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Analyst: Paper Outlines `Subversive Action` (Al-Arian/Al-Najjar)
The Tampa Tribune ^ | 12/01/2001 | MICHAEL FECHTER

Posted on 12/01/2001 6:36:46 PM PST by PogySailor

Analyst: Paper Outlines `Subversive Action`

By MICHAEL FECHTER

The outline envisions a vast covert intelligence and training operation spread throughout the United States.

It describes an organization with everything from a team of researchers engaged in academic studies to groups that get military training.

Investigators found the 29-page outline inside the home of University of South Florida computer science professor Sami Al-Arian during a 1995 search. Al-Arian created an Islamic think tank called the World and Islam Studies Enterprise that worked with USF faculty from 1991 to 1995.

Law enforcement officials maintain the think tank and a related charity, the Islamic Committee for Palestine, were fronts for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group. Immigration agents arrested Al-Arian's brother-in- law, Mazen Al-Najjar, a week ago and plan to detain him until they execute a final deportation order.

The arrest showed that investigators have not retreated from their assertion that the Tampa resident is connected to terrorists. The handwritten Arabic outline for the Center for Studies, Intelligence and Information may be one reason why.

The outline's author is unknown. The handwriting looks different from a solicitation letter Al-Arian wrote in 1995 seeking support after a Jihad attack in Israel. Both the outline and the letter were among thousands of documents federal agents seized during searches of Al-Arian's home and the think tank's office.

Al-Arian Mum On Document

Government lawyers asked Al-Arian about the document when he testified at a bond hearing for his brother-in-law last year. He refused to answer questions about it, or any confiscated records, invoking his privilege against self-incrimination more than 100 times.

Intelligence analysts who examined the outline for The Tampa Tribune say the document may be unrelated to Al-Arian's activities. But they considered it significant.

``What you've got here is a long-range outline for subversive action and propaganda against the United States,'' said Pat Lang, senior Defense Department officer for Middle East, South Asian and terrorism information from 1985 to 1994.

Al-Arian has declined to answer questions from the Tribune, saying the newspaper is biased against him specifically and Muslims in general.

But David Cole, an attorney representing Al-Najjar, said the elaborate organization portrayed in the outline bears no resemblance to the work conducted by the think tank and charity. Cole, a Georgetown University law professor, said he is familiar with the outline, but only studied it enough to conclude it had nothing to do with his client.

The outline is dated June 1981, roughly coinciding with the Jihad's founding. It takes special note of the role the Islamic movement in North America can play at the center of ``the Zionist and Christian organizations and other similar organizations that plan and work to undermine the pillars of Islam and the Islamic Movement in our countries.''

It offers advice on organizing everything from social and political science departments to methods of surveillance and spying and the use of codes to avoid detection.

The Department of Information, for example, would be spread out among major cities.

``The observation of each city with a particular importance and influence in the section of North America is entrusted to a specific individual ... who sends a monthly dossier,'' an FBI translation of the outline said.

Divisions of studies, intelligence and military affairs are among other components listed. The studies program would include a political science department focusing on Islamic political thought. The military division can plan training ``by taking advantage of the circumstances accessible for training in this country,'' the outline said.

Same Idea, Different Names

``It's a blueprint for the organization of a covert, intelligence-collecting capability in the United States or any other country. You just have to change the names,'' said Rusty Capps, a retired FBI intelligence supervisor and president of the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies in Alexandria, Va. >/font>

Capps could not assess whether the think tank or the charity were attempts to put the plan into action. But Capps was struck that agents found a document from 1981 in Al-Arian's home 14 years later, and speculated that Al-Arian ``kept it because it had value and he thought he might use it or he was using it.''

Immigration and Naturalization Service attorneys entered the outline into evidence a year ago while fighting to keep Al-Arian's brother-in-law behind bars. Al-Najjar had been held since May 1997 on secret evidence that the government said proved he was a national security threat linked to the Islamic Jihad.

A federal judge ordered a new bond hearing, ruling that the use of secret evidence violated Al-Najjar's due process rights by denying him a fundamentally fair chance to defend himself.

She sent the case back to an immigration judge, who ruled that the evidence presented in open court did not show Al-Najjar was a threat.

Immigration Judge R. Kevin McHugh ruled that ``There is evidence in the record to support the conclusion that [the think tank] was a reputable and scholarly research center and the [charity] was highly regarded.'' He later ordered Al-Najjar freed, ruling that the government failed to give him enough unclassified information about its secret evidence to preserve his due process rights.

A review of testimony from that hearing and an unclassified summary of the government's evidence indicates it involves money Al-Najjar sent abroad that may have gone to an account related to the Islamic Jihad.

A Focus On Finances

The summary shown to McHugh said Al-Najjar held a leadership position with the Jihad ``with a significant role in the financial affairs of the [group] in the United States.''

A 16-page FBI declaration accompanying the summary said investigators obtained financial records in their investigation and used court-approved electronic eavesdropping for intelligence purposes.

``The [charity] has served as a vehicle by which [the Jihad] has raised funds to support terrorist activities in the Occupied Territories,'' it said.

It then detailed a series of transactions that were discussed in court.

Al-Najjar testified that the money came from relatives. Sometimes it was for his own use and other times he was holding it for protection from insecure banks in the Middle East, he said. He said he moved it around to get favorable interest rates.

Cole doubted that the transactions were related to the secret evidence. Al-Najjar testified that the money came from, and was returned to, his family. And the government has accused him of fundraising for terrorists, not laundering terrorist money, Cole said.

``I honestly don't believe that they think Mazen Al-Najjar poses some threat to the national security,'' Cole said. ``He is just another person who has been caught up in this general determination to act, to be tough on terrorism.''

That's a good thing to do, but only when it is justified by the facts, Cole said. He doesn't think this case is justified.

Immigration agents re-arrested Al-Najjar a week ago outside his north Tampa apartment after the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld his final order of deportation. Immigration law allows the government to detain him for 90 days while trying to carry out the deportation.

As a stateless Palestinian, however, Al-Najjar says he has no country willing to accept him. It hasn't helped that the United States branded him a national security threat connected to a terrorist group.

The Jihad's current leader, Ramadan Shallah, worked at the think tank and charity Al-Najjar helped lead in the early 1990s. A speaker introducing Al-Arian at a 1991 rally called the charity the Jihad's active arm. Al-Arian did not correct him.

The charity held annual conferences and occasional rallies with speeches by the Jihad's spiritual leader, paid homage to its martyrs and featured Jihad symbols on the stage.

Then, in October 1995, the think tank's director emerged as the Jihad's new commander in Damascus, Syria. Shallah had been teaching Middle East Studies at USF six months earlier. While he was in the United States, he had dropped his last name and became known as Ramadan Abdullah.


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: alarian; alnajjar; florida; usf
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An Al-Arian / Al-Najjar update from Tampa.
1 posted on 12/01/2001 6:36:46 PM PST by PogySailor
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To: Dixie Mom; Gee Wally; Flipyaforreal; Cincinatus' Wife
FYI Bump.
2 posted on 12/01/2001 6:50:03 PM PST by PogySailor
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To: PogySailor
O'Reilly busted this guy a while ago, they should have put him in jail then.----
3 posted on 12/01/2001 6:52:17 PM PST by rs79bm
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To: PogySailor
Thank you for the ping! One can only hope that our intelligence people been keeping very close tabs on these two (?), if they've left them to roam free for so long.
4 posted on 12/01/2001 6:57:54 PM PST by Flipyaforreal
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To: summer
Back at ya!
5 posted on 12/01/2001 7:05:04 PM PST by PogySailor
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To: PogySailor
Thanks. I really hope Gov. Bush says something about this.
6 posted on 12/01/2001 7:06:42 PM PST by summer
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To: LarryLied; Amore; floriduh voter; Miss Marple; RightOnline; sarasmom
FYI.
7 posted on 12/01/2001 7:07:26 PM PST by summer
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To: rs79bm
I've been following this with interest. Seems USF has become somewhat of an Islamist hotbed.
8 posted on 12/01/2001 7:16:24 PM PST by PogySailor
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To: summer
If I had to take a guess, there may be "behind the scenes" activities that prevent him from addressing this issue directly.
9 posted on 12/01/2001 7:18:11 PM PST by PogySailor
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To: PogySailor
Pogy, you may be right, but he could say: "I am concerned, I am aware, and things are happening I can not discuss."

To me, that is a lot better than silence.
10 posted on 12/01/2001 7:30:17 PM PST by summer
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To: summer
I agree. Hopefully he will make a statement ASAP.
11 posted on 12/01/2001 7:33:06 PM PST by PogySailor
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To: PogySailor
Yes. ASAP would be good.
12 posted on 12/01/2001 7:35:28 PM PST by summer
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To: PogySailor
Good article--thanks for the ping; I've been following this story. In my opinion, this will eventually be a textbook case of how terrorists assimilate themselves into our communities, and exploit our freedoms and prosperity in order to destroy them.
13 posted on 12/01/2001 7:39:14 PM PST by Dixie Mom
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To: PogySailor
How ironic or convenient is it that these two resided in Tampa, i.e. Central Command? These two realities have never converged in any news reports or here. Maybe this is the BIG SECRET. Thank me later.

Remember the sleeper traitor who infiltrated the military elsewhere in the south who gave away military secrets and then blew up an embassy?

I'm saying these guys were sent to Tampa specifically to somehow through their local connections, subvert the military - MacDill Air Force Base in particular.

14 posted on 12/01/2001 7:41:43 PM PST by floriduh voter
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To: floriduh voter
I had a conversation with a friend this afternoon about that very thing. It would not surprise me at all.
15 posted on 12/01/2001 7:46:55 PM PST by PogySailor
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To: floriduh voter
I had a conversation with a friend this afternoon about that very thing. It would not surprise me at all.
16 posted on 12/01/2001 7:48:19 PM PST by PogySailor
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To: PogySailor
O'Reilly was right, as usual.
17 posted on 12/01/2001 7:49:27 PM PST by GOPJ
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To: PogySailor
So, three of us know. Maybe they were trying to hack into MacDill's database. They better check the entire computer department at USF if they haven't already. These guys like to "borrow" our stuff against us instead of obtaining their own.
18 posted on 12/01/2001 7:57:31 PM PST by floriduh voter
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To: PogySailor
So, three of us know. Maybe they were trying to hack into MacDill's database. They better check the entire computer department at USF if they haven't already. These guys like to "borrow" our computers instead of obtaining their own. Straight out of the bin laden handbook.
19 posted on 12/01/2001 8:00:31 PM PST by floriduh voter
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To: floriduh voter
It's odd Central Command and the University of South Florida Muslims are in the same area. It's easy to believe leadership of the terrorist are in Florida, I'm just not sure if it's Tampa. University of South Florida Muslims are so public and visible. You would think the more powerful leaders would be more hidden. Then again, maybe they were overconfident.

I pray that Ashcroft can get them all before they strike again.

I'm saying these guys were sent to Tampa specifically to somehow through their local connections, subvert the military - MacDill Air Force Base in particular.

20 posted on 12/01/2001 8:01:12 PM PST by GOPJ
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