The Al Arian Indictment: Editorial from St. Pete Times

The Al-Arian indictment Whether or not it amounted to criminal conduct, the USF professor's activity in support of an Islamic terrorist group is laid out in damning detail.

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The other shoe finally dropped on Sami Al-Arian, and it landed with the force of a collapsing facade. Until Thursday, the University of South Florida professor and his defenders had claimed for years that any attempt to curb his activities on behalf of Islamic extremist groups constituted a violation of his rights to free speech and academic independence. The massive indictment announced Thursday by Attorney General John Ashcroft ended that pretense. From this point forward, the case against Al-Arian and his co-defendants clearly rests in the context of international terrorism, not academic freedom.

Al-Arian, like every criminal defendant, deserves the presumption of innocence. However, the meticulously detailed indictment documents what should have been clear all along: Al-Arian was never, as he claimed to be, a simple academic who happened to have some controversial views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Instead, he has been a leader in this country of efforts to raise funds, set policy and provide organizational support for Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a group responsible for some of the worst recent acts of terror in the Middle East. Whether the activities of Al-Arian and his associates constitute the serious criminal acts alleged in the federal indictment will be decided in a court of law. But even before this indictment, no fair reading of Al-Arian's activities since coming to USF could ignore his ties to Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The seriousness of the charges against Al-Arian stand in contrast to the frivolousness of the case USF officials had attempted to make to keep him off campus for the past year. The detailed indictment also stands in contrast to the unserious investigation commissioned by USF officials in the mid-1990s, when the questionable activities of Al-Arian's self-styled campus think tank first embarrassed the university. Al-Arian now stands formally accused of leading a conspiracy that abetted terrorist attacks resulting in the deaths of dozens of innocent men, women and children. But because USF officials weren't willing to wait on hard evidence, they suspended Al-Arian based on trumped-up accusations, such as failing to inform audiences that he was not an official spokesman for the university.

As the criminal case against Al-Arian and the other defendants moves forward, it is worth reminding a jittery public that the indictment does not allege any connection with al-Qaida in general or with the Sept. 11 attacks in particular. Instead, the case revolves around activities undertaken by Al-Arian and others in support of groups responsible for terrorist attacks in the Middle East. Al-Arian has always cast those activities as innocent charitable work. The government alleges a much more intricate and sinister conspiracy.

In either case, it is clear from the indictment that Al-Arian continued those activities even after then-President Clinton issued a 1995 executive order declaring a state of emergency prohibiting the kinds of financial transactions Al-Arian appears to have been conducting with operatives of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In fact, the indictment suggests his activities continued even after the Sept. 11 attacks and the subsequent national attention that was focused on Al-Arian after his disastrous appearance on a cable talk show. If arrogance and stupidity were crimes, Al-Arian would be in even bigger trouble.

The attack is coming at Steve Emerson, the Tampa Tribune and its reporter, Michael Fetcher, as well as Ashcroft. I saw the al-Arian & Muslim spinners out yesterday.

Terror Indictments

Breach in 'the wall' opened intelligence to investigators

By MARY JACOBY, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 21, 2003

WASHINGTON -- Law enforcement officials called it "the wall." And when it came down last November, criminal investigators pursuing Sami Al-Arian suddenly found themselves awash in critical new evidence for their case.

Intercepted phone conversations and faxes. Human sources. Financial trails. Classified information collected for a decade by Federal Bureau of Investigation intelligence agents was now being shared with Department of Justice criminal prosecutors.

So what tore down this once inviolable wall between the FBI's intelligence and criminal investigations divisions? The answer is a special court ruling last November clarifying that the two sides could, in fact, work together.

For years, the Justice Department assumed that the wall could not be breached. Beginning in the 1980s, the department issued guidelines meant to guard civil liberties by holding criminal investigators to high federal standards for engaging in wiretapping or searches.

A lower bar existed for electronic surveillance conducted purely for intelligence-gathering purposes. And these requests for intelligence-only wiretaps were reviewed in Washington by an obscure panel of judges who make up the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

For years, Justice Department officials believed wiretaps granted by that court could never be used to prosecute criminals.

In a Nov. 18, 2002, decision, an appeals court said that assumption was wrong. It said law enforcement officials had consistently misinterpreted the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA.

The 1978 law authorizes FBI agents to investigate suspected "agents of a foreign power" operating in the United States who are believed to be engaged in spying or international terrorist activities.

"It is quite puzzling that the Justice Department, at some point during the 1980s, began to read the statute as limiting the Department's ability to obtain FISA orders if it intended to prosecute the targeted agents," the ruling of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review said.

The review court said that by definition, spies or international terrorists are violating the criminal laws of the United States. Therefore, the court said, it made no sense to block their prosecution just because evidence was obtained by wiretaps approved by the FISA court.

In a news conference Thursday, Attorney General John Ashcroft called the Al-Arian indictment "one of the very valuable benefits" of demolishing the wall between the intelligence agents and law enforcement.

The indictment details dozens of communications secretly monitored by federal authorities since the early 1990s in which Al-Arian wrangles with other accused Palestinian Islamic Jihad leaders over nuts-and-bolts issues of running the terror group.

In 1994, the group was in financial straits and under pressure from their sponsor, Iran, to clean up spending practices, the indictment says. It says Al-Arian was asked to conduct an audit and then fought fiercely to see his proposed financial reforms accepted.

"This investigation, which culminated today in the unsealing of the indictment, was significantly aided by the now-declassified intercepted faxes and telephone calls," Paul Perez, the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Florida, said in an interview Thursday.

There were, however, many obstacles to the indictment.

One hurdle for criminal investigators was that their evidence centered on activities that occurred in the early and mid 1990s. It was not until 1996 that a stronger antiterrorism law was enacted to make it easier to charge suspected terrorists. And it wasn't until 1997 that the State Department designated Palestinian Islamic Jihad as a "foreign terrorist organization."

A couple of years ago, prosecutors prepared an indictment of Al-Arian based on the federal Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. But internal debate in the Department of Justice over that strategy kept prosecutors from filing that indictment.

Investigators knew the FBI's intelligence arm had gathered evidence on al-Arian's World and Islam Studies Enterprise, a think tank based at the University of South Florida. But rules keeping intelligence and criminal investigations separate prevented prosecutors from gaining access to that classified information.

This hands-off attitude, however, came under fresh scrutiny after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Congress quickly passed a new antiterrorism law, the 2001 Patriot Act, that sought to clarify when intelligence information could be used in criminal investigations. Ashcroft quickly wrote new rules to break down the wall.

After the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court initially rejected Ashcroft's move to change the rules, Justice Department lawyers appealed. That prompted the first and only decision ever handed down by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, the rarely used appeals panel.

In their Nov. 18 decision, judges Ralph B. Guy, Edward Leavy and Laurence Hirsch Silberman -- all semiretired appeals judges originally appointed by Ronald Reagan to the bench -- radically changed the landscape for terror prosecutions.

"The government argues persuasively that arresting and prosecuting terrorist agents of, or spies for, a foreign power may well be the best technique to prevent them from successfully continuing their terrorist or espionage activity," the appeals panel said.

And with that, FBI intelligence agents and criminal investigators began working together, ultimately resulting in Thursday's indictment.

dawn53: This is hysterical considering they were one of his biggest defenders.

Catspaw: Oh they still are

Please re-read this paragraph, dawn:

it is worth reminding a jittery public that the indictment does not allege any connection with al-Qaida in general or with the Sept. 11 attacks in particular. Instead, the case revolves around activities undertaken by Al-Arian and others in support of groups responsible for terrorist attacks in the Middle East.

Although the writer makes a fluffy attempt at condemning Al-Arian's ties to a terrorist organization, the above is also an attempt to diffuse the situation....after all, he can't be THAT bad.....he wasn't plotting anything against AMERICANS, only those ME folks......so, we should be less concerned. Additionally, he's not be shown to have "any connection with AQ, or 9/11" rather, a he's ONLY a supporter of a DIFFERENT terrorist group, so it's not as bad....these are the subtleties between an outright, strong condemnation of Al-Arian and one which makes either a defense/excuse/morally relative comment so as to weaken its condemnation. IMHO, they simply MUST issue some kind of condemnation....this newspaper does have egg on its face.

Also, last night while watching O'Reilly, his guest pointed out that there is a definite link to AQ with Al-Arian, not direct, but if AQ is point "A," and Al-Arian is point "C," there is a definite link with another terrorist organization, point "B," which has ties directly with A and C......connect the dots between events/people, and you have Al-Arian connection with AQ....the guest's name I do not remember, but something to this effect was discussed last night.

I can't remember the guest's name either, but he did mention that in the indictment, it talks about Sami/PIJ getting a donation from the Sudan at the same time bin Laden was there.

But to demonstrate how the St. Pete's Times has handled this recently (prior to his appearance on O'Reilly, they were his biggest cheerleader), Howard Troxler's column can best be described as "ambivalent."

Terror Indictments

Which face of Al-Arian should be believed?

TROXLER

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By HOWARD TROXLER, Times Columnist

I spent a long time Thursday with a yellow highlighter and Sami Al-Arian's federal indictment. Now it is getting late in the evening, but two feelings keep colliding in my brain, over and over.

The first is anger at Al-Arian, who has regularly labeled any questioning of his activities as anti-Arab bigotry. He made me feel guilty about it.

Unless there was a different guy also named Sami Al-Arian running around for the past 10 years, at the very least he was doing more than teaching computer science and running a few seminars on Islam over at the University of South Florida.

The indictment is detailed. It is precise. It is 121 pages long and lists 253 overt acts. Not all of them, not even very many of them, can be waved away by Al-Arian's claim of "politics," nor his lawyer's breezy assertion that it is all "a work of fiction."

The feds specifically have Al-Arian consulting regularly with Islamic Jihad leaders around the world, raising more than just humanitarian money, and getting reports on the results of the latest murderous deeds sometimes even as the ashes still smoldered.

From his academic post at USF, through faxes and phone calls and express mail (the Jihad preferred DHL), the indictment charges Al-Arian helped control the Islamic Jihad's budget and where it was banked. He helped determine the group's structure and joined in the internal struggles over who held power.

The wills of Mideast suicide bombers were stored on his university computer in Tampa, the feds say. He transferred money from his USF Credit Union account to the Mideast to pay off the families of Palestinian terrorists.

It reads like a classic Mafia indictment. That is not a coincidence. The feds used the racketeering and conspiracy laws that they have used against organized crime.

Sami Al-Arian is accused of being Al Capone's bookkeeper: not a trigger man, but a guy who helped make it all possible.

That's the first feeling.

The colliding feeling, which I cannot shake no matter how hard I try, is that we have only heard the feds talk so far. A criminal charge is never prettier than when it is freshly printed in an unrebutted indictment.

Maybe there was a time when it was enough for the feds to stand up and hold a big dog-and-pony press conference.

But nobody knows better than us in Tampa how little a federal indictment can resemble the actual facts. If I am not being clear enough: The Tampa feds relied on made up transcripts of the tapes in the famous Aisenberg baby-disappearance case. Stood right up there and used made up fiction and got us to publish it in the newspaper. (If the feds want to protest this characterization, I will be happy to republish large sections of Judge Steven Merryday's findings here, which I have been itching to do anyway.)

So just because an indictment says it does not make it true.

Al-Arian might never be convicted.

The lawyers surely will wrangle over how much of Al-Arian's involvement with the Islamic Jihad predates 1995. Only then did it become illegal to lend support to that group and certain individual terrorists.

Secondly, some of the overt acts listed in the indictment are trivial -- the receiving of faxed press releases, for example. It is natural that an Islamic studies institute might get on all kinds of fax lists. Other acts are jury questions. Is it really "support" of terrorism to provide a pension for widows and children?

Third, Thursday's indictment gives no clue about the source of the information. Attorney General John Ashcroft said it was made possible by the new sharing of intelligence information with the FBI. That raises the possibility of a precedent-setting fight over how much of the evidence is admissible.

So the prosecutors have a long road.

Al-Arian has an even longer road, however, in the court of public opinion. That's the big news in Thursday's indictment. For the first time, we have a hard claim that he was hardly the innocent, put-upon college professor that he has played these past few years.

Having been let down by the feds in the past, I am cynical about indictments. Having felt guilty about doubting Al-Arian in the past, now I feel let down.

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