Posted on 09/22/2003 4:46:36 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Almost exactly six months ago, at the start of the liberation of Iraq, the Center for Security Policy warned that a "fragging" incident at the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom "could be the precursor for a far larger and more dangerous problem, both for the military and for American society more generally. Call it the ‘Fifth Column syndrome.'"
This ominous forecast was prompted by a disturbing possibility: Sergeant Asan Akbar, the alleged perpetrator of a lethal grenade attack on his superiors who commanded the 101st Airborne on the eve of the unit's "jump off" into Iraq, "could have gotten murderous ideas about America, its armed forces and the Muslim world from a chaplain in the U.S. military."
Saudi Credentialing of Chaplains?
The Decision Brief went on to note that, "As of June 2002, nine of the armed forces' fourteen Muslim chaplains received their religious training from [a] Saudi-supported entity, the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences (GSISS) in Leesburg, Virginia. In March of that year, the multi-agency Operation Greenquest raided the offices of GSISS, along with twenty-three other Muslim organizations. Agents also raided the homes of Dr. Iqbal Unus, the Dean of Students at GSISS, and Dr. Taha Al-Alwani, the school's President. According to search warrants issued at the time, these groups were raided for "potential money laundering and tax evasion activities and their ties to terrorist groups such as...al Qaeda as well as individual terrorists...(including) Osama bin Laden."
Enter Captain James Yee
These troubling facts have, regrettably, just been called to mind once again. This week, the Army arrested one of its Muslim chaplains, Captain James Yee, charging him with five offenses: sedition, aiding the enemy, spying, espionage and failure to obey a general order. According to the Washington Times, it "may also charge him later with the more serious charge of treason, which under the Uniform Code of Military Justice could be punished by a maximum sentence of life" in prison.
At this writing, it is not clear whether Captain Yee was one of those recruited, trained and certified by the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences. What is known about him, however, according to a profile that appeared in the New York Times shortly after the 9/11 attacks is that, at the time he was "The newest Muslim chaplain..., a Chinese-American and a West Point graduate who was born into a Lutheran family, took an interest in Islam in college and deepened his convictions while stationed at Fort Knox, Kentucky, where he was studying vehicle maintenance during the month of Ramadan alongside four visiting Egyptian army officers. In a telephone interview, Chaplain Yee said he left the military to attend a traditional Islamic school in Damascus, Syria, where he spent four years studying Arabic and religion. He is serving with the 29th Signal Battalion at Fort Lewis, Washington."
The article went on to quote Chaplain Yee as saying that, "Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, some of the 80 Muslims on his base have come to him with concerns about being deployed to fight Muslims overseas. He said he tells them, ‘An act of terrorism, the taking of innocent civilian lives is prohibited by Islam, and whoever has done this needs to be brought to justice, whether he is Muslim or not.'" If true, this would be commendable and helpful to the war effort.
Unfortunately, subsequent to that interview, Capt. Yee was assigned to minister to Al Qaeda, Taliban and other enemy combatants incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. According to press accounts, he is suspected of performing while there a very different service for his co-religionists. When he was arrested, he was reportedly carrying classified documents, including diagrams of the facilities in which the prisoners are being held. He may also have been facilitating communications between the detainees and perhaps fellow terrorists still at large in ways that could undermine U.S. efforts to interrogate the former and counter the latter.
An Isolated Problem?
One can only hope that the surveillance that resulted in Yee's arrest is part of a wider effort to ensure that chaplains ministering to Muslims in the U.S. military are promoting the sorts of moderate, pro-American views he purportedly held in 2001, rather than the sort of radical, intolerant and jihadist views of the so-called "Islamists." Otherwise, the danger is very real that serving members of the armed forces could be subjected to ominous proselytizing intended to give rise to clandestine Fifth Column activities in this country and a whole new front in the War on Terror.
These sorts of concerns prompted two of the Nation's legislators who are most knowledgeable about Islamist penetration and influence operations in the United States – Senators Charles Schumer (Democrat of New York) and Jon Kyl (Republican of Arizona) – to call in recent months for just such an assessment by the Pentagon. To date, their appeals for action by the Office of the Secretary of Defense appear to have gone unanswered. If that situation was undesirable before the arrest of Chaplain Yee, it is wholly unacceptable in its aftermath.
The Bottom Line
Muslims in uniform have a potentially important contribution to make to the national security, just as their civilian counterparts can contribute greatly to the commonweal. We cannot, however, allow Islamists among them to use our guarantees of religious freedom – or, for that matter, other civil liberties – to destroy the U.S. military and governmental institutions established over two centuries ago to promote and safeguard those liberties, and the millions of Americans of all faiths who hold them dear.
"When he was arrested, he was reportedly carrying classified documents, including diagrams of the facilities in which the prisoners are being held."
A classified document could be damn near anything, to include a memorandum that is deemed classified, because it has someone's social security number on it.
A diagram of the facilities could have been a simple map to find his way around the place, so that he could get to the place where services were held.
"He may also have been facilitating communications between the detainees and perhaps fellow terrorists still at large in ways that could undermine U.S. efforts to interrogate the former and counter the latter."
Notice that it does not say if any such assistance was intentional or unintentional. Facilitating communications could be something as simple as inadvertently being a go-between for code words. Example: an inmate asks "What verse of the Koran did you discuss with Akbar?", to which the Chaplain responds, "Akbar wanted to discuss such and such." - not knowing that this may have some special meaning between the inmates, such as "I haven't spilled my guts yet, don't tell the infidels anything."
I am just automatically suspicious of any article written about the military. It is so easy to make the insignificant sound significant and the uneventful sound eventful, because the military uses technical jargon that sounds impressive to those unfamiliar with it. I have seen too many tricks to hype up events, like saying "was exposed to enemy fire for 30 minutes" rather than "was shot at twice, 30 minutes apart".
This is going to need to be confronted.
Is Wallid Shatter still on President Bush's Secret Service detail?
There's another issue lurking in this story that I haven't seen any of the intelligence sources say in any of the major newspaper stories on CPT Yee. If this man sympathized with the enemy, and he counseled these detainees while they were going through the interrogation process, it's very likely that he hindered the interrogations in a substantial way. Interrogations depend on control, and a sense of total isolation on the part of the detainee. Any outside contact, particularly from someone with authority (as a military officer) and moral authority (as a Muslim cleric) would threaten the methods used by most military interrogators.
CPT Yee was in a critical position; he had unsupervised, unblocked, personal access to the detainees at a time when their isolation and dependency was critical. Knowingly or unknowingly, he may have given these detainees the will to fight our interrogators, to hold onto information a little longer that might be used to save American lives. If the facts are as alleged, then CPT Yee had about as large of an effect on the war on terrorism as can be imagined. While not as spectacular or bloody as the betrayal allegedly committed by SGT Hasan Akbar against his officers in the 101st, this betrayal is probably more deadly for all of us.
We have been infiltrated.
Here's their webstite:
US Islamic Leaders Issue Fatwa on US Muslim Soldiers Fighting ...
... by Taha Jabir Al-Alawani, President of the Fiqh Council of North America and President
of the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences, and Sheikh ...
www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3bcc8a171f3a.htm - 36k - Cached - Similar pages
The 'Fifth Column' syndrome
... 14 Muslim chaplains received their religious training from another Saudi-supported
entity, the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences (GSISS) in ...
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/874857/posts - 17k - Cached - Similar pages
The Wahhabi Fifth Column: A clear and present danger
... of their investigation, agents raided more than a dozen Saudi-funded organizations,
such as the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences in Leesburg ...
www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/814115/posts - 26k - Cached - Similar pages
Some suspected of terrorist ties supported [Congressman]Moran [D ...
... 1998. And Taha Alalwani, president of the raided Graduate School of
Islamic and Social Sciences, gave Moran $500 in January 2001. ...
www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/665789/posts - 16k - Cached - Similar pages
Muslim Troops Highlight Nation's Diversity (origin of Muslim ...
... Al-Mubarak is now an Air Force Reserve second lieutenant and attending
the School of Islamic and Social Sciences in Leesburg, Va. ...
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/874566/posts - 54k - Cached - Similar pages
Muslim linked to Al-Arian trained military chaplains (Schumer ...
... She criticized Schumer for suggesting Al-Alwani and the academy he runs, the
Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences, have ties to terrorism. ...
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/877868/posts - 37k - Cached - Similar pages
Holy war and the professors: distortion of jihad by scholars has ...
... Illinois, John Iskander of Georgia State, Mark Woodard of Arizona State, Taha Jabir
Al-Alwani of the graduate school of Islamic and social sciences in Leesburg ...
www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/780692/posts - 34k - Cached - Similar pages
[Traitor] Sgt. Akbar studied at Saudi-funded mosque
... forces' 14 Muslim chaplains received their religious training from another Saudi-backed
entity, the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences, or GSISS ...
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/876579/posts - 32k - Cached - Similar pages
Enemy Within May Complicate War
... studies that are accredited or have qualifying educational-institution standing."
In fact, the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences (GSISS) is one of ...
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/884599/posts - 22k - Cached - Similar pages
News/Activism by keyword BICE
... One of these groups is the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences, whose
Virginia offices were raided last year by Customs Service agents investigating ...
freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/k-bice/browse - 53k - Cached - Similar pages
SAUDI SUBVERSION IN AMERICA
... institutions active in the religious field: the International Institute of Islamic
Thought (IIIT) and the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences (GSISS ...
www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/657139/posts - 56k - Cached - Similar pages
The fifth column syndrome (A wake up call to all who love this ...
... fourteen Muslim chaplains received their religious training from another Saudi-supported
entity, the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences (GSISS) in ...
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/874429/posts - 52k - Cached - Similar pages
Albanian Muslims: Islamist Target (Stephen Schwartz alert)
... this country. Among them, he is Ibn Khaldoon Professor-at-Large,
School of Islamic and Social Sciences, Leesburg, Virginia. The ...
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/767467/posts - 32k - Cached - Similar pages
Defender of the Faith [Portrait of anti-Islamist Khaled Abou El ...
... Taha Alalwani, president of the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences
in Leesburg, Va., which trains Muslim chaplains for the American military ...
www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/688102/posts - 34k - Cached - Similar pages
Enemy Within May Complicate War (Muslims 2% Of US Military)
... studies that are accredited or have qualifying educational-institution standing."
In fact, the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences (GSISS) is one of ...
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/888634/posts - 53k - Cached - Similar pages
Feds Searched Offices of Seven McKinney Donors (She Raked In Big ...
... Foundation, the Safa Trust, Mar Jac Investments, the International Institute of
Islamic Thought, the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences, and the ...
www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/669314/posts - 68k - Cached - Similar pages
Wahhabis in the Old Dominion
... institutions active in the religious field: the International Institute of Islamic
Thought (IIIT) and the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences (GSISS ...
www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/660540/posts - 47k - Cached - Similar pages
Enemy Within May Complicate War
... studies that are accredited or have qualifying educational-institution standing."
In fact, the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences (GSISS) is one of ...
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/883110/posts - 42k - Cached - Similar pages
'Fifth Column' within the US armed forces
... 14 Muslim chaplains received their religious training from another Saudi-supported
entity, the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences (GSISS) in ...
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/875254/posts - 46k - Cached - Similar pages
Black Muslim Traitors--We have met the enemy
... fourteen Muslim chaplains received their religious training from another Saudi-supported
entity, the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences (GSISS) in ...
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/874833/posts - 69k - Cached - Similar pages
How a Muslim Chaplain Spread Extremism to an Inmate Flock: ...
... Taha Jabir Alalwani, the president of the Graduate School of Islamic and Social
Sciences in Leesburg, Va., helped arrange the trip in 2000 for the prison ...
www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/836362/posts - 59k - Cached - Similar pages
The Scandal of US-Saudi Relations
... agents finally get around to raiding 16 innocuous-looking Saudi-funded institutions
such as the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences of Leesburg ...
www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/820241/posts - 87k - Cached - Similar pages
US 'Lacks Knowledtge to Launch Land War'
... Al-Mubarak is now an Air Force Reserve second lieutenant and attending
the School of Islamic and Social Sciences in Leesburg, Va. ...
www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ba81f00261a.htm - 71k - Cached - Similar pages
The End of an Alliance (Saudi Arabia worldwide funding of terror ...
... also been raided, for good cause; among them are the International Institute of Islamic
Thought, the Fiqh Council, and the School of Islamic and Social Sciences ...
www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/796340/posts - 85k - Cached - Similar pages
Former Attorney General Casts Christ as Terrorist
... agents finally get around to raiding 16 innocuous-looking Saudi-funded institutions
such as the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences of Leesburg ...
www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/820329/posts - 100k - Cached - Similar pages
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.