SPECIAL TO THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Imagine the president of the United States inviting to the White House the comrades of one of the top international terrorists in the world, a terrorist chieftain who has orchestrated mass murder against scores of innocent civilians, including American children. Or visualize a picture of first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton warmly greeting a top leader of an American branch of a radical Islamic terrorist front group. Or think of the vice president of the United States happily embracing a top Islamic militant leader who has championed the terrorist mastermind behind the World Trade Center bombing, a plot that was designed to kill 50,000 American people.
Unfortunately, you do not need a wild imagination to conjure up these images. These meetings actually occurred within the past year, as evidenced by the photos that accompany this article. These pictures were reprinted from the pages of radical Islamic periodicals.
Although the administration of President Bill Clinton has publicly touted its war on international terrorism, which has included new counter-terrorism laws and resources for the FBI, it has simultaneously courted and embraced militant Islamic groups in the United States. These groups have openly promoted, supported and championed Islamic terrorist groups that have targeted Jews, Christians and moderate Muslims around the globe. Indeed, during the past year, the Clinton administration has openly welcomed into the White House known U.S.-based representatives of foreign Islamic militants - even arranging special receptions for these guests.
During the past decade, radical Islamic groups representing the entire spectrum of militant terrorist organizations - including the Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah, Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Algerian Islamic Salvation Front and Egyptian Jihad - set up shop in the United States to raise funds, recruit new members, publish and disseminate their propaganda and even organize terrorist operations.
"These radical terrorist groups found that the United States, the freest country in the world, was the best place to organize and build up their terrorist movements,'' said Oliver Revell, former head of the FBI's counter-terrorist investigations. He added: "In recent years, Hamas and other terrorist groups found they can manipulate the American public and politicians hiding under non-profit `religious charities,' self-defined religious umbrellas and the politically correct buzzword of `human rights.'''
Unlike the stereotypical picture of gun-toting terrorists, American-based militants set up "front'' organizations projecting the false facade of representing all Muslims or pretending to serve as "human and civil rights'' organizations for Muslims. But, says professor Khalid Duran, a Muslim specialist in fundamentalist Islam, "The only rights these groups are protecting are the rights of terrorists to carry out mass murder.''
TWO MAJOR GROUPS IN U.S.
Among the two major groups fronting for or championing radical Islam in the U.S. are the Council on American Islamic Relations, or CAIR, and the American Muslim Council, or AMC, both headquartered in Washington, D.C. Records and documents obtained from both the White House and the internal publications of the groups themselves show that CAIR and AMC have been invited repeatedly into the White House by the president, the first lady and Vice President Al Gore.
Curiously, the White House met with these groups despite an abundance of available material showing these groups to be tied to terrorist movements. Even after the meetings with the radical Islamic groups were publicly exposed in a Wall Street Journal article by this writer in March 1996, the White House continued to meet with the militants. The question is why. Does the White House consider these groups to be representative of all Muslims? If so, that is a terrible slur on American Muslims and Muslims worldwide who abhor violence and want nothing to do with the extremist fringes of radical Islam that represent no one but themselves.
Does the White House consider these militants to be simply legitimate members of the ethnic and political American mosaic? If so, why doesn't the White House extend the same courtesy to other groups and invite officials of the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nation or Louis Farrakahn's Nation of Islam into the White House? Does the White House believe it can turn these groups into moderates? If so, the record shows that the meetings have only emboldened the radical Islamic groups into more aggressive support for terrorists. Was the White House duped into believing these groups were "moderate?'' If so, such a deception would have meant that the White House did not pursue one iota of vetting of these groups before they were welcomed into the White House inner sanctum. Even assuming such a deception could have occurred the first time these groups were invited, how could the White House ignore subsequent public statements and articles attesting to the radical agenda of these groups?
For the time being, we may not know the answers to these questions. But the public has a right to know in the future.
A LOOK IN SIDE CAIR
Here's a sketch of these groups, starting with the Council on American Islamic Relations. CAIR, established in 1994 in part with funds from radical Persian Gulf donors, says its agenda is to protect "Muslim civil rights.'' In fact, it has openly and covertly championed the most violent international terrorists in the world today. These include Musa Abu Marzuk, the Palestinian Hamas commander now being held in an American prison and awaiting extradition to Israel, and Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, serving a life sentence for orchestrating a mass murder conspiracy that included the World Trade Center bombing. The conspiracy, according to the presiding judge, would have resulted in the most civilian casualties on American soil since the Civil War. (Fortunately, the plot was interdicted by the FBI before a second set of planned bombings could be carried out.)
CAIR's officers include one Islamic official who was listed by the Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator in the World Trade Center bombing and other officers who have called for the destruction of American society and have promoted blatant anti-Semitism. In addition, CAIR has sponsored the visits of radical fundamentalists to the United States, including Jordanian Islamic Action Front official Bassam al-Amoush. Speaking at a Muslim conference in downtown Chicago in December 1994, al-Amoush openly called for the killing of Jews.
Federal records show that CAIR was created by a Texas-based group, the Islamic Association for Palestine, an organization that Revell has deemed a "Hamas front.'' The Islamic Association for Palestine has issued Hamas communiques calling for suicide bombing operations, produced and distributed terrorist-training tapes glorifying the killing of "infidels,'' and published some of the most virulent anti-Semitic and anti-American screeds.
Until he became the founding head of CAIR, Nihad Awad was a top official of the Islamic Association of Palestine. While Awad was an officer, someone in that group's Dallas-based office, according to telephone records released in the World Trade Center bombing trials, was in contact with the conspirators behind the bombing.
In 1994, Awad declared at a university symposium in Florida: "I am in support of Hamas. ... I know that this movement as an Islamic movement has not been objectively reported in the United States ... '' Accordingly, both Awad and Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR's communication director, have repeatedly attacked as "anti-Muslim'' journalists and others who have written about the terrorism committed by Hamas and other radical Islamic terrorist groups.
Hooper has openly defended Hamas, the Sudanese National Islamic Front and other violent anti-American terrorist groups by claiming that articles critical of these organizations or which expose their American connections are "smears against Islam.''
Recently, CAIR has begun to organize street protests against news organizations that write about the history of militant Islam -going to the point of lambasting anyone who refers to "fundamentalist Islam'' or to the concept of a jihad (holy war) in Islam as guilty of "defaming Muslims.''
The other group repeatedly wined and dined at the White House is the American Muslim Council, whose head is Abdulrahman Alamoudi. Both the president and the vice president have invited Alamoudi into the White House, and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton allowed the American Muslim Council this year to organize a reception for itself at the White House, even selecting all the participants. In addition, the AMC has provided "talking points" for the first lady for her syndicated column and speeches.
A LOOK INSIDE AMC
What does the American Muslim Council stand for? AMC has repeatedly championed and supported Hamas and its leaders, routinely declaring that Hamas "is not a terrorist group'' and claiming that U.S. efforts to clamp down on terrorist funding in America are "anti-Islam.'' Following the 1995 arrest of Hamas terrorist commander Musa Abu Marzuk, Alamoudi became Marzuk's primary defender. "I know the man, he is a moderate man on many issues,'' Alamoudi was quoted in the Washington Post, adding, "This (arrest) is an insult to the Muslim community.''
Soon, Alamoudi began organizing Marzuk's defense fund. Earlier this year, Alamoudi stated on Arabic television, "I have known Musa Abu Marzuk before and I really consider him to be from among the best people in the Islamic movement,Hamas. ... I work together with him.''
The AMC has collaborated closely with known Hamas and Islamic Jihad front groups such as the Virginia-based United Association for Studies and Research, or UASR, and the Florida-based World and Islam Studies Enterprise. (The latter group has now shut down and is under federal investigation for serving as a terrorist command and control center in the United States.)
Records show that Alamoudi has actively participated in or sponsored militant Islamic conferences, featuring some of the leaders of the most violent Middle Eastern terrorist groups and their front organizations in the United States. One such radical gathering, at which Alamoudi was a speaker along with known terrorists from the Middle East, was held in Virginia in 1991.
Alamoudi has closely worked with UASR, distributing its materials and co-sponsoring its conferences. At an October 1993 conference co-sponsored by AMC and UASR, Democratic U.S. Rep. Robert G. Torricelli of New Jersey was the guest speaker.
Beyond support for Hamas, the AMC has provided office space to the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front, organized press conferences for visiting officials of the Sudanese National Islamic Front (an organization defined as "terrorist'' by the State Department), lauded the electoral victory of the radical Islamic Turkish Refah Party (known for its open anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism), championed the radical Iranian-trained anti-American mujahedeen (holy warriors) in Bosnia, portrayed President Clinton's meeting with Salman Rushdie as an insult to Muslims comparable to the Holocaust against the Jews, and attacked the media for exposing militant Islam's repression of women and their human rights.
ABOUT THE WRITER
Steve Emerson is a terrorism expert who has investigated the activities of radical Islamic groups in the United States. A former correspondent for both U.S. News and World Report and Cable News Network, Emerson was executive producer of the award-winning 1994 documentary "Jihad in America," is the author of four books on the Middle East and counter-terrorism, and has testified frequently before Congress on the threat of Islamic groups to the United States.
