The Homeland Security Assessment on Vets Never Probed by Congress

Dicks having a little computer glitch, I'm posting this for him.  I know several people who post on Grumpy were offended when this first came out..

Congress Should Start With Southern Poverty Law Center





The following section on disgruntled veterans was part of a nine page intelligence assessment that became public in April, 2009. America’s support for its veterans has grown substantially since the dark days of the Vietnam era. Veterans should be vigilant that they are not again stereotyped by the few among them who disgrace themselves. They should also be wary of private organizations, regardless of how noble their cause, that negatively influence the legacy of those who served. Much has been said about the assessment but little is known of its origins and why veterans were targeted and assigned an ideology that just doesn’t fit. Are veterans part of the most dangerous terrorist threat in the United States (emphasis added)? They indeed are. But the assessment overlooked the most dangerous among them.



Disgruntled Military Veterans




“DHS/I&A assesses that right-wing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans to exploit their skills and knowledge from military training and combat. These skills and knowledge have the potential to boost the capabilities of extremists—to carry out violence. The willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremists groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today.



“---After Operation Desert Shield/Storm in 1990-1991, some returning military veterans---including Timothy McVeigh---joined or associated with rightwing extremists groups.



“---A prominent civil rights organization reported in 2006 that ‘large numbers of potentially violent neo-Nazis, skinheads and other white supremacists are now learning the art of warfare in the [US] armed forces.’



“---The FBI noted in a 2008 report on the white supremacist movement that some returning military veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have joined extremist groups.”



Lone Wolves and Small Terrorist Cells




‘DHS/I&A assesses that lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent rightwing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorist threat in the United State (emphasis added). Information from law enforcement and non-governmental organizations indicates lone wolves and small terrorist cells have shown intent---and, in some cases, the capability---to commit violent acts.



DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano apologized for this assessment which focused on right-wing extremists, particularly the reference to disgruntled military veterans. In the year and a half since its release the hoopla has died down and there hasn’t been much public discussion about disgruntled vets. Shortly after the report was leaked a House panel voted a resolution unanimously to study the origins of this report but it has no subpoena power until approved by the full House. The full House, of course, never moved in this direction. But it doesn’t take an act of Congress to chase down the origins of the report or determine the mindset behind its conclusions.

The “prominent civil rights organization” used by DHS was the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an organization formed originally to keep tabs on the Ku Klux Klan and now bills itself as a “Hate Watch” group. Founder Morris Dees, an Alabama civil rights attorney has put his life on the line on more than one occasion battling the Klan and his dedication to the interdiction of radical right violence cannot be minimized. However, Dees and the SPLC are decisively left leaning and in numerous instances, radically so. In many cases the SPLC sees radical right tendencies in reasonable organizations and individuals and is not shy about inflating innocent activity to paint a radical agenda.

For instance, the Tea Party is regularly ridiculed as racist and hate based which is a primary play in the Marxist playbook. Morris Dees’ esteem has dropped considerably from his early days as a legitimate watchdog to what is now just another immature radical left attack dog.

Perhaps some of the early integrity of the SPLC hangs around enough to influence this DHS assessment. The report began under the Bush Administration. But an assessment of the SPLC would have been wise prior to accepting its findings and creating the DHS’ own assessment.

Some of the comments by the SPLC after the assessment was made public is indicative of the nonsense which has become quite common from the left in trying to promote their views.

The reasoning is quite circular when the SPLC’s Intelligence Project Director, Mark Potok says, “Basically, the report tracks fairly closely with what we have been saying for some time now. They mention us a couple of times [in the assessment], though not by name.”

If the DHS relies on the SPLC’s assessment and includes it in the report, of course it’s going to track closely with what the SPLC has been saying.

Potok goes on to say that the DHS assessment, “confirms that white supremacists are interested in the military. There is some concern, and there should be, about returning veterans, one need only think of the example of Timothy McVeigh, who was in the first Iraq war.”

But Potok is not just the Intelligence Project director for the SPLC. He is also the editor of the SPLC’s Intelligence Report described by the SPLC itself as “a quarterly investigative journal that monitor’s the radical right (2/26/09 special edition).”

Potok may even be DHS assessment’s contributing editor. His comments in the 2/26/09 Special issue of the SPLC’s Intelligence Report contain the same themes found in the DHS report.

DHS spokeswoman, Sara Kuban said that the [DHS] report was one of several of an ongoing series of assessments, “to facilitate a greater understanding of the phenomenon of violent radicalization in the U.S.”

But of those several reports only the right–wing, white supremacist radicals and their American military recruitment targets are considered the most dangerous domestic terrorist threat in the United States (emphasis added).

“The purpose of the report is to identify risk. This is nothing unusual," said Ms. Kuban, who added that the Homeland Security Department did this "to prevent another Tim McVeigh from ever happening again."

The antics of Gulf War veteran Tim McVeigh and that horrible memory he left us in Oklahoma City dominate the vet centered paranoia in the report. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D. NJ) also invokes the name when he defended the content. “[Veterans] are simply listed as targets [by right-wing extremists] coming out of war, not unlike Tim McVeigh, who came out of a military situation and became radicalized in the process and killed Americans.”

The assessment of course, did not “simply list” veterans as targets. It stated that their right wing recruiters were “the most dangerous domestic terrorist threat”.

There is ample evidence that McVeigh was a cut-out, a participating dupe in the plot conjured up in the Middle East. Evidence also supports the theory that the feds let a sting operation go too far. Both the Middle East and sting theories are much more plausible than the official, judicially remedied “facts” found in the case.

Both theories meld together for serious study when the name Ali Mohamed comes up.

Ali Mohamed served in the US Army in the mid to late 80s. Prior to that, he had served in the Egyptian Army unit that assassinated President Sadat. While serving with the Green Berets he took a thirty day leave to train al Qaeda recruits in Afghanistan. He set up the cells which ultimately led to the American Embassy bombings in Africa and the carnage on 9/11. He was finally arrested in 1998. To this day no one can say if he has been sentenced. No one knows where he is. No one caused more damage and death to Americans since WWII than Ali Mohamed; not even Timothy McVeigh. Have you ever heard of Ali Mohamed?

According to Congressman Bill Posey’s office, no one knows where this terrorist is in the system or even if he is in the system. Mohamed is as much a danger to the legacy of the Clinton Administration as he is to American citizens. That’s why he disappeared. And it is doubtful he will ever reappear. In his decade, Mohamed was, by far the most dangerous domestic terrorist in the United States (emphasis added).

If we still believe veterans are targets for recruitment into terrorist cells then we should study a few examples that would prove that theory. Unfortunately, the SPLC overlooked these right wing fanatical recruits:



Army Sgt. Hasan Akbar rolled a frag into his CO’s tent in Kuwait just before the 2003 Iraq invasion. Two officers died and 14 were wounded in the ensuing chaos. His diary entries in the early 90s profess a hatred of Caucasians and loyalty only to Islam.

The classic, lone wolf terrorist, also known as the beltway sniper served in the Army’s 84th Engineering Company. In 2002, eight years after his Honorable Discharge John Muhammad killed ten people in the Washington DC area with the help of a juvenile companion. There is no mention of him in the DHS assessment.

Semi Osman served with the US Navy in Tacoma, Washington. He was part of a refueling unit that used trucks similar to those used to destroy the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. Nineteen servicemen died; 5 stationed here in Brevard. He was arrested in 2002 in connection with a jihadist training camp in Oregon and deported.

While hunting the beltway sniper authorities made a connection to Osman when Gitmo detainee Ferod Abbasi name dropped one James Ujaama. An American computer expert, Ujaama trained terrorists in both the US and Pakistan. Osman and Ujaama ran the US camps where the beltway sniper trained. Investigators were surprised to find Ujaama up to his neck in murder services because he had received a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition and the Washington State Legislature had declared June 10, 1994 James Ujaama Day in honor of his community service.

Former Army reservist Jeffry Leon Battle was part of the American home grown terrorist group known as the Portland Seven. He was indicted for “enlisting in the reserves to receive military training to use against America”. Battle is the exact prototype mentioned in the DHS assessment, but Battle himself is not mentioned nor are the camps in which he trained.

Paul Hall converted to Islam in 1995 and joined the Navy two years later as Hasan Abu-jihaad, or Hasan Father of Holy War. It is doubtful a sailor calling himself PO3 Robert Death to America would have been given a security clearance. But PO3 Father of Holy War was and used that information to report American ship movements to other jihadists. Honorably discharged in 2002, he was arrested in 2007 and charged with treason when his cell unraveled. He was convicted in March 2008 and sentenced to ten years.

All of the above terrorists served in the military with the exception of Ujaama, a recruiter and all of them displayed alarming behavior which took considerable effort not to investigate prior to their crimes.. These are just the more infamous ones.

It can be reasonably argued that Islamic jihadists are right-wing radicals. ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’, is an Arab expression which would allow some coordination with white supremacists. But they are unlikely permanent bedfellows.

McVeigh had a mysterious companion known as John Doe #2 who vanished and was written off as non-existent as the investigation ran into Jihadist tributaries. John Doe #2 bore a striking resemblance to Andreas Strassmeir, purportedly an agent with German intelligence sent to a place called Elohim City on the Arkansas/Oklahoma border to infiltrate the white supremacists there. McVeigh was known to have visited the camp and was seen in Strassmeir’s company on a number of occasions. Strassmeir returned to Germany shortly after the bombing.

Also resembling John Doe #2 was Hussain Hashem al Hussaini, a former Iraqi soldier that came to Oklahoma City as a refugee from the first Gulf War. Witnesses placed him in McVeigh’s company many times. He, like a lot of other key Middle Eastern players in the drama of Oklahoma City were never interviewed much less suspected.

Terry Nichols had ties to the Philippines, particularly Cebu City where the terror outfit Abu Sayyef operated and Nichols was there when Ramsi Yusef, the 1993 World Trade Center bomb-maker was practicing his craft. The FBI as well as most of the intelligence services bumbled through investigations of jihadists throughout the 80s and 90s and the obvious propensity to ignore the signs could be attributed as much to CYA as to PC.

Prior to DHS Secretary Chertoff’s departure in January, 2009 an assessment did raise alarm over Islamic extremists; this one focusing on Hamas. The report cites the establishment of sleeper cells, fund raising and recruiting. The military connection comes by way of one Abdurahman Alamoudi, former head of the American Muslim Council who in addition to laundering terrorist funds also helped oversee the appointment of Muslim chaplains to the US military.

In April, 2009 terrorists gathered in Chicago to prepare for the fall of America. A worldwide Sunni network tied to numerous terror groups called Hizb ut-Tarir felt confident enough to openly meet in America. The theme of this conference was: The Fall of Capitalism and the Rise of Islam. The group is dedicated to the spread of Sharia Law, a theocratic system completely opposed to the freedoms expressed in our Constitutional principles.

We are in a strange war. It resembles the Cold War with hot fronts. Our enemy is over there and over here. We are fighting mind forces as well as ground forces. And we are fighting people who hate us as Americans. Unfortunately, some of them are Americans. From the long term historical record it would seem that the most dangerous domestic terrorist threat in the United States would be Islamic sleeper cells not right-wing white supremacists. Those sleepers are most likely to come from our prisons and madrassas rather than our military, although, as stated above, they do infest our Armed Services to some extent. That is not to say that white supremacists are not a threat. They certainly are and need to be monitored. Nor can we afford to ignore malcontents in our military; especially the obvious ones such as Petty Officer Jihaad and more recently, the Ft. Hood murderer.

But the DHS assessments were distributed to law enforcement agencies throughout the country. Many of those law enforcement personnel are veterans and can see that Timothy McVeigh is the vehicle that drove the association with veterans. The most damaging result of the release of this assessment is the revelation that the analysts who wrote it couldn’t see it—but maybe they did.

Congress never did investigate where the DHS got its information. Many of its members are quite familiar with their own bumbling that led to the events in Oklahoma City, on 9/11 and many more attacks we suffered during the 90s; even including Flight 800 in 1996. The key to the bumbling can be seen in the investigations. We have the best resources and personnel available and are capable of getting to the bottom of almost any crime; particularly those of high magnitude. While there is a degree of incompetence in any endeavor, only when it is blatant and avoidable can we suspect a cover up from the highest authorities. When people screw up, they don’t want it known; especially when it cost the lives of hundreds of people. This is a tragic reality. An investigation of the origins of this report would open a whole can of worms not as easily quashed as was possible in the 90s.

However, a new class may be entering Congress with no ties to the 90s. Will we see a change? The prognosis is bleak. New and truthful revelations may have adverse effects on foreign policy, international relations and, not to be forgotten, personal legacies.

Still, we must make noise when appropriate. This assessment is a lie and it has never been officially investigated. This is how lies enter the political debate, perpetrated and promoted by those with a specific agenda. In this case the SPLC entered an official document, influenced it, and then pretended it agreed with their own assessments. Very clever.

The SPLC’s agenda, benevolent or otherwise mandates its support of the underdog. That’s what the civil rights movement was all about. But it fails miserably to recognize that at times, the underdog is the enemy. That’s why there is no mention in the assessment of the most dangerous domestic terrorist threat in the United States---Islamic jihad.



Dick Lancaster, July, 2009-updated October, 2009