Author: J. Michael Waller
Publication: Insight on the News
Date: July 12, 2002
URL: http://www.insightmag.com/news/258224.html
Totalitarian regimes in the Middle
East have targeted the United States with a well-financed influence campaign
that is being rooted in American politics. Veteran watchers of the "active-measures"
programs of the former Soviet Union say this Islamist propaganda offensive
bears an uncanny resemblance to the old Soviet international front operations
and the broad parade of fellow travelers who used themes of peace, tolerance
and civil liberties to advance Soviet strategic goals by weakening the
United States at home and abroad.
"Active measures" is a translation
of aktivniye meropriyatya, a term of KGB tradecraft that spans the covert-action
spectrum from disinformation and propaganda to assassination and sponsorship
of terrorism.
Numerous parallels are visible between
the totalitarianism of Soviet communism and that of Wahhabism, a Saudi-funded
movement to seize control of global Islam, notes Stephen Schwartz, a former
leftist, prolific chronicler of communist strategy and tactics and author
of the forthcoming book Two Faces of Islam. "Aside from their ideological
similarities and the common elements in the struggle of each power," says
Schwartz, "there is a striking matter of their identical tactics in penetration
of the United States."
In a column for FrontPageMag.com,
Schwartz writes, "The Communist Party U.S.A. claimed to lead and, in
effect, represent the entire labor
and left movement when its constituency was restricted to a narrow band
of fanatics and agents of a foreign regime." The same is true, he says,
of campaigns that promote the Saudi brand of Islam, including U.S.-based
Muslim political pressure groups he calls the "Wahhabi lobby."
For example, he says, "the Council
on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the American Muslim Council (AMC)
and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) claim to lead and, in effect,
represent the entire community of American Muslims. In fact, its constituency
is restricted to a narrow band of fanatics and agents of a foreign regime,
the Saudi kingdom."
The U.S. government had a means
of predicting, identifying and countering Soviet active measures both at
home and abroad. But it is poorly equipped to deal with Saudi-sponsored
(and smaller, noncentralized) political- influence operations of militant
Islamists against U.S. interests overseas and against the public and decisionmakers
domestically. Cold War concerns at least led U.S. officials to focus on
Soviet fronts and covert operations, but little notice was taken of the
Islamist propaganda development that began in the early 1960s.
Now, with the Soviet Union long
gone and the information revolution having empowered small, decentralized
groups to battle the United States with methods short of all-out military
warfare, researchers at the Rand Corporation's National Security Research
Division have taken the lead in defining a new phenomenon they call "netwar."
Rand's John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, who coined the term "cyberwar"
to discuss the military implications of the information revolution on warfare,
also have coined the word "netwar" to define conflicts short of war involving
actors who might or might not be military or even government.
Netwar's distinguishing element,
they write in their new book, Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror,
Crime and Militancy, takes advantage of the information revolution to empower
small, networked organizations to battle hierarchical governments. Netwar,
according to Arquilla and Ronfeldt, is "an emerging mode of conflict (and
crime) at societal levels, short of traditional military warfare, in which
the protagonists use network forms of organization and related doctrines,
strategies and technologies attuned to the information age.
"These protagonists are likely to
consist of dispersed organizations, small groups and individuals who communicate,
coordinate and conduct their campaigns in an Internetted matter, often
without a precise central command." The United States barely is beginning
to grapple with the problem, intelligence sources say.
In its heyday, according to a CIA
estimate provided to Congress, the Soviet Union spent an estimated $3.3
billion annually on active measures, including the Izvestiya, Pravda, New
Times, Novosti and Tass propaganda vehicles; Radio Moscow and clandestine
radio stations around the world; international Communist parties; more
than a dozen international front organizations such as the World Peace
Council; and the KGB's entire operating budget for foreign rezidentura
outposts. The budget included support for guerrilla and terrorist organizations.
The Saudis are outspending the former
Soviet Union in their worldwide influence operations, and much of that
money has been spent in the United States, intelligence officials claim.
At one point in the 1990s, some $1.85 billion was funneled through a single
reputed Saudi front group in Northern Virginia, the SAAR Foundation, to
fund Islamist activity, according to SAAR documents reviewed by Insight.
Raided by federal agents for suspected terrorist money laundering and now
closed, the SAAR Foundation was part of a network of Wahhabi-sponsored
political front groups, mosques, charities, educational foundations, youth
and student organizations, investment firms and holding companies. Many
currently are under federal investigation as part of the Treasury Department's
Operation Green Quest to track down alleged terrorist money.
"The Communist Party U.S.A. used
labor unions as cover; the Wahhabi lobby uses charities," says Schwartz
in his column. "The means and the ends are the same: Each represents the
place where the ideological network encounters and seeks to control the
masses. Each is used as a recruitment center and cover for terrorists."
A leading active-measures expert says that while the Communist Party in
the United States was very small and of "limited influence" on policy,
"its value to the Soviets was that it provided the cadre to recruit people
for front activities to promote Soviet interests."
The most publicized Islamist groups
in the post-Sept. 11 federal raids received notoriety for their covert
funding of, and even overt political support for, terrorist groups such
as Hamas, Hezbollah and al-Qaeda. So far there have been vocal protests
of innocence and no legal proof of guilt, but multiagency investigations
are continuing vigorously. Meanwhile, federal officials have yet to reel
in a larger web of political and educational groups that are not suspected
of funding terrorism but that do appear to be running Saudi propaganda
operations under various guises. U.S. officials are more interested at
the moment in tracking direct terrorist financial and operational support
activity, but the FBI also has a mandate and a legal precedent to investigate
covert foreign political-influence operations aimed at government decisionmakers.
That, however, may be a while in
coming. It is against the law to be an unregistered foreign agent, and
the U.S. intelligence community defines such an individual as having a
clandestine relationship with a foreign intelligence officer. However,
current law contains loopholes that allow such individuals to operate without
being monitored or stopped. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) inserted one
such loophole into the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
"Kennedy made it very clear that
merely carrying out instructions of a foreign intelligence officer in support
of a political objective would not be 'covered' under the law," according
to Herbert Romerstein, a former professional investigator with the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. "That loophole remains in the
USA PATRIOT Act," passed after the Sept. 11 attacks as a tough new legal
tool to fight terrorism, Romerstein says.
The Saudis began their modern global
propaganda campaign in the early 1960s, founding the Muslim World League
(MWL) in 1962. Ten years later, the Saudi regime backed establishment of
the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) and financed its activities.
The MWL has offices around the world, including in New York and Virginia.
Wa'il Jalaidan, a cofounder of al- Qaeda, was head of the MWL office in
Pakistan. Federal agents raided the MWL Virginia offices in March for alleged
ties to terrorism. Abdullah bin Laden, brother of terrorist Osama bin Laden,
headed WAMY's Virginia office. Insight sources say that an FBI probe into
WAMY's alleged terrorist ties has "mysteriously ended."
At press time, the MWL was sponsoring
a high-profile tour of the United States to promote Muslim understanding.
Under the wings of the early Saudi
international fronts sprang networks of other organizations sharing interlocking
leaderships and responsible for a range of activities: one group to coordinate
and recruit students on college campuses nationwide, another for political
agitation and others for political lobbying, education, cultural and religious
outreach, cadre-building; charities (to include fund raising for terrorist
organizations); and holding companies, investment funds and tax-exempt
foundations to finance the networks.
Many of these active-measures operations
reportedly are run through mosques, where they are not subject to IRS reporting
requirements and until passage of the USA PATRIOT Act last autumn were
practically off- limits to the FBI. Federal authorities raided or shut
down at least 17 of the organizations for alleged financial improprieties
since Sept. 11. All the affected organizations maintain their innocence.
Recent years have seen a merger
between some old Soviet front organizations and left-wing activist groups
and Islamic terrorist causes. The New York-based National Lawyers Guild
(NLG) - officially cited as having been created in the 1930s under Josef
Stalin as the foremost legal bulwark for the Communist Party U.S.A., its
fronts and controlled organizations - survived its Soviet sponsors and
now is considered by national-security specialists to be the main legal
group facilitating terrorists and related causes. Among its projects, the
NLG has published brochures advising people how to stand up to the FBI
if questioned in terrorist cases. The brochure is available on the NLG
Website in several languages, including Arabic, Farsi and Punjabi.
The NLG leadership runs the day-to-day
operations of another group, the National Coalition to Protect Political
Freedom (NCPPF), founded in the 1960s to provide legal support for domestic
terrorist groups such as the Weather Underground, Symbionese Liberation
Army, Black Liberation Army and Puerto Rican Armed Forces of National Liberation
(see "Domestic Front in the War on Terror," Jan. 7).
The NCPPF's current president, Sami
al-Arian, has been identified as a leading figure in the Palestinian Islamic
Jihad, on the State Department terrorist list. Confronted publicly about
his terrorist connections by Fox News' Bill O'Reilly and others, al-Arian
said he was "shocked" that some of his friends turned up in the Middle
East as terrorist leaders and protested that "We have been involved in
intellectual-type activity."
The NLG, NCPPF and other reputedly
Marxist operations of long-standing, such as the Center for Constitutional
Rights (CCR), defend their clients as being unjustly accused, condemned
through guilt by association or simply as misunderstood individuals whose
politically unpopular views and actions must be protected under the Constitution.
Critics of their clients, as well as law-enforcement agencies and anyone
else acting against them, are labeled "racists and bigots" - now favorite
terms of agents of the Wahhabi netwar.
This apparently is a 21st century
adaptation of defense tactics that have served Soviet operatives well since
the 1940s.
"Like the Communists before them,
the Wahhabis have presented arrestees, detainees and indicted suspects
as people persecuted because they are 'foreign-born' or victims of 'ethnic
profiling,'" says Schwartz.
"In the long term, the communist
juridical operation aimed at protecting their terrorist, treasonous and
spying activities was successful," Schwartz adds. "It should therefore
surprise nobody that when the Wahhabi lobby came under American investigative
scrutiny in the 1990s, their response and that of their defenders (including
a considerable number of ultrasecularist and leftist Jews) almost exactly
reproduced the effort mounted earlier in American history by Stalinist
Communists and their protectors. Aside from the claim that they were victims
because they were 'foreign-born' or were 'ethnically profiled,' the Wahhabis
have recycled a full range of Stalinist techniques for evading the law."
Indeed, the AMC denounced the Treasury
Department's March 20 raids on suspected terrorist fund-raising fronts
in Virginia. The raids, AMC said in a news release slamming federal agents
for "McCarthy-like tactics" in search of "evidence of wrongdoing that does
not exist," were anti-Muslim. AMC exhorted, "Brothers and Sisters, this
is YOUR community that has been attacked."
Veteran congressional investigator
Romerstein urges federal investigators not to be intimidated or fall further
into pander mode: "The FBI should be planting informants in these groups
and monitoring them."
U.S. Fails to Expose Islamist Active
Measures
The U.S. government is poorly equipped
to monitor and evaluate foreign covert political-influence operations against
Americans, and especially against U.S. decisionmakers.
"The reason we were successful in
exposing Soviet active measures was that we did it in a coordinated way,"
says Herbert Romerstein, who founded and directed the Office of Counter
Soviet Active Measures at the now-defunct U.S. Information Agency (USIA).
"We raised the costs to the Soviet Union of spreading their lies, causing
problems that snapped back on them, making it more of a problem to spread
their propaganda and disinformation."
With no other government agency
taking the lead, the Pentagon created an Office of Strategic Influence
(OSI) that would, in part, wage the war of ideas in the Muslim world. Insight
sources alleged Department of Defense (DoD) spokeswoman Torie Clarke covertly
wrecked the OSI by leaking disinformation about the office's mission to
the New York Times in February, leaving the government without a single
tool for strategic- influence campaigns abroad. Clarke has refused to respond
to Insight's many offers to allow her to refute these charges.
U.S. officials, including some supportive
of OSI, tell Insight that the Pentagon is not the proper venue for an effort
to counter pro-terrorist propaganda abroad on a daily basis, or to deal
with Wahhabi and other Islamist covert operations inside the United States.
Looking back on the USIA Office
to Counter Soviet Active Measures, Romerstein notes, "We don't have an
apparatus now to counter the lies being spread by America's enemies in
the Arab world." In fact, the United States has nothing in place to do
this at home.
The FBI lacks its own analytical
unit and its internal database is so antiquated that agents have to write
files in longhand.
The bureau also was stung in the
1980s for investigating communist terrorist activity that operated under
the cover of Christian churches, resulting in the famous CISPES case that
cost the careers of key senior FBI antiterrorism officials. As for the
CIA, with few exceptions it does not collect intelligence on organizations
inside U.S. borders. The mandates of other federal law-enforcement and
investigative agencies also are extremely narrow, pertaining to tax evasion,
immigration violations, undeclared foreign funding, money-laundering and
so forth, with no other agency connecting the dots.
Security experts tell Insight that
the new Department of Homeland Security, with its planned intelligence-analyses
office, must establish a unit dedicated to monitoring and assessing Wahhabi
and other foreign-funded influence operations aimed at American citizens
and decisionmakers, and to taking appropriate defensive measures.
That's fine, counters Romerstein,
but the key to analysis is the actual collection of information. "If you
can't gather the data in the first place, you can analyze to your heart's
content, but you won't have the information."
FBI Draws Line Between Muslims,
Terrorists
FBI Director Robert Mueller heaped
praise on those Muslims in America who have helped the bureau crack down
on domestic and foreign terrorist groups - but what he didn't say was more
revealing.
In a controversial June 28 appearance
before the American Muslim Council (AMC), where he thanked American Muslims
for their help, Mueller broke protocol and avoided praising the organization
hosting his speech. Indeed, he said this: "Unfortunately, persons associated
with this organization in the past have made statements that indicate support
for terrorism and for terrorist organizations. I think we can - Muslims
and non-Muslims alike - justifiably be outraged by such statements."
In the week prior to the speech,
various TV personalities, including MSNBC's Alan Keyes and Fox News' Bill
O'Reilly, tried to get AMC Executive Director Eric Vickers to denounce
terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah and al-Qaeda. While denouncing
acts of terrorism, Vickers avoided denouncing these notorious terrorist
groups themselves.
The night before Mueller addressed
the AMC, guest host Mike Barnicle on CNBC's Hardball asked Vickers to condemn
Hamas and Hezbollah. Vickers would not. Barnicle followed, "How about al-Qaeda?"
According to the transcript, Vickers'
only response was, "They are involved in a resistance movement."
An Islamic Republic in America?
"I wouldn't want to create the impression
that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic
sometime in the future."
- Ibrahim Hooper, director of communications,
Council on American- Islamic Relations.
"I think if we are outside this
country, we can say oh, 'Allah, destroy America.' But once we are here,
our mission in this country is to change it. There is no way for Muslims
to be violent in America, no way. We have other means to do it. You can
be violent anywhere else but in America."
- The American Muslim Council's
Abdurahman Alamoudi.
"The center of gravity of the Muslim
world is shifting to this country."
- Faiz Rehman, communications director,
American Muslim Council. June 27, 2002
J. Michael Waller is a senior writer
for Insight magazine.
