American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us Read Online Free PDF Page A

FBI reports, the trooper found a small arsenal of semi-automatic weapons and several out-of-state license plates in the trunk. The guns were legally licensed to the driver, a local gun dealer and former Waterbury policeman of Albanian origin. He told police he was training volunteers to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. A computer check found that the extra license plates were registered to El-Sayeed Nosair, a name that meant little at the time. A year later, on November 5, 1990, Nosair leapt onto the front pages of newspapers when he murdered Rabbi Meir Kahane, the founder of the Jewish Defense League and leader of a militant anti-Arab movement in Israel, at a hotel in New York. By then, several foreign militant movements had moved into the liberal environment of the United States of America. By 1990, Hamas (of Palestine) and al-Gama‘at al-Islamiyya (of Egypt) were here, as was the precurser to the now-infamous al Qaeda (of Afghanistan and Sudan) run by Osama bin Laden.
    In the following decade, a shifting cast of characters attempted a series of attacks on American targets:
     
 
In January 1993, Pakistani citizen Mir Aimal Kasi shot five CIA employees outside the agency’s headquarters, killing two.
     
In February 1993, the first World Trade Center bombing killed six and caused over 1,000 others to suffer smoke inhalation. Four men were found guilty, and 118 were listed as potential unindicted coconspirators.
     
In June 1993, nine followers of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and the Sheikh himself were arrested in a sting operation, for planning a Day of Terror in New York. They had schemed to bomb the United Nations Headquarters, the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, the George Washington Bridge, and a federal office building.
     
In March 1994, livery driver Rashid Baz opened fire on a bus filled with fifteen Hasidic Jews on the Brooklyn Bridge, killing one and injuring three others.
     
In February 1997, a Palestinian schoolteacher opened fire on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, killing one tourist and injuring six others before turning the gun on himself.
     
In July 1997, Ghazi Ibrahim abu Mezer was arrested by New York City police, foiling his plan to bomb the subway system.
     
On September 11, 2001, nineteen men hijacked four cross-country jetliners, flying two into the twin towers of the World Trade Center which succeeded in collapsing both buildings, and flying one into the Pentagon. The fourth plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania, after passengers foiled the hijackers’ plans. Over 3,000 people were killed.
     
    These acts all aimed at Americans at home. But terrorists have also used the country as a base for mayhem committed against other nations and against American targets abroad. Osama bin Laden, for example, used agents in the United States to purchase a satellite telephone and carry it to him, for use in planning the 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Hamas is known to have sent promising Middle Eastern recruits to the United States for training; here they were taught how to build car bombs and other explosives for use in the Middle East. Above all, the United States has proven a fertile ground for fund-raising. Nonprofit foundations have helped raise untold sums supporting terrorist activities in the Middle East and elsewhere. Overall, the terrorists’ activities can be divided into four categories: recruitment, fund-raising and/or money-laundering, networking, and direct organizing.
     
Recruitment
     
    Foreign terrorist organizations have utilized solo operators in America as well as groups. Some of their representatives and supporters have entered the country illegally, using visa fraud; they have also actively recruited individuals who are able to use American passports to travel freely around the world.
    A few examples will give the general idea. For just one example of visa fraud, consider the case of Ghazi Ibrahim abu Mezer. In 1997, he was arrested by New York police