Posted on 10/18/2003 2:19:51 AM PDT by sarcasm
ASHINGTON, Oct. 17 — Federal law enforcement authorities said in court documents unsealed on Friday that they suspected a group of Islamic charities in Northern Virginia of laundering hundreds of thousands of dollars or more from Saudi Arabia to help finance terrorist attacks by Hamas and other militant groups.
The authorities said in documents that they suspected that the network of charitable and educational institutions known as the Saar group in Herndon, Va., used an elaborate system of domestic and overseas financial transactions to "blur the trail" of its revenues and disguise the fact that it was sending money to aid overseas terrorist organizations.
The documents, originally filed under seal by federal authorities in March 2002 to obtain a search warrant to raid the Islamic institutions, represent the most detailed public accounting to date of a wide-ranging investigation into the Saar group.
Law enforcement officials point to the continuing investigation as a linchpin of their efforts to trace the roots of terrorist financing worldwide. But Muslim leaders have said that the investigation is driven by ethnic profiling, and defense lawyers for the group said they believed the newly disclosed documents showed that the government's case was vague and unsubstantiated.
"This case is built on innuendo. It's all just post-9/11 hysteria," said Nancy Luque, a prominent Washington lawyer who is defending the charities. "The government's whole line in these documents is, `This looks bad, so the money must be going to terrorism.' But they don't show one penny that went to a terrorist."
One law enforcement official said the investigation into the Northern Virginia group is continuing and that the allegations made in the 2002 search warrant affidavit unsealed on Friday were "still considered solid."
But the investigation, which began in 1998, has yielded few actual prosecutions.
A New Jersey man, Soliman S. Biheiri, whose investment firm received money from the Northern Virginia charities, was convicted this month on federal immigration charges. And a leading Muslim activist, Abdul Rahman al-Amoudi, who worked at the charities in the early 1990's and also helped to train Islamic military chaplains, was arrested after officials said he tried to smuggle money from Libya to terrorist-related groups in Syria.
But Ms. Luque said those two defendants were at best peripheral to the Saar group and that the government's willingness to make public the search warrant indicated that its investigation had reached a dead end after the much-publicized raids were carried out last year.
"If after 20 months they haven't arrested or detained these people or tried to freeze their assets or shut them down, I think the case is over," she said. "There's no evidence of any terrorist financing."
The affidavit used to carry out those raids, filed by a customs agent, David Kane, said the authorities suspected that the Herndon charities began using an elaborate pattern of financial concealment in the mid-1990's after it was disclosed that they had given at least $50,000 to Sami al-Arian, a former Florida professor and prominent Muslim activist who was indicted in February and charged with being the North American leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a group that has carried out suicide bombings in Israel.
The affidavit cited a letter from a leader of the Northern Virginia group to Mr. al-Arian in 1991 saying he considered Mr. al-Arian and leaders of the Palestinian resistance to be "a part of us and an extension of us." The affidavit also said that the F.B.I. had obtained a copy of a fatwa, or a religious declaration, that a leader of the group signed in the late 1980's declaring that "jihad is the only way to liberate Palestine."
Mr. Kane said that the group made $54 million in grants and allocations from 1996 to 2000 but that much of that money was given to entities that the group already controlled in the United States and in tax havens like Isle of Man. He said he suspected that the purpose of the complicated financial arrangements was to "hinder the ability of investigators to ascertain the ultimate disposition of those monies" and that the transactions may have violated federal tax and financial reporting laws.
Mr. Kane said that investigators had traced several suspicious and apparently laundered payments of more than $100,000 to the group from the al-Rajhis, a wealthy family in Saudi Arabia. He said there was "no innocent reason" for the group's complicated financial arrangements with the Saudis, and he said he suspected the transactions were intended to disguise the militant purpose of the proceeds.
In addition, Mr. Kane said one member of the Saar group brought $3,388,000 in cash into the United States from Saudi Arabia in 1980, raising further suspicions.
But a lawyer for the al-Rajhi family, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said after reviewing the documents that he saw no evidence any crime had been committed. "These documents are indecipherable to me," the lawyers said, "and the fact is that this investigation has led nowhere."
"This case is built on innuendo. It's all just post-9/11 hysteria," said Nancy Luque, a prominent Washington lawyer who is defending the charities. "The government's whole line in these documents is, `This looks bad, so the money must be going to terrorism.' But they don't show one penny that went to a terrorist."
If I read that chart correctly, Nancy Luque and Maria Hsia have a lot of the same contacts.
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Kathleen Willey Redux?
Nancy Luque Shows Up In the Strangest Places
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| Nancy Luque (file). |
Lawyer Nancy Luque shows up in the oddest places.
Sharp-eyed Clinton scandalmongers will remember her as the erstwhile attorney and spokeswoman for Julie Hyatt Steele, a central witness in the Kathleen Willey sexual harassment scandal that enveloped Bill Clinton at the same time that Ken Starr was hunting the former President, and Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky were becoming household names.
Luque must have done her job well. Because this past week, she emerged as spokeswoman and attorney for Hugh Rodham, Hillary Clinton's brother, and the central figure in one part of the Clinton pardons scandals.
And that raises some interesting questions about her role in the Kathleen Willey incident.
A Washington Insider
Nancy Luque is a partner in the well-known Washington law firm of Reed Smith LLP, and she specializes in white collar criminal defense cases -- especially when they concern large corporate clients running afoul of the Federal Government. Previously, Luque worked for the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division from 1979 to 1982, and then was the Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia from 1983 to 1989. She joined Reed Smith in 1995.
Before the Clinton and Clinton-related projects that she worked on, her highest profile assignment was defending Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. In addition to her botched defense in the case (Pollard is currently a "guest" of the Federal government for the rest of his life, unless a deal is worked out that would release him), Luque had a falling-out with Pollard after his conviction, and he accused her of "misrepresentation, gross incompetence, breech of confidentiality, deceit, slander, and libel."
It now appears, though, that Ms. Luque developed a new stream of revenue with an even more high profile client: Bill Clinton.
Kathleen Willey
According to her own accounts, Kathleen Willey was propositioned and groped against her will by Bill Clinton in the Oval Office on November 29, 1993. The story, though, remained a secret until the summer of 1997, when acting on a tip from Paula Jones lawyer Joseph Cammorata, Newsweek reporter Michael Issikoff visited her and the incident was related to him, along with the name of a corroborating witness: Julie Hyatt Steele. Specifically, Kathleen Willey told Issikoff that she had told Steele about the incident at the time that it happened.
Issikoff interviewed Steele at her home, and got a confirmation of the story that Willey told. That was enough for Newsweek to print the allegations, adding fuel to the fire that was to include Paula Jones and Monica's famous blue dress.
And then, the Clinton spin machine went into overdrive.
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| Mike McCurry at the White House. |
Spinning Into Control
According to Mike McCurry, Clinton's press secretary at the time, the Clinton White House became aware that Newsweek was sniffing around another sex scandal and that it might involve Kathleen Willey. They didn't have specifics until the story was about to break, but as Newsweek went to press, the Clinton White House learned that the allegations involved a specific meeting between the President and Willey, and that the allegations were confirmed by Willey's friend, Julie Steele.
So what's a White House to do? Easy. Bury Willey's credibility.
It's unclear exactly who hired and paid for Nancy Luque, but no matter who did, she showed up on the media's doorstep shortly after the Newsweek story broke with an interesting story of her own: her client, Julie Steele, had lied to Issikoff at the direction of her delusional friend, Kathleen Willey. And that Michael Issikoff had also misled her into thinking that her "white lies" were off the record.
Deconstructing Willey
Luque made the talk show rounds, expounding and expanding on the story in such venues as Larry King Live and to any reporter that would listen.
According to Luque, Steele had received a call from Kathleen Willey the same day that Willey had spoken to Issikoff, begging her to confirm that Willey had told Steele about the encounter in the Oval Office, and that it was entirely non-consensual. Steele, according to Luque, agreed to lie to Issikoff, but got cold feet when the Newsweek reporter actually showed-up. Again, according to Luque, Steele insisted that the story be off-the-record, and then confirmed what Willey had told Issikoff.
Once Luque's remarks reached Issikoff, he was stunned: not only had Steele not required her remarks to be off-the-record, they obviously contradicted the story that Willey had told him, and that Steele herself had confirmed.
More importantly though, and to bolster Steele's claims of independence from the White House, Luque was careful to present her client as an innocent caught up in the Clinton scandals -- and that she had recanted her story simply in the interest of honesty, not because of any pressure or arrangement with the Oval Office.
To be fair, Luque wasn't the only cog in the Clinton spin machine attacking Willey. The media was inundated by reports that Willey had a number of extramarital affairs, had a child out-of-wedlock as a young woman, and had a series of dubious financial dealings resulting from her husband's failed businesses (not to mention, her husband committed suicide on the very day that Willey was meeting Clinton in the Oval Office). The ferocity and pace of the Willey denunciations was breathtaking: even a tearful interview on the newsmagazine 60 Minutes wasn't enough to resurrect Willey's credibility.
And of course, while Clinton didn't dispute that he met Willey that day, he certainly disputed the events of the meeting and painted a picture of old-friend Bill Clinton simply consoling a despondent Kathleen Willey.
By the time it was over, Kathleen Willey's credibility had been destroyed, and despite a number of run-ins concerning false testimony to Starr's Grand Jury, Steele went back to obscurity and Nancy Luque could rightly consider her handling of the case a success.
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| Maria Hsia (left) and Nancy Luque (right) |
Haven't We Seen Her Before?
Apparently, Nancy Luque impressed some people in the White House, because she landed another job for the Clinton Administration: she represented fundraiser Maria Hsia.
Hsia was a Democratic fundraiser caught up in the variety of campaign finance scandals which bedeviled the Clinton/Gore Reelection bid in 1996. Despite offers for a "no jail time" plea bargain, Hsia (and her attorney, Nancy Luque) went to trial, and lost. Sentencing on the convictions was recently postponed due to Hsia's poor health, but it's expected that she will receive a very large fine and possibly a short amount of jail time.
Nancy Luque's involvment in Hsia's defense is problematic, however. And it begins to cast doubt on the veracity of Julie Steele, especially in the 180 degree change in Steele's story. Clearly, if not exactly in the pay of the Clinton Administration, Luque certainly may have been in league with them during the Willey matter.
But wait, it gets better.
Deja Vu
This past week, Nancy Luque emerged as the spokesperson and attorney for another participant in the Clinton post-administration scandals: Hugh Rodham.
Caught up in the pardon scandals, Rodham is alleged to have peddled influence with Clinton to secure the pardons of two felons, one of whom is a drug trafficker that was, until his sentence was commuted, serving a fifteen year Federal prison sentence.
Luque will likely be making a round of appearances on a variety of talk shows, and possibly before the Senate and the House, as Rodham's role is probed as part of the larger pardon scandals.
And just as clearly, it is now quite obvious that Luque has an extensive set of business relationships with the Clintons and the Clinton Administration -- both during its term in office and now, in its post-White House period.
What Did She Do, and When Did She Do It?
Which leads observers to ask the question: was Jule Steele "gotten to"? Did the White House, learning that a major scandal was about to erupt, task Nancy Luque to ensure Jule Steele's testimony was changed?
At the moment, it's impossible to know. None of the major players in the Willey incident are talking about their roles: even Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff won't comment on the suspicious change in Steele's story because he doesn't have any proof to support any possible scenario explaining the flip-flop.
However, he stands by his assertion that Steele corroborated Willey's story when he met her, and that she agreed to state that for the record: he won't speculate as to why she subsequently changed her story.
But one thing is sure: Nancy Luque gets around.
I have to leave for a bit, but I will be looking at this later today. Quite a coincidence, isn't it?
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The network used ``a convoluted web of multiple transactions'' by a network of companies, trusts and charities - mostly run by the same few people - to hide money going to two militant Palestinian groups, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the investigator says.
The suspect organizations were part of ``a complex coalition of overlapping companies in northern Virginia controlled by individuals who have shown support for terrorists or terrorist fronts,'' the document states. It calls this coalition the ``Safa Group,'' a name taken from one of the primary trusts.
The document, 101 pages long, is a sworn affidavit written to support a government request for a warrant to search 14 properties in Herndon, Va., and a Georgia poultry business on March 20, 2002.
The affidavit was filed with a federal judge in Virginia in March 2002 and signed by Customs Agent David Kane. Customs since has become part of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Department of Homeland Security.
Portions of the affidavit pertaining to Al-Arian, who is awaiting trial in Tampa on federal racketeering and conspiracy charges, were released three months ago after a lengthy court fight spearheaded by The Tampa Tribune in partnership with The New York Times.
But the rest of the document was kept secret until Friday, when the judge ordered nearly all the rest of it unsealed on motions from Dow Jones Inc., parent company of The Wall Street Journal; the Tribune; and The New York Times.
Expanding The Allegations
In the 20 pages or so of the affidavit released previously, the government alleged that Al-Arian organized the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, one of the Middle East's most violent terrorist organizations, from his home in Tampa and might have authored its violent manifesto. Agents found the document, which terrorism experts didn't know existed, on Al-Arian's home computer in a raid in 1995.
The government also alleged in that portion of the affidavit connections among Al-Arian and a number of associates in Tampa and elsewhere. One eventually became head of the Jihad.
The newly released sections of the affidavit allege a wider web of connections between a number of the people in Al-Arian's circle and those running the Safa Group, and further allege links between these people and Islamic Jihad and Hamas.
In addition, Kane links Al- Arian with Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Islamic spiritual leader considered the inspiration behind the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.
The Safa Group used more than 100 charities, trusts and companies ``to facilitate the funding of terrorist operations,'' the affidavit states.
There is probable cause to believe that the people running the Safa Group knowingly provided material support to terrorist organizations and violated federal tax laws, Kane writes in the newly released portions of the affidavit.
Many of the Safa Group's organizations existed only on paper, according to the affidavit. Often they had the same mailing addresses, it states, and frequently they had the same directors and officers as well.
They engaged in a variety of practices designed to avoid government scrutiny, the affidavit says. They might have done so for several reasons, but Kane maintains that they did it to keep government agents from discovering that they were funneling money to the Jihad and Hamas.
Tracing Millions Of Dollars
The affidavit traces the movement of millions of dollars through the organizations. Some of it was transferred to two organizations that Al-Arian founded while at USF - the World and Islam Studies Enterprise and the Islamic Committee for Palestine. The government says both were fronts for the Islamic Jihad.
Millions more were shifted from one entity to another in the Safa Group, then eventually sent overseas, the affidavit says. Often it wound up in financial institutions on the Isle of Man, known like Switzerland for its secretive banking laws. There, the trail goes cold, the affidavit says.
However, government agents still think the money went to terrorism because no other explanation makes sense, the affidavit states.
The Tribune and The New York Times began seeking the affidavit's release in mid-2002, in part because of a government document linking the Virginia case to its investigation in Tampa of Al-Arian, WISE and ICP.
Attorneys for the Safa Group first supported releasing the affidavit but then unexpectedly shifted position and began fighting it.
Dow Jones joined the court fight this month after some in the Safa Group filed libel suits against it, the CBS News program ``60 Minutes'' and author Rita Katz over accounts each had published or broadcast about the Virginia case.
On Friday, the judge held that it was unreasonable for the Virginia group to be pursuing a libel action while simultaneously fighting to keep secret documents that might be vital to the defense of Dow Jones, ``60 Minutes'' and Katz. The judge kept under seal only a small portion of the affidavit to protect ongoing criminal investigations.
Prosecutors supported the affidavit's release.
``It appears to us that, where the targets of an investigation are using the law as a sword against other private litigants who accuse them of involvement with terrorist financing, they should not be able to prevent the unsealing of evidence connecting them to terrorist financing,'' wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg.
Nancy Luque, an attorney representing the Safa Group who opposed the affidavit's release, said Friday evening that it is a gift because it will dispel most of the strongest suspicions about her clients.
``There are no terrorism accusations in it after all their ballyhooing,'' Luque said. ``Kane doesn't know where all the money went so he thinks it went to terrorism. That's not probable cause.''
Most of her clients' involvement with Al-Arian came in the early 1990s, she said. That was long before any accusations that he supported the Jihad and while he was a respected computer scientist at USF.
Few Details On Al-Arian, Rahman
The newly released portions of the affidavit reveal little of the alleged ties between Al-Arian and Sheik Rahman.
He visited Al-Arian's home and spoke at his mosque, the affidavit says. But it offers no details on when the alleged visit occurred or why. ICP records show the sheik also spoke at one of the group's annual conferences.
Rahman is serving life in prison after being convicted of plotting to blow up other New York landmarks and tunnels.
The Virginia investigation began in 1998, largely due to documents seized during the 1995 raid in Tampa of Al-Arian's home and offices. That raid came three weeks after a former Al-Arian associate, Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, emerged as the new leader of the Islamic Jihad in Syria.
An unindicted co-conspirator in Al-Arian's case, Taha Jaber Al-Awani, plays a significant role in Kane's affidavit. He is an officer with a number of the Virginia-based groups, including the International Institute of Islamic Thought, which provided much of the money for Al-Arian's WISE organization in Tampa.
Al-Awani attended annual conferences Al-Arian hosted on Palestinian and religious issues. Prosecutors say those conferences were used to raise money for the Islamic Jihad and that Al-Awani knew of the Tampa connection to it.
Kane writes in the affidavit that those like Al-Awani who sent money to Al-Arian and his organizations ``knew that they were sending it to support suicide bombings and terrorism conducted by PIJ.''
Al-Awani also runs the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences, which trains Muslim chaplains for the military. Kane's affidavit claims that Al-Awani signed a fatwa, or a religious edict, between December 1988 and November 1989. It proclaimed ``that Jihad is the only way to liberate Palestine,'' the affidavit says.
Variety Of Financial Sources
Meanwhile, Al-Awani may have been one of those behind millions of dollars in bank transfers between organizations within the Safa Group and with other entities outside, including banks on the Isle of Man, an autonomous island off Great Britain.
Of $54 million in grants and allocations reported by charities in the Safa Group from 1996 to 2000, the affidavit says, $26 million was transferred to the Isle of Man.
Nearly three-quarters of that money came from the group's members. About 13 percent came from sources in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia.
The transactions were part of a ``conspiracy to impede and impair'' investigators, Kane writes, although he concedes that his belief that the money went to terrorists is partly supposition.
``There appears to be no innocent explanation for the use of layers and layers of transactions between Safa Group companies and charities,'' Kane write, ``other than to throw law enforcement authorities off the trail.''
Al-Arian was fired from his job as a USF computer science professor shortly after his indictment in February. He is in custody at the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex in Sumter County and could not be reached for comment. He is scheduled to stand trial in January 2005.
Three other men will stand trial with him. Four other alleged conspirators live abroad and have not been arrested.
Reporter Michael Fechter can be reached at (813) 259-7621.
Bump since the al Arian thing is going on - though not being covered very well.
Tech note FWIW: that Namebase site sometimes temporarily freezes on me, too, while it's on a page that's compiling a chart (it doesn't do it on most pages on the site, just the chart pages) because the chart seems to involve some type of Java program (at least that's what I think it is), but it usually only lasts a minute or two and then it's okay. If it doesn't unfreeze for you eventually, you can also view the same information on the site in text form without the chart graphic and you won't get that problem. To get the text version search on Google using the phrase "Namebase" + "[whatever name you want to search on]". The information used to generate the chart appears at the bottom of the page in the text-only version, with what appears as line "density" in the chart indicated here by numbers in descending order indicating how frequently the target name appears on the same page as the other name it's being crossreferenced with in the sources Namebase is drawing from. BTW what the numbers/line densities mean is that the same names appear on the same page; it doesn't necessarily mean the two people were associated in real life, though it may mean that in some cases.
SNIP
The Clinton/China Connection - the ‘Legal Team’
Hogan & Hartson
Hogan & Hartson is an international law firm lobbying for Russia and Communist China. This firm, the largest in Washington, D.C., is ‘tight’ with the Clinton Administration, being involved in the Clinton/Gore campaigns and the Presidential Inaugural Committee. The firm represents the Democratic National Committee, a reported recipient of funds laundered by Johnny Chung, and is currently representing a friend of the Clintons and Gore - the notorious John Huang.
Let’s look at the Clinton / Hogan & Hartson connection.
1. Sandy Berger - National Security Advisor and head of the National Security Council.
SNIP
Another tie to Hogan & Hartson is Nancy Luque, who, like Hogan & Hartson’s Christine Varney and Anthony Harrington, was an attorney for the Clinton-Gore campaign. In addition, in that capacity, Ms. Luque would have also worked with Hogan & Hartson’s Sandy Berger. Ms. Luque is at the international law firm of Reed Smith Shaw and McClay, which, of course, has dealings with Communist China. Ms. Luque is the attorney for Maria Hsia, a notorious Clinton-Gore fundraiser accused of funneling money through the Buddhist Temple to Al Gore, and of numerous other types of illegal influence peddling to Clinton, Gore and the DNC for the Chinese Communists. It is also interesting to note that Ms. Luque was an attorney for the campaign where Ms. Hsia was doing the illegal money laundering! Another ‘helpful’ move in the long list of Clinton cover-ups was Ms. Luque’s ‘pro bono’ representation of Julie Hiatt Steele who was involved in the Willey/Clinton scandal.
SNIP
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Nancy Luque is a Washington attorney that represented Julia Steele in the Kathleen Willey/ Bill Clinton sex scandal. Willey accused the President of groping her in the Oval Office in a kind of low-intensity sexual assault. Steele first corroborated Willey's story, but then denied it and claimed to have lied to help her then-friend, Kathleen Willey.