Posted on 08/01/2002 12:00:36 PM PDT by honway
WHEN FBI COUNSEL COLLEEN ROWLEY DROPPED her bombshell, a now-famous letter to the director, detailing how bureau higher-ups thwarted attempts to investigate accused 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, before the September 11 attacks, she set off a firestorm. The scorching produced a mea culpa of sorts in June from FBI Director Robert Mueller and a promise of reform.
Now there's another whistle blower telling a similar pre-9/11 tale. And so far, the FBI has gone to great lengths to silence him.
The Weekly has learned that Chicago-based special agent Robert Wright has accused the agency of shutting down his 1998 criminal probe into alleged terrorist-training camps in Chicago and Kansas City. The apparent goal of the training camps, according to confidential documents obtained by the Weekly, was to recruit and train Palestinian-American youths, who would then slip into Israel. Recruits at these camps reportedly received weapons training and instruction in bomb-making techniques in the early 1990s. The bomb-making curriculum included the sort of explosives later used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. And government documents state that two trainees came from the Oklahoma City area.
One alleged trainer at the terror camps is now fending off a government lawsuit to seize his bank accounts, car and property for alleged money laundering on behalf of the militant group Hamas. So far, no one has been prosecuted for these alleged terrorism-related activities.
The official government position is that Middle Eastern groups had no involvement in the 1995 bombing carried out by Timothy McVeigh, and that conclusion may stand the test of time. The FBI, however, never fully investigated leads suggesting a different verdict, according to law-enforcement and government sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. Congressional investigators are starting to re-examine the entire matter. There's also another troubling question: Why has the FBI dismissed or ignored evidence linking the Oklahoma City bombing to the Middle East? Is it because these leads are unlikely to pan out or because the agency still has something to hide regarding its own intelligence-gathering lapses?
ROBERT WRIGHT'S STORY IS DIFFICULT TO PIECE together because he is on government orders to remain silent. And by extension so are his attorneys when it comes to confidential information. Wright has written a book, but the agency won't let him publish it or even give it to anyone. All of this is in distinct contrast to the free speech and whistle-blower protections offered to Colleen Rowley, general counsel in the FBI Minneapolis office, who got her story out before the agency could silence her.
Wright, a 12-year bureau veteran, has followed proper channels, sending his book off for an internal review and asking for permission to respond to reporters' queries. Neither of those efforts panned out, and he has since sued the agency over this publication ban. The best he could do was a May 30 press conference in Washington, D.C., where he told curious reporters that he had a whopper of a tale to tell, if only he could.
Wright did say that FBI bureaucrats "intentionally and repeatedly thwarted his attempts to launch a more comprehensive investigation to identify and neutralize terrorists." And that "FBI management failed to take seriously the threat of terrorism in the U.S." Wright was careful not to i llegally disclose any confidential details about what he knew, but tears filled his eyes as he apologized to the families of September 11 victims for the Bureau's mistakes leading up to 9/11. He also made a tantalizing reference to his removal from a money-laundering case that, he implied, had a direct connection to investigations into terrorism.
This still-active case centers on Mohammed Abdul Hamid Khalil Salah, 49, a naturalized American citizen who was born in Jerusalem. Salah has described himself as a humanitarian who distributed money collected in the U.S. to needy West Bank Palestinian families. He's also reportedly worked in Arab-owned grocery stores, as a used car salesman and as a computer analyst for a Chicago-based Islamic charitable group, the Quranic Literacy Institute, which the FBI alleges was involved in money laundering. Institute and Muslim leaders have vehemently denied any wrongdoing.
Both the American and Israeli governments contend that Salah served as a money courier for the terrorist group Hamas. Salah's attorney in the civil action, Mathew Piers, did not return phone calls from the Weekly. But in published accounts, Piers adamantly denied that his client was a bagman for Hamas. Salah and his wife are still living
in Chicago in a house the government is trying to seize.
In June 1998, the feds filed a civil assets-forfeiture suit against Salah. Such actions are frequently used to seize the money and property of drug dealers. In the Salah case, the U.S. Attorney's Office went after personal property and accounts in seven banks, with a total estimated value of $1.5 million. In the civil complaint, the government alleged that Salah intended the funds would "support a conspiracy involving international terrorist activities, [and] the domestic recruitment and training in support of such activities, including extortion, kidnapping and murder of citizens of Israel."
Attached to the complaint is a 40-page sworn affidavit from agent Wright. In it, Wright details bank accounts, property deals and money transfers designed to support Hamas. But among the most intriguing elements is a reference to Salah's earlier trial in Israel, which received substantial press coverage in Israel at the time.
In 1993, Israeli intelligence arrested Salah and another naturalized American, Mohammed Jarad, on suspicion of transferring hundreds of thousands of dollars to Hamas for guns and ammunition.
Salah was interrogated by Israeli military intelligence -- he says he was tortured, a claim the Israelis deny. Under interrogation, Salah reportedly confessed to recruiting Islamic militants and then helping to instruct them in the use of poisons, chemical weapons and explosives. The training supposedly occurred in the late 1980s. Later, in 1991, Salah allegedly served as a financial agent for Hamas, opening accounts at a number of Chicago-area banks. Wright's affidavit states that between June 1991 and December 1992, Salah spent more than $100,000 in direct support of Hamas military activities. Wright added that the weapons purchased were used in Hamas assaults and suicide attacks on Israeli citizens.
In 1994, at Salah's secret military trial, Israeli prosecutors introduced a statement signed by another Palestinian detainee, Naser Hidmi, formerly a student at Kansas State University. Hidmi stated in an affidavit that he accepted Salah's invitation to a four-day "retreat" at a camp in the Chicago area in June 1990. At the camp, he reportedly studied Hamas philosophy and received explosives training. Hidmi also asserted in his statement that he met Salah again at a conference of Muslim youth held in Kansas City in December of the same year. On that occasion, Hidmi claimed he got more Hamas training and Salah participated in the instruction.
In 1995, Salah pleaded guilty to funneling funds to Hamas and he served about five years in prison before being released and deported to the U.S. Mohammed Jarah served six months in jail following a plea bargain to a lesser charge.
While Salah sat in an Israeli prison, the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control added his name to the list of "Specially Designated Terrorists," because of his alleged Hamas connections. After he returned to Chicago, Salah found himself squarely in the FBI's crosshairs. In 1995, Wright began investigating money laundering on behalf of international terrorist organizations. This investigation led him to Salah.
Wright's affidavit alleges that Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook, a Hamas leader, directed Salah's activites, at one point authorizing him to give $790,000 to Hamas military units. The Israeli government indicted Marzook, while he was living in the U.S., for abetting terror attacks in Israel. American authorities arrested Marzook and held him for two years before deporting him to Jordan.
Wright also alleged that Salah funneled money through Switzerland via Saudi businessman Yassin Kadi. The U.S. government has since designated Kadi as a financial supporter of Osama bin Laden and frozen his American assets. Kadi too has denied any wrongdoing.
The assets-forfeiture case against Salah, which was filed in an Illinois federal court, remains active. Wright was removed from the case shortly after it was filed. And he would apparently contend, if allowed to talk, that his FBI superiors ordered him to drop any criminal investigation into Salah and the terrorist camps allegedly run by Hamas.
WRIGHT'S WAS NOT THE ONLY PROBE of Middle Eastern links to terrorists and acts of terror in the U.S. Unbeknownst to Wright, an investigation of Salah and his alleged involvement in training camps was undertaken by the House of Representatives Republican Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare. This task force, as previously reported in the Weekly, had issued alerts to law enforcement and U.S. intelligence agencies in the months prior to the Oklahoma City bombing. It had warned of an impending Islamist terror campaign, allegedly run by Hamas and directed by Iran.
After the 1995 blast, Oklahoma Citybased television reporter Jayna Davis spoke numerous times with task-force executive director Yossef Bodansky. He eventually gave her a memo in which he'd summarized intelligence reports detailing the operations of the terror camps. In the memo, constructed from his intelligence reports, Bodansky wrote that Iranian intelligence had ordered Hamas to develop cadres from among Palestinian youth living in the U.S.
"The idea," Bodansky wrote, "was to build a group of highly trained Arabs with U.S. passports who can be inserted into Israel to replace local cadres killed or arrested by Israeli Forces." The Iranians, Bodansky contended, argued that Israel would treat the Americans with "kid gloves." He also stated it would be easier for these recruits to infiltrate Israel with U.S. documents.
Bodansky declined to be interviewed by the Weekly, but in the memo, Bodansky also alleged that the first round of training took place in Chicago, "organized by Muhammad Salah" in 1990. Bodansky stated that "25 trainees" took part and all were given code names.
"Salah and five other instructors, including a Libyan-American, who was a former Marine," he wrote, conducted training. The instruction included military topics, sabotage, and one group received "detailed instructions on building car bombs from readily available, off the shelf materials."
Bodansky also wrote that a second round of training occurred at a December 1990 Hamas youth conference in Kansas City. "Secret sessions," he added, "were devoted to leadership and command training." Another round of training also occurred in Kansas City in 1991. During this meeting, he said, some people were given "highly detailed and practical instructions in supervising the construction of explosives, including car bombs like the one used in Oklahoma City."
The operatives, Bodansky stated, were then assigned to locations throughout the U.S. He also alleged that so-called "Lilly whites" were subsequently trained at the same Chicago camps in 1993. These were people, whose backgrounds he stated, would not make them suspect. These individuals were given weapons training as well as the latest instruction in bomb-making techniques. Two individuals from Oklahoma City, he added, attended this camp. Bodansky did not name these men.
The information supplied to reporter Davis mirrors the information about Salah and the terror training camps that emerged from Israel and through Wright's affidavit. Wright's attorney told the Weekly that Wright knew nothing of Bodansky's parallel investigation.
TO DATE, THE FBI AND DEPARTMENT OF Justice have seemingly exerted more effort in shutting down these leads than pursuing them. Last October, the Justice Department blocked the court appearance of retired Oklahoma City FBI agent Dan Vogel at a hearing in the state murder case against convicted Oklahoma Cityaccomplice Terry Nichols. In an interview with the Weekly, Vogel said he intended to tell the court the truth -- that he had accepted evidence from former TV reporter Jayna Davis that tied Timothy McVeigh, Nichols and a group of Iraqis working in Oklahoma City to a larger bombing conspiracy.
Vogel said he passed the materials to the Bureau but was later told the documents were returned because of questions regarding who owned the documents. Davis and her attorneys contend that the documents were never returned. Whatever the case, the Bureau's reputed rationale for spurning potential evidence is slim indeed.
Wright got no explanation at all when he was ordered to cease his own probe, said Chicago-based attorney David Schippers, who is representing Wright along with Judicial Watch, a Washington, D.C.based legal foundation. (Schippers is most famous for his role as lead counsel spearheading the House impeachment of former President Bill Clinton.) "Bob was simply pulled off these investigations," said Schippers. The FBI "just shut down the operations and never told him why."
The FBI and the Department of Justice declined comment for this story.
Wright chronicled his allegations against the Bureau in a complaint filed with the Inspector General's Office of the Department of Justice. The FBI, in turn, has threatened to discipline or fire Wright if he publicizes the details of the complaint. The Inspector General's Office has failed to act, referring the matter to Congress instead. And there, finally, investigators got interested, and called Wright in for an interview, said sources close to the investigation. It remains to be seen how far and how vigorously these leads will be pursued.
add legs with patterson's indy star piece, the WSJ piece, along w/ jayna davis interview and this thing's moving.
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
CODE OF QUIET Geoffrey Gray The Village Voice; Features; Pg. 43 June 25, 2002, Tuesday
She didn't want to talk. She hadn't answered the phone in weeks. Picking it up this time was a fluke. ''I'm just trying to focus on my work,'' Coleen Rowley, the FBI's most outspoken special agent, told the Voice two days before testifying for the Senate Judiciary Committee. ''I'm just trying to get back,'' she added, ''back to the way it was.''
That's a long way from where she is now, a long way from the fitful nights in May when she typed that 13-page memo to the chief at headquarters and transformed herself, virtually overnight, into America's most courageous counterterrorism superhero, ''Cassandra'' Rowley, whistle-blower extraordinaire--the 20-year veteran who blasted her bosses as ''careerists'' and claimed her beloved agency "circled the wagons'' to cover up a score of pre--9-11 intelligence blunders.
Bob Novak started the questioning: ''Mr. Wright, your charges against the FBI are really more disturbing, more serious, than Ms. Rowley's. Why is it, do you think, that you have been ignored by the media, ignored by the congressional committees, and no attention has been paid to your allegations?'' Wright paused. ''I don't know the true reasons for that.''
''It wasn't my intention to get the media involved,'' she said, in her Fargo-sweet accent. ''Gosh, now it's a little like . . . whoa! . . .
It's pretty way out there.'' Was she worried about retaliation? Losing her job? Public smears?
She had to leave for Washington. She didn't want to say.
Enter the patriotic tattletale, star of America's most thrilling political drama. Martyrdom. Public interest. Betrayal. The stakes could not be higher, nor the poorly dressed characters and overwrought plot more ripe for prime time. It's Must-See Reality TV.
But a story like Rowley's often ends years later with a subtle game of bureaucratic payback, a bitter finale the public rarely gets to witness.
Rowley has been promised protection. Some think her mass exposure will provide her with a shield of immunity. So far, the Minneapolis field office reports that no investigations into her situation exist, and at the word of FBI director Robert Mueller, there will be none in the future.
Public promises, counter a chorus of former whistle-blowers, only last so long. ''It's great TV for now,'' says Notra Trulock, former director of intelligence for the Department of Energy, ''but she has no idea what's she's gotten herself into.''
The first stop on the whistle-blower's roller coaster to ruin? Discreditation. That's what happened to Trulock, who was accused of racial bias when he blew the whistle on the bungled investigation into Wen Ho Lee, a scientist accused of spying for China.
''Anonymous news leaks always come first,'' he says. Fellow agents will peek into Rowley's personnel file, quiz her colleagues about her habits, and find something to feed the press, and already rumors are being whispered on the Hill. The gossip: Rowley once punished a whistle-blower herself.
Next, say those who've taken the ride, comes a gamut of retaliatory tactics: harassment from supervisors, the loss of office allies, a stripping of security clearance, the monitoring of activities, inter-office relocation--one Department of Agriculture informer was moved to a desk in the hallway outside the bathroom!--demotions, psychiatric or medical referrals, or ''administrative leave,'' to put it euphemistically.
''The FBI never fires whistle-blowers, directly,'' says psychiatric social worker Don Soeken.
In the late '70s, Soeken worked for the U.S. Public Health Service, and his job was to perform ''fitness for duty'' examinations for federal employees whose supervisors thought they were mentally unstable. But Soeken noticed something curious about his clientele. All his patients seemed to be whistle-blowers, Soeken says, and he was asked to label the muckrakers mentally unfit, giving the government the green light to dismiss them. Soeken refused. He then became a whistle-blower himself, reporting the shameful practice to Congress, and now helps whistle-blowers recover on a farm in West Virginia. He calls it the Whistlestop. ''There's only one commandment in the FBI,'' says one of his patients, Fred Whitehurst. ''Thou shall not say anything bad about the FBI.'' Whitehurst used to be the FBI's chief forensic scientist for explosives analysis; he examined the powders left on the rubble from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. For over a decade, he watched other lab scientists fudging reports to make quick criminal convictions. He howled. Now he lives in the backwoods of North Carolina, runs a forensic watchdog group, and drives a stripped-down Ford truck with crank-up windows. Like Rowley, Whitehurst was praised in Congress for his courage. Senators promised him an award ceremony in the White House Rose Garden. What he got instead were demotions, a missing medical record, internal investigations, followed by psychological treatments. ''The FBI will push you 'til you break,'' he says, ''and you can never return from your day in the sun.'' Like many other agents, he was flown to the Isaac Ray Center in Chicago to undergo a fitness-for-duty evaluation. For 27 years, Isaac Ray has enjoyed a contract to treat FBI personnel, and in addition to working on criminals and delinquents, they've also shrunk the heads of celebrity madmen like John F. Hinckley Jr. ''Vulgar rape'' is how Whitehurst describes his experience there. ''I was sentenced to a room for nine hours and wasn't even allowed to pee.'' Isaac Ray denies the spooky, X-Files allegations. Evaluations--which can stretch over several days and cost over $10,000--are based on a comprehensive test featuring 565 yes-or-no questions, according to the center, and that test has not changed in 30 years. ''People like Whitehurst who are 'normal' are going to have trouble if you give them enough stress over a long period of time,'' says center president Dr. James Cavanaugh. ''But I can assure you nobody is being submitted to vulgarities or unusual procedures.'' Whitehurst says he had no choice but to undergo the treatment, because if he refused, the bureau would fire him for insubordination.
''The strange thing is, Americans pray for patriotic individuals to save them from national disasters,'' Whitehurst says. ''But when that someone comes along, they slice into your abdomen, pull 30 feet of gut out, stomp on it, and then what kind of hero are you?
''You're not. You've been branded as a loon. All you have to do in the FBI is step in the line of fire. You'll get blown away.''
The same day Rowley left for Washington, a colleague of hers, Special Agent Robert Wright, was waiting a few hundred miles away in the FBI's Chicago field office. Wright was getting nervous. Again. The producers from CNN's Crossfire had been calling; they wanted the young, baby-faced Fed on their Thursday night show, with Carville and Novak, to coincide with the presumed lead story, Rowley's testimony. At the advice of his counsel, Wright agreed.
Wright's a whistle-blower, too--well, sort of. He's a money guy, tracks the accounts of international terrorists, and like Rowley, he claims his investigation, code named Vulgar Betrayal, was obstructed by the bureau. Like Rowley, he also has suggested 9-11 could have been prevented. But unlike her, he can't seem to find anyone in Washington who'll listen.
Bob Novak started the questioning: ''Mr. Wright, your charges against the FBI are really more disturbing, more serious, than Ms. Rowley's. Why is it, do you think, that you have been ignored by the media, ignored by the congressional committees, and no attention has been paid to your allegations?''
Wright paused. ''I don't know the true reasons for that.''
Part of the problem started with him. He asked the FBI for permission to go public with his 500-page manuscript, which he says outlines the failures of the FBI's counterterrorism efforts. Muzzled by the Office of Public and Congressional Affairs, he sought help last summer from Judicial Watch, a Washington nonprofit famous for suing government to get documents and expose corruption. Judicial Watch is now suing the FBI for him. And his life is slowly going to hell.
Once on Al Qaeda's trail, Wright now works run-of-the-mill bank fraud cases. He's also been hit with two claims of harassment--one sexual, one racial--both deemed baseless by his lawyers. No one, it would seem, takes him seriously--except Judicial Watch, who are calling him another victim of the bureau's ''culture of fear.''
Coleen Rowley walked into the chambers of the Senate Judiciary Committee like John Wayne, wearing a badge and carrying her pistol. Yet with a frumpy jacket and oversized glasses, she looked like a stressed librarian, the sleepless owner of many cats. Hours before, her boss had promised the nation he would protect her. But nothing in the law requires him to. Federal whistle-blower statutes don't apply to FBI agents. Rather than being reviewed by a third party, their complaints are handled internally. Shielded by nothing but her naivete and the goodwill of her boss, Rowley sat alone before a hundred flashbulbs and told the world the FBI needs to change, quickly. She was polite, thorough, boring.
During the recess, the network pundits seemed disappointed with the performance. Sure, Rowley had fleshed out the details of her letter, they argued, but she wasn't naming names. She showed no outrage. She wasn't acting like a whistle-blower. She even commended Bob Mueller! She was positive about change! Hardly the renegade tone for what could be the last words of a martyr. ''Maybe the 'treatment' will be different for Rowley,'' says Soeken, ''but I doubt it.''
About how many questions are on the MMPI? Any idea? Just curious...
Washington
The parents of an American teen-ager slain on the West Bank have filed suit in a federal court in Chicago against Islamic groups and charities, claiming they raised money in the United States for Hamas, a radical Islamic group that has carried out dozens of suicide bombings against Israelis.
|
Also among the defendants is Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook, a native of Gaza who was deported to Jordan in 1997 and then deported from the kingdom last year when King Abdullah closed the Hamas political bureau in Amman, and Mohammed Abdul Hamid Khalil Salah, described as the leader of Hamas" military branch and a resident of Illinois. |
The Boims asked for $600 million in damages in what could be the first effort by individuals to use federal terrorism laws against what the suit called "a network of front organizations" in the United States that raise money for Islamic causes.
Actually, the suit contended, the money was channeled to terrorists and some of it was used to pay for the vehicle, machine guns and ammunition used to kill the Boims' son David, a 17-year-old yeshiva student who was gunned down in 1996 waiting with other students at a bus stop in Beit El, on the West Bank. Earlier, the two attackers had opened fire on a civilian bus and injured two passengers.
The Palestinian Authority apprehended Amjad Hinawi and Khalif Tawfiq Al-Sharif, described in the court papers as known members of Hamas' military wing, in 1997.
Hinawi confessed and was tried and convicted by a Palestinian court in 1997 and sentenced in 1998 to 10 years in prison. According to the suit, Al-Sharif was released by Palestinian authorities and participated in a suicide bombing in Jerusalem in 1997 in which five civilians were killed and 192 injured.
Among the groups named as defendants were Quranic Literacy Institute, with offices in Oak Lawn, Ill.; Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, a California corporation with a branch office in Illinois; and Islamic Association for Palestine. The Quranic institute is said to translate and publish sacred Islamic texts. The Holy Land foundation claims to conduct a variety of humanitarian relief and development efforts. The Islamic association disseminates information on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Also among the defendants is Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook, a native of Gaza who was deported to Jordan in 1997 and then deported from the kingdom last year when King Abdullah closed the Hamas political bureau in Amman, and Mohammed Abdul Hamid Khalil Salah, described as the leader of Hamas" military branch and a resident of Illinois.
A telephone number is listed for a Mohammed Salah in Bridgeview, Ill., but efforts to reach him were unsuccessful because the number is not published.
"In general, the allegations that have been brought against us in this case and the preceding case that's still in court are utterly false," said Ahmer Haleem, secretary of the Quranic Literacy Institute in Oak Lawn, Ill., a suburb just sought of Chicago. "In my judgment, they are persecutorial in nature.
"I think that it's important for people in the media to begin to take a deeper look at what's happening to Muslims in America," Halem said, adding that he believes Muslims are being unfairly targeted by government authorities, such as the FBI as part of an aggressive anti-terrorism effort.
"Rather than protecting American citizens, they are targeting Muslims," he said. "There's an assumption in the media that Muslims are somehow associated with terrorism. It's as dangerous as the Oklahoma bombing situation pointed out."
Haleem's reference to the "preceding case" was to a civil forfeiture action brought by the Justice Department under the same law relied on by the suits filed Friday by individual platintiffs. The Justice Department civil case has been put on hold by a federal judge as the request of the defendants, who said they also were subjects of a criminal investigation.
A message left Sunday with the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development branch in Palos Hills, Ill., was not immediately returned.
No listing could be found in Illinois for a branch of the Islamic Association for Palestine.
CHICAGO
The parents of an American teen-ager killed by members of a Palestinian militant group in the West Bank can sue U.S. Islamic charities accused of contributing to the organization, a federal appeals court ruled.
|
Named as defendants in the Boims' lawsuit are Quranic Literacy Institute of Oak Lawn; Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, which has offices in Palos Hills; and Mohammed Abdul Hamid Khalil Salah, a Bridgeview resident who served five years in an Israeli prison for funneling funds to Hamas. |
"It should be taken as a warning to any contributors to an organization that supports terrorism that if there is an American victim, he can sue the contributors and recover huge damages in an American court," said Nathan Lewin, an attorney for Joyce and Stanley Boim. The couple filed a $300 million lawsuit in the 1996 killing of their son, David, by Hamas militants.
The court's decision marked the first time a federal appeals court ruled on the provisions of the 1992 federal Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows for the recovery of damages due to acts of terrorism.
"It's a notable decision both for the fact that it addresses a very interesting and largely unsettled free-speech issue and it arises in the context of lots of terrorist acts taking place," said Jesse Chopper, law professor at the University of California at Berkeley.
Attorneys for the charities, which had appealed a trial judge's decision not to throw out the lawsuit, argue that only people who commit terrorist acts can be sued under the law.
Named as defendants in the Boims' lawsuit are Quranic Literacy Institute of Oak Lawn; Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, which has offices in Palos Hills; and Mohammed Abdul Hamid Khalil Salah, a Bridgeview resident who served five years in an Israeli prison for funneling funds to Hamas.
The groups have said there is no way they could have known that any money they contributed to organizations on the West Bank would be used in the Boim shooting.
John Beal, an attorney representing the Quranic Literacy Institute, which translates Islamic texts, said no decision has been made on whether to ask the full court to hear the case or appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Holy Land Foundation, whose offices were raided and closed by the U.S. Treasury Department in December as part of a terrorism investigation, has denied supporting terrorism, saying it raises funds for humanitarian and disaster relief. Salah couldn't be reached for comment because he has an unlisted phone number.
The Boims are former New Yorkers who live in Jerusalem. Their son was a 17-year-old yeshiva student when he was gunned down while waiting with other students at a bus stop in the Jewish settlement of Beit El. The men apprehended in the attack were described in court papers as members of Hamas.
Administer To Individuals 18 years and older
Reading Level 6th grade
Completion Time 60-90 minutes (567 true/false items*)
*Seems kind of close to "565 yes-or-no questions", no?
couple questions:
was the Holy Land Foundation the operation in the Dallas area that was raided/shut down the week preceeding 9/11?
have US authorities frozen/siezed Holy Land Foundation assets in the U.S.?
p.s. looks like this case has been going on for a couple years now.
The warrant was sealed by a Dallas judge and federal agents refused comment on the motive of the raid. But agents appeared to copying from computer hard drives and had cut off the Internet service to company's 500 clients.One of those clients, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, which calls itself the nation's largest Muslim charity, is located just across the street from the Internet business.
During the raid, InfoCom's employees relocated to the foundation's offices.
Holy Land has itself been under federal investigation for alleged ties to Hamas and has been outlawed in Israel, where the Palestinian movement has been blamed for terrorist attacks.
If it isn't Whitey Bulger and the Rifleman murdering people for decades with the full knowledge of the directors of the FBI, it's Clinton's fascist cabal covering up Oklahoma City, Waco, TWA 800, and looking the other way when they're told that terrorists are planning to kill more Americans.
Yeah, this used to be real "tinfoiler" stuff. Right now, it looks like the tinfoilers are the only people in this country with any intelligence at all.
holy land was a client.
I think there shared office space or were in the same building or something like that.
who knows? (please pass the reynolds wrap)
We must be careful about all the stuff we covered up in the 90's.
The article posted contains never before reported information, such as the sample above. I suggest you read both articles if you are interested in the new information.
An Agent tearing up at the disclosure that the FBI's failure contributed to the deaths of over 2,800 citizens has already been reported, but thanks for the reminder. The magnitude of the FBI's failure is overwhelming for some.
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