on Wednesdays in Washington.

And there are other unexplained threads connecting Muslim leaders who are under investigation to Norquist’s influence-peddling operation. In 2000 and 2001, for example, a firm with which Norquist has been registered as a lobbyist, Janus-Merritt Strategies, reported that Alamoudi had paid the company a total of $40,000 for lobbying on human rights issues and Malaysia. But in a Dec. 17, 2001, letter to the secretary of the U.S. Senate, which administers public lobbying records, a managing partner of the firm wrote that Janus-Merritt had erred in identifying Alamoudi as its client. The letter said the actual client was another Muslim leader who could be reached at 555 Grove St. in Herndon, Va.

Three months later, dozens of federal agents, with their guns drawn, burst through the doors of that office building in Herndon, seizing evidence in the United States’ ongoing investigation of international terrorist financial networks.

9/11 Commission fails to connect terror dots

The 9/11 Commission’s conclusion that “We have no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States” does not augur well for the rest of the panel’s inquiry. 

If the members of the commission could not connect dots that are all too obvious – or recognize their staff’s inability to do so – it seems likely that their work will fall short in other important areas as well.

The commission has allowed itself to be used as a political instrument by critics of President Bush and his liberation of Iraq.  This is the ineluctable result of the shortcomings of its staff report, so brilliantly illuminated by Andrew McCarthy in an essay published today by National Review Online. 

The staff’s statement concerning Iraq and Al Qaeda is internally inconsistent; it ignores key facts; it selectively addresses others; and it effectively condemns as incredible the considerable amount of evidence that suggests Saddam Hussein and Usama bin Laden did indeed have a collaborative relationship – as President Bush and Vice President Cheney have insisted.

Particularly egregious is the supposedly conclusive finding that Mohammed Atta could not have been in Prague for his final meeting with an Iraqi intelligence officer simply because calls were made in Florida on Atta’s cell phone during the time period the meeting was to have occurred. Czech intelligence contends Atta was in Prague and attended the meeting, and Mr. McCarthy observes that it would be entirely possible (to say nothing of prudent tradecraft) to have someone – perhaps his co-conspiring roommate – use the phone at a time when Atta could not, because he was overseas where the phone would not work. 

This sort of proof-by-assertion is all too familiar to those who used to confront the unwillingness of some in the U.S. intelligence community to recognize that the Soviet Union was a state sponsor of terror and a serial violator of arms control agreements.  Perhaps, as the communists used to say, the similarity is “no accident.” 

As it happens, the staff member who reported to 9/11 Commission members yesterday that there was no “collaborative relationship” between Iraq and Al Qaeda was none other than Douglas MacEachin – a man who once held senior positions at the CIA, including posts with the Office of Soviet Analysis from 1984-1989, the Arms Control Intelligence Staff for the next few years, and the job of Deputy Director for Intelligence from 1992 until 1995. 

In these capacities, MacEachin appeared to colleagues to get things wrong with some regularity.  For example, he was reflexively averse to conclusions that the Soviets were responsible for supporting terrorism.  He reportedly rejected as “absurd” analyses that suggested Moscow was illegally developing bioweapons.  And, as DDI, he forced CIA analysts to tailor their assessments to please Clinton administration policy-makers. 

In short, in the old days, MacEachin refused to believe the Soviets were a threat. Now, he offers support to those who insist that Iraq was no threat. There may be a role for a "see-no-evil" sort of guy, but it should not be at the Central Intelligence Agency — and certainly not at a commission whose charter is to connect the dots, no matter where they lead.

Even as the press had a feeding-frenzy over MacEachin’s statement absolving Saddam of ties to Al Qaeda, fresh evidence of malevolent intentions toward the United States that would have made anti-American collaboration between Saddam and Al Qaeda only natural was supplied by an unlikely source: another old intelligence hand, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to Putin, his intelligence agencies shared sensitive information with the Bush administration after the Sept. 11 attacks and before the United States went to war with Iraq in March of 2003. According to Putin’s intelligence, Saddam Hussein’s regime was crafting plans to execute terror attacks against America, both inside and outside of this country.  Thus far, Putin has not elaborated on whether Al Qaeda was also involved with these particular plans. At the very least, however, this information confirms the Bush team’s contention that Saddam dealt deeply in terror and its judgment that to leave Saddam in power would be to invite murderous attacks in the future.

One wonders whether the 9/11 Commission was exposed to the Putin intelligence before it effectively dismissed the possibility that Saddam Hussein had a hand in the 2001 attacks.  For that matter, did they review the information contained in three highly informative books providing “credible evidence” — of at least a circumstantial nature — that Saddam had already acted on his desire to strike this country? 

Dr. Laurie Mylroie’s The War Against America: Saddam Hussein and the World Trade Center Attacks – A Study of Revenge,  which concerns the first effort to destroy the Twin Towers in 1993; Jayna Davis’ The Third Terrorist: The Middle East Connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing,  which concerns the 1995 destruction of the Murrah Building; and Stephen Hayes’ The Connection: How al Qaeda’s Collaboration with Saddam Hussein has Endangered America, all persuasively support a very different conclusion than that advanced yesterday by Douglas MacEachin. 

It is high time that their conclusions, together with arguments like those presented so cogently by Andrew McCarthy, are given at least a fraction of the media attention — and credibility — afforded a statement that so manifestly fails to connect the dots.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy in Washington.