The Enemy Within.

The terrorist threat comes from a long list of dangerous organizations, many of which may have extensive operations inside the United States. The current U.S. administration has sent American military forces to the other side of the world to capture Osama bin Laden. The real, imminent threat, however, is here at home. The horrendous attacks of September 11th involved only a small number of the Trojan Horse terrorist troops still within our gates. It is this legion of terror that must be rooted out before it can launch even more cataclysmic attacks of death and destruction on America.

Over the past four decades, THE NEW AMERICAN and its predecessors (American Opinion and The Review of the News) have published a veritable mountain of articles detailing the establishment of a vast terror network within the United States. Terrorist organizations and their sponsors from virtually every part of the world have been building their support apparatuses in our country for years. At the same time, many "domestic" terrorist groups -- U.S. citizens who, invariably, are supported by foreign powers -- have also been honeycombing America with their subversive networks. For a period of nearly eight years during the 1970s and 1980s, this reporter watched firsthand, in an undercover capacity, as these networks were being assembled. I was present at many meetings featuring members of certified terrorist groups such as the Palestinian PLO and PFLP, the Irish Republican Army, the El Salvadoran FMLN, the Nicaraguan Sandinistas (FSLN), the Puerto Rican FALN, the Black Panthers, the African National Congress, and others.

This writer was an eyewitness also at meetings where members of these terrorist groups mingled with radical and Communist lawyers posing as "civil libertarians" to coordinate their systematic legal attacks on police and intelligence agencies. Their plan was simple and effective: 1) present themselves as victims of political and ethnic persecution by law enforcement groups; 2) demand an end to "police spying" and "McCarthyism"; 3) bring harassing lawsuits and orchestrate media attacks to demoralize, intimidate, neuter, and dismantle investigative agencies; and 4) use their newfound freedom from surveillance to patiently advance their subversive agenda.

These forces were at war with our civilization, we repeatedly warned, and were attempting to bring about the destruction of our free republic. After many years of preparation, that war has now entered a new phase. The fact that bombs are not going off daily should not be taken as a signal for complacence; waiting for the next round of terror to begin before taking appropriate action is folly. There are identifiable terrorists and terrorist supporters in our midst who can be arrested or deported now. At the very least, they should be put under strict surveillance immediately so as to avoid the imposition of police state measures on all citizens, measures which will surely follow any additional terrorist rampage. The following groups and individuals should be watched closely.

AI-Qaeda

Almost completely unheard of by the American public before the events of Black Tuesday, Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network has now become the subject of daily headlines. It is quite possible that Al-Qaeda has been involved in several of the most deadly acts of terrorism perpetrated against the U.S. over the past decade. Since the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, THE NEW AMERICAN has published a series of articles detailing the extensive evidence that Middle Eastern terrorist cells were involved with convicted OKC bomber Timothy McVeigh and co-conspirator Terry Nichols. We also reported credible evidence linking those Mideast cells to the terror ring of Ramzi Yousef and Osama bin Laden that was responsible for the earlier 1993 World Trade Center (WTC) bombing and other terrorist acts. [*]

Ramzi Yousef, now convicted and imprisoned for his role in the first WTC attack, had also plotted a spectacular terrorist act involving the simultaneous hijacking of multiple American airliners. We reported this along with other evidence, and we delivered considerable evidence from our investigation, including sworn affidavits from witnesses, to members of Congress during several visits to Washington, D.C. If officials had followed up on this credible evidence, might the terrible events of Black Tuesday been averted? Very possibly.

The TNA investigation indicated that Iraqi soldiers whom President Clinton had admitted to the U.S. as "refugees," and who had settled in Oklahoma City, were active members of the OKC bombing conspiracy. Ramzi Yousef, according to recent reports by former CIA chief James Woolsey and Iraq specialist Dr. Laurie Mylroie, is not Pakistani, as originally thought, but Iraqi and an agent of Saddam Hussein. One of Yousef's convicted co-conspirators in the 1993 WTC bombing, Abdul Hakim Murad, has admitted to being a member of the group that he claims bombed the Murrah Building. Other Yousef co-conspirators, Mahmud Abouhalima and El Sayyid Nosair, had ongoing connections with bin Laden's top lieutenant, Wadih el-Hage. Abouhalima actually met with el-Hage at a radical Islamic conference in Oklahoma City. Nevertheless, no one in the Clinton administration, the media, or Congress was willing to consider seriously any evidence that might point to a Middle East connection and upset the forced "consensus" that the OKC attac k was the work of angry, "anti-government," "right-wing," white males.

But surely now, after September 11th, the Al-Qaeda network here in the U.S. has been rounded up, right? Nearly two weeks after Black Tuesday, on September 23rd, Washington Post writers Bob Woodward and Walter Pincus reported that four to five cells of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda have been allowed to operate in the United States for the last several years -- and continue to do so -- under the watchful eyes of the FBI. The FBI says it is helpless to arrest the men until they do something illegal. At least two of the hijackers of the September 11th attacks, Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhazmi, were also on this same FBI "watch list." They also, presumably, did nothing illegal -- before commandeering a plane and using it for a suicide terror attack.

The FBI and Immigration and Naturalization Service are shackled by lawsuits and legislation, such as the 1990 Immigration law sponsored by Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), which have left us wide open to terrorists. The Kennedy law, as interpreted by our State Department, holds that "mere" membership in a terrorist organization or advocacy of acts of terrorism does not exclude foreigners from receiving U.S. immigration or visitor visas.

Islamic Jihad, llamas, Hezbollah

Articles in THE NEW AMERICAN have also presented some of the evidence we have gathered showing the likely connection of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Yasser Arafat's PLO to the OKC-WTC terror attacks as well as to Yousef and bin Laden. Those familiar with the long history of transnational cooperation between multiple groups in terrorist operations do not find this difficult to believe; in fact, they expect it. We pointed out, for instance, that Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, the head of Islamic Jihad, was, at the time of the OKC bombing, posing as a harmless economics professor at the University of South Florida and running a Tampa-based revolutionary apparatus disguised as an Islamic "think tank." Hamas and Hezbollah also have their religious, academic, and humanitarian front organizations in the U.S. All three of these terror groups have proven to be deadly, ruthless, and virulently anti-American. And all have utilized suicide attacks.

In April of this year, when Iran sponsored another of its terrorist summits, leaders of all three groups attended: Sheikh Hasan Nasrallah of the Lebanese Hezbollah; Khalid Mash'al of Hamas; and Ramadan Shallah of the Islamic Jihad. Their adherents here in America pretend to be disciples of peace but, like Ramzi Yousef, who claimed asylum status, they mean to do America grave harm. And they have made serious inroads among the 10 million Muslims who now reside in the United States.

Yet, when Secretary of State Colin Powell announced that the Bush administration was freezing the U.S. assets of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, he did not announce a similar policy concerning the considerable assets of organizations connected to Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad.

PLO and PFLP

Yasser Arafat is, arguably, the world's richest and most celebrated terrorist. He is royally received as head of state in capitals from Russia to China, Cuba, Iraq, Latin America, Europe, and the United States. He is heralded as a reformed man of peace beset by hard-liners bent on spoiling his commitment to the "peace process." And he is showered with billions of tax dollars from Europe, America, and Arab states. Yet, his Palestine Liberation Organization remains one of the world's largest terrorist armies, and he maintains relations with terrorist organizations worldwide. His network of loyal followers and paid agents within the United States is extensive. As previously mentioned, key individuals in both the WTC and OKC bombings had direct ties to the PLO.

Compared to its record of high-profile hijackings and bombings in the 1960s and '70s, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) seemed to have gone into relative inactivity and obscurity during the past two decades. On October 21st Of this year, however, the PFLP captured headlines again, with its assassination of Israel's Minister of Tourism, Rehavam Zeevi. The PFLP, a hard-core Marxist-Leninist branch of the PLO, headed for many years by George Habash, has its network here in America also. Beginning in 1987, the INS attempted to deport eight PFLP foreign nationals -- seven Palestinians and one Kenyan. The ACLU, the National Lawyers Guild, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the usual retinue of Hollywood activists rallied to the terrorist cause. The PFLP terror supporters became the "LA 8" martyrs, and the INS was forced to appeal all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, a process that took 12 years and millions of dollars.

FMLN, FSLN, EZLN, FALN

Although Middle Eastern terrorist groups have grabbed the limelight, Latin American groups almost certainly have larger numbers of trained operatives within the U.S. The Farabundo Marti guerrillas of El Salvador (FMLN) and the Sandinistas of Nicaragua (FSLN) are Cuban-backed and have large contingents of cadres inside our borders among the respective immigrant groups from those countries. Providing crucial assistance to the FMLN and FSLN within the U.S. are Communist-founded support groups such as CISPES (Committees in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador), NACLA (North American Congress on Latin America), and WOLA (Washington Office on Latin America). CISPES was founded by Farid Handal, the brother of Salvadoran Communist Party leader Shafik Handal. Farid received help in his effort from Alfredo Garcia Almeida, one of Fidel Castro's intelligence agents stationed at the Cuban mission to the UN. CISPES has placed its committees in hundreds of U.S. communities and on many college campuses.

Likewise, Mexico's Cuban-backed Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) has a large presence in the U.S. and is supported by a large, radical Hispanic network and the usual college revolutionaries. The very violent Cubanbacked FALN and the Macheteros of Puerto Rico have stepped up their organizing activities since President Clinton's 1999 release from prison of 11 convicted FALN terrorists. President Bush's cave-in to FALN demands for the U.S. Navy to leave the Vieques training base in Puerto Rico has served only to further escalate the terrorists' demands.

The IRA 

Like the PLO, the Irish Republican Army has gone respectable. Like Chairman Arafat, the IRA's Gerry Adams has professed peaceful intentions and denounced violence. He was a regular visitor to the Clinton White House. Recent developments, though, have proven the IRA peace offensive to be as phony as the PLO's. In August three top officers in the IRA's "legitimate" political party, Sinn Fein, were arrested in Colombia, where they had allegedly traveled to provide explosives expertise to that nation's FARC terrorists. One of the men, James Monaghan, sat with Gerry Adams at annual Sinn Fein conferences. Another, Martin McCauley, was Sinn Fein's director of elections in Upper Bann in 1996. The third man, Niall Connolly, Sinn Fein's main emissary to Latin America, had lived in Communist Cuba for six years. In April, Sinn Fein Senator Mick Lanigan showed up at the aforementioned terror conference in Teheran.

Not only has the IRA refused to disarm, as its leaders had earlier pledged to do, but it has been caught receiving guns through a gun-smuggling ring in the U.S. The IRA has always counted heavily for financial support from the large U.S. Irish community, which it has been very careful to shield from knowledge of the organization's ties to Russia, Cuba, Libya, and other terrorist-sponsoring states and terrorist organizations.

Nation of Islam 

Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam is certain to become a major force in the terror wars ahead. In 1998 he completed his third "World Friendship Tour," which took him to some 40 countries, including all of the hate-America terror states. Among the nations visited by Farrakhan were Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Russia, and Cuba. During his 1996 tour, Libya's terrorist kingpin, Muammar Qaddafi, pledged $1 billion to Farrakhan's efforts in the U.S. According to JANA, the official mouthpiece of the Libyan government, Qaddafi said "American blacks could set up their own state within the United States with the largest black army in the world." Qaddafi also stated: "Our confrontation with America used to be like confronting a fortress from outside. Today, we have found a loophole to enter the fortress and to confront it from within."

Following his visit to the ruins of one of Qaddafi's residences that was bombed in the 1986 U.S. retaliatory attack on Tripoli, Farrakhan wrote this consoling note to Qaddafi: "I implore God to punish our enemies hundreds of times, just as they did to us and against you." Farrakhan identifies completely with Qaddafi and, like "Mad Muammar," considers the U.S. to be his "enemey."

The Nation of Islam leader then went on to Tehran, where, Agence France Presse reported, "Farrakhan paid tribute ... to Iran on the anniversary of its 1979 Islamic revolution, as a crowd of tens of thousands chanted 'Death to America."'

Farrakhan laid a wreath on the tomb of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, professed his love for the maniacal Imam, and declared that "we will use American Muslim unity as a lever of pressure against the arrogant policies of the United States."

Although his "Million Man March" didn't live up to its billing, Farrakhan has demonstrated the ability to assemble hundreds of thousands and to command the fanatical loyalty of thousands of devotees. That is especially frightening considering his ties and commitments to the most ruthless terror regimes.

Kosovo Liberation Army 

As William Norman Grigg has repeatedly shown in these pages, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) is one of the deadliest narco-terrorist criminal syndicates in the world. Maoist in ideology, it has covered itself with a veneer of Islamism to better appeal to Balkan Muslims and hide its true terrorist agenda.

Allied with Osama bin Laden, the Russian- and Chinese-hacked terror regime in Iran, and the Albanian and Italian mafias, the KLA cadres have become the major heroin traffickers and assassins-for-hire throughout Europe. During the Clinton administration, the KLA was made our "ally" in Kosovo and given protected sanctuaries under NATO and UN control. Hundreds, if not thousands, of KLA terrorists have been admitted to the U.S. as "refugees."

Cuba

Since he hosted the infamous 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Havana, assembling more than 500 representatives from virtually every terrorist group in the world, Fidel Castro has served as the chief impresario of the international terror apparatus. In May, just four months before Black Tuesday, Fidel journeyed to his fellow terror states of Iran, Syria, Libya, and Algeria. In Iran, he told the cheering mobs: "Today, there is a king in the world a thousand times stronger than the shah you overthrew, and that is the imperialist king living next to my homeland. However, this imperialist king will finally fall, just as your king was overthrown." In July, Hassan Khomeini, the 29-year-old grandson of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, was Castro's honored guest in Havana for "National Rebellion Day."

Castro has developed a huge network of agents and sympathizers in the U.S. and, as recent spy arrests and trials have demonstrated, his agents have successfully penetrated critical offices in the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the U.S. Air Force.

One of his spies, Alejandro Alonso, revealed during his trial in Miami, on December 30, 2000, that he was instructed by the Havana regime to locate areas in South Florida "where we can move persons as well as things, including arms and explosives."

Is it just a coincidence that so many of the September 11th hijackers operated out of Florida, or did they receive assistance through Castro's Florida networks? It is possible that the Black Tuesday attacks would have been even more horrendous if three men traveling on Pakistani passports through Cuba had not been arrested in the Cayman Islands in August 2000. The three, who claim to be Afghans, are still being held by the government of the Cayman Islands. The Cayman government released a letter that had been sent to Radio Cayman 13 days prior to the attacks, foretelling the coming catastrophe. The letter was from Cayman pleasure boat captain Byron Barnett, who claimed to have overheard the three men conversing with another individual. Mr. Barnett warned:

[W]e have an urgent situation with the three Afghanistan [sic] that we have in our midsts for the past months. I have been convinced that they are agents of Osama Bin Laden -- one of the world's greatest terrorist -- operating out of -- you guessed it -- Afghanistan. The three agents here are organizing a major terrorist act against the U.S. via an airline or airlines.... Why do you think that their last country before they came to the Cayman Islands was Cuba? I feel that the world will think this is the most unlikely place on Earth to launch an attack -- the Cayman Islands.... If we foil these agents' plans we may never know for sure why they are here, but if we allow this attack to be carried out this would be one of the greatest and most far reaching catastrophes for these Islands.

Incredibly, despite Castro's 40-year record of terrorist activities and support for terrorism, subversion, war, and revolution, the "leading lights" of the U.S. foreign policy establishment -- especially at the Council on Foreign Relations -- are advocating that Cuba be dropped from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, and that the U.S. move toward "normalization" of relations with Castro.

Rather than accepting the arguments that we must give up our freedom and adopt police-state measures to deal with terrorism, the American people must insist that the federal government utilize its proper authority and ample resources to root out the enemies -- foreign and domestic -- who have shown by word and deed that they are aligned with the forces of terror and darkness.

(*.) See our September 14, 1998 issue, "OKC's Mideast Connection" and "America the Vulnerable," and our issue for October 12, 1998, "American-Made Terrorists." These articles are available at www.thenewamerican.com/focus/okc/.