Former Navy Sailor Charged With Passing Secrets to Al Qaeda

Ex-Sailor Accused Of Supporting Terrorism

PHOENIX, March 8, 2007(CBS/AP) A former Navy sailor is accused of supporting terrorism by disclosing secret information about the location of Navy ships and the best ways to attack them.

The secrets wound up with a suspected terrorism financier, FBI investigators say.

During an initial appearance Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Phoenix, Ariz., Hassan Abujihaad, 31, accepted removal to Connecticut.

He has been charged with supporting terrorism with intent to kill U.S. citizens and transmitting classified information, reports David Moskowitz of CBS radio affiliate KFYI (audio).

He apparently was working as a delivery man in Phoenix.

The investigation that began in Connecticut followed a suspected terrorist network across the country and into Europe and the Middle East.

Abujihaad, who also is known as Paul R. Hall, is charged in the same case as Babar Ahmad, a British computer specialist arrested in 2004 and accused of running Web sites to raise money for terrorism.

Ahmad is scheduled to be extradited to the U.S. to face trial.

During a search of Ahmad's computers, investigators said they discovered files containing classified information about the positions of U.S. Navy ships and discussing their susceptibility to attack.

Abujihaad, a former enlisted man, exchanged e-mails with Ahmad while on active duty on the USS Benfold, a guided-missile destroyer, in 2000 and 2001, according to an affidavit released Wednesday. He allegedly purchased videos promoting violent jihad, or holy war.

"In these e-mails, he supported Osama bin Laden and the attack on the USS Cole" in Yemen in 2000, said special agent Deb McCarley of the FBI's Phoenix office.

In those e-mails, Abujihaad discussed naval military briefings and praised those who attacked the USS Cole in 2000, according to the affidavit by FBI Agent David Dillon.

The documents retrieved from Ahmad show drawings of Navy battle groups and discuss upcoming missions. They also say the battle group could be attacked using small weapons such as rocket-propelled grenades. The ships were never attacked.

Authorities discovered Abujihaad's military e-mail address among the computer files, and he had a secret security clearance that would have allowed him access to that material, according to the affidavit.

The investigation was run out of Connecticut because Ahmad allegedly used an Internet service provider there to host one of his fundraising Web sites. Kevin O'Connor, the U.S. attorney for Connecticut, had no comment Wednesday night.

Ahmad was arrested in 2004 but the case against Abujihaad apparently received a boost in December following the arrest of Derrick Shareef, 22, of Genoa, Ill., near Chicago, who was accused of planning to use hand grenades to attack holiday shoppers at a mall.

According to the affidavit, Shareef and Abujihaad lived together in 2004 when Ahmad was arrested. After reading news reports of the case, Abujihaad became upset and said, "I think this is about me," Shareef told investigators.

Authorities then taped a phone conversation between Abujihaad and an informant in which Abujihaad appeared nervous. Though Abujihaad didn't say outright that he was involved in the leak of classified information, the affidavit provided enough evidence for an arrest warrant.

Abujihaad received an honorable discharge from the Navy in 2002, according to the affidavit.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/08/terror/main2546508.shtml

Our World: Jihad's campus collaborators

By Caroline B. Glick
Monday, March 5, 2007

The general tendency of Westerners is to view global jihad as a foreign policy issue. But today it is clear that it is also a domestic policy issue.

Over the weekend The Sunday Telegraph reported that a recently circulated British intelligence report warned: "The terrorist threat facing Britain from home-grown al-Qaida agents is higher than at any time since the September 11 attacks in 2001."

After foiling the jihadist plot to down US-bound British passenger aircraft last summer, MI5 director Eliza Manningham-Buller claimed that there are some 1,600 British Muslims actively involved in plotting attacks against Britain. According to the intelligence report cited in the Sunday Telegraph, today that number exceeds 2,000.

As one senior British political source told the newspaper, "The Security Services have constantly warned that the task of countering Islamic terrorism is a daunting one. There will be more attacks in Britain."

It is not surprising that Britain faces the specter of mass attacks carried out by its own citizens in the name of Allah. Repeated exposes of the goings-on in British mosques and in supposedly "moderate" British Muslim communal organizations have shown unequivocally that they are being used as indoctrination centers for jihad.

A poll published last month by Britain's Policy Exchange think tank bore out the poisonous impact this indoctrination has had on young Muslims in the country. Thirty-seven percent of British Muslims between the ages of 16-24 would rather live under Shari'a law than under British Common Law; 36 percent think Muslims should be killed if they convert to another religion; 13 percent admire al-Qaida and similar terror groups; and a whopping 74 percent of young British Muslims believe women should wear veils.

WHILE IT is true that in the US the danger of home-grown jihadists to national security is lower than it is in Britain, it is also true that there is a growing phenomenon of jihadist violence being perpetrated by Muslim men against American civilians in the name of jihad.

Ten days ago, the Investors Business Daily published an editorial enumerating a partial list of acts of terrorism carried out by Muslim men against their fellow Americans since the September 11 attacks. Most recently, Sulejman Talovic entered a shopping mall in Salt Lake City, murdered five and wounded four unsuspecting shoppers before being killed by an off-duty police officer.

As was the case when Derrick Shareef, another Muslim male, was arrested in early December for plotting to carry out a similar attack at a shopping mall in Illinois just before Christmas, the media and the law enforcement agencies covering the Salt Lake City massacre have made light of the fact that the perpetrator was a Muslim.

While Talovic is dead and so cannot explain his motives to authorities, Shareef was arrested after telling an FBI informant of his plans to murder Jews specifically and Americans in particular for Allah. As Shareef told the informant, "I swear by Allah man, I'm down for it too. I'm down for the cause. I'm down to live for the cause and die for the cause, man."

SHAREEF'S protestations of jihadist ardor made little impression on either federal authorities or the media. Upon announcing Shareef's arrest, US Federal Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald insisted that he was acting on his own and that he had no outside inspiration for his decision to commit mass murder for Allah. As was the case with Talovic and with Naveed Afzal Haq, who murdered one woman and wounded five during his shooting rampage at the Seattle Jewish Federation last July, the media and federal authorities have hushed up and failed to investigate the jihadist motives for the Illinois attacker or link him to any larger phenomenon.

The Investors Business Daily editorial ran under the headline "Sudden jihad syndrome." The term, which has been bandied about by law enforcement officials in both the US and Britain in recent months, encapsulates the view that Muslims can be incited and then move to commit acts of murder in the name of Allah and jihad instantaneously.

The attractiveness of the "sudden jihad syndrome" explanation for violent Islamic crime is clear. By arguing that the jihadists are acting on their own after being mysteriously inspired by no one, law enforcement officials and the media are relieved of the thankless task of investigating mosques, Muslim advocacy groups and Islamic centers, where the jihadist indoctrination is conducted on a daily basis.

IT IS hard to know what to make of this view. Perhaps there is something to it. Perhaps the message of jihad is so strong that young Muslim men can be inspired to shoot pregnant women in office buildings after the notion of murder for Allah enters the transoms of their minds independently of other outside factors - through vapors or spontaneous generation perhaps.

What is clear enough is that since this is the view that is informing policymakers, law enforcement officials and the media in handling a clear trend of jihadist murder, it requires serious empirical study. The obvious place for that research to take place is in the universities.

Unfortunately, there can be little hope that universities in the US or in the West in general will devote any serious consideration to this most important sociological, psychological and national security trend. Far from being willing to study the most central issue of our times, universities are leading the charge in either ignoring it, or apologizing for it.

On February 15, the Iraqi Ambassador to the UN, Hamid Al Bayati, spoke at New York's Fordham University. During the course of his remarks, Bayati doubted the fact that the Holocaust had occurred. In his words, "I'm not aware of any dictator who used chemical weapons against his own people. Some academics or diplomats would say Hitler used chemical weapons, but I am sure he didn't use them against his own people - his German people."

When pressed by law professor Avi Bell on the fact that several hundred thousand German citizens were gassed to death by Nazi Germany, Bayati still refused to take the point.

Fordham University is far from alone in providing a platform for Holocaust deniers. Last Thursday the Dean's office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology co-sponsored an event on the Arab-Israel conflict called, "Foreign Policy and Social Justice: A Jewish View, a Muslim View." The man invited to provide the Jewish view was Dovid Weiss, a member of the crackpot Neturei Karta sect. Weiss rose to prominence when he traveled to Teheran last December to participate in Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial conference.

While MIT and Fordham were hosting Holocaust deniers in the name of intellectual freedom, their fellow universities were hosting "Israel Apartheid Week." As part of their efforts to criminalize the Jewish state, Arab and Jewish speakers at "Israel Apartheid Week" events refer to Israel as "1948 Palestine" and show propaganda films portraying IDF soldiers and Israeli civilians in Judea and Samaria as murderers.

The events are generally sponsored by the International Solidarity Movement. In addition to their campus outreach, the ISM sponsors the weekly riots against the security fence in Bil'in and in Hebron, where its protesters throw rocks at IDF soldiers. Given the violent content of their actions in Israel, it should come as no surprise that their events on US campuses also breed violence.

At an "Israel Apartheid Week" event at City University of New York, after watching a propaganda film, 19-year old Binyamin Rister rose and politely asked the ISM presenters if they supported terrorism. When he received no reply he politely repeated the question. Rather than wait for an answer, CUNY security guards dragged Rister from the room and then repeatedly banged his head against the wall of an elevator and threw him head first down the stairs. Rister's injuries from the assault by campus security required him to be evacuated by ambulance in a neck brace to the hospital.

In an almost identical case at Georgetown last year, Bill Maniaci a 65-year-old retired Jewish American police officer was brutalized by Georgetown security guards after he asked ISM spokesmen if they supported terrorism. He is currently suing Georgetown for $8 million in damages for the assault. According to Lee Kaplan's report of the CUNY event in Frontpage Magazine, there were seven witnesses to the unprovoked attack against Rister. He too has filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against CUNY.

EVEN THOSE propounding the view that jihadist murderers in the US and Britain are inspired to kill after being brought under the spell of the "sudden jihad syndrome" cannot deny that the root of the jihad is ideas. Similarly, it is self-evident that the key to beating the global jihad is victory in the battlefield of ideas. Unfortunately, as the pro-jihadist trend on US and Western campuses, and its impact on idea consumers in law enforcement, the media and policy circles throughout the free world shows, to the extent that those charged with engaging in the battle of ideas are engaged, they fight on the side of the enemy.

Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C., and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post, where this article first appeared.

http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/CarolineBGlick/2007/03/05/our_world_jihads_campus_collaborators

April 3, 2009

Note: The following text is a quote:

http://newhaven.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/nh040309.htm

PRESS RELEASE

April 3, 2009

FORMER MEMBER OF U.S. NAVY SENTENCED TO 10 YEARS IN FEDERAL PRISON FOR DISCLOSING CLASSIFIED INFORMATION

WASHINGTON—Nora R. Dannehy, Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut, and other federal officials announced that Hassan Abu-Jihaad, formerly known as Paul R. Hall, 33, of Phoenix, Arizona, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Mark R. Kravitz in New Haven to 120 months of imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release, for disclosing previously classified information relating to the national defense.

“This defendant provided classified information to others with the understanding that it could be used to endanger the lives of hundreds of members of the United States Navy, and we are pleased that the court imposed the maximum prison term allowed under the law,” Acting U.S. Attorney Dannehy stated. “I want to acknowledge the efforts of all the agents, analysts and prosecutors involved in this matter who have worked diligently over the course of several years to bring this defendant to justice.”

According to the evidence provided at trial, in 2001, four or five months after the October 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole, Abu-Jihaad provided classified information regarding the movements of a United States Navy battle group, which was charged with enforcing sanctions against the Taliban and engaging in missions against Al Qaeda, to Azzam Publications, a London-based organization that is alleged to have provided material support and resources to persons engaged in acts of terrorism through the creation and use of various internet web sites, e-mail communications, and other means, including www.azzam.com.

Between approximately February 2000 and the end of 2001, the web site http://www.azzam.comwww.azzam.com was hosted on the computer web servers of a web hosting company located in Trumbull, Connecticut. At the time the classified information was disclosed to Azzam Publications, Abu-Jihaad was an enlistee in the United States Navy on active duty in the Middle East and was stationed aboard the U.S.S. Benfold, one of the ships in the battle group whose movements were disclosed.

Evidence presented at trial indicated that, in December 2003, British law enforcement officers recovered a computer floppy disk in a residence of one of the operators of Azzam Publications. Forensic analysis of the disk disclosed a password-protected Microsoft Word document setting forth previously classified information regarding the upcoming movements of a U.S. Naval battle group as it was to transit from San Diego to its deployment in the Persian Gulf in 2001. The document went on to discuss the battle group’s perceived vulnerability to terrorist attack.

According to the evidence at trial, subsequent investigation uncovered several email exchanges from late 2000 to late 2001 between members of Azzam Publications and Abu-Jihaad, including discussions regarding videos Abu-Jihaad ordered from Azzam Publications that promoted violent jihad and extolled the virtues of martyrdom; a small donation of money Abu-Jihaad made to Azzam Publications; and whether it was “safe” to send materials to Abu-Jihaad at his military address onboard the U.S.S. Benfold.

In another email exchange with Azzam Publications, Abu-Jihaad described a recent force protection briefing given aboard his ship, voiced enmity toward America, praised Usama bin Laden and the mujahideen, praised the October 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole – which Abu-Jihaad described as a “martyrdom operation,” – and advised the members of Azzam Publications that such tactics were working and taking their toll. The email response from Azzam Publications encouraged Abu-Jihaad to “keep up... the psychological warefare [sic].”

The evidence at trial also indicated that Abu-Jihaad’s contact information – namely, his Navy email account – was among the few saved in an Azzam Publications online address book.

The evidence at trial included the testimony of six Navy witnesses indicating, among other things, that as a Signalman in the Navigation Division of the U.S.S. Benfold during the 2001 deployment, Abu-Jihaad had access to certain classified information, including advance knowledge of the battle group’s movements.

The evidence at trial also included court-authorized wiretap recordings, during which Abu-Jihaad used coded conversation to refer to jihad; admonished others not to speak openly about jihad over the phone or on the Internet because it was “tapped”; and discussed having conversations with associates using a shredder and after frisking them for electronic components.

The calls played for the jury also included Abu-Jihaad’s use of the terms “hot meals” and “cold meals” in reference to his current and former ability, respectively, to provide inside information or intelligence about potential U.S. military targets. Abu-Jihaad told an associate that he “hadn’t been on that job in X amount of years . . . to see . . . what the fresh meal is,” and in 2006, told another associate that he had not “been in the field of making meals” for more than four years. The evidence established that Abu-Jihaad had left the U.S. Navy in 2002.

On March 5, 2008, a federal jury in New Haven found Abu-Jihaad guilty of one count of providing material support of terrorism, and one count disclosing previously classified information relating to the national defense. On March 4, 2009, Judge Kravitz partially granted a defense motion for a judgment of acquittal on the material support of terrorism charge. The charge of disclosing previously classified information relating to the national defense carries a statutory maximum term of imprisonment of 10 years.

Acting U.S. Attorney Dannehy commended the substantial efforts and cooperation of the several federal law enforcement agencies involved in the investigation including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”); the Federal Bureau of Investigation in New Haven, Phoenix and Chicago; the United States Attorney’s Offices in Phoenix and Chicago; the Naval Criminal Investigative Service; the Defense Criminal Investigative Service; and the Internal Revenue Service’ Electronic Crimes Program.

Acting U.S. Attorney Dannehy also praised the substantial efforts of law enforcement authorities from the Metropolitan Police Service’s Counter-Terrorism Command within New Scotland Yard, whose efforts and assistance have been essential in the investigation of this matter.

This case is being pursued by a Task Force out of Connecticut consisting of law enforcement officers from the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, the Internal Revenue Service’s Electronic Crimes Program; the Defense Criminal Investigative Service and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

The case is being prosecuted by a team of federal prosecutors including Assistant United States Attorneys Stephen Reynolds and William Nardini from the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut, Trial Attorney Alexis Collins from the Counter-Terrorism Section of the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Security Division in Washington and Trial Attorney Rick Green from the Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property Section of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, with the assistance of Paralegal Specialist David Heath.

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