Category Archives: Libya Benghazi Muslim Brotherhood murder

Bergdahl, 5 Years and Forfeit Salary?

Posted on by

It is official, charges are likely to be rendered this week on Bowe Bergdahl. The chatter is recommending 5 years in prison and forfeiture of his salary during the time he defected. But is this enough if accurate? Read on to determine for yourself given the summary below.

The Unraveling

How the Obama administration’s story on Bowe Bergdahl and the Taliban fell apart

Late in the afternoon of Saturday, May 31, Barack Obama strode confidently to a lectern in the White House Rose Garden flanked by the parents of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, a soldier who had gone missing from his platoon in the mountains of Afghanistan in June 2009.

Newscom

“This morning I called Bob and Jani Bergdahl and told them that after nearly five years in captivity, their son, Bowe, is coming home,” Obama said.

The president thanked service members who “recovered Sergeant Bergdahl and brought him safely out of harm’s way.” Obama also expressed gratitude to the diplomats who had handled the case, and he reported that his administration had “worked for several years to achieve this goal.” The president confirmed news reports from earlier in the day that Bergdahl had been freed as part of a prisoner exchange with the Afghan Taliban—a deal that was brokered by the government of Qatar. “As part of this effort, the United States government is transferring five detainees from the prison in Guantánamo Bay to Qatar,” he announced.

The Bergdahls were understandably emotional about the news and in brief statements thanked their friends and their government for supporting them through the long ordeal.

It was, for Obama, a fleeting moment of triumph. For more than a year, the president had been buffeted by events that he could not—or would not—control. The disastrous debut of Obamacare, the continuing fallout from the Benghazi attacks, the consequences of intelligence disclosures by Edward Snowden, the unfolding human tragedy in Syria, the Russian power play in Ukraine, the scandal that has engulfed the Veterans Administration—in one crisis after another, the man who once boldly declared his intent to be a transformative president had shown himself to be a reactive one.

But in the course of three days in late May, Obama sought to wrest control back by demonstrating progress on two of his longest-held goals: ending America’s overseas wars and closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. On May 28, in a commencement speech before cadets graduating from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Obama declared that all combat troops would be out of Afghanistan by the end of 2016. And three days later, in announcing the transfer of five senior Taliban officials, all designated at “high risk” to return to battle, Obama demonstrated his determination to shutter the detainee facility.

The morning after Obama announced the prisoner exchange, top national security officials from his administration fanned out on the Sunday talk shows. The job of explaining the president’s decision fell to defense secretary Chuck Hagel and national security adviser Susan Rice.

The president, recognizing the “acute and urgent situation” of the missing soldier, had an obligation to “prioritize the health of Sgt. Bergdahl,” Rice explained. “His life could have been at risk.” Waiting was not an option.

Bergdahl was a hero, she suggested, “an American prisoner of war captured on the battlefield” who had served his country with “honor and distinction.”

In an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, Rice explained that the five Taliban commanders would be transferred to Qatar, where “they will be carefully watched” and “their ability to move will be constrained.”

Rice brushed off concerns that the United States had engaged in hostage negotiations with terrorists, emphasizing that the United States communicated indirectly with the Taliban through the Qataris. Hagel, for his part, was clear about the U.S. diplomatic partners on the exchange. “We didn’t negotiate with terrorists,” he insisted in an appearance on Meet the Press.

He downplayed the notion that the five Taliban commanders could present a threat to the United States, arguing that he wouldn’t sign off on any detainee transfer unless “our country can be assured that we can sufficiently mitigate any risk to America’s security.”

And then came the unraveling.

Many of Hagel’s and Rice’s key claims would be disputed quickly. Some would prove to be misleading, others simply false.

No risk to America’s security? Michael Leiter, the former head of the National Counterterrorism Center under Obama, said it was “very, very likely” that the five Taliban leaders would return to the fight. An intelligence official who briefed the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, Rob Williams, the national intelligence officer for South Asia, said that there is a high likelihood that at least four of the five freed prisoners, and possibly all of them, will rejoin the fight. Even Obama, after downplaying the threat, conceded that “absolutely” there was a chance they would take up arms against America.

Didn’t negotiate with terrorists? The United States engaged in “direct discussions with the Taliban in late 2011, early 2012,” a senior administration official acknowledged in a background briefing with reporters on May 31. The Taliban took possession of Bergdahl in Afghanistan, where the U.S. military can freely conduct operations, and quickly transferred him to the Haqqani network, a Taliban-associated group in Pakistan, where it cannot go. The Haqqani network held Bergdahl until shortly before his release. They were formally designated a terrorist group by the United States in September 2012. One of the early U.S. requests in the talks was a simple one: The Taliban had to renounce terrorism. They refused.

The freed Taliban figures will be carefully watched? A report by Reuters quoted a senior Gulf official on security provisions for the Taliban in Qatar as saying, “They can move freely within the country. Under the deal, they have to stay in Qatar for a year, and then they will be allowed to travel outside the country. .  .  . They can go back to Afghanistan if they want to.” Reuters further reported that the men “will not be treated as prisoners while in Doha and no U.S. officials will be involved in monitoring their movements while in the country.”

Bergdahl served with “honor and distinction”? “That’s not true,” Specialist Cody Full told The Weekly Standard. “He was a deserter. There’s no question in the minds of anyone in our platoon.”

Bergdahl’s rapidly declining health required immediate intervention to save his life? In a video of the hand-over released by the Taliban, Bergdahl appeared gaunt but walked without apparent difficulty to the waiting helicopter. Doctors at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany said he was having nutritional issues but listed him in “stable” condition. And, according to the Wall Street Journal, the video that generated the sense of urgency was filmed in December 2013, six months before the “emergency” prisoner exchange.

In the days following the announcement of the exchange, the public scrutiny of three aspects of the deal—Bergdahl’s disappearance, his health, and the threat posed by the release of the Guantánamo detainees—left Obama back where he started. His trip to Europe for a meeting of the G-7 was overshadowed by questions about the deal, and Obama found himself, once again, reacting to a crisis of his own making.

The Disappearance

Almost immediately after the Rose Garden ceremony, Bowe Bergdahl’s platoon mates began telling a story they’d been ordered to keep quiet. Bergdahl, they said, was a deserter. Specialist Full took to Twitter and in a long string of posts—interrupted only by short breaks for beer—provided his recollections of Bergdahl’s disappearance.

In a subsequent interview with The Weekly Standard, Full was blunt. “He was not a hero. What he did was not honorable. He knowingly deserted and put thousands of people in danger because he did. We swore to an oath, and we upheld ours. He did not.”

Specialist Josh Cornelison shared that view. “He walked off—and ‘walked off’ is a nice way to put it,” said Cornelison, the medic in Bergdahl’s platoon. “He was accounted for late that afternoon. He very specifically planned to walk out in the middle of the night.”

In total, nine members of Bergdahl’s squad have accused him of walking out on his fellow soldiers. An AR 15-6 investigation conducted by the Army came to the same conclusion, though it stopped short of formally classifying Bergdahl as a deserter because such a label requires knowledge of intent, which the Army investigators lacked.

Speaking out about the circumstances of Bergdahl’s departure took some courage. At the time of his disappearance, the soldiers were instructed not to talk about Bergdahl, his departure, or his possible whereabouts. That much is routine—any public discussion of the hostage could threaten his life and the lives of the troops and intelligence officials working to rescue him. But these soldiers were also asked to sign nondisclosure agreements. That step, a former senior Pentagon official says, is “highly unusual.”

Bergdahl’s platoon mates’ concern for his well-being quickly became a concern for their own. Within days of his disappearance, the U.S. military received intelligence reports that Bergdahl had deliberately sought out the Taliban. Evan Buetow, the platoon leader, told CNN’s Jake Tapper that they’d gotten a report that Bergdahl was in Yahya Khel, a village less than two kilometers away, asking villagers for someone who spoke English and could lead him to the Taliban. “I heard it straight from the interpreter’s lips as he heard it on the radio,” Buetow said. “There’s a lot more to this story than a soldier walking away.”

The minute-by-minute military log of Bergdahl’s disappearance and the subsequent rescue efforts was made public via WikiLeaks. And while that long, jargon-filled account includes reporting on Bergdahl’s asking for an English speaker, it does not include the rather important detail that the missing soldier, traveling without his weapon, was seeking the enemy.

Still, other soldiers have backed up Buetow’s version of events. And a Washington Post report on June 4 confirmed it. Villagers told the Post’s Kevin Sieff that Bergdahl was looking for the Taliban. Ibrahim Mankiel, the district intelligence chief, asked the obvious question: “Why would an American want to find the Taliban?”

While it’s important in the current context to avoid jumping to conclusions about Bergdahl’s motivations, those working to find him in rural Afghanistan—and trying to survive—didn’t have that luxury. In short order, Bergdahl had gone from fellow soldier to deserter to potential collaborator with the enemy. Did Bergdahl share valuable information with the Taliban—either voluntarily or under duress? A retired U.S. Army captain who led troops in both Afghanistan and Iraq tells The Weekly Standard that whatever the Army eventually finds out about Bergdahl’s possible cooperation with the enemy, his squad mates had to assume the worst—particularly after learning that he’d gone looking for their enemy. This officer says he would have told any soldiers who saw Bergdahl in a village to assume they were walking into an ambush.

That kind of suspicion may have been warranted. “Over the next couple of months, all the attacks were definitely far more directed,” Buetow told Tapper. “Before he left, we’d have IEDs go off virtually every day, but they were going off in front of the trucks .  .  . on the side of the road. Following Bergdahl’s disappearance, IEDs started going off directly under the trucks. They were getting perfect hits every time.” Soldiers in the region chased bogus leads on Bergdahl’s whereabouts that sometimes led to traps, well-orchestrated attempts to lure Bergdahl’s would-be rescuers into situations where they would be vulnerable to attack.

The results of the initial investigation into Bergdahl’s disappearance remain classified, and the administration has resisted congressional calls to make them public. When top Obama administration national security officials briefed senators on June 4, they expressed frustration with the public debate around Bergdahl’s departure, telling lawmakers that his fellow soldiers were more nuanced in their initial interviews than in their recent comments.

Still, it seems clear that Bergdahl, who walked away from his unit in the middle of a war and whose departure greatly increased risks to his fellow soldiers, was not “captured on the battlefield” and did not serve with “honor and distinction,” as Susan Rice had said. When Buetow was asked on Fox News what he thought when he heard Rice’s claim, he said, “It upset me.”

The Army has launched a second investigation into Bergdahl’s departure. Shortly after he was transferred to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, counter-intelligence interrogators peppered Bergdahl with questions about his disappearance and his time in captivity. What he says in those interviews—and what he doesn’t—will shape the investigation.

Bergdahl’s Health

Shortly after Bergdahl was handed over to the Americans on May 31, a helicopter whisked him to Bagram Air Base, and then he was flown to Germany. Doctors who evaluated him have provided few details, but they listed him in “stable condition and receiving treatment for conditions requiring hospitalization.” The statement cited only “attention to diet and nutrition needs” in its description of his treatment.

A National Security Council official who briefed reporters just two hours after the exchange took place said of Bergdahl: “He’s in good condition and able to walk.”

Susan Rice offered a similar assessment on This Week. Bergdahl “is said to be walking and in good physical condition.”

That must have been quite a surprise. In describing the urgency of the prisoner exchange, top Obama administration officials including Rice and Hagel offered descriptions of Bergdahl that made him sound as though he were near death. “We had information that his health could be deteriorating rapidly,” Hagel said on Meet the Press. “There was a question about his safety.”

Obama administration officials frequently used Bergdahl’s health to explain why they had decided to ignore the requirement in the National Defense Authorization Act to give Congress 30 days’ notice before transferring detainees from Guantánamo. Hagel acknowledged that the administration hadn’t given so much as a heads-up to key members of Congress until the transfers were already taking place, despite regular assurances—in public and in private—that Congress would be consulted. The withering criticism was bipartisan.

“Our views were clearly translated,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Democrat from California who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, at a press availability on June 3. “So it comes with some surprise and dismay that the transfers went ahead with no consultation, totally not following the law.”

The more heat the administration received for ignoring Congress, the more dire their descriptions of Bergdahl’s health became. In a press briefing on June 2, White House spokesman Jay Carney pointed to “the state of his health” as one of the key reasons the White House had ignored the requirements of the NDAA.

But members of Congress, including top Democrats, weren’t buying it. “He was undernourished, not necessarily malnourished,” Feinstein said, pointing to a recent intelligence assessment. “Unless something catastrophic happened, I think there was no reason to believe he was in instant danger. There certainly was time to pick up the phone and call.”

On June 4, the Wall Street Journal published a lengthy story, sourced heavily to Obama administration officials, reporting that Bergdahl’s health was the main reason for the urgency of the exchange. “Two secret videos showing rapid deterioration in Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s health persuaded reluctant military and intelligence leaders to back the prisoner swap that has stoked a backlash,” the story began. According to the Journal, the Qatari government provided a proof-of-life video to the U.S. government in January 2014. It had been shot the month before, in December 2013.

The story did not explain why a video from late last year generated sudden urgency—six months later. Was additional intelligence gathered more recently that suggested Bergdahl might die without immediate intervention? If so, the administration has not cited it.

The Journal story quoted Shawn Turner, the spokesman for director of national intelligence James Clapper, explaining why his boss, previously skeptical of the prisoner exchange, now favored it: The intelligence community, Turner said, had “evidence that Sgt. Bergdahl’s health was failing and that he was in desperate need of medical attention.”

That same morning, the Taliban released a 17-minute propaganda video of the exchange. In the video, Bergdahl looks somewhat gaunt and confused, but otherwise healthy. He walks without assistance from a pickup truck to the U.S. forces who have come to retrieve him, and then on to the helicopter that will take him to Bagram.

A video isn’t enough to permit a medical diagnosis, of course, but there’s little question that images of Bergdahl were not consistent with the administration’s descriptions of him before his release. Neither are the things that top intelligence officials were telling lawmakers in closed briefings. When Clapper, the nation’s top intelligence official, answered questions on Capitol Hill Wednesday, he was asked directly if the United States had intelligence showing that Bergdahl’s health required immediate extraction. “The intel wouldn’t support that,” Clapper responded, according to sources familiar with his testimony.

By the evening of Wednesday, June 4, when the White House dispatched top national security officials to Capitol Hill to brief an all-Senate meeting, the administration was backing away from claims that Bergdahl’s health had required that the exchange take place when it did. Although the senators were shown the December proof-of-life video, administration briefers downplayed the urgent health issues that had been a key talking point over the previous several days. “It was a subtle, but a very real shift,” said one senator who attended the briefing. Instead, the briefers recast their argument, saying that they could not have told Congress because a leak about the negotiations could have killed the deal. That was the reason—not Bergdahl’s health—that Congress was not notified.

Sources say the briefers expressed bewilderment that people thought the administration had claimed Bergdahl’s health condition was so poor it threatened his life. “That fell flat,” said an official in the briefing. “Even Democrats weren’t buying it.”

Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, expressed skepticism. “His health was not the critical factor. .  .  . In that one video, you can tell he had been drugged .  .  . and he was in a different state five months ago.”

The Weekly Standard asked Turner, the DNI spokesman, to explain the discrepancies. He said that the Journal article had not used his entire statement and suggested that the edited version was misleading. In a new statement late Wednesday, Turner said: “Sgt. Bergdahl’s suspected deteriorating health was one of a number of factors that contributed to the DNI’s decision. It was not the only factor and certainly was not the determining factor. It was a data point—one of many.”

Subsequent requests for comment—about Clapper’s testimony and any fresh evidence that Bergdahl’s life had been in jeopardy—went unanswered.

If the administration was retiring the dangerously-poor-health talking point, someone forgot to tell the president and his secretary of defense.

Hagel, in an interview with the BBC that aired Thursday, went further: “It was our judgment based on the information that we had that his life, his health were in peril.”

Obama, one day after his top intelligence official rejected claims that Bergdahl’s health had made an emergency deal necessary, made the claim yet again. “We had a prisoner of war whose health had deteriorated and we were deeply concerned about it. And we saw an opportunity and we seized it.”

Guantánamo

The other side of that opportunity was the transfer of five senior Taliban commanders from captivity in Guantánamo to relative freedom in Qatar. The Taliban had been seeking the release of these five officials—plus another who died in prison—for more than three years. The assessments of the men conducted by Joint Task Force Guantánamo (JTF-GTMO) found that each one presented a “high risk” of returning to the battle if he were released. Other detainees had been assessed as lesser threats, and some had even been cleared for release. Not these prisoners.

“All five of those guys are exceptionally dangerous,” says Paul Rester, the former lead interrogator at Joint Task Force Guantánamo. “These are men who ran entire regions for the Taliban, they had thousands of fighters under their command. They survived the Soviets, they survived the civil war, they survived us, they survived Sam Scott’s Gitmo chicken.”

Rester and his team were responsible for the threat assessments of the detainees. An experienced interrogator, Rester got his start during the Vietnam war and first interviewed mujahedeen in the 1980s when the United States saw them as allies against the Soviet Union. Rester interrogated many of those at Guantánamo and in some cases got to know them well. He and his team rewrote their assessments every year.

“Those assessments only tell the story of how they constitute a risk to us,” he says. “They don’t tell you how they are revered in the population. They can think rings around us in that environment.”

When Obama came to Washington, he made clear that one of the immediate goals of his presidency would be to close the facility at Guantánamo. So the president set up his own team, the Guantánamo Review Task Force, made up of lawyers, military officers, intelligence analysts, and diplomats, who would make recommendations to the president about how to handle individual prisoners.

JTF-GTMO’s job was to assess each detainee’s intent and ability to harm the United States, its interests, and its allies. Its assessments were done by men and women who were chiefly concerned with prosecuting a war. The Guantánamo Review Task Force’s mandate was different. It was established simultaneously with President Obama’s order to shutter the facility in one year. That deadline proved impractical, but the task force was formed for the purpose of closing Guantánamo. Clearly, the task force was willing to accept more risk in detainee transfers than JTF-GTMO. Indeed, the task force recommended that dozens of detainees who were deemed “high risk” by JTF-GTMO be transferred.

But even the Obama team recommended that 48 of the remaining Guantánamo detainees be held indefinitely. All five Taliban commanders that Obama released last week were in this group.

For Rester, that’s significant. “We had the best military analysts on the planet look at these guys and recommend against transfer,” he says. “And then Obama’s team—this administration’s most knowledgeable, courageous, and liberal legal minds came to the same conclusion. They could not bring themselves to recommend these guys for transfer or release.”

Many of the intelligence officials who have worked on Guantánamo agree with them. In a hearing on June 4, Clapper was asked to assess the likelihood that these individuals would return to the fight on a scale of 1 to 10. Clapper gave one of the men an 8 and the other four a 9.

But Obama and his team are telling the public a different story. “I will not sign off on any detainee coming out of Guantánamo unless I am assured .  .  . that we can sufficiently mitigate any risk to American security,” said Hagel on Meet the Press.

Those risks are not mitigated. They’re enhanced.

“Unless the goal is to increase the combat power of the enemy, they should have remained under U.S. government control,” says one former intelligence official who worked on Guantánamo issues. “Those five in particular should have remained at Guantánamo at least until the last U.S. military person [in Afghanistan] has been withdrawn.”

 

Barack, Hillary and Ben Collaborated on the Benghazi Lies

Posted on by

The day after, September 12th, she stood next to Barack and they already knew. Hillary’s State Department had truth tellers but they were dismissed.  

Judicial Watch Obtains State Department DSCC Records on Terrorist Attack on Benghazi

JANUARY 26, 2015

Top State Department Official Admitted to Congress that Command Center “could follow what was happening in almost real-time”

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it has obtained court-ordered documents in accordance with its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. State Department seeking “any and all logs, reports, or other records” the Washington-based Diplomatic Security Command Center produced between September 10, 2012, and September 13, 2012, relating to the terrorist attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on October 16, 2014, (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01733)).

According to testimony given by Deputy Assistant Secretary Of State Charlene Lamb before the House Oversight Committee on October 10, 2012, the Command Center knew the Benghazi compound was under hostile fire from the moment the attack began. Lamb’s testimony was in direct conflict with initial false claims by the Obama administration that the attack arose from a spontaneous demonstration in response to an Internet video.

“When the attack began,” Lamb testified, “a Diplomatic Security agent working in the Tactical Operations Center immediately activated the Imminent Danger Notification System and made an emergency announcement over the PA. Based on our security protocols, he also alerted the annex U.S. quick reaction security team stationed nearby, the Libyan 17th February Brigade, Embassy Tripoli, and the Diplomatic Security Command Center in Washington. From that point on, I could follow what was happening in almost real-time.”

Despite knowing it was an attack, the State Department, including its security Command Center, continued to falsely tie “demonstrations” to the Benghazi terrorist assault. The State Department’s January 20 document production contains a press release issued by the Diplomatic Security Command Center, on September 12, 2012, that falsely states that “violent demonstrations took place at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, and at the U.S. Special Mission Compound in Benghazi, Libya, resulting in damages in both locations and casualties in Benghazi.”

The Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit, filed after the State Department failed to respond to a June 12, 2014, FOIA request, seeks the following:

Any and all activity logs, reports, or other records produced by the Diplomatic Security Command Center between September 10 2012, and September 13, 2012, regarding, concerning, or related to the attack at the U.S. Special Mission Compound and Classified Annex in Benghazi, Libya.

Lamb’s 2012 testimony that the Diplomatic Security Command Center knew in “real time” that a terrorist attack was underway ran contrary to claims by top Obama officials, including U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who on September 16, 2011, told NBC’s Meet the Press, “[W]hat happened in Benghazi was in fact initially a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired hours before in Cairo, almost a copycat of the demonstrations against our facility in Cairo, prompted by the video.” According to Foreign Policy magazine, Lamb’s testimony was also buttressed by an October 9, 2012, press conference call in which a senior State Department official told reporters, “The ambassador walked guests out at 8:30 or so; there was nobody on the street. Then at 9:40 they saw on the security cameras that there were armed men invading the compound.”

“The State Department’s Diplomatic Security Command Center clearly knew in real time that a full-fledged terrorist attack was taking place on September 11 at the U.S. compound in Benghazi, and the American people deserve to be told the truth,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “We are now into the fourth year of a massive Obama administration cover-up. And the Command Center communiques may further help unravel the Obama administration’s growing web of deceit. I’ve always believed that the Benghazi cover-up was about two presidential campaigns – the Obama reelection effort and Hillary Clinton’s nascent presidential campaign. I have little doubt that the State Department is protecting Hillary Clinton with this latest cover-up.”

Judicial Watch has now filed 40 FOIA requests, a Mandatory Declassification Review, and eight lawsuits against the Obama administration relating to the Benghazi terrorist attack. Currently, Judicial Watch is the only non-governmental organization in the nation currently litigating in federal court to uncover information withheld by the Obama administration about the events that transpired before, during, and following the Benghazi massacre.

In April 2014, Judicial Watch forced the release of State Department documents it had obtained, including an internal email showing then-White House Deputy Strategic Communications Adviser Ben Rhodes and other Obama administration public relations officials attempting to orchestrate a campaign to “reinforce” President Obama and to portray the Benghazi consulate terrorist attack as being “rooted in an Internet video, and not a failure of policy.” Other documents showed that State Department officials initially described the incident as an “attack” and a possible kidnap attempt. The documents were obtained by Judicial Watch result of a June 21, 2013, FOIA lawsuit filed against the Department of State (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-00951)) Judicial Watch’s release of the Rhodes email, which had been withheld by the Obama administration from Congress, caused the House of Representatives to approve the Select Committee on Benghazi, which is now led by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC).

In June 2013, Judicial Watch released the first seven photos depicting the devastating aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks on U.S. diplomatic and CIA facilities in Benghazi. The following November, it obtained 32 new documents from the Department of State, including 13 previously withheld photos depicting the carnage at the U.S. Consulate. The documents were obtained in response to a Freedom of Information (FOIA) lawsuit filed against the State Department on February 25, 2013 (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1-13-cv-00242)).

 

 

Iran, the Enemy: Ignored by the White House

Posted on by

There are at least 3 Executive Orders blocking assets of Iranian entities due in part to the category placed on Iran by the U.S. State Department that Iran is a known and proven state sponsor of terror. Barack Obama has lifted sanctions on Iran for the misguided mission and talks to neutralize their nuclear weapons program in violation of the Executive Orders.

The United States began imposing sanctions on Iran in 1983 for the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon. The U.S. placed Iran on the terror list which automatically triggers sanctions. It must be noted however, that there are certain conditions where sanctions do not apply and this includes humanitarian aid.

Iran has also been at the core of the instability in Iraq mostly by financially supporting and providing arms to Iraqi militias going back to as early as 2006. This coordination between Iran and the Iraqi militias were under the Qods force at the command of Qasem Soleimani. Today, this commander is leading the hostilities again in Iraq as the U.S. is battling Islamic State. Why is this all important? The Obama White House and the U.S. Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry have been in long talks with Iranian leadership over their nuclear weapons program. To date this has included lifting sanctions, un-freezing of billions of dollars to keep Iran at the negotiations table. Why are we legitimizing Iran at all when they continue to be a state sponsor of terror?

State Department officials as recently as this week admitted they are not working to eliminate the nuclear program but simply to manage it by trusting Iran’s position and pledges. Iran lies and has lied and continues to lie, but the Obama administration dismisses that fact completely. In short Israel being allied with America has been replaced with allying with Iran.

Barack Obama emphasized in this week’s State of the Union address that he will veto any Congressional action to re-apply sanctions to Iran while the talks continue. Speaker Boehner drew first blood the following day by inviting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before a joint session on Congress on February 17. The White House responded immediately calling the invitation a violation of diplomatic processes. The White House went further to state that during Netanyahu’s visit to the United States, the President will NOT meet with the Prime Minister.

The matter gets worse when it comes to the fact that the White House and the State Department continue to run to Iran for the sake of saving nuclear talks which for the last year have failed. No one can explain exactly just why these talks are so tantamount to complete with a win, rather than preventing Iran’s nuclear program completely. If you are still in question as to why the talks must be terminated, it is simply due to lies and never-ending terrorism at the hands of Iran against not only Israel but includes Europe and the United States of America.

Only this week were Israeli tourists attacked while on vacation in Argentina by Iranian attackers. But the most chilling aspect of Iran is their history of terrorism especially when it comes to the bombing of a Jewish Center in 1994 killing 85. A prosecutor all of these subsequent years has been investigating this bombing and submitted a 500 page indictment two years ago. The prosecutor, Alberto Nisman was set to testify a few days ago, but was found dead in his home over the weekend. Nisman had built a case file on Iran’s globally deadly proven evidence and shared all documents with Interpol. Argentina worked diligently to cover up and protect Iran….it became yet another bloody and deadly end.

Nisman’s 500-page-long indictment, handed on Wednesday to an Argentine federal judge, says that several intelligence stations were established to sponsor, foster and execute terrorist attacks in order to export the Islamic revolution. Identical intelligence bases and centers were discovered in Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and Suriname.

“I legally accuse Iran of infiltrating several South American countries to instal intelligence stations – in other words espionage bases – destined to commit, encourage and sponsor terror attacks like the one that took place against the AMIA,” Nisman was quoted as saying.

According to the dossier, the terrorist network that struck the AMIA center was nearly successful in an attempt in 2007 to blow up the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. The bid was thwarted, however, and the  plotters were arrested and later sentenced to life terms in prison. The prosecutor said in his report that these two attacks were part of a wider plan to strike against other targets in Latin America. The report also mentioned the potential development in parts of Latin America by Iran of sleeper cells.

In his report, Nisman also offered new and corroborating evidence implicating the highest authorities of Iran in the AMIA bombing. The indictment says that Mohsen Rabbani, a former Iranian cultural attaché in Buenos Aires, had not only orchestrated the AMIA center bombing in which 85 people died and hundreds were wounded, but also acted as a coordinator of the Iranian infiltration in South America.

According to Nisman, Rabbani spread his activities to Guyana through a disciple, Abdul Kadir, who is a former Guyanese lawmaker and imprisoned for the attempted attack on Kennedy Airport. Kadir was trained and supported by Tehran, the indictment said, and was arrested while boarding a plane for Iran.

Nisman’s office said that the prosecutor had sent copies of his indictment to the judicial authorities of the respective countries. He also requested the International Police Organization (Interpol) to increase precautions and take further measures in order to detain all the suspects in the AMIA case.

Reaction

The head of the Argentine Jewish umbrella group DAIA, Julio Schlosser, who is also a vice-president of the World Jewish Congress, said that Nisman’s filing “reinforces the sentiment that Iran is an unreliable interlocutor that finances and promotes terrorism.” The report provded that the Jewish community had been right in rejecting the memorandum of understanding signed between the governments of Argentina and Iran earlier this year which calls for the establishment of an international ‘truth commission’ tasked with investigation the AMIA bombing. Schlosser said Iran was “not a valid interlocutor because it finances and promotes terrorism.”

Argentine courts have charged eight current and former senior Iranian officials in the bombing, including the current Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi and ex-Revolutionary Guard chief Mohsen Rezai. Both are among the candidates in the 14 June presidential election in Iran.

In closing, shame on Barack Obama and John Kerry and those European leaders that are in lock step with the continued quest on the nuclear talks and placing Iran on equal footing globally. There is no case in history where this objective by the White House is aiding and abetting the enemy.

Let’s Get Serious about Cells in America

Posted on by

This report was published by the Counter-Terrorism Center in 2008. Given the toll-free super highway since 2009 by the Obama administration, the prediction is it is much worse. The report below has citations listed at the bottom. The FBI/DHS are not going to address the truth and neither is the DoJ or the White House, it is time we take what we can and learn, then take action with lawmakers.  If you don’t think this is serious then know what happened just today (Jan. 14).     Ohio Man Arrested for Alleged ISIS-Inspired Attack on US Capitol     The FBI has arrested an Ohio man for allegedly plotting an Islamic State-inspired attack on the U.S. Capitol, where he hoped to set off a series of bombs aimed at lawmakers, whom he allegedly considered enemies.

Christopher Lee Cornell -– also known as Raheel Mahrus Ubaydah -– was arrested earlier today on charges of attempting to kill a U.S. government official.

Government documents say the FBI first noticed Cornell after he voiced support for violent “jihad” on a Twitter account.

Further investigation revealed his intent to attack the U.S. Capitol, and he planned to detonate pipe bombs there and open fire on any employees and officials after the bombs went off, according to government documents.

The FBI and Department of Homeland security issued a bulletin to law enforcement agencies across the country, notifying them of the case.

“The alleged activities of Cornell highlight the continued interest of US-based violent extremists to support designated foreign terrorist organizations overseas, such as ISIL, by committing terrorist acts in the United States,” the bulletin read. “Terrorist group members and supporters will almost certainly continue to use social media platforms to disseminate English language violent extremist messages.”

 

Evaluating the Terrorist Threat Posed by African-American Muslim Groups

May 15, 2008

Author(s): Christopher Heffelfinger

The FBI introduction to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) file on Clarence Smith—aka Clarence 13X—reads only, “Smith was the leader of the ‘Five Percenters,’ a notorious Harlem street gang. He was shot to death in 1969” [1]. Yet, as a lyrical sample from Lord Jamar (a prominent Five Percenter and hip-hop artist) reads in his Greatest Story Never Told, “Allah [Clarence Smith] was assassinated in 1969, that case was never solved. His movement survived him, today it’s known as the Nation of Gods and Earths” [2]. The Five Percenters are just one facet of indigenous Muslim evolution in the United States; others, like Jama`at al-Fuqara’, retain ties to Pakistan and are ideological affiliates of militant Salafist groups such as al-Qa`ida. This article will examine trends among three predominantly African-American Islamic movements, at least one of which should be considered a domestic terrorism concern for the United States. It also serves to provide counter-terrorism professionals with knowledge enabling them to differentiate terrorist threats from more benign religious groups.

The Five Percent Nation

Clarence 13X was initially a member of the Nation of Islam (NOI) and attended its Temple Number Seven in Harlem, where Malcolm X preached from 1960 to 1963 [3]. One rumor claims that he left the NOI because he questioned the divinity of Wallace Fard, the founder of the NOI who claimed to bring divine inspiration to Elijah Muhammad. Clarence 13X split with the NOI in 1963 [4]. He adopted the name “Allah” and set to the streets of Harlem to educate fellow black Americans on the Supreme Mathematics, the Supreme Alphabet and the tenets of his movement, which claimed that 85% of men are easily misled, 10% understand some truth but use it for their own benefit, and five percent are enlightened divine beings [5]. Under Clarence 13X, or Allah, the Five Percenters (also called the Five Percent Nation) established a headquarters in Harlem—the Allah School in Mecca—in 1966 [6]. Today, the movement includes Busta Rhymes, members of Wu Tang Clan, Jus Allah and many other high-profile hip-hop artists.

The FOIA FBI file on Clarence Smith reveals some of the details pertaining to their concern over his activities:

“…letterhead memorandums to the Bureau dated 6/2/65, 6/9/65 and 7/9/65, all captioned ‘DISTURBANCE BY GROUP CALLED “FIVE PERCENTERS,” HARLEM, NEW YORK CITY, 5/31/65; RACIAL MATTERS,’ which contained subject under the name CLARENCE 13X SMITH aka ‘Allah,’ and which further reflected that subject was the recognized leader of the ‘Five Percenters.’

“It is noted that records of the Bureau of Special Services, (BSS), New York City Police Department, (NYCPD), reflects subject’s true name as CLARENCE SMITH JOWERS and as CLARENCE SMITH JOWARS, however, for uniformity, subject’s true last name will be carried as JOWARS until such time as investigation determines the true spelling of subject’s last name.

“CLARENCE SMITH JOWARS, aka Clarence 13X, a Negro male, born 2/21/28 in Virginia, city not known, NYCPD # B 612230, resided in Apartment 5E, 21 West 112th St., NYC, from August, 1954, through January, 1964. Subject has Social Security Number 228-28-0034. Subject served in the US Army under the name CLARENCE SMITH JOWARS or CLARENCE SMITH from 10/29/52, through 10/29/54, and had Army Serial Number 51207085. Subject had the rank of Private First Class, served in Korea, and was last assigned to Company ‘F,’ 39th Infantry, Ft. Dix, New Jersey” [7].

The final assignment is peculiar, for coincidence if no other reason. Ft. Dix was the site of the foiled plot by six young Muslim men arrested in 2007 for planning to essentially embark on a shooting spree within the base and kill as many U.S. servicemen as possible [8]. The case is still awaiting trial. Ft. Dix is significant to African-American history, as in 1969 “there were rebellions at the military prisons of Fort Dix, Fort Jackson, three times at Fort Riley, Camp Pendleton, and others. At Fort Dix, one of the prisoner demands was: ‘Free Huey P. Newton, the New York Panther 21, the Presidio 27, and all political prisoners!’” [9]

Toward the end of Clarence Smith’s FBI File, it reads:

“On 11/16/65, [REDACTED] BSS, NYCPD, advised SA that on 11/16/65, subject […] appeared in New York State Supreme Court, NYC, and was found ‘unable to understand the charges against him.’ Subject was remanded to the custody of the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene for an indefinite confinement” [10].

He was assassinated in 1969 in a case that remains unsolved. Curiously, the latter pages of Clarence Smith’s FBI file read: “Subject is a Negro male, born 2/21/28 or 2/22/28, at Danville, Virginia” [11]. At one of Jama`at al-Fuqara’s (Community of the Impoverished, JF) compounds, called “Red House” [12], 24 members of the compound were convicted of firearms violations [13]. Red House sits about 66 miles from Danville, VA, Clarence Smith’s birthplace. The locations of JF’s compounds often appear laden with symbolism, but it is not yet known if the proximity of this compound to Danville has any larger significance.

What relevance do the Five Percenters have to terrorism? There is no material link between the Five Percent Nation (nor fringe groups like the Seas of David) and terrorism, but they are on a graduating spectrum in terms of radicalization. To the extreme of the Five Percent Nation is the highly militant Jama`at al-Fuqara’ that strongly rejects the tenets of the Nation of Gods and Earths [14], and instead adheres to a Salafist Islam akin to that of al-Qa`ida. Members may move toward the more militant and austere Islam of JF if they feel the Five Percenters are ineffective at effecting societal change, or if they can be convinced that their doctrine is blasphemous per Salafist norms.

Jama`at al-Fuqara’

The Salafist Jama`at al-Fuqara’ is a much more potentially threatening group. It could have as many as 30 compounds in the United States and Canada, with affiliates in the Caribbean. At these compounds, members engage in tactical training exercises and weapons training, and explosives caches have been uncovered in at least one instance. Islamberg, in Hancock, NY, is considered to be JF’s headquarters. Paul Williams, who did extensive study on the group, states,

“Though primarily based in Lahore, Pakistan, Jamaat ul-Fuqra has operational headquarters in New York and openly recruits through various social service organizations in the U.S., including the prison system. Members live in hamaats or compounds, such as Islamberg, where they agree to abide by the laws of Jamaat ul-Fuqra, which are considered to be above local, state and federal authority” [15].

Although JF is estimated to be 95% African-American, it is not purely an Afro-nationalist movement in the United States. Its ties to overseas militant Salafist trends clearly run much deeper. Sometime in the late 1990s, Jama`at al-Fuqara’ changed its name to the “Muslims of America” and still operates as such.

It is possible there is some resonance in ideas between followers of the Five Percent Nation and followers of Jama`at al-Fuqara’. George Johnson, Jr., a retired serviceman, security analyst and African-American, said,

“I have never personally known an admitted member of Al-Furqara’. However, some of my Black Muslim friends and relatives who belong to various other Afro-centric and mainstream Islamic sects (NOI, Ansar Allah, 5 per centers, Bilalians, etc.) express some of the same doctrines and beliefs and are sympathetic to Al-Fuqara’s ideas” [16].

Yet, JF’s ideology is drastically different than that of NOI, the Five Percenters, or Seas of David. It was founded by a Pakistani cleric, Shaykh Mubarak `Ali Gilani, in Brooklyn in 1980, when he first visited the United States [17]. Shaykh Gilani’s guiding principle is to “purify” the Islamic umma through violence. One retired intelligence official with expertise on militant Islam explained in September 2007,

“At one point they ran private security firms in NYC and in Karachi, Pakistan. Their spiritual leader was Pir Sayed Gilani who lives in Pakistan, and arranged training for U.S. Fuqra members in the Pakistan camps of the Kashmiri insurgents; some American Fuqra members actually fought in Kashmir against Indian forces. Intelligence shows that Gilani is connected to Pakistan’s ISI and al-Qaeda; the WSJ’s Daniel Pearl was on his way to interview Gilani when he was kidnapped” [18].

A number of JF members have fought overseas, including in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Kashmir, Bosnia and Lebanon. Others in the highly secretive group were affiliated with the Kifah Refugee Center, also known as the Brooklyn Jihad Office [19]. One member, Clement Rodney Hampton-El, an African-American Muslim convert, was convicted of plotting to blow up New York City landmarks in 1993. He provided weapons training to fellow members at the Brooklyn Jihad Office, including El Sayyid Nosair who used that training to assassinate Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York in 1990. According to Hampton-El’s testimony, he had a meeting at the Saudi Embassy in December 1992 where Jamaican-born, Muslim scholar Bilal Phillips gave him the names of U.S. servicemen ready to finish their tours of duty. He was to recruit the men as volunteer mujahidin and paramilitary trainers for an Usama bin Ladin-sponsored insurgency in Bosnia [20].

Bilal Phillips provides more material linkages between these African-American Muslims (typically converts) and militant Salafism. Phillips’ biography on his website reads, “Bilal, who had read Malcolm X’s autobiography, visited one of the temples of the Black Muslims. Though impressed by their organization and the fact that their women dressed modestly, he found their ideology useless” [21]. He seems to have turned toward a much more austere form of Islam. There is still much more to be unraveled pertaining to Bilal Phillips and his connections to Salafist clerics in Saudi Arabia and around the Islamic world.

Seas of David/Liberty City Seven

A more recent manifestation of non-Salafist militancy is the case of the Seas of David, or Liberty City Seven. On April 16, a jury was hung in the case against the “Liberty City Seven,” who were charged with planning an attack on Chicago’s Sears Tower following a 2006 FBI raid on their warehouse and temple in Liberty City, a poor suburb of Miami [22]. This was the second trial against the group; the first ended in acquittal for one man while the jury was deadlocked over counts against the other six.

The group had no firearms, no explosives and no links to a terrorist group when they were arrested. Its leader reportedly roamed the neighborhood in a bathrobe, toting a wooden walking stick [23]. The Liberty City Seven subscribed to teachings that blended Christianity and Islam; the Seas of David, the obscure organized group of which the seven were members, developed teachings partially derived from those of the Moorish Science Temple of America, according to Narseal Batiste, the group’s alleged leader [24].

Where They Are Today

Critical for intelligence and law enforcement officials is the ability to distinguish non-violent, pietistic or spiritualist movements from Salafist-inspired ones that advocate or practice militancy. Today, the Five Percent Nation is largely leaderless, with various teachers propagating the beliefs of Clarence 13X and poses no serious terrorist threat, although gang activity and criminality is a concern. The Seas of David will, in all likelihood, dissipate and pose no further threat. Such movements, however, may serve at times as a gateway to more conservative—sometimes militant—Salafist groups, such as Jama`at al-Fuqara’. The Jama`at al-Fuqara’/Muslims of America deserves a more comprehensive treatment, as the group is clearly one of the most glaring domestic terrorism concerns for the United States.

Christopher Heffelfinger is a researcher and consultant for the Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy. He contributed to the Militant Ideology Atlas, the CTC Harmony project, and the continuing CTC-FBI education collaborative at West Point. Prior to that, Mr. Heffelfinger edited two volumes on terrorism (Unmasking Terrorism, with forewords by Michael Scheuer and Gen.William Odom), and also served as editor of the weekly Terrorism Focus. He is a fluent Arabic reader and speaker, having spent time in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Morocco. Mr. Heffelfinger lived in Sana`a, Yemen in 2000, and attended the same language school as John Walker Lindh. He also lived and studied with the Naqshbandi Tariqat, where he studied with native speakers refuting militant Salafist ideology through Islamic source texts.

Notes

[1] FBI File #100-444636, available at http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/smith.htm.

[2] One site that includes the lyrics from the Greatest Story Never Told is www.lyricstime.com/lord-jamar-greatest-story-never-told-lyrics.html.

[3] Jane I. Smith, Islam in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), pp. 101-103.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Mattias Gardell, In the Name of Elijah Muhammad: Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), p. 225.

[6] Michael Muhammad Knight, The Five Percenters (Oxford: One World Publications, 2007).

[7] FBI File #100-444636, available at http://foia.fbi.gov/smith/smith1.pdf.

[8] See Troy Graham, “Man who Supplied Guns in Alleged Fort Dix Terror Plot Sentenced to 20 Months,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 1, 2008.

[9]  “Black GIs, Rebellion and the Fall of the Flag,” Revolutionary Worker #994, February 14, 1999.

[10] FBI File #100-444636.

[11]  Ibid.

[12] Ironically, Red House shares the name of the parliament of Trinidad and Tobago. The building was stormed by Jamaat al-Muslimin, an Afro-Caribbean Islamist movement, in July 1990. The group took hostages, including the prime minister, and announced that they had overthrown the government. See Ken I. Boodhoo, “Islamic Fundamentalism in the Caribbean,” LACC Publications Occasional Papers Series, Florida International University, Dialogue #135, 1992.

[13] Paul L. Williams, “Springtime in Islamberg: Radical Muslim Paramilitary Compound Flourishes in Upper New York State,” Canada Free Press, May 11, 2007.

[14] The Nation of Gods and Earths is the current name of the Five Percenters movement.

[15] Williams, “Springtime in Islamberg: Radical Muslim Paramilitary Compound Flourishes in Upper New York State.”

[16] Personal interview, George Johnson, September 14, 2007.

[17] For more information, see the South Asia Terrorism Portal file on Jama`at al-Fuqara’, located at www.satp.org.

[18] Personal interview, unnamed retired intelligence official, September 2007.

[19] “United States: The Jamaat al-Fuqra Threat,” Stratfor.com, June 3, 2005.

[20] J.M. Berger, “Al Qaeda Recruited Gulf War Vets in 1992, Effort Linked To Saudi Gov’t,” Intelwire.com, January 6, 2004.

[21] For more information on Bilal Phillips, see his official website at www.bilalphilips.com.

[22]  Justin Rood and Vic Walter, “Second Terror Mistrial Hurts Bush Administration, Critics Say Hung Jury Leads to Second Mistrial in ‘Liberty City Seven’ Case,” ABC News, April 16, 2008.

[23]  Ibid.

[24] “Indictment: Suspects Wanted to ‘Kill All the Devils We Can,’” CNN, June 24, 2006.   ***

Let’s look at more. It is time this information gets headlined for the sake of national security.  Informant: Islamic Compounds in America are Training for Jihad by Martin Mawyer, November 2012

In Hancock, NY an Islamic community that sits on 80 acres of land has decided to form its own government.  They call their community: The Town of Islamberg.  They have their own mayor, deputy mayor and five town council members.  None of them are elected, of course.

They even boast that their “town” provides departments of education, medical, finance and land development services.

This Islamic compound has truly become a city-state.  Though not recognized as a legitimate township by the City of Hancock, this Islamic community nevertheless enforces its own laws on the “citizens” within its borders.  They do so by using the iron fist of Sharia law.

I interviewed a member of this camp, which sits deep in the Catskills Mountains of upstate New York.  The Islamic group that has established this camp is part a network known as Muslims of the Americas (MOA), which has documented links to Al Qaeda.

MOA has established similar villages in nearly three-dozen locations nationwide, with other prominent camps found in Texas, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, California and Tennessee.

The man I interviewed, Ali Aziz, painted a shocking picture of what life is like to live inside these camps and how many of their members engage in terrorist training activities. Aziz, an Egyptian Muslim, worked as an undercover informant for eight years for the New York Police Department (NYPD). During that time, he lived on MOA camps and worked closely with MOA leadership, all the time supplying the NYPD with information about illegal activity on the camps—including guerilla combat training.

Aziz was drawn into the life of an informant after police arrested him years ago on a passport violation. Aziz was fluent in both English and Arabic, and he had been an Olympic Judo athlete.

“I knew the martial arts,” he said, “which (MOA) liked. I could teach them Arabic. I could teach them how to read the Quran.”  He was welcome with open arms by MOA members and its leaders.

I have visited the outside of the Hancock compound a couple times and flown over it once. It’s typical of virtually every other MOA camp. It’s in a heavily wooded area off the beaten path, with mostly battered trailers and homes and a couple of newly constructed buildings thrown into the mix. It has dirt roads lined with old cars, new cars and junk cars. Wooded debris, discarded scrapings and demolished buildings can be seen throughout the area, giving it an unsightly appearance from above.

It has its own graveyard, similar to those found on other camps. And the property has a couple of small lakes which have been used as “open areas” to shoot their weapons across. Not surprisingly, Hancock also has a guard shack to intercept unwanted visitors.

By all accounts, Hancock—which now calls itself “The Town of Islamberg”—is the camp that houses the leaders of MOA and makes decisions for the rest of the camps throughout the United States.

Aziz provided this shocking information: MOA has created a secret jihadist army, similar to a guerilla-trained militia, that is ready to attack American citizens “at one word” from their leader, Sheikh Gilani.

One of the main purposes of the camps is to provide guerilla training for the young men—and in some cases the women—to be prepared for jihad. A videotape that I obtained exclusively shows MOA members being trained on the Hancock camp, shooting guns, pretending to attack with knives, practicing slitting throats, and strangling victims. This chilling video is proof that MOA compounds have been used to train Islamic terrorists for combat.

Aziz confirmed that the camps have stockpiles of illegal weapons.

Aziz also confirmed what my research had already shown: That the MOA’s policy was to encourage members to collect as much public assistance as possible, and the more children they had the more assistance they received, much of which is returned to Sheikh Gilani in Pakistan.

Aziz explained that the residents of the MOA believe that their top leader, Sheikh Gilani, is able to travel through space and time, and that he spies on them at all times. This fear helps keep them from disobeying the strict laws of MOA and the “town” leaders.

“They think Gilani will turn them into a monkey,” he said.

MOA members are to follow Gilani’s orders blindly and without questioning. Gilani teaches his followers that “jihad” is their purpose in life. Aziz confirms that four generations of MOA members have been brought up on these camps—taught from birth to distrust Americans and to prepare for jihad. The young men are trained to be criminals. Aziz calls them “modern warrior slaves.”

For some in the MOA camps, they’ve never known any other life, said Aziz. Their schooling, where there is schooling, is laughable, possibly even criminal. In the York, South Carolina, MOA compound children are taught in a storage shed. Local authorities are fearful of even discussing how these children are taught and what they are being taught.

The most vulnerable and emotionally abused on the camps are women. “They are insecure,” Aziz said of the women. “They don’t know anything. They don’t know about the outside world. They depend on everything from a man.”

Many of the women are forced into polygamous marriages at very early ages, marriages that take place inside the camps. Aziz calls them “silent” weddings. Though such “silent” weddings are standard throughout all the villages, not all marriages are illegal.

More than 90 percent of the women are on state benefits, Aziz claims, with a portion of this money going back to Sheikh Gilani in Pakistan. “They have so many kids,” he said of the women. “Eight kids. Nine kids. They have to raise them and they don’t have a lot.”

Not a lot of money. Not a lot of housing. Frequent brutality from their husbands. And a lot of kids. That’s a woman’s fate on the camps.

Because of their seclusion, lack of education, forced marriages, fear of beatings, dependency on men and their religious slavery to Sheikh Gilani and his male lieutenants, women in the camps are stripped of any independent desire to flee. “After four generations,” Aziz said, “they are living in their comfort zone.”

Discipline on the camps is ruthless, and is executed as both punishment and to intimidate followers from ever leaving.

“This is one thing I want you to really believe,” Aziz told me in one of his most distressed moments during the interview. “If somebody breaks a command, you could be tied to a tree and hit with sticks. This is crazy.”

Members are beaten for such violations as cursing, disobedience to the leaders, lying, using birth control or even watching programs on TV they’re not supposed to watch.

“Sometimes they do a crime,” Aziz said, explaining that a “crime” is doing something forbidden by Sheikh Gilani. “Sometimes they do a crime like that and they lash you. I gave the NYPD some tapes of evidence of kids getting beat, women tied to trees, stuff like that. That put me in a bad situation because I exposed these abuses.”

“I saw a 50-year-old woman tied to a tree and getting beaten … This is what I think is the biggest disgrace, the abuse. The only thing is, nobody on the camps says anything. Of course they’re afraid.”

“Some people are there because they’re scared,” Aziz said. “They don’t know what to do. They have their children there. They’re scared of the wrath of Gilani. … They are so controlled, so brainwashed. It’s crazy.”

Welfare fraud is rampant. Aziz said that children on the Hancock compound learn at an early age that it’s OK to commit crimes against non-Muslims and engage in scams. “A lot of them do welfare fraud. They do all kind of scams.”

Drug dealing is also common and is used as a source of income for MOA. “The drug money goes back to Gilani,” Aziz said, referring to their terrorist leader who rules them from Pakistan.

“I gave the NYPD enough information to shut the camps down,” he said.

That evidence included: The sexual abuse of women.  The physical abuse of children. The failure to educate girls. Such criminal activity as drug running, welfare fraud and illegal weapons.   And worse.

Ali said, “I would get into trouble if I told you everything I was providing the NYPD.  It would violate my immunity.  I was providing information to the NYPD about people who committed some very serious crimes. I’m talking about…” And then he stopped and asked, “What is worse crime you can commit?”

Ali never answered that open-ended question, riffed with imaginative answers.  But he left no question about the goal of MOA and their city-states that they are forming across America.

“The ultimate purpose,” Ali said, “is to be ready when the time is right.”

“You walk up to them and ask them, ‘What do you want to do?’ ‘I want to fight for Gilani.’  That’s what they want,” Ali said.  “It’s not good.”

Martin Mawyer is the Founder and President of Christian Action Network, a non-profit public advocacy and education group based in Lynchburg, Virginia. He began his career as a freelance journalist and has authored several books, including “Silent Shame,” “The Pro-Family Contract With America,” “Pathways to Success,” and his most recent, “Twilight in America: The Untold Story of Islamic Terrorist Training Camps Inside America.” He has produced a number of documentary films, including Homegrown Jihad, Islam Rising, Sacrificed Survivors and America’s Islamic Threat. Mawyer has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, Hannity, Larry King Live, Pat Robertson’s 700 Club, NBC’s Today Show, Entertainment Tonight and Fox and Friends.  His latest book, “Twilight in America,” co-authored by Patti A. Pierucci, details the activities of Islamic terrorist training camps scattered throughout the United States. It can be purchased atTwilightInAmerica.com, or Amazon.com in book or Kindle version.

– See more at: http://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/2012/11/16/informant-islamic-compounds-in-america-are-training-for-jihad/#sthash.vMBft3Qd.dpuf

 

French Government Does NOT Get a Pass

Posted on by

The world watched in horror the bloody events in Paris at the hands of militants. A great deal of work is going into investigations and research to determine names, backgrounds, connections and causes of the terror in France.

The background, cells and names rising to the surface are not new to the intelligence communities allied with the United States. What is new is that the governmental leadership(s) in Europe, North Africa and the West ignored the intelligence clarion calls for alarm.

Going back to 2005 and even earlier, mining open source information, the Buttes Chaumont information has been out there. The brothers of the Paris attacks were only the most recent members of the Buttes Chaumont terror cell. There were clearly other brothers and members that were festering a decade ago.

 

‘The first cell in this network was named the “19th arrondissement” or “Buttes Chaumont” cell, which both brothers were a part of. Farid Benyettou, a charismatic self-taught preacher who lectured outside various mosques and prayer groups, including the Addawa mosque of the 19th arrondissement, led this cell. Although Redouane died, Boubaker was in charge of a way station in Syria for French youths headed to Iraq. El-Hakim did not last long, though, since the Assad regime arrested him in 2004, imprisoned him for a year, and then extradited him to France in 2005.
El-Hakim would be sentenced in 2008 to seven years for his involvement in the recruitment ring. This would have kept him imprisoned through 2015, but he ended up only serving 2/3 of his term and was then deported to Tunisia sometime in 2012. Since then, el-Hakim’s name has popped up in reports on militants around Chaambi Mountain in western Tunisia. Again, it is hard to assess these claims since there is almost no way of independently verifying them. That said, due to his past connections within a jihadi recruitment network and al-Qaeda in Iraq, it would not be far-fetched if he indeed did have some type of connection or relationship with AQIM.
At the same time, due to the murky nature of el-Hakim’s presence in Tunisia and the dearth of solid information on the connections between AQIM and AST, it is too early to come to any real conclusions.’

The New York Times is data mining as well as has offered some current insight but the paper omits the feeble policy by the French leadership to deal with the dark yet active cell connections in France and in Northern Africa. The intelligence IS there but quite possibly passed to the side out of lack of law enforcement, lack of policy and lack of will.

It is a tragedy that France had to deploy more that 85,000 personnel to track down the killers in France while some many victims died. For the next several weeks, collaboration on intelligence and policy will occur include the United States.

PARIS — They jogged together or did calisthenics along the hilly lawns and tulip-dotted gardens of Buttes-Chaumont, the public park in northeastern Paris built more than a century ago under Emperor Napoleon III. Or they met in nearby apartments with a janitor turned self-proclaimed imam, a man deemed too radical by one local mosque because of his call for waging jihad in Iraq.

The group of young Muslim men, some still teenagers, became known to the French authorities as the Buttes-Chaumont group after the police in 2005 broke up their pipeline for sending young French Muslims from their immigrant neighborhood to fight against American troops in Iraq. The arrests seemingly shattered the group, and some officials and experts were skeptical that members ever posed a threat to France.

But the shocking terror attacks last week in Paris have now made plain that the Buttes-Chaumont network produced some of Europe’s most militant jihadists, including Chérif Kouachi, one of the three terrorists whose three-day rampage left 17 people dead and who was killed by the police.

Other alumni from the group have died in Iraq or remained committed to radical Islam, including a French-Tunisian now aligned with the Islamic State who has claimed responsibility for a handful of assassinations in Tunisia, including the July 2013 murder of a leading left-wing politician.

“They were considered the least dangerous,” Jean-Pierre Filiu, a professor of Middle East studies and specialist on French Islamic terror cells, said of the Buttes-Chaumont group. “And now you see them really at the forefront.”

Now French authorities, while still piecing together how such violent attacks could have been staged in the capital, must also be concerned by the possibility that other homegrown groups may be passing unnoticed — or may be similarly underestimated.

The attacks suggest the prospect of a potent intermingling among some members of the original Buttes-Chaumont group and other extremists. Their meeting place, apparently, was the French prison system.

There, their radicalism hardened as some members of the group came together with other prominent jihadists who were connected to more extensive and dangerous militant networks.

For decades, France has endured Islamic terror threats and attacks, from Iranian-inspired groups during the 1980s, to Algerian extremists in the 1990s, to cells linked to Al Qaeda before and after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

More recently, French and other European security services have grown increasingly alarmed by thousands of young, alienated Muslim citizens who have enlisted for jihad in the conflicts in Syria and Iraq.

In each decade, a familiar pattern has emerged: a radicalized minority of European Muslims — whether they have gone abroad for jihad or not — have been angered and inspired by wars the West has waged in the Arab world, Africa and beyond, and have sought to bring the costs of those conflicts home.

After French authorities swept up members of the Buttes-Chaumont group in the 2005, during his time in prison Chérif Kouachi came under the sway of an influential French-Algerian jihadist who had plotted to bomb the United States Embassy in Paris in 2001.

There, he also recruited a holdup artist named Amedy Coulibaly, the man who killed four hostages at a kosher supermarket in Paris on Friday.

It is unclear if his older brother, Saïd Kouachi, who also took part in the attack on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper office, was a member of the Buttes-Chaumont group, but the authorities have confirmed that the older brother spent time in Yemen between 2009 and 2012, getting training from a branch of Al Qaeda.