Posted on 06/08/2003 11:04:50 PM PDT by chance33_98
A scary story of militants, FBI bungling
06/08/03
Donna Marchetti Special to The Plain Dealer
Imagine you are a Jewish woman living in the United States with your husband and children.
On Friday night, you and your family have a traditional Shabbat dinner. On Saturday morning, you rise and don a chador, the black baglike garment worn by many Muslim women in the Middle East. Under your clothing, you have taped a small recording device to your skin. Your husband drops you off a few blocks from your destination. At the door of a mosque, or perhaps a convention center, you become an Arabic-speaking Muslim. It's in your accent, your mannerisms, the thoughts you express.
Then you walk into the hall where people are calling for the murder of Jews, and you turn on your recorder.
This is what the anonymous author of "Terrorist Hunter" does routinely. Her book, part memoir, part investigative reporting, can be breathless and disjointed, and its writing sometimes amateurish. That shouldn't stop any would-be readers; its contents are chilling.
Born into a well-off Iraqi Jewish family, the author enjoyed an idyllic childhood until one day shortly after Saddam Hussein's Baath party seized power in 1968. Government henchmen broke down their door and hauled her father off to prison, where they accused him of spying for Israel. He was held and tortured for a year. His pregnant wife was tortured in the next room so that he could hear her screams. A kangaroo court found him guilty, and he was hanged in a public square along with eight other Jews to the cheers of a half-million spectators.
The author fled with her family to neighboring Iran and then to Israel, where she grew up and got married. Eventually, she, her husband and their children moved to the United States, and the restless young housewife answered an ad for employment at a research institute. Fast-forward a few months, and Anonymous is deep into the infiltration of militant Islamic organizations for her employer, which supplies intelligence to the U.S. government.
This is white-knuckle reading, as she tells of perspiration loosening the tape holding her recorder in place, of slip-ups in conversation, of having to sit passively while a Muslim scholar tells his audience that Israelis make ashtrays from the skulls of Muslim fetuses.
But perhaps scarier than the hate spewed by these fanatics (who seem far more numerous than most of us might suspect) is the downright ineptitude, arrogance and grandstanding with which she says the FBI has conducted its investigations of these groups and their activities. Not only did they regularly ignore her reports and refuse to cooperate with other government agencies, they began to investigate her.
Anonymous' anger at the FBI is not personal. It's the outrage of a nation, expressed in one woman's voice, for every day that passes as the tangled web of organized terrorists comes closer to accomplishing its goals, while a bunch of bungling, bickering federal agents allow it to happen.
Is all of this exaggerated, or even untrue? It's impossible to say.
The author's anonymity might raise questions of credibility, yet by writing her account, she risks reprisals by terrorist organizations and further FBI investigation. Furthermore, her accusations are remarkably similar to those of FBI lawyer Coleen Rowley, who took headquarters to task for thwarting her office's investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui. Had she been allowed to proceed unhampered, Rowley claimed, the investigation might have led to the pre- vention of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Reason enough, in my estimation, to pay heed to Anonymous' warnings.
Marchetti is a critic in Cleveland Heights.
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