How Faisal snuck through
Easy path from terror camp to US
By PAUL SPERRY
Excerpt:
Six years ago, Homeland Security ordered customs agents at JFK and other international airports to examine all travelers of Pakistani descent -- including US citizens -- for "rope burns," "unusual bruises," "wounds/scars" and other signs of minor injuries suffered while attending "terrorist training camps in Pakistan."
The sensitive two-page action alert -- dated June 17, 2004 -- warned that individuals trained in the Pakistani camps "are destined" to carry out terror attacks inside the US.
A lot of good it did. The system flagged Shahzad -- but he was allowed to continue traveling to Pakistan and eventually obtain a US passport, all the while eluding FBI monitoring.
The "Pakistan watch" intensified in January 2005, when the Department of Homeland Security directed airport inspectors to help intercept "Pakistani-based young men in their 20s traveling to the US." The men were believed to be plotting to attack New York and other terror targets. But inspectors stood down once that specific threat passed.
Months later, British citizens of Pakistani origin bombed the London subways after training at Pakistan camps -- and DHS ordered US border authorities to renew their focus on Pakistani travelers. But Washington soon backed off the increased scrutiny after the Pakistani Embassy and US Muslim groups complained about profiling.
Then UK authorities foiled the August 2006 plot to blow up planes over US cities. The Pakistani Britons in that cell had also trained at camps in Pakistan -- so Homeland Security again put agents back on high alert for Pakistani travelers.
The department even created a temporary watchlist, called a "one-day lookout," to screen high-risk passengers inbound from Pakistan. Those flagged (in the so-called ATS-P computer system) are subjected to a battery of questions and additional searches to determine if they've visited Pakistan terror camps.
And that system flagged Shahzad this past February when he re-entered the US from a five-month stint in Pakistan. He was sent to secondary inspection for a more detailed screening, where his bags were searched and he was asked about his long stay in Pakistan.
In fact, during that time he learned bomb-making at a terror camp. But he simply explained that he was visiting family and was released from custody. ("Looking for a bride" is another common line jihadist suspects returning from Pakistan use to escape investigation.)
DHS agents sent a report to the FBI, noting that Shahzad had been flagged after bringing some $80,000 in cash into the US. There were other red flags as well, such as the fact he'd come back this time without his wife.
But the bureau didn't aggressively follow up. "The FBI should have kept an eye on him," a DHS official told me.
Maybe the bureau was still smarting from the response to its September 2008 FBI manhunt for Pakistan-trained cells (launched in response to leads developed in the arrest of an al Qaeda operative). That got tamped down after Muslim groups led by CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations) and their Hill cheerleaders hounded FBI Director Robert Mueller for singling out young Muslim men. (House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers hammered Mueller in a public hearing over "racially profiling" Pakistanis.)
After the bombing attempt last Christmas, DHS increased airport scrutiny of travelers from Yemen, Pakistan and other high-risk Muslim nations. But howls over profiling soon prompted Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to scrap the policy.
This politically correct, piecemeal system isn't enough to protect us from the growing threat of American turncoats training for jihad in Pakistan.
Bad guys like Shahzad -- and Najibullah Zazi, the Queens native who plotted to blow up the New York subways, and Daood Gilani (aka David Headley), who helped plan the Mumbai massacre -- still slip back into the US after training to kill in Pakistan, then go on their way.
We need to close the front door overseas: Washington should place a moratorium on new visas for young male immigrants from Pakistan until the terror camps are permanently closed. And the FBI must keep a closer eye on young Pakistani-American men and their mosques -- and not apologize for it.
Otherwise, it's just a matter of time before one of them uses his overseas terror training against his American countrymen -- this time successfully.
Excerpt:
A mosque rises over Ground Zero. And fed-up New Yorkers are crying, "No!"
A chorus of critics -- from neighbors to those who lost loved ones on 9/11 to me -- feel as if they've received a swift kick in the teeth.
Plans are under way for a Muslim house of worship, topped by a 13-story cultural center with a swimming pool, in a building damaged by the fuselage of a jet flown by extremists into the World Trade Center.
The opening date shall live in infamy: Sept. 11, 2011. The 10th anniversary of the day a hole was punched in the city's heart.
How the devil did this happen?
Plans to bring what one critic calls a "monster mosque" to the site of the old Burlington Coat Factory building, at a cost expected to top $100 million, moved along for months without a peep. All of a sudden, even members of the community board that stupidly green-lighted the mosque this month are tearing their hair out.
Paul Sipos, member of Community Board 1, said a mosque is a fine idea -- someplace else.
"If the Japanese decided to open a cultural center across from Pearl Harbor, that would be insensitive," Sipos told me. "If the Germans opened a Bach choral society across from Auschwitz, even after all these years, that would be an insensitive setting. I have absolutely nothing against Islam. I just think: Why there?"
Why, indeed.
A rally against the mosque is planned for June 6, D-Day, by the human-rights group Stop Islamicization of America. Executive director Pamela Geller said, "What could be more insulting and humiliating than a monster mosque in the shadow of the World Trade Center buildings that were brought down by an Islamic jihad attack? Any decent American, Muslim or otherwise, wouldn't dream of such an insult. It's a stab in the eye of America."
Called Cordoba House, the mosque and center is the brainchild of the American Society for Muslim Advancement. Executive director Daisy Khan insists it's staying put.
"For us, it's a symbol, a platform that will give voice to the silent majority of Muslims who suffer at the hands of extremists. A center will show that Muslims will be part of rebuilding lower Manhattan," said Khan, adding that Cordoba will be open to everyone.
"We were pleased to see that the community welcomed us as an asset to lower Manhattan," she added. "The community board approved it."
Not so fast.
The Financial District Committee of Community Board 1 seems to have gotten ensnared in a public-relations ploy by mosque-makers. At a May 5 meeting, the committee gave the project an enthusiastic thumbs-up. But boards have zero say over religious institutions.
Board chair Julie Menin, blind-sided by the move, predicts "this will be overturned by the full board" later this month.
snip
Unclear is how the mosque will raise the $100 million-plus it needs.
"We would be seeking funding from anyone who would help," Khan told me. "Seeking maybe some bonds or something like that." At the May 5 community board meeting, she displayed a sign with names like "Rockefeller Brothers Fund" and "Ford Foundation," which observers believed meant money is coming from those organizations. But Khan says those groups merely gave money in the past, and no funding is yet in place.
There are many questions about the Ground Zero mosque. But just one answer.
Move it away.
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Does anybody but me find the name Daisy Khan just a little humorous in an otherwise insanely UNfunny world?