Record­ed Decem­ber 11, 2005

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Intro­duc­tion: Begin­ning with an inter­view with the remark­able John Lof­tus, this broad­cast high­lights the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the acquit­tal of Sami al-Arian—a close polit­i­cal ally of George W. Bush. In addi­tion to his close rela­tion­shio with Bush and oth­er promi­nent Repub­li­cans, “Sam­my the Aryan” is a leader of Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad, a ter­ror­ist group and off­shoot of the fas­cist Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. After review­ing the sto­ry of his law­suit against al-Ari­an, and how that suit led to the Oper­a­tions Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002, John Lof­tus dis­clos­es that Judge Moody made al-Arian’s acquit­tal a sure thing with his instruc­tions to the jury. Judge Moody told the jury they must acquit, if the pros­e­cu­tion could not prove that the mon­ey al-Ari­an raised for PIJ was used to com­mit a ter­ror­ist act. After the inter­view with Mr. Lof­tus, the pro­gram reviews the al-Ari­an case, includ­ing his links to Bush, the GOP, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, and a milieu that financed al Qae­da. The broad­cast reviews sev­er­al oth­er irreg­u­lar­i­ties that led to the acquit­tal of al-Ari­an, a proven ter­ror­ist who was under the pro­tec­tive wing of the White House and the Repub­li­can Par­ty, as well as the Sau­di polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic elite.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of the “acci­den­tal” destruc­tion of key doc­u­ments in the al-Ari­an case; review of the fact that the statute of lim­i­ta­tions had expired for many of the crimes with which al-Ari­an should have been charged; review of the fact that many of al-Arian’s crim­i­nal co-con­spir­a­tors were out­side of the reach of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and could not be brought to tri­al; review of the links between Grover Norquist, Karl Rove, Bush busi­ness part­ner and polit­i­cal ally Talat Oth­man, the SAAR net­work, the Bank Al Taqwa (and its head–former Nazi spy Youssef Nada) and Sami al-Ari­an; al-Arian’s pres­ence and activ­i­ties in the Unit­ed States as an exten­sion of the doc­trine set forth in The Project, dis­cussed in FTR #537.

1. An excel­lent way to begin this dis­cus­sion is the pre­sen­ta­tion of a pic­ture of a 4/15/2005 ral­ly by Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood off­shoot to which Sam­mi al-Ari­an belongs. (Al-Ari­an is referred to by Mr. Emory as “Sam­my the Aryan”—a direct ref­er­ence to the Nazi and fas­cist char­ac­ter of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood.) Excused by West­ern apol­o­gists as a “demo­c­ra­t­ic” group, the Mus­lim Brotherhood—including its branch orga­ni­za­tion Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad—is any­thing but demo­c­ra­t­ic. Check out this pic­ture, which reveals in stark fash­ion the true nature of the group to which “Sam­my the Aryan” belongs.

2. Much of the first side of the pro­gram con­sists of an inter­view with John Lof­tus, the hero­ic for­mer fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor and mil­i­tary offi­cer whose work has fig­ured promi­nent­ly in these broad­casts over the years. (For more about Lof­tus, use the For The Record web site search func­tion.) Much of the pro­gram involves a review by John of the his­to­ry of the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s alliances with Nazi Ger­many, British intel­li­gence, the CIA and Sau­di Ara­bia. Again, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is the par­ent orga­ni­za­tion of Sami al-Arian’s Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad. John also reviews how his law­suit against al-Ari­an led to the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002. (FTR#473 con­tains a good syn­op­sis of the major points of infor­ma­tion con­tained in this part of the dis­cus­sion.)

3. Dis­cussing the acquit­tal of al-Ari­an, John not­ed that a wire­tap of al-Arian’s tele­phone in 1989 record­ed al-Ari­an bemoan­ing the fact that Hamas (a rival off­shoot of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood) had tak­en pub­lic cred­it for a ter­ror­ist act that he had set up. Abun­dant evi­dence exists to prove al-Ari­an com­plic­it in ter­ror­ism. MR. LOFTUS MAKES THE POINT THAT PRESIDING JUDGE MOODY CHARGED THE JURY IN A MANNER THAT MADE CONVICTION IMPOSSIBLE. MOODY INSTRUCTED THE JURY THAT, UNLESS THE PROSECUTION COULD PROVE THAT THE MONEY AL-ARIAN RAISED FOR PALESTINIAN ISLAMIC JIHAD WAS USED TO COMMIT TERRORIST ACTS (WHICH IS IMPOSSIBLE), THEY HAD TO ACQUIT. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the jury did not con­vict al-Ari­an. Oth­er obsta­cles stand­ing in the way of al-Arian’s pros­e­cu­tion will be dis­cussed below. One should not lose sight of the fact that al-Ari­an was a close polit­i­cal ally of George W. Bush. In addi­tion, the above-men­tioned 3/20/2002 Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids revealed that al-Ari­an was part of the SAAR net­work, itself very close to the GOP and the White House. This will be dis­cussed below as well. (For more about the GOP/SAAR/Muslim Broth­er­hood/al-Ari­an con­nec­tion, see—among oth­er programs—FTR#’s 415, 435, 454, 462, 464, 467, 495, 500, 515.)

4. In addi­tion to Judge Moody’s unimag­in­able instruc­tions to the jury, al-Arian’s acquit­tal was assured by the fact that the statute of lim­i­ta­tions had expired for many of the crimes with which he might have been charged. On top of that, his co-con­spir­a­tors in his long ter­ror­ist career were out of the coun­try and could not be brought to tri­al in the U.S. In his dis­cus­sion of the al-Ari­an case, John Lof­tus notes the extent to which the fed­er­al author­i­ties refused to bring charges against al-Ari­an, and—beyond that—the SAAR net­work, to which he belonged. That delay had much to do with al-Arian’s acquit­tal. (As will be seen below, that net­work was direct­ly linked to George W. Bush’s pow­er­ful Sau­di friends, as well as to Bush, the GOP and top Repub­li­can oper­a­tives Grover Norquist and Karl Rove.)

“ . . . Some defense attor­neys said out­side the court­room in recent days that the three defendants—Ballut, for­mer uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent Sameeh Taha Ham­moudeh and Ili­nois char­i­ty man­ag­er Hatim Maji Fariz—were swept into the case because of pros­e­cu­tors’ need to build a crim­i­nal case of conspiracy—in this case, con­spir­a­cy to kill and maim hun­dreds of Israelis since the 1980’s. Legal experts said that the U.S. gov­ern­ment had lit­tle choice but to craft a con­spir­a­cy case. The vast bulk of their evi­dence, derived from years of secret wire­taps and mon­i­tor­ing of fax­es, cen­ters on the ear­ly to mid-1990s, before al-Arian’s offices and home were searched and he became more cir­cum­spect over the tele­phone.”

(“Co-Defen­dants in Fla. Deny Ties to Con­spir­a­cy” by John Mintz; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 6/8/2005; pp. 1–2.)

5. Note the role that the expi­ra­tion of the statute of lim­i­ta­tions played in this case:

“But the statute of lim­i­ta­tions allows the pros­e­cu­tion to charge some­one for crimes going back only five years—unless the charge is con­spir­a­cy, in which case the gov­ern­ment can bring in alle­ga­tions going back decades, as it has done in this tri­al. [Empha­sis added.] The prob­lem for the pros­e­cu­tion, defense attor­neys said, is that those secret­ly mon­i­tored wire­taps and fax­es show al-Ari­an dis­cussing inti­mate details of PIJ’s oper­a­tions not with his three co-defen­dants but with five oth­er men.”

(Ibid.; p. 2.)

6. “All of those five men were top PIJ lead­ers with al-Ari­an for years, U.S. pros­e­cu­tors said, and all of them have been charged with him with con­spir­a­cy to murder—but they are over­seas and will not be tried in this case. Defense attor­neys and crim­i­nal lawyers who have observed the case said the gov­ern­ment was in a jam—how could it put on a tri­al for crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy and have only one con­spir­a­tor at the defense table?”

(Idem.)

7. “The three defen­dants on tri­al with al-Ari­an are basi­cal­ly stage props,’ said Steve Craw­ford, a for­mer fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor who has fol­lowed the case and who recent­ly rep­re­sent­ed Hammoudeh’s wife on an unre­lat­ed fraud charge. ‘The gov­ern­ment didn’t have enough of the big guns [from PIJ] here to give a visu­al show­ing of a con­spir­a­cy, so they sweep in the poor mopes at the bot­tom.’”

(Ibid.; p. 3.)

8. “Defense lawyers and pros­e­cu­tors declined to com­ment. U.S. Dis­trict Judge James Moody has barred them from speak­ing about the case out­side the court­room. The five over­seas defen­dants who are not on tri­al now were caught in hun­dreds of phone calls and fax­es dis­cussing the key strate­gic issues then fac­ing PIJ—deep inter­nal strug­gles, the dis­ap­pear­ances of mil­lions of dol­lars, how to pla­cate its angry finan­cial back­ers in the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment, and whether to merge with the Islam­ic Resis­tance Move­ment, a com­pet­ing mil­i­tant Pales­tin­ian group.”

(Idem.)

9. “The five are Ramadan Shal­lah, who worked at an al-Ari­an think tank at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Flori­da and who now runs PIJ from Syr­ia; Abd al Aziz Awda, PIJ’s orig­i­nal spir­i­tu­al leader; al-Arian’s broth­er-in-law, Mazen al-Naj­jar; lead­ing Mus­lim schol­ar Bashir Nafi; and Muhammed Tasir al-Khat­ib, the group’s alleged trea­sur­er. . . .”

(Idem.)

10. Anoth­er fac­tor in the acquit­tal of Bush’s bud­dy Sami al-Ari­an was the fact that many of the con­ver­sa­tions link­ing him to ter­ror­ism occurred before the offi­cial des­ig­na­tion of Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad as a ter­ror­ist group in 1995. As will be seen below, anoth­er fac­tor dic­tat­ing the acquit­tal of Sam­my the Aryan may well have been the “acci­den­tal” destruc­tion of key doc­u­ments by fed­er­al author­i­ties.

“ . . . But much of the con­ver­sa­tion and activ­i­ty used by pros­e­cu­tors pre­dat­ed the 1995 des­ig­na­tion by the Unit­ed States of Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad as a ter­ror­ist group, a des­ig­na­tion that pro­hib­it­ed Amer­i­cans from sup­port­ing it. Sev­er­al legal ana­lysts and law pro­fes­sors said Tues­day that the gov­ern­ment appeared to have over­reached in its case. . . .”

(“Ex-Pro­fes­sor Beats Ter­ror Charges” by Eric Licht­blau [New York Times]; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 12/7/2005; p. A5.)

11. In eval­u­at­ing the acquit­tal of Bush’s Bud­dy, remem­ber the role in these events of Harken Ener­gy direc­tor (and polit­i­cal ally of George Bush Sr and George Bush Jr) Talat Oth­man. (Harken Ener­gy was one of the younger Bush’s failed ener­gy com­pa­nies.) Oth­man gave a Mus­lim bene­dic­tion at the Repub­li­can con­ven­tion, and was a direc­tor of Grover Norquist’s Islam­ic Institute—a cen­tral ele­ment of the GOP’s con­nec­tions to the world of Islam­ic ter­ror­ism. Norquist served as a lob­by­ist for many of the Islamists involved with the GOP milieu, includ­ing Sami al-Ari­an. Be sure to note Othman’s role in inter­ced­ing with then Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Paul O’Neill on behalf of the tar­gets of the 3/20/2002 Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids, which were spurred by John Loftus’s suit against al-Ari­an. (Othman’s inter­ces­sion with O’Neill is dis­cussed below, and in—among oth­er programs—FTR#’s 356, 357, 376, 454, 462, 464, 467.) The dis­cus­sion reviews some of the Mus­lim ter­ror­ist links to Norquist, Bush and com­pa­ny.

“ . . . ‘The Al-Ari­an case was not a soli­tary lapse. . . . That out­reach cam­paign opened rela­tion­ships between the Bush cam­paign and some very dis­turb­ing per­sons in the Mus­lim-Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty.’ Nev­er­the­less, Norquist con­tin­ued to build a coali­tion of Islamist groups to sup­port Bush. On July 31, 2000, the Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion opened in Philadel­phia with a prayer by a Mus­lim, Talat Oth­man, in which Oth­man offered a duaa, a Mus­lim bene­dic­tion. It was the first time a Mus­lim had addressed any major U.S. polit­i­cal gath­er­ing. A third-gen­er­a­tion Amer­i­can and a busi­ness­man from Chica­go of Mus­lim-Arab descent, Oth­man was chair­man of the Islam­ic Insti­tute. He had also been the board mem­ber of Harken Ener­gy rep­re­sent­ing the inter­ests of Abdul­lah Taha Bakhsh, the Sau­di investor who had helped Bush make his for­tune by bail­ing out Harken in the late eight­ies. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s] When the con­ven­tion end­ed on August 3, after George W. Bush had for­mal­ly been nom­i­nat­ed for pres­i­dent, between his family’s extend­ed per­son­al and finan­cial ties to the House of Saud and his campaign’s ties to Islamists, it could be said that he was tru­ly the Ara­bi­an Can­di­date. . . .”

(House of Bush/House of Saud; by Craig Unger; Scrib­n­er [HC]; Copy­right 2004 by Craig Unger; ISBN 0–7432-5337‑X; pp. 208–209.)

12. Norquist’s Islam­ic Insti­tute sig­nif­i­cant­ly over­lapped indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions tar­get­ed in the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002. A sum­ma­ry account of those raids and the inves­ti­ga­tion into the SAAR foun­da­tion and the Safa trust fol­lows: As will be seen below, Sami al-Ari­an was part and par­cel to this milieu. Again, it was John Loftus’s law­suit against al-Ari­an that pre­cip­i­tat­ed these raids.

“ . . . In the ear­ly morn­ing hours of Wednes­day, March 20, 2002, 150 fed­er­al agents—many with their guns drawn—raided four­teen offices and homes in the sub­urbs of Wash­ing­ton, D.C. FBI and Cus­toms agents loaded sev­en pan­el trucks with more than five hun­dred box­es of doc­u­ments, com­put­ers, and finan­cial records of more than one hun­dred char­i­ties, think tanks, and busi­ness­es affil­i­at­ed with the Hern­don, Virginia—based SAAR Foun­da­tion. Most of the inter­re­lat­ed busi­ness­es and char­i­ties were run out of a sin­gle office at 555 Grove Street, a brown brick and glass three-sto­ry office com­plex on a qui­et street.”

(Blood from Stones: The Secret Finan­cial Net­work of Ter­ror; by Dou­glas Farah; Broad­way Books [HC] (sub­sidiary of Ran­dom House); Copy­right 2004 by Dou­glas Farah; ISBN 0–7679-15262–3; p. 152.)

13. “The SAAR Foun­da­tion, the back­bone of the clus­ter, takes its name from Sulaiman Abdul Aziz al Rajhi, head of one of Sau­di Arabia’s wealth­i­est fam­i­lies, who fun­neled mil­lions of dol­lars through the clus­ter of busi­ness­es and char­i­ties. The al Rajhi name was on the Gold­en Chain list of ear­ly al Qae­da sup­port­ers that was found in the Benev­o­lence files in Sara­je­vo.”

(Ibid.; pp. 152–153.)

14. “The SAAR Foun­da­tion was incor­po­rat­ed in Hern­don, Vir­ginia, on July 29, 1983, and for­mal­ly dis­solved on Decem­ber 28, 2000. How­ev­er, many of the foundation’s func­tions were tak­en over by the Safa Trust, an orga­ni­za­tion reg­is­tered at the same address and run by sev­er­al of the same board mem­bers. Law enforce­ment offi­cials dubbed the maze of the over­lap­ping com­pa­nies, with shared direc­tors, the Safa Group. The groups often financed each oth­er, send­ing the mon­ey in cir­cles. The scores of Safa orga­ni­za­tions are con­trolled by about fif­teen Mid­dle East­ern and Pak­istani men who serve with each oth­er on a host of insti­tu­tion­al boards. Four senior lead­ers of the net­work are Iraqis who had lived in Sau­di Ara­bia, and have been mem­bers of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood.”

(Ibid.; p. 153.)

15. Note the role of Yaqub Mirza in the gen­e­sis of the orga­ni­za­tions asso­ci­at­ed with SAAR and Safa Trust. Mirza was a key direc­tor of the Ptech firm, and report­ed­ly had sig­nif­i­cant con­nec­tions with the FBI. (For more about Mirza’s links with the FBI and Ptech, see—among oth­er programs—FTR#’s 462, 464.)

“In the Unit­ed States, the men used Sau­di mon­ey to launch some of the nation’s lead­ing Mus­lim orga­ni­za­tions. In 1983, with mon­ey from the al Rajhi fam­i­ly, the SAAR Foun­da­tion was born. The direc­tor was Yaqub Mirza, a Pak­istani native with a Ph.D. in physics from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas. Oth­er groups were formed short­ly after­ward. Five of the top Safa exec­u­tives live in spa­cious homes on adjoin­ing lots in Safa Court in Hern­don, a twen­ty-two-acre par­cel of land bought by one of the SAAR-affil­i­at­ed firms in 1987.”

(Idem.)

16. “In time, the Safa net­work owned or invest­ed in scores of busi­ness­es world­wide: dairy farms in Zim­bab­we; schools in Ivory Coast; a huge poul­try busi­ness in the state of Geor­gia; an Islam­ic mutu­al fund in Wash­ing­ton state; an invest­ment com­pa­ny in Malaysia; shell com­pa­nies in Pana­ma; and com­mer­cial apple orchards in Chile. By the late 1980’s, the SAAR Foun­da­tion had become one of the Wash­ing­ton, D.C., region’s biggest land­lords. ‘The funds came very eas­i­ly,’ said a busi­ness­man who dealt with SAAR. ‘If they want­ed a few mil­lion dol­lars, they called the al Rajhis, who would send it along.’ At the same time, the lead­ers of the SAAR Foun­da­tion incor­po­rat­ed and sat on the boards of char­i­ties and non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions. Many were branch­es of Sau­di char­i­ties that oper­ate world­wide. . . .”

(Ibid.; pp. 153–154.)

17. The pro­gram notes the sig­nif­i­cant over­laps between the SAAR net­work and the Al Taqwa net­work. (For more about the Al Taqwa/SAAR/Safa Trust link, see—among oth­er pro­grams—FTR#’s 356, 357, 382, 415, 423, 425, 432, 433, 435, 454, 455. For more about the Norquist links to the tar­gets of Oper­a­tion Green Quest, see—among oth­er pro­grams—FTR#’s 356, 357, 415, 425, 435, 454, 455, 462, 464, 467, 515.)

“ . . . Oper­a­tion Green Quest was launched in Octo­ber 2001 as part of the Cus­toms Ser­vice ini­tia­tive to track bin Laden’s finan­cial empire. In a small, win­dow­less con­fer­ence room Green Quest agents chart­ed the Byzan­tine rela­tion­ships among the more than one hun­dred Safa net­work enti­ties, a spi­der­web of over­lap­ping names and orga­ni­za­tions. Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tors also chart­ed the rela­tion­ship among the Safa net­work enti­ties and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood through the Al Taqwa Man­age­ment empire of Yousef Nada. U.S. offi­cials said they had tracked about $20 mil­lion from Safa enti­ties flow­ing through Nada’s Bank al Taqwa, but said the total could be much high­er. [Empha­sis added.]”

(Ibid.; pp. 154–155.)

18. “The ties between Nada and Safa lead­ers were many and long-stand­ing, as were their ties to oth­er Broth­er­hood lead­ers. Two mem­bers of the Safa Group helped set up Bank al Taqwa in the Bahamas and sev­er­al Safa lead­ers loaned Nada mon­ey. In 1976, two oth­er men who lat­er became promi­nent in the Safa Group found­ed Nada Inter­na­tion­al, a Broth­er­hood bank in Liecht­en­stein. For a time, Sulaiman Abdul al Rajhi, the SAAR Foun­da­tion founder, worked for Nada at that bank. Nada Inter­na­tion­al was des­ig­nat­ed a ter­ror­ist financier by the Trea­sury Depart­ment after 9/11. . . .”

(Ibid.; p. 155.)

19. Do not fail to take note of the role in the SAAR/Safa Trust milieu of Cherif Sed­ky, a lawyer for Khalid bin Mah­fouz. Like the bin Laden fam­i­ly, the bin Mah­fouz fam­i­ly are busi­ness part­ners with the Bush fam­i­ly.

“ . . . SAAR lawyers said the $1.8 bil­lion was report­ed because of a cler­i­cal error, despite the fact that the ten-dig­it num­ber, $1,783, 545, 883, was repeat­ed at least sev­en times on the form. Cherif Sed­ky, the foundation’s trea­sur­er, said that he ‘did not recall’ that amount of mon­ey flow­ing through the com­pa­ny. . . . There is anoth­er thread in the Safa net­work that has drawn scruti­ny from fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors, For the last five years of its exis­tence, the trea­sur­er of the SAAR Foun­da­tion, the group’s cen­tral enti­ty, was Cherif Sed­ky, an Amer­i­can lawyer rep­re­sent­ing the al Rajhi fam­i­ly. Sed­ky is also the rep­re­sen­ta­tive and busi­ness part­ner of Khalid bin Mah­fouz, one of the wealth­i­est men in the world and long­time banker to the Sau­di roy­al fam­i­ly. . . .”

(Ibid.; p. 156.)

20. The Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids were trig­gered by a raid on the Sami al-Ari­an, the ter­ror­ist, sup­port­er of Bush and asso­ciate of Norquist.

“ . . . The Safa Group might have escaped scruti­ny in 2001, if not for a raid that occurred sev­en years ear­li­er, lead­ing to anoth­er thread of inves­ti­ga­tion. In 1995, the FBI raid­ed the home and offices of Sami al-Ari­an, a Kuwaiti-Pales­tin­ian com­put­er sci­ence pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Flori­da in Tam­pa. The feds sus­pect­ed al-Ari­an, a slight, beard­ed, and bald­ing man, was secret­ly fun­nel­ing mon­ey to ter­ror­ists. They believed he was a senior mem­ber of the Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad, a group that unleash­es sui­cide bombers against Israelis.”

(Ibid.; p. 158.)

21. More about Bush’s bud­dy:

“Al-Ari­an was a vocal activist on Pales­tin­ian caus­es, and he fre­quent­ly spoke at Islam­ic con­fer­ences. At one 1991 con­fer­ence, al-Ari­an, dressed in the flow­ing robes of an imam, was video­taped shout­ing in Ara­bic ‘Let us Damn Amer­i­ca, let us damn Israel. Let us damn their allies until death.’ In the ear­ly 1990s, al-Ari­an set up orga­ni­za­tions to raise mon­ey for orphans and wid­ows and the study of Islam. He used the orga­ni­za­tions to spon­sor Mus­lim con­fer­ences, includ­ing one that fea­tured Omar Abdul Rah­man, the blind Sheik who insti­gat­ed the 1993 World Trade Cen­ter attack.”

(Idem.)

22. “Al-Ari­an also spon­sored the U.S. visa of Ramadan Abdul­lah Shal­lah, who joined al-Ari­an on the uni­ver­si­ty fac­ul­ty from 1992 to 1994. But Shal­lah sud­den­ly dis­ap­peared in Octo­ber 1995, imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the assas­si­na­tion of PIJ leader Fat’hi Ibrahim Shika­ki. Shal­lah resur­faced a few days lat­er at Shikaki’s funer­al in Dam­as­cus, where the slain leader’s body was tak­en with full mil­i­tary hon­ors. Shal­lah, stand­ing by the cas­ket, had been named Shikaki’s suc­ces­sor. Al-Ari­an said he was ‘shocked’ at Shallah’s ties to PIJ. But the FBI final­ly swooped in.”

(Ibid.; pp. 158–159.)

23. More about al-Ari­an and the Safa Group. Note that the monies flow­ing to al-Ari­an from the SAAR/Safa Group was sanc­tioned for use by al-Ari­an and com­pa­ny through dif­fer­ent front groups. Com­pare this with the strat­e­gy pro­posed in the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood doc­u­ment The Project, dis­cussed at the end of this descrip­tion and at length in FTR#537.

“The raid on al-Ari­an led to the Safa Group. The FBI found let­ters doc­u­ment­ing Safa enti­ties’ finan­cial sup­port of al-Ari­an to the tune of tens of thou­sands of dol­lars a year. In a Sep­tem­ber 7, 1993, let­ter, Safa Group lead­ers told one al-Ari­an-led group: ‘We con­sid­er you a part of us and an exten­sion of us and we as a part of you,’ adding that their finan­cial dona­tion of tens of thou­sands of dol­lars was ‘ for you as a group, regard­less of the par­ty or façade you use the dona­tion for.’”

(Ibid.; p. 159.)

24. “But the al-Ari­an and Safa Group inves­ti­ga­tions lan­guished. In the 2000 elec­tions al-Ari­an sup­port­ed George W. Bush, urg­ing Mus­lims to vote Repub­li­can as the best hope of end­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion against Arab-Amer­i­cans. Al-Ari­an and his fam­i­ly were pho­tographed with a beam­ing Bush and his wife, Lau­ra, dur­ing a Flori­da cam­paign stop. Al-Ari­an liked to boast that he had deliv­ered ‘con­sid­er­ably more’ than the 537 votes that gave Bush his vic­to­ry in Flori­da and allowed him to cap­ture the White House. On June 20, 2001, al-Ari­an was invit­ed to the White House as part of a large del­e­ga­tion of Mus­lims to be briefed by pres­i­den­tial advis­er Karl Rove.”

(Idem.)

25. Bush asso­ciate Talat Oth­man, a direc­tor of Norquist’s Islam­ic Insti­tute, went to bat on behalf of the tar­gets of the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 2002. O’Neill was fired rough­ly sev­en months lat­er.

“In 2002, dur­ing the pres­i­den­cy of George W. Bush, Oth­man again won access to the White House and met with Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury Paul O’Neill to dis­cuss U.S. gov­ern­ment raids on Mus­lim char­i­ties that were alleged­ly fund­ing ter­ror.”

(House of Bush, House of Saud; p. 125.)

26. Is it a “coin­ci­dence” that fed­er­al employ­ees in Tam­pa “acci­den­tal­ly” destroyed key paper­work in the al-Ari­an case?!

“ . . . In Decem­ber 2003, clerks at a fed­er­al cour­t­house in Tam­pa acci­den­tal­ly destroyed search war­rants in the Al-Ari­an case. The doc­u­ments con­tained affi­davits from fed­er­al agents that sup­port­ed 1995 search­es of Al-Arian’s home and offices and were among thou­sands of doc­u­ments shred­ded some­time between 1998 and 2002. As this book went to press, there were seri­ous ques­tions as to whether the destruc­tion of the doc­u­ments might affect his pros­e­cu­tion.”

(Ibid.; p. 208.)

27. In FTR#537, we looked at The Project, a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood blue­print for infil­tra­tion and co-option of West­ern insti­tu­tions by the Broth­er­hood. It is inter­est­ing to reflect on the infor­ma­tion in that pro­gram, when eval­u­at­ed against the back­ground of a doc­u­ment seized in the raid of al-Arian’s res­i­dence. This doc­u­ment dove­tails per­fect­ly with the doc­trine set forth in The Project. The estab­lish­ment of the Islam­ic Insti­tute, Norquist’s Pales­tin­ian wife [see FTR#515], the estab­lish­ment of the SAAR net­work and Ptech are all con­sis­tent with this al-Ari­an doc­u­ment and The Project. Note that al-Ari­an is believed to be the author of this doc­u­ment. (The SAAR net­work was begun on 7/29/1983—The Project was dat­ed Decem­ber of 1982.)

“ . . . A doc­u­ment seized in a 1995 raid of a close Alam­ou­di friend and polit­i­cal ally, for­mer Uni­ver­si­ty of South Flori­da pro­fes­sor Sami Al-Ari­an, out­lined a plan to ‘infil­trate the sen­si­tive intel­li­gence agen­cies or the embassies in order to col­lect infor­ma­tion and build close rela­tion­ships with the peo­ple in charge of these estab­lish­ments.’ The unsigned doc­u­ment, which author­i­ties believe was authored by Al-Ari­an in part because it was found among his papers, added: ‘We are in the cen­ter which leads the con­spir­a­cy against our Islam­ic world . . . Our pres­ence in North Amer­i­ca gives us a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to mon­i­tor, explore and fol­low up.’ It instruct­ed mem­bers of the ‘cen­ter,’ thought to refer to an Islam­ic think tank that Al-Ari­an found­ed, to ‘col­lect infor­ma­tion from those rel­a­tives and friends who work in sen­si­tive posi­tions in gov­ern­ment.’ [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s]. . . .”

(“How Secure is the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty?” by Mary Jaco­by; Salon.com; 6/22/2004; p. 3.)