From “Con­text of ‘Short­ly After March 1994: US Learns Bin Laden Gave Promi­nent Mus­lim Activist Mon­ey for Blind Sheikh’ “
COOPERATIVE RESEARCH

Abdo Mohammed Hag­gag, speech­writer for the “Blind Sheikh,” Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rah­man, makes a deal and agrees to tes­ti­fy against Abdul-Rah­man in an upcom­ing US tri­al. [New York Times, 6/26/1994] He soon reveals that bin Laden has been pay­ing for Abdul-Rahman’s liv­ing expens­es since Abdul-Rah­man moved to the US in 1990 (see July 1990). This is one of the first things that caus­es US intel­li­gence to become inter­est­ed in bin Laden. [Miller, Stone, and Mitchell, 2002, pp. 147–148] Fur­ther, Hag­gag reveals that the mon­ey was fun­neled through Abdu­rah­man Alam­ou­di and his orga­ni­za­tion, the Amer­i­can Mus­lim Coun­cil. “Inves­ti­ga­tors tried to prove Alam­ou­di was a ter­ror mid­dle­man but could not find ‘smok­ing gun’ evi­dence. That allowed Alam­ou­di to became a polit­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed Mus­lim activist and co-founder of the Amer­i­can Mus­lim Armed Forces and Vet­er­an Affairs Coun­cil, which helps the US mil­i­tary select Mus­lim chap­lains.” [New York Post, 10/1/2003] This same year, Alam­ou­di will be one of the founders of Ptech, a US com­put­er com­pa­ny with sus­pect­ed ter­ror­ism ties (see 1994). It will lat­er be alleged that he was able to oper­ate with impuni­ty for years due to his close ties to Grover Norquist, a pow­er­ful Repub­li­can lob­by­ist (see March 20, 2002). In 2004, the US will sen­tence him to 23 years in prison for ille­gal deal­ings with Libya (see Octo­ber 15, 2004).