Jamie Glazov interviews Harvey Kushner, author of Holy War on the Home
Front, in FrontPage.
Kushner says:
I knew that it was two years after the 9/11 attacks and we were no safer than before the terrorists blasted holes in the New York City skyline. I had the evidence that Government agencies are still sloppy, negligent, or worse. I could show that federal judges were probating illegal aliens who are “known or suspected terrorists” back onto our streets. I knew that federal probation officers can’t report suspicions of terrorist activity from felons they supervise because there’s no one to report it to. I knew that a drug worth billions of dollars a year is being smuggled into the country by a Middle Eastern-African-British network, but no one is investigating it-or its links to terrorism. The USCIS Asylum Offices get applications from Middle Easterners who testify to involvement with terrorism, but they can’t reject them because the FBI won’t return their phone calls.
Don’t believe it? Sorry, but I had the documents to prove it and I had to tell Americans that for all the time and money we’ve spent in the past three years on “security,” Americans are no safer. As I say in the book: “In my thirty years in counterterrorism, I have never been more worried about my country.” That’s why I wrote Holy War. Let the truth be told.
FP: Why do you think there is so much government incompetence in dealing with the threats facing this country?
Kushner: Like the old Tom Lehrer song about the French hating the Germans and the Germans hating the Dutch, and so on-this federal law enforcement agency hates this federal law enforcement agency, this federal intelligence gathering agency hates this federal intelligence gathering agency, and everybody seems to have a problem with a particular federal agency, even local law-enforcement personnel. Like other government agencies, federal law enforcement and intelligence gathering agencies don’t share information and that makes local law enforcement feel like second-class citizens.
Moreover, in some ways 9/11 made a federal agency like the FBI only more self-conscious and protective of their image. The FBI, was always reticent about giving information. After 9/11 whatever came into their possession never left it. I have spoken to many state and local agencies or departments charged with protecting American citizens where they live and work. Almost all report their biggest problem in the War on Terrorism is nobody giving them up-to date information about threats from the Islamic terror network. Most say even three years after 9/11, the FBI and related federal agencies still don’t “download” real-time information to local agencies.
As long as the men and women of local law enforcement are kept in the dark about real-time terrorist data, government incompetence, either real or perceived, will continue.
FP: Can you illuminate for us a bit how the secret Islamic network operates?
Kushner: Near the end of the Spanish Civil War, General Emilio Mola’s army was advancing on Madrid when someone asked him which of his four columns would capture the city. “The fifth column,” he replied, meaning the rebel’s militant supporters inside the capital whose efforts had already undermined it from within. This is exactly the strategy of the secret Islamic network.
Islamic extremists constitute a fifth column-a highly organized underground army whose tentacles reach into our colleges and universities; recruit converts in mosques and prisons; and raise money through bogus Muslim charities and drug running operations-in America. They are committed to the most violent goals of Islamic jihad and united in their belief that God wants them to destroy America completely.
The Islamic secret network’s complicated web of multialphabet acronym organizations and interlocking directorates helps conceal their activities. This is evident through the many Islamic charities raising fungible monies aimed at both charitable and terrorist causes. Muslim anti-discrimination organizations are also created to appear to be the voices of moderate Islam when they are in fact the supporters of Militant Islam.
In contrast, many operatives in the secret network hide by being prominent, so that no one could accuse them of anything, much less investigate them. Consider, for example, the case of Abdurahman Muhammad Alamoudi, now serving time in a federal penitentiary. Alamoudi’s way of hiding was to be prominent, so that no one could accuse him of anything, much less investigate him. Alamoudi’s invitations to the White House and meetings with President Clinton gave him a lot of influence. He used it to make friends, silence critics, and hide influence-buying into Washington’s most prominent circles….
Read it all.