Posted on 09/15/2001 12:50:58 PM PDT by Greenpointer
Tick, tick, tick: Fears increase of foreign terrorists
landing massive blow on U.S. soil
BYLINE: Richard Cole
DATE: 06-08-1997
PUBLICATION: The Austin American-Statesman
PAGE: J1
NEW YORK -- At this moment, militant groups labeled by the State Department as terrorist organizations -- Hezbollah, Palestine Islamic Jihad, the Irish Republican Army and others -- operate quietly within U.S. borders from New York to San Diego.
These groups collect U.S. dollars, sometimes through fraud, to send to their cells overseas. They have used U.S. addresses to buy U.S. equipment, U.S. Internet sites to communicate and foundations in the United States to raise money.
But it gets worse.
``A lot of these groups now have the capability and the support infrastructure in the United States to attack us here if they choose to,'' says John O'Neill, who headed the FBI's counterterrorism unit until last year and now heads those efforts for the FBI in New York.
O'Neill and others indicated there is a particular danger from Islamic militants, who view the United States as the Great Satan.
Meanwhile, the level of danger posed by terrorism in general has grown significantly, according to highly credible sources.
A terrorist attack with anthrax -- or Sarin gas, or a World Trade Center-style bomb ``dirtied'' with enough nuclear material to make parts of the city uninhabitable -- is almost inevitable, a 1996 Senate report warned.
Defense Secretary William Cohen said much the same at a conference on terrorism this spring.
``This scenario of a nuclear, biological or chemical weapon in the hands of a terrorist cell or rogue nation is not only plausible, it's really quite real,'' he warned.
In a classified report titled ``Terror 2000,'' Pentagon analyst Peter Probst identifies scenarios including the release of anthrax, one of the deadliest known toxins, in a New York City subway tunnel.
``The death toll would be horrific,'' Probst says.
The United States has seen a hint of such work by foreign terrorists in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which killed six and injured about 1,000.
Those involved included Islamic radicals from Palestine, Sudan and Egypt as well as U.S. converts. The same group had planned to bomb other New York City landmarks.
Their views hardly reflect those of Muslims in general. Nearly all of this nation's estimated 6 million Muslims are law- abiding citizens, many seeking the American Dream.
``There are fanatics in every religion, and as long as they do not carry their fanaticism to a terrorist act, there is nothing wrong in their beliefs,'' says Seif Ashmawy, the Egyptian-American publisher of the Voice of Peace, a monthly publication on Muslim issues. ``But there is a very small minority that wish to impose their ideas by force.''
Despite the threat, there are severe limitations on what the United States and other governments can do to curb the activities of Islamic militants at home. Demands for action bump up against the U.S. tradition of providing safe harbor to foreign dissidents, from Mexican revolutionaries at the turn of the century to today's anti- Castro Cubans.
Gerry Adams, head of the Irish Republican Army's political supporters, Sein Finn -- and once banned from entering Great Britain -- has met with President Clinton and congressional leaders. And like Mideast terror groups, the IRA has long raised money from supporters in the United States.
What is different about Islamic extremists, say terror experts, is the radical fringe who consider this country an enemy of Islam that must be punished.
``The fact they are using the United States as a launching pad, a depot and a bank is not new. What is different is the fact it is done so with an open hostility toward the U.S. government and U.S. society,'' says Brian Jenkins, a terrorism expert who served on the U.S. aviation security commission.
The alleged builder of the World Trade Center bomb -- a shadowy figure who calls himself Ramzi Yousef, facing a July 14 trial in the case -- plotted to blow up a dozen U.S. airliners in a single day and practiced in the Philippines with a nitroglycerine charge that killed one passenger.
In Saudi Arabia, the FBI is still trying to unravel the possible alliance of Iran, Shiite Hezbollah, militant Sunni radicals and the world's leading financier of terror, Osama bin Laden, in two bombings that killed 24 U.S. soldiers and two Indians.
Here in the United States, authorities fret about ``sleeper cells'' of Hezbollah terrorists awaiting orders from Tehran, or zealots acting on the influence of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, the Egyptian cleric convicted of leading the World Trade Center conspirators.
Acting CIA director sees growing webs
Such terrorists ``are expanding their networks, improving their skills and sophistication, and working to stage more spectacular attacks,'' warns acting CIA Director George Tenet.
To conduct their activities in the United States and elsewhere, groups with suspected ties to Islamic extremists are employing a range of financial and telecommunications links and tactics in the United States:
* When A.C. Nielsen, the nation's largest coupon redemption company, hired a private investigator to look into fraud, he traced part of the problem to Palestinian merchants who redeemed coupons for products never purchased, then sent $100 million of that cash back to the Middle East.
At least two of the major coupon fraud groups were headed by terrorists, says Nielsen's investigator, Ben Jacobson.
In St. Louis, he says, the ringleader was Zein Isa, a U.S. commander of the terrorist Abu Nidal Organization. Isa later was indicted for terrorist activities and convicted of murder.
In Brooklyn, Jacobson found a phony coupon redemption center run by Mahumud Abouhalima -- now serving 240 years in prison for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
* Congressional analyst Kenneth Katzman says that Hamas -- whose suicide bombings helped derail the Middle East peace process -- receives an estimated 30 percent to 80 percent of its budget from the United States. Hamas leaders say the money goes to schools and clinics.
* Israel accuses Virginia businessman Mousa Abu Marzook, whom U.S. authorities expelled to Jordan last month, of financing Hamas terrorist cells. An FBI agent testified that millions of dollars passed through Marzook's accounts.
More than $200,000 of that total has gone to the Holy Land Foundation of Richardson, Texas, which was shut down in Israel as a fund-raising tool of Hamas. Holy Land's U.S. branch denied any connections to Hamas and continued to raise funds in the United States.
* About $500 million from the sale of heroin in the United States and Europe has gone to leaders of the PKK, a Kurdish separatist group identified by the State Department as the world's deadliest terrorist organization, say undercover agents.
* Other U.S.-based Islamic foundations are under investigation by the U.S. Customs Service to determine if they passed money to Middle East terrorists.
One is in Florida, where investigators are searching for evidence of wrongdoing in stacks of Arabic documents, encrypted computer files and bank records seized from the World and Islam Studies Enterprise, a Tampa-based Mideast think tank once affiliated with the University of South Florida.
Ramadan Shallah, a USF Middle East studies instructor who served as administrative director of the think tank, slipped out of the country last year to assume leadership of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
* A top FBI official says a San Diego-based Internet Web site called the Islam Report provided a clearinghouse for terrorist communiques, including those of militants in Algeria, where 60,000 people have died in terror strikes and military responses.
Information on building weapons of mass destruction -- nuclear, chemical and biological -- is now routinely passed through the Internet, Defense Secretary Cohen noted at the terrorism conference. And the sophistication and easy availability of technology compared to much of the world makes the United States an ideal environment for terrorist networks.
Action is being taken to control the entry of terrorist suspects into the United States.
The two most glaring examples of porous U.S. borders emerged from the World Trade Center bombing. Yousef, the suspected bomb builder, came through with a false passport, then claimed political asylum and was released to build his deadly explosive device.
Abdel-Rahman, the ringleader, was supposedly barred from this country for his efforts to overthrow the Egyptian government. But he somehow obtained a U.S. visa, took up residence in New Jersey and then successfully fought extradition.
Tighter immigration restrictions
That has now changed. Immigration officials can bar entry to those connected to terrorist organizations. Deportations proceedings have been made easier with a new provision permitting the government to present evidence against alleged terrorists in closed hearings to protect sources here and overseas.
But Oliver Revell, a retired FBI official and former head of counterintelligence, says the fixes do not go far enough.
``We're the only country that puts the onus on the government to prove that people are here illegally,'' he said. ``Not only do you have to prove that individuals are here illegally, but you must prove that they are not eligible for any type of asylum.''
Complicating all the new laws is one of the most fundamental issues to face any free society, especially one that prides itself on providing a safe haven to the world's downtrodden: One nation's terrorist is another nation's freedom fighter.
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