Recorded Decem­ber 11, 2005

Lis­ten: MP3

Side 1  Side 2

REALAUDIO

Intro­duc­tion: Begin­ning with an inter­view with the remark­able John Lof­tus, this broad­cast high­lights the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the acquit­tal of Sami al-Arian—a close polit­i­cal ally of George W. Bush. In addi­tion to his close rela­tion­shio with Bush and other promi­nent Repub­li­cans, “Sammy the Aryan” is a leader of Pales­tin­ian Islamic Jihad, a ter­ror­ist group and off­shoot of the fas­cist Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. After review­ing the story of his law­suit against al-Arian, and how that suit led to the Oper­a­tions Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002, John Lof­tus dis­closes that Judge Moody made al-Arian’s acquit­tal a sure thing with his instruc­tions to the jury. Judge Moody told the jury they must acquit, if the pros­e­cu­tion could not prove that the money al-Arian raised for PIJ was used to com­mit a ter­ror­ist act. After the inter­view with Mr. Lof­tus, the pro­gram reviews the al-Arian case, includ­ing his links to Bush, the GOP, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, and a milieu that financed al Qaeda. The broad­cast reviews sev­eral other irreg­u­lar­i­ties that led to the acquit­tal of al-Arian, a proven ter­ror­ist who was under the pro­tec­tive wing of the White House and the Repub­li­can Party, as well as the Saudi polit­i­cal and eco­nomic elite.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of the “acci­den­tal” destruc­tion of key doc­u­ments in the al-Arian case; review of the fact that the statute of lim­i­ta­tions had expired for many of the crimes with which al-Arian should have been charged; review of the fact that many of al-Arian’s crim­i­nal co-conspirators were out­side of the reach of the fed­eral gov­ern­ment and could not be brought to trial; review of the links between Grover Norquist, Karl Rove, Bush busi­ness part­ner and polit­i­cal ally Talat Oth­man, the SAAR net­work, the Bank Al Taqwa (and its head–former Nazi spy Youssef Nada) and Sami al-Arian; al-Arian’s pres­ence and activ­i­ties in the United States as an exten­sion of the doc­trine set forth in The Project, dis­cussed in FTR #537.

1. An excel­lent way to begin this dis­cus­sion is the pre­sen­ta­tion of a pic­ture of a 4/15/2005 rally by Pales­tin­ian Islamic Jihad, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood off­shoot to which Sammi al-Arian belongs. (Al-Arian is referred to by Mr. Emory as “Sammy the Aryan”—a direct ref­er­ence to the Nazi and fas­cist char­ac­ter of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood.) Excused by West­ern apol­o­gists as a “demo­c­ra­tic” group, the Mus­lim Brotherhood—including its branch orga­ni­za­tion Pales­tin­ian Islamic Jihad—is any­thing but demo­c­ra­tic. Check out this pic­ture, which reveals in stark fash­ion the true nature of the group to which “Sammy the Aryan” belongs.

2. Much of the first side of the pro­gram con­sists of an inter­view with John Lof­tus, the heroic for­mer fed­eral pros­e­cu­tor and mil­i­tary offi­cer whose work has fig­ured promi­nently in these broad­casts over the years. (For more about Lof­tus, use the For The Record web site search func­tion.) Much of the pro­gram involves a review by John of the his­tory of the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s alliances with Nazi Ger­many, British intel­li­gence, the CIA and Saudi Ara­bia. Again, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is the par­ent orga­ni­za­tion of Sami al-Arian’s Pales­tin­ian Islamic Jihad. John also reviews how his law­suit against al-Arian led to the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002. (FTR#473 con­tains a good syn­op­sis of the major points of infor­ma­tion con­tained in this part of the discussion.)

3. Dis­cussing the acquit­tal of al-Arian, John noted that a wire­tap of al-Arian’s tele­phone in 1989 recorded al-Arian bemoan­ing the fact that Hamas (a rival off­shoot of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood) had taken pub­lic credit for a ter­ror­ist act that he had set up. Abun­dant evi­dence exists to prove al-Arian com­plicit in ter­ror­ism. MR. LOFTUS MAKES THE POINT THAT PRESIDING JUDGE MOODY CHARGED THE JURY IN A MANNER THAT MADE CONVICTION IMPOSSIBLE. MOODY INSTRUCTED THE JURY THAT, UNLESS THE PROSECUTION COULD PROVE THAT THE MONEY AL-ARIAN RAISED FOR PALESTINIAN ISLAMIC JIHAD WAS USED TO COMMIT TERRORIST ACTS (WHICH IS IMPOSSIBLE), THEY HAD TO ACQUIT. Not sur­pris­ingly, the jury did not con­vict al-Arian. Other obsta­cles stand­ing in the way of al-Arian’s pros­e­cu­tion will be dis­cussed below. One should not lose sight of the fact that al-Arian was a close polit­i­cal ally of George W. Bush. In addi­tion, the above-mentioned 3/20/2002 Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids revealed that al-Arian was part of the SAAR net­work, itself very close to the GOP and the White House. This will be dis­cussed below as well. (For more about the GOP/SAAR/Muslim Brotherhood/al-Arian con­nec­tion, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 415, 435, 454, 462, 464, 467, 495, 500, 515.)

4. In addi­tion to Judge Moody’s unimag­in­able instruc­tions to the jury, al-Arian’s acquit­tal was assured by the fact that the statute of lim­i­ta­tions had expired for many of the crimes with which he might have been charged. On top of that, his co-conspirators in his long ter­ror­ist career were out of the coun­try and could not be brought to trial in the U.S. In his dis­cus­sion of the al-Arian case, John Lof­tus notes the extent to which the fed­eral author­i­ties refused to bring charges against al-Arian, and—beyond that—the SAAR net­work, to which he belonged. That delay had much to do with al-Arian’s acquit­tal. (As will be seen below, that net­work was directly linked to George W. Bush’s pow­er­ful Saudi friends, as well as to Bush, the GOP and top Repub­li­can oper­a­tives Grover Norquist and Karl Rove.)

“ . . . Some defense attor­neys said out­side the court­room in recent days that the three defendants—Ballut, for­mer uni­ver­sity stu­dent Sameeh Taha Ham­moudeh and Ili­nois char­ity man­ager Hatim Maji Fariz—were swept into the case because of pros­e­cu­tors’ need to build a crim­i­nal case of conspiracy—in this case, con­spir­acy to kill and maim hun­dreds of Israelis since the 1980’s. Legal experts said that the U.S. gov­ern­ment had lit­tle choice but to craft a con­spir­acy case. The vast bulk of their evi­dence, derived from years of secret wire­taps and mon­i­tor­ing of faxes, cen­ters on the early to mid-1990s, before al-Arian’s offices and home were searched and he became more cir­cum­spect over the telephone.”

(“Co-Defendants in Fla. Deny Ties to Con­spir­acy” by John Mintz; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 6/8/2005; pp. 1–2.)

5. Note the role that the expi­ra­tion of the statute of lim­i­ta­tions played in this case:

“But the statute of lim­i­ta­tions allows the pros­e­cu­tion to charge some­one for crimes going back only five years—unless the charge is con­spir­acy, in which case the gov­ern­ment can bring in alle­ga­tions going back decades, as it has done in this trial. [Empha­sis added.] The prob­lem for the pros­e­cu­tion, defense attor­neys said, is that those secretly mon­i­tored wire­taps and faxes show al-Arian dis­cussing inti­mate details of PIJ’s oper­a­tions not with his three co-defendants but with five other men.”

(Ibid.; p. 2.)

6. “All of those five men were top PIJ lead­ers with al-Arian for years, U.S. pros­e­cu­tors said, and all of them have been charged with him with con­spir­acy to murder—but they are over­seas and will not be tried in this case. Defense attor­neys and crim­i­nal lawyers who have observed the case said the gov­ern­ment was in a jam—how could it put on a trial for crim­i­nal con­spir­acy and have only one con­spir­a­tor at the defense table?”

(Idem.)

7. “The three defen­dants on trial with al-Arian are basi­cally stage props,’ said Steve Craw­ford, a for­mer fed­eral pros­e­cu­tor who has fol­lowed the case and who recently rep­re­sented Hammoudeh’s wife on an unre­lated fraud charge. ‘The gov­ern­ment didn’t have enough of the big guns [from PIJ] here to give a visual show­ing of a con­spir­acy, so they sweep in the poor mopes at the bottom.’”

(Ibid.; p. 3.)

8. “Defense lawyers and pros­e­cu­tors declined to com­ment. U.S. Dis­trict Judge James Moody has barred them from speak­ing about the case out­side the court­room. The five over­seas defen­dants who are not on trial now were caught in hun­dreds of phone calls and faxes dis­cussing the key strate­gic issues then fac­ing PIJ—deep inter­nal strug­gles, the dis­ap­pear­ances of mil­lions of dol­lars, how to pla­cate its angry finan­cial back­ers in the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment, and whether to merge with the Islamic Resis­tance Move­ment, a com­pet­ing mil­i­tant Pales­tin­ian group.”

(Idem.)

9. “The five are Ramadan Shal­lah, who worked at an al-Arian think tank at the Uni­ver­sity of South Florida and who now runs PIJ from Syria; Abd al Aziz Awda, PIJ’s orig­i­nal spir­i­tual leader; al-Arian’s brother-in-law, Mazen al-Najjar; lead­ing Mus­lim scholar Bashir Nafi; and Muhammed Tasir al-Khatib, the group’s alleged treasurer. . . .”

(Idem.)

10. Another fac­tor in the acquit­tal of Bush’s buddy Sami al-Arian was the fact that many of the con­ver­sa­tions link­ing him to ter­ror­ism occurred before the offi­cial des­ig­na­tion of Pales­tin­ian Islamic Jihad as a ter­ror­ist group in 1995. As will be seen below, another fac­tor dic­tat­ing the acquit­tal of Sammy the Aryan may well have been the “acci­den­tal” destruc­tion of key doc­u­ments by fed­eral authorities.

“ . . . But much of the con­ver­sa­tion and activ­ity used by pros­e­cu­tors pre­dated the 1995 des­ig­na­tion by the United States of Pales­tin­ian Islamic Jihad as a ter­ror­ist group, a des­ig­na­tion that pro­hib­ited Amer­i­cans from sup­port­ing it. Sev­eral legal ana­lysts and law pro­fes­sors said Tues­day that the gov­ern­ment appeared to have over­reached in its case. . . .”

(“Ex-Professor Beats Ter­ror Charges” by Eric Licht­blau [New York Times]; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 12/7/2005; p. A5.)

11. In eval­u­at­ing the acquit­tal of Bush’s Buddy, remem­ber the role in these events of Harken Energy direc­tor (and polit­i­cal ally of George Bush Sr and George Bush Jr) Talat Oth­man. (Harken Energy was one of the younger Bush’s failed energy com­pa­nies.) Oth­man gave a Mus­lim bene­dic­tion at the Repub­li­can con­ven­tion, and was a direc­tor of Grover Norquist’s Islamic Institute—a cen­tral ele­ment of the GOP’s con­nec­tions to the world of Islamic ter­ror­ism. Norquist served as a lob­by­ist for many of the Islamists involved with the GOP milieu, includ­ing Sami al-Arian. Be sure to note Othman’s role in inter­ced­ing with then Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Paul O’Neill on behalf of the tar­gets of the 3/20/2002 Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids, which were spurred by John Loftus’s suit against al-Arian. (Othman’s inter­ces­sion with O’Neill is dis­cussed below, and in—among other programs—FTR#’s 356, 357, 376, 454, 462, 464, 467.) The dis­cus­sion reviews some of the Mus­lim ter­ror­ist links to Norquist, Bush and company.

“ . . . ‘The Al-Arian case was not a soli­tary lapse. . . . That out­reach cam­paign opened rela­tion­ships between the Bush cam­paign and some very dis­turb­ing per­sons in the Muslim-American com­mu­nity.’ Nev­er­the­less, Norquist con­tin­ued to build a coali­tion of Islamist groups to sup­port Bush. On July 31, 2000, the Repub­li­can National Con­ven­tion opened in Philadel­phia with a prayer by a Mus­lim, Talat Oth­man, in which Oth­man offered a duaa, a Mus­lim bene­dic­tion. It was the first time a Mus­lim had addressed any major U.S. polit­i­cal gath­er­ing. A third-generation Amer­i­can and a busi­ness­man from Chicago of Muslim-Arab descent, Oth­man was chair­man of the Islamic Insti­tute. He had also been the board mem­ber of Harken Energy rep­re­sent­ing the inter­ests of Abdul­lah Taha Bakhsh, the Saudi investor who had helped Bush make his for­tune by bail­ing out Harken in the late eight­ies. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s] When the con­ven­tion ended on August 3, after George W. Bush had for­mally been nom­i­nated for pres­i­dent, between his family’s extended per­sonal and finan­cial ties to the House of Saud and his campaign’s ties to Islamists, it could be said that he was truly the Ara­bian Candidate. . . .”

(House of Bush/House of Saud; by Craig Unger; Scrib­ner [HC]; Copy­right 2004 by Craig Unger; ISBN 0–7432-5337-X; pp. 208–209.)

12. Norquist’s Islamic Insti­tute sig­nif­i­cantly over­lapped indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions tar­geted in the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002. A sum­mary account of those raids and the inves­ti­ga­tion into the SAAR foun­da­tion and the Safa trust fol­lows: As will be seen below, Sami al-Arian was part and par­cel to this milieu. Again, it was John Loftus’s law­suit against al-Arian that pre­cip­i­tated these raids.

“ . . . In the early morn­ing hours of Wednes­day, March 20, 2002, 150 fed­eral agents—many with their guns drawn—raided four­teen offices and homes in the sub­urbs of Wash­ing­ton, D.C. FBI and Cus­toms agents loaded seven panel trucks with more than five hun­dred boxes of doc­u­ments, com­put­ers, and finan­cial records of more than one hun­dred char­i­ties, think tanks, and busi­nesses affil­i­ated with the Hern­don, Virginia—based SAAR Foun­da­tion. Most of the inter­re­lated busi­nesses and char­i­ties were run out of a sin­gle office at 555 Grove Street, a brown brick and glass three-story office com­plex on a quiet street.”

(Blood from Stones: The Secret Finan­cial Net­work of Ter­ror; by Dou­glas Farah; Broad­way Books [HC] (sub­sidiary of Ran­dom House); Copy­right 2004 by Dou­glas Farah; ISBN 0–7679-15262–3; p. 152.)

13. “The SAAR Foun­da­tion, the back­bone of the clus­ter, takes its name from Sulaiman Abdul Aziz al Rajhi, head of one of Saudi Arabia’s wealth­i­est fam­i­lies, who fun­neled mil­lions of dol­lars through the clus­ter of busi­nesses and char­i­ties. The al Rajhi name was on the Golden Chain list of early al Qaeda sup­port­ers that was found in the Benev­o­lence files in Sarajevo.”

(Ibid.; pp. 152–153.)

14. “The SAAR Foun­da­tion was incor­po­rated in Hern­don, Vir­ginia, on July 29, 1983, and for­mally dis­solved on Decem­ber 28, 2000. How­ever, many of the foundation’s func­tions were taken over by the Safa Trust, an orga­ni­za­tion reg­is­tered at the same address and run by sev­eral of the same board mem­bers. Law enforce­ment offi­cials dubbed the maze of the over­lap­ping com­pa­nies, with shared direc­tors, the Safa Group. The groups often financed each other, send­ing the money in cir­cles. The scores of Safa orga­ni­za­tions are con­trolled by about fif­teen Mid­dle East­ern and Pak­istani men who serve with each other on a host of insti­tu­tional boards. Four senior lead­ers of the net­work are Iraqis who had lived in Saudi Ara­bia, and have been mem­bers of the Mus­lim Brotherhood.”

(Ibid.; p. 153.)

15. Note the role of Yaqub Mirza in the gen­e­sis of the orga­ni­za­tions asso­ci­ated with SAAR and Safa Trust. Mirza was a key direc­tor of the Ptech firm, and report­edly had sig­nif­i­cant con­nec­tions with the FBI. (For more about Mirza’s links with the FBI and Ptech, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 462, 464.)

“In the United States, the men used Saudi money to launch some of the nation’s lead­ing Mus­lim orga­ni­za­tions. In 1983, with money from the al Rajhi fam­ily, the SAAR Foun­da­tion was born. The direc­tor was Yaqub Mirza, a Pak­istani native with a Ph.D. in physics from the Uni­ver­sity of Texas. Other groups were formed shortly after­ward. Five of the top Safa exec­u­tives live in spa­cious homes on adjoin­ing lots in Safa Court in Hern­don, a twenty-two-acre par­cel of land bought by one of the SAAR-affiliated firms in 1987.”

(Idem.)

16. “In time, the Safa net­work owned or invested in scores of busi­nesses world­wide: dairy farms in Zim­babwe; schools in Ivory Coast; a huge poul­try busi­ness in the state of Geor­gia; an Islamic mutual fund in Wash­ing­ton state; an invest­ment com­pany in Malaysia; shell com­pa­nies in Panama; and com­mer­cial apple orchards in Chile. By the late 1980’s, the SAAR Foun­da­tion had become one of the Wash­ing­ton, D.C., region’s biggest land­lords. ‘The funds came very eas­ily,’ said a busi­ness­man who dealt with SAAR. ‘If they wanted a few mil­lion dol­lars, they called the al Rajhis, who would send it along.’ At the same time, the lead­ers of the SAAR Foun­da­tion incor­po­rated and sat on the boards of char­i­ties and non­profit orga­ni­za­tions. Many were branches of Saudi char­i­ties that oper­ate worldwide. . . .”

(Ibid.; pp. 153–154.)

17. The pro­gram notes the sig­nif­i­cant over­laps between the SAAR net­work and the Al Taqwa net­work. (For more about the Al Taqwa/SAAR/Safa Trust link, see—among other pro­grams—FTR#’s 356, 357, 382, 415, 423, 425, 432, 433, 435, 454, 455. For more about the Norquist links to the tar­gets of Oper­a­tion Green Quest, see—among other pro­grams—FTR#’s 356, 357, 415, 425, 435, 454, 455, 462, 464, 467, 515.)

“ . . . Oper­a­tion Green Quest was launched in Octo­ber 2001 as part of the Cus­toms Ser­vice ini­tia­tive to track bin Laden’s finan­cial empire. In a small, win­dow­less con­fer­ence room Green Quest agents charted the Byzan­tine rela­tion­ships among the more than one hun­dred Safa net­work enti­ties, a spi­der­web of over­lap­ping names and orga­ni­za­tions. Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tors also charted the rela­tion­ship among the Safa net­work enti­ties and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood through the Al Taqwa Man­age­ment empire of Yousef Nada. U.S. offi­cials said they had tracked about $20 mil­lion from Safa enti­ties flow­ing through Nada’s Bank al Taqwa, but said the total could be much higher. [Empha­sis added.]”

(Ibid.; pp. 154–155.)

18. “The ties between Nada and Safa lead­ers were many and long-standing, as were their ties to other Broth­er­hood lead­ers. Two mem­bers of the Safa Group helped set up Bank al Taqwa in the Bahamas and sev­eral Safa lead­ers loaned Nada money. In 1976, two other men who later became promi­nent in the Safa Group founded Nada Inter­na­tional, a Broth­er­hood bank in Liecht­en­stein. For a time, Sulaiman Abdul al Rajhi, the SAAR Foun­da­tion founder, worked for Nada at that bank. Nada Inter­na­tional was des­ig­nated a ter­ror­ist financier by the Trea­sury Depart­ment after 9/11. . . .”

(Ibid.; p. 155.)

19. Do not fail to take note of the role in the SAAR/Safa Trust milieu of Cherif Sedky, a lawyer for Khalid bin Mah­fouz. Like the bin Laden fam­ily, the bin Mah­fouz fam­ily are busi­ness part­ners with the Bush family.

“ . . . SAAR lawyers said the $1.8 bil­lion was reported because of a cler­i­cal error, despite the fact that the ten-digit num­ber, $1,783, 545, 883, was repeated at least seven times on the form. Cherif Sedky, the foundation’s trea­surer, said that he ‘did not recall’ that amount of money flow­ing through the com­pany. . . . There is another thread in the Safa net­work that has drawn scrutiny from fed­eral inves­ti­ga­tors, For the last five years of its exis­tence, the trea­surer of the SAAR Foun­da­tion, the group’s cen­tral entity, was Cherif Sedky, an Amer­i­can lawyer rep­re­sent­ing the al Rajhi fam­ily. Sedky is also the rep­re­sen­ta­tive and busi­ness part­ner of Khalid bin Mah­fouz, one of the wealth­i­est men in the world and long­time banker to the Saudi royal family. . . .”

(Ibid.; p. 156.)

20. The Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids were trig­gered by a raid on the Sami al-Arian, the ter­ror­ist, sup­porter of Bush and asso­ciate of Norquist.

“ . . . The Safa Group might have escaped scrutiny in 2001, if not for a raid that occurred seven years ear­lier, lead­ing to another thread of inves­ti­ga­tion. In 1995, the FBI raided the home and offices of Sami al-Arian, a Kuwaiti-Palestinian com­puter sci­ence pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­sity of South Florida in Tampa. The feds sus­pected al-Arian, a slight, bearded, and bald­ing man, was secretly fun­nel­ing money to ter­ror­ists. They believed he was a senior mem­ber of the Pales­tin­ian Islamic Jihad, a group that unleashes sui­cide bombers against Israelis.”

(Ibid.; p. 158.)

21. More about Bush’s buddy:

“Al-Arian was a vocal activist on Pales­tin­ian causes, and he fre­quently spoke at Islamic con­fer­ences. At one 1991 con­fer­ence, al-Arian, dressed in the flow­ing robes of an imam, was video­taped shout­ing in Ara­bic ‘Let us Damn Amer­ica, let us damn Israel. Let us damn their allies until death.’ In the early 1990s, al-Arian set up orga­ni­za­tions to raise money for orphans and wid­ows and the study of Islam. He used the orga­ni­za­tions to spon­sor Mus­lim con­fer­ences, includ­ing one that fea­tured Omar Abdul Rah­man, the blind Sheik who insti­gated the 1993 World Trade Cen­ter attack.”

(Idem.)

22. “Al-Arian also spon­sored the U.S. visa of Ramadan Abdul­lah Shal­lah, who joined al-Arian on the uni­ver­sity fac­ulty from 1992 to 1994. But Shal­lah sud­denly dis­ap­peared in Octo­ber 1995, imme­di­ately fol­low­ing the assas­si­na­tion of PIJ leader Fat’hi Ibrahim Shikaki. Shal­lah resur­faced a few days later at Shikaki’s funeral in Dam­as­cus, where the slain leader’s body was taken with full mil­i­tary hon­ors. Shal­lah, stand­ing by the cas­ket, had been named Shikaki’s suc­ces­sor. Al-Arian said he was ‘shocked’ at Shallah’s ties to PIJ. But the FBI finally swooped in.”

(Ibid.; pp. 158–159.)

23. More about al-Arian and the Safa Group. Note that the monies flow­ing to al-Arian from the SAAR/Safa Group was sanc­tioned for use by al-Arian and com­pany through dif­fer­ent front groups. Com­pare this with the strat­egy pro­posed in the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood doc­u­ment The Project, dis­cussed at the end of this descrip­tion and at length in FTR#537.

“The raid on al-Arian led to the Safa Group. The FBI found let­ters doc­u­ment­ing Safa enti­ties’ finan­cial sup­port of al-Arian to the tune of tens of thou­sands of dol­lars a year. In a Sep­tem­ber 7, 1993, let­ter, Safa Group lead­ers told one al-Arian-led group: ‘We con­sider you a part of us and an exten­sion of us and we as a part of you,’ adding that their finan­cial dona­tion of tens of thou­sands of dol­lars was ‘ for you as a group, regard­less of the party or façade you use the dona­tion for.’”

(Ibid.; p. 159.)

24. “But the al-Arian and Safa Group inves­ti­ga­tions lan­guished. In the 2000 elec­tions al-Arian sup­ported George W. Bush, urg­ing Mus­lims to vote Repub­li­can as the best hope of end­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion against Arab-Americans. Al-Arian and his fam­ily were pho­tographed with a beam­ing Bush and his wife, Laura, dur­ing a Florida cam­paign stop. Al-Arian liked to boast that he had deliv­ered ‘con­sid­er­ably more’ than the 537 votes that gave Bush his vic­tory in Florida and allowed him to cap­ture the White House. On June 20, 2001, al-Arian was invited to the White House as part of a large del­e­ga­tion of Mus­lims to be briefed by pres­i­den­tial adviser Karl Rove.”

(Idem.)

25. Bush asso­ciate Talat Oth­man, a direc­tor of Norquist’s Islamic Insti­tute, went to bat on behalf of the tar­gets of the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of 2002. O’Neill was fired roughly seven months later.

“In 2002, dur­ing the pres­i­dency of George W. Bush, Oth­man again won access to the White House and met with Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury Paul O’Neill to dis­cuss U.S. gov­ern­ment raids on Mus­lim char­i­ties that were allegedly fund­ing terror.”

(House of Bush, House of Saud; p. 125.)

26. Is it a “coin­ci­dence” that fed­eral employ­ees in Tampa “acci­den­tally” destroyed key paper­work in the al-Arian case?!

“ . . . In Decem­ber 2003, clerks at a fed­eral cour­t­house in Tampa acci­den­tally destroyed search war­rants in the Al-Arian case. The doc­u­ments con­tained affi­davits from fed­eral agents that sup­ported 1995 searches of Al-Arian’s home and offices and were among thou­sands of doc­u­ments shred­ded some­time between 1998 and 2002. As this book went to press, there were seri­ous ques­tions as to whether the destruc­tion of the doc­u­ments might affect his prosecution.”

(Ibid.; p. 208.)

27. In FTR#537, we looked at The Project, a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood blue­print for infil­tra­tion and co-option of West­ern insti­tu­tions by the Broth­er­hood. It is inter­est­ing to reflect on the infor­ma­tion in that pro­gram, when eval­u­ated against the back­ground of a doc­u­ment seized in the raid of al-Arian’s res­i­dence. This doc­u­ment dove­tails per­fectly with the doc­trine set forth in The Project. The estab­lish­ment of the Islamic Insti­tute, Norquist’s Pales­tin­ian wife [see FTR#515], the estab­lish­ment of the SAAR net­work and Ptech are all con­sis­tent with this al-Arian doc­u­ment and The Project. Note that al-Arian is believed to be the author of this doc­u­ment. (The SAAR net­work was begun on 7/29/1983—The Project was dated Decem­ber of 1982.)

“ . . . A doc­u­ment seized in a 1995 raid of a close Alam­oudi friend and polit­i­cal ally, for­mer Uni­ver­sity of South Florida pro­fes­sor Sami Al-Arian, out­lined a plan to ‘infil­trate the sen­si­tive intel­li­gence agen­cies or the embassies in order to col­lect infor­ma­tion and build close rela­tion­ships with the peo­ple in charge of these estab­lish­ments.’ The unsigned doc­u­ment, which author­i­ties believe was authored by Al-Arian in part because it was found among his papers, added: ‘We are in the cen­ter which leads the con­spir­acy against our Islamic world . . . Our pres­ence in North Amer­ica gives us a unique oppor­tu­nity to mon­i­tor, explore and fol­low up.’ It instructed mem­bers of the ‘cen­ter,’ thought to refer to an Islamic think tank that Al-Arian founded, to ‘col­lect infor­ma­tion from those rel­a­tives and friends who work in sen­si­tive posi­tions in gov­ern­ment.’ [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s]. . . .”

(“How Secure is the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity?” by Mary Jacoby; Salon.com; 6/22/2004; p. 3.)