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Accused Terrorist Is Big GOP Donor

by Justin Rood
ABC NEWS: THE BLOTTER [1]

The Nation­al Repub­li­can Con­gres­sion­al Com­mit­tee (NRCC) won’t say what it plans to do with thou­sands of dol­lars in cam­paign dona­tions it received from an accused ter­ror financier.

Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari gave $15,250 to the NRCC since 2002, accord­ing to FEC records pub­lished on the Web site opensecrets.org [2].

On Fri­day, Alishtari pled not guilty to fund­ing ter­ror­ism and oth­er crimes, includ­ing finan­cial fraud.

The NRCC is the main polit­i­cal group ded­i­cat­ed to help­ing the Repub­li­can par­ty win seats in the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Reached Mon­day morn­ing for com­ment, an NRCC spokes­woman declined to dis­cuss the mat­ter on the record.

The indict­ment against Alishtari unsealed in Man­hat­tan fed­er­al court Fri­day charges him with pro­vid­ing mate­r­i­al sup­port to ter­ror­ists by trans­fer­ring $152,000 between banks to alleged­ly be used to pur­chase night-vision gog­gles and oth­er equip­ment need­ed for a ter­ror­ist train­ing camp.

Alishtari, aka Michael Mixon, was paid for his efforts to col­lect and trans­fer the funds, which includ­ed $25,000 sent from a bank in New York to a bank in Mon­tre­al, Cana­da, the indict­ment alleges.

Police and FBI agents arrest­ed Alishtari in New York City on Fri­day. A day ear­li­er, agents raid­ed his Ard­s­ley, N.Y. home, accord­ing to the “Low­er Hud­son Jour­nal News.” When a reporter for the paper reached a woman claim­ing to be Alishtar­i’s wife on Fri­day and informed her of the charges, she cried and said he was inno­cent, the paper report­ed.

The NRCC would not con­firm it had received dona­tions from Mr. Alishtari, or that he had received numer­ous awards from the orga­ni­za­tion, as is claimed by an online list of per­son­al accom­plish­ments that appears to have been post­ed by Mr. Alishtari.

The list says he was made a life mem­ber of the NRC­C’s “Inner Cir­cle” and was named New York State Busi­ness­man of the Year by the group in 2003 and 2004.

The NRCC “Busi­nessper­son of the Year” fundrais­ing cam­paign, which gave such “awards” to at least 1,900 GOP donors, has been derid­ed as a tele­mar­ket­ing scam by polit­i­cal watch­dogs.

Read Bri­an Ross’ pre­vi­ous inves­ti­ga­tion on the NRC­C’s “Per­son of the Year” fundrais­ing cam­paign. [3]

The online list also claims Alishtari was appoint­ed to the pres­i­den­t’s “USNRCC White House Busi­ness Advi­so­ry Group.”

An archived Web site for one of Alishtar­i’s com­pa­nies, GlobalProtector.net, claims it had demon­strat­ed a “Web fil­ter” tech­nol­o­gy for offi­cials at the Depart­ment of Defense’s Mia­mi, Fla.-based South­ern Com­mand (South­Com), which coor­di­nates U.S. mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean and over­sees the con­tro­ver­sial Guan­tanamo Bay deten­tion facil­i­ty.

South­Com spokesman Steve Lucas would not con­firm or deny any con­tacts between Alishtari and offi­cials there. South­Com per­son­nel he spoke with said South­Com does not use the com­pa­ny’s soft­ware, and could not rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty they had received a sales pitch from him or anoth­er com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

A data­base of unclas­si­fied fed­er­al con­tracts at FedSpending.org [4] does not show South­Com or any oth­er gov­ern­ment branch award­ed busi­ness to Alishtar­i’s com­pa­ny.

A call to the tele­phone num­ber which had been list­ed on Glob­al­Pro­tec­tor’s site con­nects to a record­ed mes­sage offer­ing the caller to “spark up your days and nights” by call­ing a 1–800 phone chat line.