 |
 |
|
John Kass |
It's a short leap from gangster to terror suspect
Published June 11, 2002
You can never accuse Chicago gangbangers of thinking small.
And the arrest of Jose Padilla--accused of working with terrorists to give us radiation poisoning with a "dirty bomb"--proves it.
Here's what court documents and local law-enforcement sources say about Padilla:
His career started with a knifing in an alley. By then, he'd joined a gang with a threatening name, something like the Maniac Latin Psychos or the Psycho Latin Maniacs.
Later, he traveled to Pakistan, learned about bombs and came back to Chicago on a reconnaissance mission to determine the best place to build and plant his device. In the process he joined another gang--Al Qaeda.
But he's not the only Chicago street gangster with big dreams.
A few of them started out small, extorting Italian immigrants. Later, they took over Chicago politics, went into the booze business, the judge-picking business, Hollywood, construction, casinos, you name it.
By then they'd became corporate, creating what we now call the Outfit and--according to historians and authors--helped elect John Kennedy president.
They were so good at public relations that they had their front man, Al Capone, take all the media and federal heat, which is the way Paul "The Waiter" Ricca wanted it.
In the recent past other Chicago street gang bosses have tried to organize black precincts and even got job training contracts through City Hall.
And don't forget that another Chicago street gang boss--El Rukn chief Jeff Fort--considered dabbling in terrorism on American soil for Libya's Moammar Gadhafi.
According to federal officials, Padilla wanted to build a dirty bomb to spread radiation poisoning in Washington and kill a lot of us. He was arrested in May at O'Hare International Airport.
"We must root out those who are planning such attacks, we must find them, we must stop them, and when we have them in our control, we must be able to question them about future attacks," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said at a news conference Monday.
As they question Padilla, perhaps he'll tell them how he got started.
Padilla began his career as a juvenile, with a knife and a baseball bat in an alley off 16th Street and Kedvale Avenue in August 1985.
The victim, Elio Evangelista, had the misfortune to carry some cash that Padilla and a friend wanted for themselves.
"They ran through the alleys," a law-enforcement source told me. "The other guy did the stabbing. Padilla did the kicking. He kicked the guy a few times in the head."
Police found Evangelista lying in the alley. His hands were on his belly. He was trying to keep his intestines from spilling out onto the ground. It didn't work, and he died.
After his release from the Cook County juvenile facility, Padilla got himself arrested and sent to jail on a variety of charges.
Now that he's an international terrorist operative, Padilla has decided to call himself by another name:
Abdullah al Muhajir.
Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft has obliged by calling him al Muhajir And so TV and broadcast reporters called him al Muhajir. All day Monday, it was al Muhajir this and al Muhajir that.
I don't mean to be rude. And please don't accuse me of not embracing cultural diversity when it comes to gangbanger terrorists. But I refuse to call him al Muhajir.
Perhaps you remember another American who was caught helping Al Qaeda. His name is John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban.
He's not a gangbanger from 16th Street. Lindh grew up wealthy in California, the son of rich hippies, and attended alternative schools.
Lindh, too, traveled to Pakistan and hung out with Al Qaeda and fought against the U.S. in Afghanistan.
Now Lindh is facing trial for his part in a prison uprising there that claimed the life of an American, an officer of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Lindh didn't call himself Lindh or Walker when he was caught. He called himself Abdul Hamid.
But neither government officials nor the American news media bought it. They all refused to call him Abdul Hamid.
To this day, everybody still calls him Lindh, or John Walker Lind, or the American Taliban. Nobody calls him Hamid.
Obviously, we can't have a double standard here.
You can't call the rich white American terrorist Lindh while referring to the poor Latino American terrorist as al Muhajir. That smacks of cultural elitism and would be unfair to Padilla.
But we can call him a gangster.
That's how Padilla started. And that's how he'll end.
jskass@tribune.com
And the arrest of Jose Padilla--accused of working with terrorists to give us radiation poisoning with a "dirty bomb"--proves it.
Here's what court documents and local law-enforcement sources say about Padilla:
His career started with a knifing in an alley. By then, he'd joined a gang with a threatening name, something like the Maniac Latin Psychos or the Psycho Latin Maniacs.
Later, he traveled to Pakistan, learned about bombs and came back to Chicago on a reconnaissance mission to determine the best place to build and plant his device. In the process he joined another gang--Al Qaeda.
But he's not the only Chicago street gangster with big dreams.
A few of them started out small, extorting Italian immigrants. Later, they took over Chicago politics, went into the booze business, the judge-picking business, Hollywood, construction, casinos, you name it.
By then they'd became corporate, creating what we now call the Outfit and--according to historians and authors--helped elect John Kennedy president.
They were so good at public relations that they had their front man, Al Capone, take all the media and federal heat, which is the way Paul "The Waiter" Ricca wanted it.
In the recent past other Chicago street gang bosses have tried to organize black precincts and even got job training contracts through City Hall.
And don't forget that another Chicago street gang boss--El Rukn chief Jeff Fort--considered dabbling in terrorism on American soil for Libya's Moammar Gadhafi.
According to federal officials, Padilla wanted to build a dirty bomb to spread radiation poisoning in Washington and kill a lot of us. He was arrested in May at O'Hare International Airport.
"We must root out those who are planning such attacks, we must find them, we must stop them, and when we have them in our control, we must be able to question them about future attacks," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said at a news conference Monday.
As they question Padilla, perhaps he'll tell them how he got started.
Padilla began his career as a juvenile, with a knife and a baseball bat in an alley off 16th Street and Kedvale Avenue in August 1985.
The victim, Elio Evangelista, had the misfortune to carry some cash that Padilla and a friend wanted for themselves.
"They ran through the alleys," a law-enforcement source told me. "The other guy did the stabbing. Padilla did the kicking. He kicked the guy a few times in the head."
Police found Evangelista lying in the alley. His hands were on his belly. He was trying to keep his intestines from spilling out onto the ground. It didn't work, and he died.
After his release from the Cook County juvenile facility, Padilla got himself arrested and sent to jail on a variety of charges.
Now that he's an international terrorist operative, Padilla has decided to call himself by another name:
Abdullah al Muhajir.
Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft has obliged by calling him al Muhajir And so TV and broadcast reporters called him al Muhajir. All day Monday, it was al Muhajir this and al Muhajir that.
I don't mean to be rude. And please don't accuse me of not embracing cultural diversity when it comes to gangbanger terrorists. But I refuse to call him al Muhajir.
Perhaps you remember another American who was caught helping Al Qaeda. His name is John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban.
He's not a gangbanger from 16th Street. Lindh grew up wealthy in California, the son of rich hippies, and attended alternative schools.
Lindh, too, traveled to Pakistan and hung out with Al Qaeda and fought against the U.S. in Afghanistan.
Now Lindh is facing trial for his part in a prison uprising there that claimed the life of an American, an officer of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Lindh didn't call himself Lindh or Walker when he was caught. He called himself Abdul Hamid.
But neither government officials nor the American news media bought it. They all refused to call him Abdul Hamid.
To this day, everybody still calls him Lindh, or John Walker Lind, or the American Taliban. Nobody calls him Hamid.
Obviously, we can't have a double standard here.
You can't call the rich white American terrorist Lindh while referring to the poor Latino American terrorist as al Muhajir. That smacks of cultural elitism and would be unfair to Padilla.
But we can call him a gangster.
That's how Padilla started. And that's how he'll end.
jskass@tribune.com