Al Qaeda Still Recruits In U.S. Jails

Jewish Press ^ | Jan. 7, 2003 | MENL

[FairOpinion]

WASHINGTON – Despite a government crackdown, Al Qaeda continues to recruit members in U.S. prisons.

U.S. officials said Al Qaeda’s recruitment has been facilitated by Muslim clergy with access to federal and state prisons. They said the organization has succeeded in winning new members despite tighter rules instituted by authorities since the Al Qaeda suicide attacks in September 2001.

“These terrorists seek to exploit our freedom to exercise religion to their advantage by using radical forms of Islam to recruit operatives,” FBI counter-terrorism chief John Pistole said. “Unfortunately, U.S. correctional institutions are a viable venue for such radicalization and recruitment.”

Pistole told a recent session of the Senate subcommittee on terrorism, technology and homeland security that federal and state authorities have faced an uphill battle to halt Al Qaeda recruitment in prisons. He said Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups have exploited the isolation of inmates and offer them protection, positions of influence and a network they can correspond with both inside and outside of prison.

Officials said Muslim chaplains have facilitated Al Qaeda recruitment. They cited the case of Warith Deen Umar, the administrative chaplain for the New York State Corrections Department, said to have preached that the Al Qaeda suicide attackers who killed more than 3,000 Americans were heroes.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons maintains a presence on the National Joint Terrorism Taskforce as part of an effort to identify Al Qaeda and recruiters for other terrorist groups in the federal prison service. Officials said the federal prison system contains 9,600 Muslims, or 5.5 percent of the inmate population. The figure does not include members of such groups as the Nation of Islam or the Moorish Science Temple.

“The percent of federal inmates who identify themselves as Muslim has remained very stable for close to a decade,” Harley Lappin, director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, said. “We have been managing inmates with ties to terrorism for over a decade by confining them in secure conditions and monitoring their communications closely. All inmates with terrorist ties are clearly identified and tracked in our information systems.”

Lappin said his agency has not hired any new Muslim chaplains since August 2001. He said the hiring freeze would continue until the completion of federal investigations.

Officials also told the Senate hearing that Al Qaeda has sought to infiltrate the U.S. military, including personnel working at Camp Delta. About 660 Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees have been interrogated at the naval facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Pistole said the FBI sees the Al Qaeda effort as a serious breach of national security. He said the FBI has launched an effort with the Defense Department and the Federal Bureau of Prisons to assess the units that examine the backgrounds of prospective chaplains and translators.

“In addition, the FBI is evaluating the protocols for ongoing security assessments of such employees during sensitive assignments, such as more frequent polygraph examinations,” Pistole said.

At the congressional hearing, a Pentagon official, principal deputy defense undersecretary Charles Abell, said the U.S. government has ended exclusivity granted to three Saudi-financed organizations for the training of Muslim chaplains.

They are the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences, in Leesburg, Va., and the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council, in Arlington, Va., which recommend chaplains to the military. The Islamic Society of North America, based in Plainfield, Ind., refers Muslim clerics to the Bureau of Prisons.

[FairOpinion]

I think they should monitor ALL conversations by inmates -- criminals have no rights to privacy. And anyone, cleric or not, who has ties to AQ should be grabbed and jailed.

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[endthematrix]

"...serious breach of national security. "

Most definitely a serious breech of common sense!

[boris]

What is the sound of one hand pinging?

[CaptIsaacDavis]

HEY! NOT ALL INMATES ARE CRIMINALS. The Administration admits that it has put several thousand people through prisons without charges and on mere suspicions. Prisons also hold tens of thousands of pre-trial non-convicted people.

Moreover, under Reno the Feds and some states started what are called "Security Threat Group" intelligence programs (that is what the fellow is obliquely referring to in the article) -- in the Federal and some state prisons. There are prisoners in jail (awaiting trial and hearings, etc.) for traffic violations that are targeted because they talk to an STG tagged suspect and end up in prison for years without sentence or admission by a court because they are tagged as STG (a Federal court in Ohio and the MA SJC recently ruled that the results of this process -- punishment detentions for periods without formal court commitments [previously extended sentences beyond legal penalties, now for anyone under the Bush Admin] -- are, of course, unconstitutional). Prisoners in MA have been formally classified as political prisoners for speaking Gaelic! No kidding. Read the MA DOC web site under STG -- Irish nationalist is an STG and they claim that Gaelic is a language for "gang talk." There are roughly 500 formal, under state and Federal USBOP regulations/laws, political prisoners. They are held under punitive punishment conditions for indefinite periods solely on the basis of the STG procedures. Some prisoners have been released only because they signed a political document promising not to be suspected of "potential" involvement in an STG, including reading literature from certain conservative groups [a loyalty oath coerced under punishment of detention in a super-max] -- defined by those STG groups in radical left-wing states as inclusive of almost any American conservative and nationalist group falsely labeled as "white supremacist." Add in the secret detentions and you have a growing issue here. Why haven't you heard about STGs in the press, and why did the MA SJC review the issue without even once mentioning the term? National security -- to avoid public debate of what's been happening since Reno enacted the program in anticipation of a massive roundup of "militia" types following Waco (which never happened, although Hillary kept pressing with all the talk of a VRWC).

What do you care. It's someone else right? WRONG. The U.S. Justice Department was reported in September (NYT) to be taking what was once known as VAAPCON and putting it on steroids (including the CIA). That was the RENO anti-abortion conspiracy smoke screen to create databases on conservative "threat groups," like the enemies lists compiled in the WH, and which targeted virtually every CONSERVATIVE organization and political leader in the country, and even had DOJ people conducting photo surveillance of Catholic Bishop's conferences (check out Judicial Watch's FOIA discoveries). The new program under Ashcroft will be based on general "threat assessments" that will result in the compilation of lists of members and contributors to every sensitive political organization on the anti-socialist right, prison STG designees of all types, and the more familiar "terr" groups. It is in this context that Rush's complaining some months back about the odd fact the Justice Department still has so many Reno era appointees in it creates a cause for concern.

Hey, you trust Bush. OK, I used to. Now what happens if he loses the election, or in 2008, or whenever the Democrats get back into power?

In case you missed it -- there are people in the governments of Colorado, California, Massachusetts, and others? that have spoken openly about freerepublic.com being a "hate" site and "threat" group.

You may be on the list!

[DustyMoment]

I've been thinking quite a bit about AQ and all of the threat warnings we have had. If I were AQ, I wouldn't bother wasting my time on finding bombs to explode or pollution to spread and just kill people. If I were AQ, I'd start going after electronic networks; networks like the Internet, broadcast networks, telephone networks, electrical transmission networks, Local and Wide Area Networks.

Shut those down and you have done more damage than another attack on a skyscraper with an airplane or exploding a bomb in a high population area. We rely on these networks for virtually everything in our lives. Shut them down and we lose the ability to communicate, exchange information, conduct business, obtain money, buy gas, burgers or milk. Our society, our very way of life comes to a standstill. Once that happens, anyone . . . ANYONE can just walk in and take over because we won't know what is going on and we'll have no way to find out what is going on. Think "Red Dawn".

I think that's what AQ may be up to.

[tkathy]

AQ is attracting sociopaths and psychopaths from around the world. They can become "Allah's little serial killers".

[FairOpinion]

"If I were AQ, I'd start going after electronic networks; networks like the Internet, broadcast networks, telephone networks, electrical transmission networks, Local and Wide Area Networks."

===

I hate to tell you this, but they are doing exactly that also.

You'll be interested to read this detailed article:


Cyber-Attacks by Al Qaeda Feared
Terrorists at Threshold of Using Internet as Tool of Bloodshed, Experts Say

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50765-2002Jun26


EXCERPT:

A forensic summary of the investigation, prepared in the Defense Department, said the bureau found "multiple casings of sites" nationwide. Routed through telecommunications switches in Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Pakistan, the visitors studied emergency telephone systems, electrical generation and transmission, water storage and distribution, nuclear power plants and gas facilities.

Some of the probes suggested planning for a conventional attack, U.S. officials said. But others homed in on a class of digital devices that allow remote control of services such as fire dispatch and of equipment such as pipelines. More information about those devices -- and how to program them -- turned up on al Qaeda computers seized this year, according to law enforcement and national security officials.


Most significantly, perhaps, U.S. investigators have found evidence in the logs that mark a browser's path through the Internet that al Qaeda operators spent time on sites that offer software and programming instructions for the digital switches that run power, water, transport and communications grids. In some interrogations, the most recent of which was reported to policymakers last week, al Qaeda prisoners have described intentions, in general terms, to use those tools.

Specialized digital devices are used by the millions as the brains of American "critical infrastructure" -- a term defined by federal directive to mean industrial sectors that are "essential to the minimum operations of the economy and government."


"We were underestimating the amount of attention [al Qaeda was] paying to the Internet," said Roger Cressey, a longtime counterterrorism official who became chief of staff of the President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board in October. "Now we know they see it as a potential attack vehicle. Al Qaeda spent more time mapping our vulnerabilities in cyberspace than we previously thought. An attack is a question of when, not if."

[DooDahhhh]

Please, find a way to kill these a holes legally.

[discostu]

Don't know about your pinging but I know your other hand is committing the sin of onan.

STOP PINGING ME.

[boris]

No, it's holding up a certain finger.

[discostu]

You realize of course that this article shows AGAIN that your proposed "security meassure" would accomplish nothing. They're recruiting American citizens, deporting the foreigners won't help when they've got Americans, or false IDs. None of the articles you've pinged me to support you at all, everyone of them outlines how the bad guys are RIGHT NOW doing things that would avoid all your silly ideas.

Oh and how about that New Years Eve 9-11 redux you predicted?! DIDN'T HAPPEN! Already lost the war indeed.

[F16Fighter]

Officials said Muslim chaplains have facilitated Al Qaeda recruitment.

Duh.

So when the ACLU mandates the government to facilitate Nazi-Cannibal-Satanists as "chaplains," in the name of "fairness and diversity," said officials shouldn't be too surprised when jail and mess freezers are packed with extra "meat."

[boris]

"You realize of course that this article shows AGAIN that your proposed "security meassure" would accomplish nothing. They're recruiting American citizens, deporting the foreigners won't help when they've got Americans, or false IDs. None of the articles you've pinged me to support you at all, everyone of them outlines how the bad guys are RIGHT NOW doing things that would avoid all your silly ideas.

Oh and how about that New Years Eve 9-11 redux you predicted?! DIDN'T HAPPEN! Already lost the war indeed."

Firstly, the holidays were one of the windows I said would be hazardous. Evidently Mr. Ridge agreed with me.

Secondly, my point--made repeatedly to you but buzzing through your vacant cranial cavity like a lost gnat--is that there are sleepers and moles--terrorist sympathizers--in place right now and we are doing nothing about it; a situation you are evidently quite comfortable with.

--Boris

[expatpat]

The Internet is probably too distributed a network to be brought down, and could only be somewhat degraded. Electrical transmission networks are somewhat distributed, but not enough to be resistant to local attacks. Telecomm is probably redundant enough, given both cell-phones and land phones, to survive OK.

[expatpat]

I should have added that the electrical supply is key to all the other networks; if it goes the rest go. So I hope we are watching that carefully....

[discostu]

You didn't say they'd would be hazardous you said there would be 9-11 redux and we wouldn't be able to stop it.

Secondly that was never your point. I never denied there were sleepers and moles. Your "point" was that the only way we could secure America would be to put a 1 mile wide minefield around the country deport everybody from the Mid East and never give them another vias again and beg Israel to save our butts. All these posts you ping me to showing they're in America already and not always from the Mid East or at least with false IDs proves irrefutably that your "security plan" was 100% bunk city, wouldn't have worked which was EXACTLY my point.

I'm not comfortable with sleepers and moles in America wanting to destroy us, but I'm not stupid enough to think that putting a giant minefield around the country would accomplish squat. All the stupidity is your boris. And your attempt to change my arguement is a sad and pathetic lie. Now really: GO AWAY. I'm sick of your hit and run BS. Every post proves me right, go crawl off in a corner and die in misery. Stop pinging, don't even reply to this, just buzz off.

[GOPJ]

It's about time the FBI looked into this mess. Also, do the Saudis or AQ donate money to American Muslim organizations? Time for some real investigative work...

Pistole said the FBI sees the Al Qaeda effort as a serious breach of national security. He said the FBI has launched an effort with the Defense Department and the Federal Bureau of Prisons to assess the units that examine the backgrounds of prospective chaplains and translators.

[AIC]

This is all old news. At least a year old. Last Nov. or Dec. there was a subcommittee about this very subject and what was going to be done about it. Around about the same time there was a subcommittee about Internet hackers and terrorist and what they could do or could not do by interrupting or sending viruses to the Gov. and businesses. So if they had a subcommittee about these subjects then it has to have been known for a while. About U.S. jails being a recruiting place; that has been known since 1993 when the leader of 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center was arrested.

[FairOpinion]

"This is all old news. At least a year old. Last Nov. or Dec. there was a subcommittee about this very subject and what was going to be done about it. "

===

This article is CURRENT, dated Jan. 7, 2004. The title does say "AQ STILL recruits" -- the point is exactly that despite everything that is knows and has been done, they are STILL doing it.