Posted on 02/22/2003 12:25:16 AM PST by Mensch
Senior law enforcement officials have suspected for years that Sami Al-Arian, the Florida professor indicted this week on charges of supporting terrorism, posed a serious national security risk, but they were slow to take action against him because of legal, political and operational roadblocks, officials said today.
The case languished for years, with investigators complaining that they were not getting the support they needed from top law enforcement officials in Washington.
Beginning in the mid-1990's, officials discussed the possibility of bringing criminal charges against Mr. Al-Arian or trying to deport him because of his suspected ties to terrorism, but they decided they lacked the legal ability to do either, former officials involved in those discussions disclosed.
"We were obviously aware of Sami. He was considered a big fish, a very serious guy" in the terrorist world, said a former senior Justice Department official under Attorney General Janet Reno who was involved in discussions about Mr. Al-Arian.
But under the department's reading of the existing case law at the time, "we considered it highly suspect" that the department could try to deport him, the official said.
The Justice Department incarcerated Mr. Al-Arian's brother-in-law, Mazen Al-Najjar, in Florida for more than four years beginning in 1997, based on secret evidence that officials said linked Mr. Al-Najjar to terrorists. Mr. Al-Najjar was deported last year. But officials concluded that because Mr. Al-Arian, unlike his brother-in-law, was a permanent American resident, immigration law prevented them from trying to deport him by using classified evidence.
Officials said the investigation into Mr. Al-Arian's activities was also slowed by turf fights among federal agencies, as well as a sense of frustration among some investigators that the Justice Department, in the climate before the Sept. 11 attacks, had not made the case a high enough priority, officials said.
Mr. Al-Arian was indicted this week along with seven other people on racketeering charges. Prosecutors accused the eight of conspiring since the early 1990's to support the Palestinian Islamic Jihad by helping finance and organize suicide bombings in Israel's occupied territories.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation began bugging many of Mr. Al-Arian's conversations in about 1994 using secret warrants obtained through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and the surveillance produced evidence linking him to the plots, officials said.
Arab-American groups have rallied around Mr. Al-Arian. They say he is being persecuted because of his outspoken advocacy of Palestinian causes, and his lawyer calls him a political prisoner.
The indictment left some terrorist specialists outside the federal government wondering why it has taken the authorities a decade to move against Mr. Al-Arian if the evidence linking him to terrorism was as strong as they now maintain.
"The indictment shows that all the while U.S. intelligence officials were listening to them plot to stage attacks, from 1994 on, and yet they did nothing to stop it until 2003," said Matthew Epstein, a terrorism expert at the Investigative Project, a counterterrorism research group in Washington.
"How many lives could have been saved if they had stopped watching and acted?" Mr. Epstein asked.
The United States has designated Palestinian Islamic Jihad as a terrorist organization and has linked it to more than 100 killings in Israel and the occupied territories, including the deaths of two young American women. Federal prosecutors maintained in the indictment unsealed on Thursday in Tampa, Fla., that Mr. Al-Arian, a professor of computer engineering at the University of South Florida, has secretly run the group's North American operation for years.
Attorney General John Ashcroft, in an interview today, hailed the indictment as a triumph for the newly expanded powers granted his department under the 2001 Patriot Act to mingle intelligence and criminal operations in ways that were previously off limits.
Mr. Ashcroft said that after an appellate court decision last November affirming the broadened powers, he gave prosecutors a "broad green light" to pursue criminal charges in cases such as that of Mr. Al-Arian.
The ability to use intelligence information more freely "was a very, very important aspect of being able to achieve what we achieved here in this case," Mr. Ashcroft said. He predicted that the newfound flexibility will allow the Justice Department to pursue criminal cases against American terrorist suspects much more aggressively in future cases.
Defense lawyers are likely to challenge the admissibility of intelligence-generated evidence in court, legal experts said, and the case could provide a crucial test of the Justice Department's expanded authority to use such material in criminal prosecutions.
The indictment provides a detailed accounting of what prosecutors say amounts to a chronology of Mr. Al-Arian's activities throughout the 1990's in support of violence in the Middle East.
The indictment states, for instance, that on Nov. 11, 1994, members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad conducted a suicide bombing in the Gaza Strip in which three people were killed and 11 were wounded.
That day, the indictment says, Mr. Al-Arian "wrote a note to be sent via facsimile" that "announced his pride" in the attack. "He asked that God bless the efforts" of the group and "accept their `martyrs,' " and urged members to be "cautious and alert," the indictment states.
Prosecutors said Mr. Al-Arian helped to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad to support terrorist operations and provide payments to the families of "martyr" suicide bombers killed in attacks.
Mr. Al-Arian and the other defendants also reached out for financial aid to nations like Sudan and Iran that have links to terrorism, speaking in code to disguise their conversations, officials said.
Ms. Reno, attorney general from 1993 through 2000, declined today to discuss her department's handling of the case. "It's a pending case," she said. "I can't comment on it."
But according to former officials and experts intimately familiar with the effort to indict Palestinian Islamic Jihad leaders in the United States, the investigation suffered from a lack of resources, such as insufficient Arabic translators, and fierce bureaucratic turf battles between the F.B.I. and the Customs Service over control of the investigation.
"We had so many obstacles that were put in our way," said a former official who worked on the case. A trip to Israel as part of the investigation had to be canceled because of bureaucratic problems, the official said, "and there were times when the Justice Department and F.B.I. were not very supportive. It fluctuated, but we never gave up."
FOX NEWS.com: "FLORIDA PROFESSOR CHARGED WITH OPERATING GLOBAL TERROR ORGANIZATION" (ARTICLE NOTE: The Florida professor is Sami Al-Arian. The terror organization is Palestinian Islamic Jihad.) (February 20, 2003)
Naturally, with Reno as the most corrupt "attorney-general" (the odorous Clinton touch is everywhere, isn't it?), everything was a pending case that she couldn't comment on.Thanks for the posting, Mensch. PennyI dare you, ugly vile one, to run again for any public office. Come on. I dare you!
May nothing but misery follow your evil ways the rest of your days.
Good old Janet. She's still lying.
With no judicial or governmental functions whatsoever, she certainly can comment on it.
Funny, that's what she always used to say back when she was still AG under the Clintonreich.
Oh the persecution and the humiliation ! These people make me sick !
What is it going to take to rid ourselves of these snakes in our midst ?
The only comments she could make is to blame it all on everyday Americans and the Bush administration. Isn't that the Clintonized version of current events?
These trash knew about this islamoterrorist and his activities, and it sounds like they didn't take step one to bring him to justice. Even if they hadn't succeeded, they could have at least started the process forward.
No sign yet that our Muslim countrymen have sorted through their religious quandry and decided to chose universal morality over some dubious religious loyalty to otherwise despicable practioners of their faith.
But under the department's reading of the existing case law at the time, "we considered it highly suspect" that the department could try to deport him, the official said.
The Justice Department incarcerated Mr. Al-Arian's brother-in-law, Mazen Al-Najjar, in Florida for more than four years beginning in 1997, based on secret evidence that officials said linked Mr. Al-Najjar to terrorists. Mr. Al-Najjar was deported last year. But officials concluded that because Mr. Al-Arian, unlike his brother-in-law, was a permanent American resident, immigration law prevented them from trying to deport him by using classified evidence.
Officials said the investigation into Mr. Al-Arian's activities was also slowed by turf fights among federal agencies, as well as a sense of frustration among some investigators that the Justice Department, in the climate before the Sept. 11 attacks, had not made the case a high enough priority, officials said.
The next time you hear that "Ashcroft is grabbing power and threatening rights" or that "Homeland Security is a big Bush power grab", point the speaker to this story -- it's one of many, many stories, including the botched investigation of the 19th hijacker Moussaoui, that directly refutes that argument.
Two points to be made:
1) The Homeland Security agency is intended to eliminate these turf wars by centralization of management.
2) Regarding the Ashcroft criticisms, Reno's justice dept elevated the Jimmy Carter era "processes and procedures" above protecting the American republic. In the most perverse way, the more important it was for US security to get information (i.e., the search warrant for The Chinese-american scientist's computer at Los Alamos) the more the Reno crowd was likely to deny investigators the right to get it.
But under the department's reading of the existing case law at the time, "we considered it highly suspect" that the department could try to deport him, the official said.
The Justice Department incarcerated Mr. Al-Arian's brother-in-law, Mazen Al-Najjar, in Florida for more than four years beginning in 1997, based on secret evidence that officials said linked Mr. Al-Najjar to terrorists. Mr. Al-Najjar was deported last year. But officials concluded that because Mr. Al-Arian, unlike his brother-in-law, was a permanent American resident, immigration law prevented them from trying to deport him by using classified evidence.
Officials said the investigation into Mr. Al-Arian's activities was also slowed by turf fights among federal agencies, as well as a sense of frustration among some investigators that the Justice Department, in the climate before the Sept. 11 attacks, had not made the case a high enough priority, officials said.
The next time you hear that "Ashcroft is grabbing power and threatening rights" or that "Homeland Security is a big Bush power grab", point the speaker to this story -- it's one of many, many stories, including the botched investigation of the 19th hijacker Moussaoui, that directly refutes that argument.
Two points to be made:
1) The Homeland Security agency is intended to eliminate these turf wars by centralization of management.
2) Regarding the Ashcroft criticisms, Reno's justice dept elevated the Jimmy Carter era "processes and procedures" above protecting the American republic. In the most perverse way, the more important it was for US security to get information (i.e., the search warrant for The Chinese-american scientist's computer at Los Alamos) the more the Reno crowd was likely to deny investigators the right to get it.
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