Universities

Holy War on the Home Front
by Harvey Kushner, Bart Davis

(Page 2 of 4)

The secret Islamic network didn't begin in 2001 when the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked. Nor did it begin in the 1990s when Islamic terrorists first attempted to blow up the World Trade Center. It began in the mid-1980s when a tightly knit group of Islamic radicals attended the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro. So blatant was the group's Militant Islamic fundamentalism and its hatred of Israel - along with the United States for supporting the Jewish state - that the other students took to calling them "the Mullahs" a title generally denoting Muslim religious leaders.

It would take twenty years for the "Mullahs" to be recognized as terrorists and for America to see the structure of the secret Islamic terror network they built. The first "Mullah" was Sami al-Arian, a Ph.D. in computer engineering. The second was al-Arian's future brother-in-law, Mazen al-Najjar, who held a degree in engineering. The third was Khalid "Shaikh" Mohammed, later one of the FBI's most wanted, with a reward of $25 million on his head.

Khalid Mohammed arrived in 1984 to study engineering. Almost twenty years later, he used the knowledge he gained at North Carolina A&T to enable the hijacked jetliners to bring down the World Trade Center towers on 9/11. He had tried before. With his nephew, Ramzi Yousef, Khalid Mohammed planned the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. They are just two of the many murderers we allowed to be trained at our own universities - on American soil.

However, the "Mullahs" could not have remained hidden in plain sight for so long without friends in high places. Before al-Arian was indicted on charges of helping to finance and run the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, he may have received details of the case from FBI agent Gamal Abdel-Hafiz when the two attended the same conference in Washington.

Abdel-Hafiz was part of the FBI investigation into al-Arian's terrorist ties, but in 1998 he refused to secretly record his conversations with al-Arian. It wasn't the first time, although Abdel-Hafiz earned raves for his work on the Lackawanna 6 case, and later became the FBI's legal attaché at the U.S. embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In 2002 FBI agent Robert Wright accused Abdel-Hafiz of refusing to let colleagues eavesdrop on a terrorist-financing suspect during a case in Chicago because "a Muslim does not record another Muslim."

An investigation prompted by the accusation brought to light charges by Abdel-Hafiz's wife that in 1989 he faked a burglary and police report to bilk his insurance company - and Abdel-Hafiz failed the FBI polygraph test when he denied it. In 2002 an FBI auditing team sent to investigate the FBI office in Riyadh ended up shredding thousands of documents - including dozens of letters from Saudi security officials containing information about terrorist suspects. At the time, Abdel-Hafiz and his supervisor Wilfred Rattigan, a convert to Islam, were in Mecca for the hajj.

Abdel-Hafiz was fired in March 2003. But one year later, in what Newsweek called a "rare decision by the Disciplinary Review Board," the FBI reversed its own Office of Professional Responsibility and reinstated Abdel-Hafiz.2 Newsweek reported the FBI's letter reinstating Abdel-Hafiz called his ex-wife's claims "uncorroborated" and "the failed polygraph examination, considering your past history with that test, were not enough to substantiate her allegations against you."

Today al-Arian awaits trial on charges of terrorism that include funding Hamas through a secret network of front groups and fund-raising arms. Al-Najjar was arrested in 1997 and deported in 2003. Khalid "Shaikh" Mohammed - linked to the bombing of the USS Cole, the murder of journalist Daniel Pearl, and the 9/11 attacks - was finally arrested in Pakistan in March 2003. But how much damage to America did they all do over twenty years? How many agents did they put into place? How much of the secret terror network was overlooked because editors frightened by political correctness told reporters not to investigate people like al-Arian - which is just what Mike Fechter of the Tampa Tribune, whose brilliant investigative reporting was a major cause of al-Arian's downfall, told me happened to him.

America must not be lulled into complacency by thinking some arrests solve our problems. Liberals who let the "Mullahs" use the Bill of Rights as a shield created a terrible legacy. The "Mullahs" came to North Carolina AT&T in their midtwenties. How many terrorists were they able to recruit and train in the decades since? These new generations bide their time. They wait. When called upon, they will strike.

Irish writer Bernard MacLaverty described the Troubles in Ireland as the "elephant in the living room." The Islamic Holy War in America is our "elephant in the living room." In April 2004, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice advised the 9-11 Commission, "We must stay on the offense, to find and defeat the terrorists wherever they live, hide, and plot around the world. If we learned anything after September 11, 2001, it is that we cannot wait while dangers gather."

The founding members of the secret Islamic terror network executed a long-range plan: raise money to fund terrorist activities; support Arab and Muslim demonstrations against our government's foreign policy and its support for Israel; infiltrate our political, economic, and military system to conduct espionage and to buy influence; and use our universities to set up fronts for terrorist organizations, because our academia's commitment to Free Speech and tolerance of diversity will protect them.

Part of the FBI indictment of Sami al-Arian, "Section E., Overt Acts," reads:

(185) On or about November 20, 1995, in Tampa, Florida, SAMI AMIN AL-ARIAN possessed, at his residence:

(1) A document entitled the "Charter of the Center of Studies, the Intelligence and the Information," which set forth a detailed description of the structure and operation of a hostile intelligence organization in the United States and elsewhere. The document included the organizational structure, duties, responsibilities, espionage methods and targets, counterintelligence and precautionary measures, methods of reporting and a cipher system to make the hostile intelligence organization appear to be affiliated with a university [emphasis added].

The "Charter of the Center of Studies" was handwritten in Arabic and dated 1981 (see the appendix). It is a Militant Islamic organizational plan for terrorism, with every cell, division, agent, and objective clearly defined. One expert's opinion regarding the original Arabic is that the document could have originated from the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood, the originator of all contemporary Militant Islamic movements.

Along with the charter, investigators found a separate sheet of paper with a hand-drawn map of the United States and Canada, more proof that Militant Islam has been building the secret terror network inside North America for decades. The map is divided into four sections:

The Western Region, with dots on the cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Denver.

The Central Region, with dots on Houston, New Orleans, St. Louis, Chicago, Indianapolis, and Detroit.

The Eastern Region, with dots on Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Raleigh, and Miami.

The Canadian Region, with dots on Toronto and Montreal.

A demonstrative Illustration of the location of the team of researchers. The Bureau of North America, is written underneath the drawing.

In 1981 few, if any, terrorist groups were in the cities labeled in Arabic on the map (see the appendix). Today there are terrorist groups in every city shown on the map, proof of how far the network has spread:

BOSTON Al Qaeda Hamas NEW YORK Al Qaeda Al Muhajiroun Gama'a al-Islamiyya Hezbollah Hamas PLO Fatah PHILADELPHIA Al Qaeda Al Muhajiroun Gama'a al-Islamiyya Hezbollah Hamas PLO Fatah WASHINGTON, D.C. Hezbollah Hamas Al Qaeda Palestinian Islamic Jihad RALEIGH Hamas Palestinian Islamic Jihad MIAMI Hamas Palestinian Islamic Jihad Fatah PLO

NEW ORLEANS Hamas DETROIT Gama'a al-Islamiyya Hezbollah Hamas PLO Fatah INDIANAPOLIS Hamas CINCINNATI Hamas ST. LOUIS Abu Nidal Organization HOUSTON Al Qaeda Hamas Muslim Brotherhood Palestinian Islamic Jihad DENVER Hamas SAN FRANCISCO Al Qaeda Hamas Abu Sayyaf Group LOS ANGELES Hamas Gama'a al-Islamiyya Al Qaeda

© 2004 Penguin Group. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Harvey Kushner is an internationally recognized authority on terrorism prevention and has been a consultant to the FBI, FAA, INS, and U.S. Customs Service. He appears regularly on Fox News Channel, CNN, and MSNBC and is routinely quoted by major national publications. He wrote the expert's report in the civil litigation investigating the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Bart Davis is the author of eleven books and has written and coproduced two feature films. A member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, he has worked with every branch of the armed services during his career.