http://www.meforum.org/article/353 Steven Emerson: Get Ready for Twenty World Trade Center Bombings
Steven Emerson is the author of four books on the Middle East and, since 1993, the foremost specialist on the subject of fundamentalist Muslim activities in the United States. Formerly a staff member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and a journalist for U.S. News & World Report and Cable News Network, he produced the documentary Jihad in America that PBS broadcast in November 1994 and won the George Polk Award for best television documentary. Daniel Pipes interviewed him on April 8, 1997.
THE THREAT
Middle East Quarterly: Do fundamentalist Muslims pose a threat to the United States?
Steven Emerson: No doubt. All the major terror groups of a fundamentalist orientation have established deeply routed, well-organized cells and infrastructure here -- Hamas Islamic Jihad, Hizbullah, as well as the Algerian groups, Islamic Salvation Front and Armed Islamic Group. They believe in the use of violence to carry out their doctrine and to achieve their goals. This is not just my assessment but the publicly stated view of top officials of the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation who repeatedly state that deeply entrenched radical Islamic groups have the ability to strike here in the United States at will.1
MEQ: How do these groups intend to achieve their agenda in the United States?
Emerson: They use the United States as a sanctuary in which they can raise funds, recruit new members, directly control Middle Eastern operations, and initiate terrorists attacks. They also use it to spread da`wa [i.e., to propagate Islam].
MEQ: Did the fundamentalists assess the World Trade Center bombing of February 1993 as harmful to their interests?
Emerson: Yes, at this point Islamic fundamentalists are withholding attacks inside this country, so the current threat is much more to Americans overseas and other Western targets. Not only have funds from the United States paid for the terrorist attacks, but actual recruits have been sent from here on actual missions to fight "infidels" and set up jihad battlefronts in Algeria, Bosnia, Israel and the territories, Lebanon, Chechniya, and the Philippines.
MEQ: At some future point things here will change for the worse?
Emerson: The rage against the United States is increasing. In an environment that not only sanctions terrorism but mandates terrorist attacks against "enemies" of Islam, the question is how long the quiet can remain.
MEQ: The absence of attacks in America since 1993 does not mean the problem of fundamentalist violence has abated?
Emerson: Not at all. If anything, the threat is greater now than before the World Trade Center bombing as the numbers of these groups and their members expands. In fact, I would say that the infrastructure now exists to carry off twenty simultaneous World Trade Center-type bombings across the United States. And as chemical, biological, and even nuclear weapons become available to them, the threat becomes ever more ominous. Just because someone holding a gun to your head doesn't pull the trigger should not be understood as the threat not existing. It would be suicidal to permit our national security to depend on the good will or rationality of radical fundamentalists.
MEQ: And in the meantime, what are they doing?
Emerson: They use the United States as a base to spread the word of extremism, to proselytize, and to recruit new members to their interpretation of Islam. They also make efforts to become entrenched and legitimate so that they can provide a base here for the entire panoply of radical policies inimical to the democracy, pluralism, and respect for the individual that characterize Western political life.
MEQ: Might the radical groups limit their violence to American interests outside the United States?
Emerson: No, because these groups are unable to restrict their hatred for the United States to certain geographical regions.
MEQ: You told Congress a year ago that "both Hamas and Islamic Jihad have not only raised considerable ... funds in the United States but have also set up operational headquarters in the US where terrorist attacks and military strategies are orchestrated."2 What proof do you have?
Emerson: Example one: Court documents video tapes seen and other intelligence material relating to the investigation by law enforcement officials of Islamic Jihad in Tampa, Florida. Prior to his assuming leadership of Islamic Jihad in Damascus in October 1995, Ramadan `Abdallah Shallah had been an instructor at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Equipped with several search warrants, the FBI and Immigration and Naturalization Service retrieved tens of thousands of documents showing that his Florida office had served as the major operational arm of Islamic Jihad outside Syria.
Example two: law enforcement has identified the Islamic Association for Palestine as the primary Hamas front group in the United States. Its December 1996 conference in Chicago included Islamic extremists from the Middle East, Hamas commanders based in the United States, and radical supporters of Hamas from all parts of the United States. Several of the more secretive sessions included a discussion about killing Jews and other "enemies of Hamas."
Example three: the activities of Hamas in the United States were revealed when materials relating to the case of Musa Abu Marzook, its operative arrested at JFK airport in July 1995, were publicly released. These documents clearly established that Abu Marzook had been dispatching agents to Israel to carry out terrorists attacks. Investigators even found the checks by which he paid his U.S.-based couriers.3
I loved Emerson's book Jihad in America; it's one of the first I read after 9/11. And he's one of the first people LEO's called to help after 9/11. He has a warehouse filled with documentation.
Last I knew he lived under heavy security; don't know if that's still the case.