| FrontPageMag.com | By Robert Spencer | By Hugh Fitzgerald | Books | Dhimmi Watch | Islam 101 | Qur'an Blog | Raymond Ibrahim | Robert Spencer |  |
|
|
|||||||||||
|
|
Gamal Abdel-Hafiz, the FBI agent who allegedly refused to tape a fellow Muslim, has been reinstated. Did he really refuse to tape a Muslim? He says he was misunderstood. From MSNBC, with thanks to LGF:
Overturning the action of its senior disciplinary officer, the FBI has reinstated a high-profile Muslim agent who had been fired last year amid a swirl of controversy over allegations of conflicting loyalties in the war on terrorism, NEWSWEEK has learned. . . .But congressional aides noted that it comes at a time when the bureau is under fire for its failure to recruit more Muslim and Arabic-speaking agents. The move also comes barely two months after Abdel-Hafiz filed a lawsuit against a current and former FBI agent, as well as ABC News for making statements in a December 2002 broadcast that left viewers with the impression he was a “sympathizer to terrorism and other religious fanatics.”
Until only a few years ago, Abdel-Hafiz had been one of the bureau’s prized counterterrorism assets, winning promotions and commendations for his work on such cases as the bombings of the Khobar Towers military barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996 and the Navy destroyer USS Cole off the coast of Yemen in October 2000.
Promoted to the post of deputy legal attaché in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in February 2001, Abdel-Hafiz was a pivotal figure in the investigation into the September 11 terror attacks. He also extracted a crucial confession that led to the arrest of the so-called Lackawanna 6—six Buffalo, N.Y.-area men who had attended an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, a case that has been publicly touted by top Justice Department officials as one of the Bush administration’s biggest successes in the war on terrorism. “You couldn’t ask for a better job by an FBI agent,” Paul Moskal, the FBI spokesman in Buffalo, told NEWSWEEK last fall about Abdel-Hafiz’s work on the Lackawanna 6 case.
But Abdel-Hafiz’s career turned sour in the fall of 2002, when a fellow FBI agent in Chicago, Robert Wright, accused him of refusing to cooperate in an earlier 1999 case targeting fundraising by the militant Palestinian group Hamas. Wright claimed that Abdel-Hafiz, who was then assigned to the bureau’s Dallas field office, had refused his request that he wear a hidden wire in a meeting with a suspect in the case on the grounds that “a Muslim does not record another Muslim.” Abdel-Hafiz has insisted that his comment was misunderstood and that his reluctance to wear the wire stemmed from his concerns that it could undermine his effectiveness in the Muslim community and jeopardize his family if word got out that he had done so. In any case, Abdel-Hafiz pointed out that his supervisor at the time, Danny Defenbaugh, then the special agent in charge of the Dallas office, made the final decision that Abdel-Hafiz should not wear a wire in the Hamas investigation.
Wright’s allegations, first made at a Washington press conference and later repeated in his December 2002 interview with the ABC News show “Primetime Live,” led to increased scrutiny of Abdel-Hafiz’s work in Riyadh. By then, Abdel-Hafiz’s chief supervisor, Wilfred Rattigan, had converted to Islam. When both Abdel-Hafiz and Rattigan flew off to Mecca for the hajj, a top FBI official in Washington complained and an auditing team was dispatched to review the office’s work. During the course of the audit, Abdel-Hafiz told NEWSWEEK, the chief inspector from headquarters concluded that there was too much “clutter” in the office and ordered the “shredding” of over 2,000 documents related to the September 11 terror investigations. Although most of the documents were duplicated in the FBI’s computers, a small number were not, according to Abdel-Hafiz. These consisted of between 50 and 100 letters written by Saudi security officials responding to FBI requests for information about terror suspects. When the FBI was forced to ask the Saudis for new copies of the letters, the Saudis—who were being severely criticized in Congress for failure to cooperate on terrorism cases—complained to senior U.S. officials.
Posted by Robert at February 27, 2004 7:40 AM
Print this entry
| Email this entry
| Digg this
| del.icio.us
|
There are plenty of Arabic-speaking Jews who could do this job! But if they are going to hire Arabs, they should be Christian Arabs! There will always be a 'cloud of suspicion' hanging over the heads of Moslems.
Posted by: Chaya Eitan at February 27, 2004 7:52 AMIts so early, but I'm doing my morning rounds; don't stories like this give you a sinking feeling? We're being lead by a generation that has a personal suicide pact with its ideology. They rather die, well more likely let other people die than be embarassed under accusations of being unfair by profiling people who look and act like they're support terror. Its such tragic folly, we're being sacrificed at the altar of liberal assumptions, so its adherents can merely turn their heads away at the site of the truth. The deficit of character in these institutions is alarming, recommend you do a google search of F. A. Hayek and the string "why the worst get on top" from his 1943 work titled The Road to Serfdom". It's quite sobering.
Posted by: bobnoxious at February 27, 2004 8:07 AM I appreciate your work with Jihad Watch. I
am a Vietnamese-American who came to the U.S.
as a refugee in 1975 after the defeat of South
Vietnam. I worked hard to become a physician
and have a very busy private pratice. You can
never find a more patriotic American than me.
I appreciate America for its' attempt to bring
democracy to a poor Asian country in Vietnam
back in the 60's. I am thankful for the people
who had served and grateful to those who had
died in Vietnam. I wish that I was younger so
I can give back to America and serve in Iraq.
To Atphan.....just a note to tell you that it's nice to see someone that has taken advantage of the "land of opportunity" that America is, and actually appreciates this country like you do.
Welcome to Jihad Watch. Robert Spencer give us incredible news.
Your story certainly sounds like that of a rags to riches success story. This is what we all mean. Asian immigration was very heavy throughout the 70s and 80s. Although every element has their share of criminals, the Asian population never came over here preaching hatred of America like these asshole Muslim clerics do.
I worked in a foundry with many hard working people from Laos. Never a problem out of any of them. They can't handle their booze very well, but they were good people to work with. The Muslim population that's infested us could really learn some valuable lessons in respect from the Asian community.
Unfortunately, they'd rather be led around by the nose, and kill people that aren't of their kind.
Again, welcome.
D.C. Watson
I was reflecting on the Vietnam conflict recently, the absence of any kind of violence against Americans outside of the country by Vietnamese nationals struck me like a bolt of lightning. I admire the Vietnamese people, they have a great deal of character, it was travesty how they were treated by their so called allies and misrepresented by the leftist media. Its a good example of people who understood the context of the issues and didn't go around killing people not involved in their affairs. A stark contrast to what we face now, as many have commented its a global conflict with no delineation between innocents and combatants, just believers and unbelievers, as evil as nazism and communism.
Posted by: bobnoxious at February 27, 2004 8:54 AMDear Atphan....please spread the word in your community with regard to Islam. You are going to be as affected by this group as everyone else. Knowledge is power. We go on facts here.
This is no paranoid illusion. They are wanting to take this country over. They will no succeed, but they will try. Your help would be greatly appreciated. You want to give back to America, this is a great way to do it.
D.C.
Posted by: DCWatson37 at February 27, 2004 9:04 AMI do not believe you should hire any Muslim for positions that are sensitive or deal with national security. Simple as that.
Posted by: Wild Hare at February 27, 2004 9:54 AMDC,as always,you are right.
One slight correction,though,it`s not that they will try to take over our country,but rather,they ARE TRYING TO TAKE OVER OUR COUNTRY,as we speak.
There should be no muslims in our armed forces,no muslims in the FBI or CIA,no muslims in any position of power whatsoever.
We are giving them the dagger to stab us in the heart.
One of the posters said that it would be a mistake if all mosques in western countries were closed down....for muslims in muslim countries would follow suit and do the same to churches in their countries....
They are already doing it,and they have been doing it for a long time.....try to walk around with a bible in your hand ,in any muslim country and you will go to jail.
I say,if mosques would be closed,muslims would flock out of the western countries they have flooded,just like that;no need to deport them .
As for the suicidal agenda of the liberals in the US,i just cannot understand it...don`t they realize thatthey are digging our own grave,and they will eventually fall in it,themselves?!
Here's the point adela, liberals are still human (whether they believe it or not), so pride and a psychological unwillingness to come to grips with their own insignificance - growing old and death. Its to much for them to handle, they really thought they were part of some historic quasi religious event and that it was possible for them to alter the future according to what their communist sympathizing university professors indoctrinated them with. Heaven on earth etc...
Now, after 9/11 what was your initial expectation? Did you assume the left would see the light or retrench and escalate its rhetoric? What happened? I think you know the answer, recognize your dealing with people who prefer to reject reality and deny truth, the hallmark of crypto-marxists.
Posted by: bobnoxious at February 27, 2004 1:16 PMUnfortunately terrorism is an unknown, unseen enemy. Terrorists walk amounst us daily. It's like mass murders, you always hear from family, friends and neighbors "they can't believe he would do that, he was such a nice guy." This is a war like no other, the enemy does not wear the uniform of a soldier and no doubt is filled with total hate and intolerance. A new kind of enemy, a new kind of war.
Posted by: Centra at February 27, 2004 5:16 PMOk. So the guy helped in the 9-11 investigation, which is good. He helped bring the Lackwanna terrorist cell to justice, which is good. But he refused to wire hismelf on religious grounds, it makes him some kind of traitor. Ok. Gotcha.
So by this logic, Iraqi-Americans, who supported the Iraq war to the man, are now dangerous subversives. Ahh, I can smell freedom in the air!
Posted by: Wickbam at March 1, 2004 12:04 AM
(Note: The Comments section is provided in the interests of free speech only. It is mostly unmoderated, but comments that are off-topic, offensive, slanderous, or otherwise annoying stand a chance of being deleted. The fact that any comment remains on the site IN NO WAY constitutes an endorsement by Jihad Watch or Dhimmi Watch, or by Robert Spencer or any other Jihad Watch or Dhimmi Watch writer, of any view expressed, fact alleged, or link provided in that comment.)