Muslim Mafia (37 page)

“Members of the Group should be able to infiltrate the sensitive intelligence agencies or the embassies in order to collect information and build close relationships with the people in charge in these establishments.”

—Secret U.S. Brotherhood charter found in possession of Brotherhood underboss and convicted terrorist Sami al-Arian
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A
LI
“T
HE
A
MERICAN
” M
OHAMED
was a loyal member of the Muslim Brotherhood who emigrated from Egypt to spy for the Brotherhood in America. After failing to penetrate CIA operations, he infiltrated the U.S. Army as a sergeant and wound up at Fort Bragg training with U.S. Special Forces, where he obtained secret security clearance.

Although he was not a Green Beret, he worked alongside the elite Berets learning unconventional warfare and counterinsurgency operations. The military trusted him, and before long, he was teaching soldiers about the Middle East at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School—commonly referred to as “Swick”—where unbeknown to his superior officers, he was stealing classified military secrets.

During weekends and other leaves from Fort Bragg, Mohamed would travel to New Jersey to train al-Qaida operatives in weapons and warfare tactics, which they would later use against the country Mohamed had sworn to protect. In a search of one terrorist’s home, authorities found U.S. Army training manuals, videos of Swick warfare instruction, and other classified materials.

After his honorable discharge from the Army, Mohamed moved to Santa Clara, California, where he set up a communications cell for al-Qaida while fronting as a computer engineer.

In 1995, he brought Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri to California for a mosque fundraising tour, reportedly raising half a million dollars for the al-Qaida leader. A large chunk of it was raised at CAIR founder Omar Ahmad’s mosque in Santa Clara, a key Brotherhood hub. (Ahmad is employed as a computer engineer in the Silicon Valley.)

Five years later, the feds finally got wise to Mohamed, and after his arrest on terrorism charges, he pleaded guilty to five counts of conspiracy for his role in planning the al-Qaida bombings of the U.S. embassies in Africa.

The Mohamed case marked the first in a series of instances in which dangerous Muslim Brotherhood figures have successfully penetrated key U.S. institutions.

After the FBI was called in to break up a Muslim spy ring at the al-Qaida prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, officials from the Justice Department and the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control gathered with FBI officials to discuss the infiltration of the U.S. government by Brotherhood agents. The high-level Washington meeting—which took place in October 2004—was the first formal discussion of the espionage threat posed by the Islamist enemy since the 9/11 attacks.
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Until then, counterintelligence efforts had been directed chiefly at old Cold War threats, such as Russia and China. But authorities have realized, if belatedly, that the new spy threat is potentially more dangerous—and more insidious. Unlike the Communists, the Muslim Brothers can infiltrate under the cover of a religion protected by the First Amendment. And as spies go, they are extremely slick.

‘OUTRAGEOUS PENETRATION’

“These guys are good,” says veteran FBI special agent John Guandolo, who was involved in the Gitmo espionage investigation and other counterterrorism and counterintelligence cases after 9/11. “They’ve achieved outrageous penetration at senior levels of our government.”

He says infiltration is the key to the Brotherhood’s “massive subversive movement in the U.S.,” and they’re following a plan established years ago.

In fact, documents show the Brotherhood movement is now decades into a North America-wide espionage operation that includes running infiltration operations against governments to collect classified intelligence.

One document, seized by federal agents in a raid of Brotherhood boss Sami al-Arian’s home in Florida, is especially instructive. Translated from Arabic, it reveals a comprehensive plan for “spying” on U.S. agencies.

“Our presence in North America gives us a unique opportunity to monitor, explore and follow up,” it states. “Members of the Group should be able to infiltrate the sensitive intelligence agencies or the embassies in order to collect information and build close relationships with the people in charge in these establishments.”
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They should also use every opportunity to “collect information from those relatives and friends who work in sensitive positions in the government.”

Unfortunately, our “sensitive intelligence agencies” have not made it very hard for the bad guys to put Muslim agents in place, hypersensitive as they are to complaints of Islamophobia by CAIR and other fronts that run interference for them.

Another al-Arian document explains that the Brothers are at war with the West, and war requires espionage and sabotage.

“We are in a battle of life and death, in a battle of fate and future against the Western hegemony,” it says. “What is needed is the dismantling of the cultural system of the West.”
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Al-Arian managed to penetrate the White House along with his pal Alamoudi before federal authorities caught up with him. He pleaded guilty to terrorism charges, served time in jail, and is now under house arrest on separate contempt charges for refusing to cooperate in the Safa group investigation, despite a federal grand jury subpoena.

The Brotherhood also has a less covert strategy to infiltrate the political system.

“The Muslim strategy for change from within incorporates the secretion of loyal Brothers into political office,” warns former FBI agent Sadler.

Groups like CAIR, MPAC, MAS, along with the Islamic Institute and American Muslim Alliance, have aided in this project. Some of them recently formed an electioneering umbrella group—the American Muslim Task Force on Civil Rights and Elections, or AMT—to promote candidates into public office.

And not just at the federal level, but state and local levels as well.

THE LIBRARY PROJECT

CAIR’s Ahmad, for example, landed a position on the Santa Clara City library board. He was a library trustee for ten years while CAIR launched its so-called Library Project, successfully targeting some eight thousand neighborhood libraries across the country with packages of books, videos, and other Brotherhood propaganda sanitizing Islam.

Brotherhood leaders, meanwhile, are actively recruiting engineers and other experts for local planning boards to remove roadblocks to expansion for Brotherhood schools and mosques.

In Fairfax County, Virginia, for example, a Muslim traffic engineer who works for the county recently testified on behalf of the radical Islamic
madrassa
run by the Saudi Embassy during a heated county hearing over the school’s planned expansion.

His testimony—along with an outpouring of some six hundred local Muslim supporters—helped the Islamic Saudi Academy win approval of its plan, even though it has been cited by the U.S. government for promoting violence and intolerance through its textbooks, and has acted as a breeding ground for terrorists, graduating even al-Qaida operatives. (Ismail Elbarasse, the Brotherhood figure and terrorist suspect who hid Brotherhood documents in his basement, served as the school’s chief financial officer.)

While the Muslim Brotherhood is outlawed in other countries, the U.S. has not yet designated the group a terrorist entity or foreign threat, even though it has stated clearly that it supports violent jihad and is dedicated to replacing the U.S. with an Islamic theocracy.

The Brotherhood continues to perplex policymakers in Washington.

Some have argued for openly including it in politics to draw it out of the shadows. They say there may be moderate elements that could be co-opted. Others argue that once in power, even a politically accountable Brotherhood would pursue policies counter to U.S. interests.

“The complication is they are a political movement, an economic
cadre
, and in some cases terrorist supporters,” says Juan Zarate, former chief of the Treasury Department’s terrorist finance unit. “They operate business empires in the Western world, but their philosophy and ultimate objectives are radical Islamist goals that in many ways are antithetical to our interests. They have one foot in our world, and one foot in a world hostile to us. How to decipher what is good, bad, or suspect is a severe complication.”
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Zarate adds, however, that “the Muslim Brotherhood is a group that worries us because it defends the use of violence against civilians.”
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After 9/11, federal investigators noticed that most of their leads traced back to the Brotherhood. In fact, almost every terrorism case, active or inactive, ties into the Brotherhood nexus, whether directly or indirectly.

“You can’t call the enemy just al-Qaida anymore,” says an FBI counterterrorism agent in Washington who’s actively investigating Brotherhood figures and their front groups. “It’s something else: it’s the Muslim Brotherhood.”
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ISLAMIC REVOLUTION

Indeed, many of the suspected Brotherhood figures identified here in this chapter (see table) have either been convicted or named as unindicted co-conspirators in terrorism-financing and other cases.

While the FBI has knocked out several leaders on various charges, the investigations have come in fits and starts. The Justice Department, politically risk-adverse as it is and still locked in a pre-9/11 mentality, remains reluctant to roll up the entire syndicate under racketeering and conspiracy statutes known as RICO—a broader and more aggressive approach favored by case agents and some prosecutors.

Congress enacted the RICO law to remove the tentacles of organized crime from legitimate enterprise. Too often the mob was able to infiltrate legitimate operations, giving a veneer of legality while secretly engaging in a pattern of criminal behavior.

Likewise, the Muslim mafia engages in a pattern of criminal conduct, laundering illicit funds through a network of legitimate-sounding front organizations. Even worse, this mafia uses religious sanctuaries to solicit holy war and treason against the U.S. government and military.

“The patterns are quite clear,” Sadler says. “Certain members of these organizations are known offenders tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. And birds of a feather flock together.”

The FBI has known the Brotherhood was a threat since at least the 1980s, and some of the same leaders under investigation then remain under investigation today. Recently declassified case files marked “SECRET” reveal that the bureau identified Jamal Barzinji, as well as Hisham Altalib, Mohammed Shamma, and Ahmad Sakr, as “members of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

“These individuals are in a position to direct the activities and support of Muslims in the U.S. for the Islamic Revolution,” the FBI report warned decades ago.
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Some say it may be too late to go after the Brotherhood now as a criminal conspiracy due to its deep entrenchment in U.S. society. Because law enforcement allowed the Brothers to conduct their organizational jihad virtually unchallenged and unexamined for decades, they have had time to build up an impressive institutional bulwark.

In fact, their organizations now represent the entire Muslim establishment in America. And few in Washington have the political will to dismantle it.

The Brotherhood has become so brazen that it recently declared war on the FBI over its cancellation of formal outreach with CAIR. It’s also targeted prosecutors such as assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg for harassment, personally singling out him and his family. Kromberg’s district covers Northern Virginia—the base of operations for the Brotherhood—and he has prosecuted many of its leaders.

Kromberg is a threat to the Brothers because he understands their conspiracy and he knows CAIR is integral to it. In a recent terrorism case, he submitted that “from its founding by Muslim Brotherhood leaders, CAIR conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists.” He added that “the conspirators agreed to use deception to conceal from the American public their connections to terrorists.”

Many counterterrorism experts warn that dismantling this infrastructure of support for terrorists remains an unfought battle in the war on terror. Reason: the syndicate that erected it is religious in nature and protected by political correctness.

Guandolo says this is the main reason he resigned last year from the bureau. He says he was frustrated by the PC handcuffs headquarters put on him and other agents trying to make solid cases against Brotherhood fronts and leaders. He says he was threatened with his job no less than three times by FBI brass who complained that “we were creating waves in the Muslim community.”

Guandolo says the Muslim Brotherhood is like “a cancer,” and Washington is just feeding it with its PC outreach. The Justice Department has held some seventy-five meetings with Brotherhood front groups who claim to represent the Muslim community, and officials still hold bimonthly meetings with them.

While the FBI has severed formal ties to CAIR, thanks to pressure from Guandolo and other case agents, the agency is still conducting outreach with another dangerous Brotherhood front considered “a nucleus” of the movement in America.