Contends feds won't prosecute due to political reasons
WorldNetDaily — Feb 24, 2014
The Justice Department has enough incriminating evidence to file terrorism charges against the Council on American-Islamic Relations and its founders but has chosen not to indict the Washington-based group and its leaders at this time, a veteran FBI agent reveals in a shocking new book.
“There is enough evidence to indict CAIR, but the government chose not to do so at this time,” said former FBI official John Guandolo, author of “Raising a Jihadi Generation: Understanding the Muslim Brotherhood Movement in America.”
He suggests the government balked at throwing the book at CAIR for political reasons.
CAIR has cultivated a number of political supporters, mainly among leading Democrats in Washington – including senior White House officials. Secret Service entry logs show CAIR officials have visited the White House several times during the Obama administration.
Despite its designation as an unindicted terrorist co-conspirator in 2007, the Muslim pressure group in recent years has successfully lobbied for changes in federal policies dealing with the war on terror. For example, CAIR took credit for helping persuade Attorney General Eric Holder to prohibit religious profiling in terror cases, a decision his department is expected to announce formally soon. It also played a key role in the Pentagon’s recent decision to change long-standing uniform rules to allow military personnel to wear Islamic beards and head coverings.
Moreover, a controversial new rule issued earlier this month by the departments of State and Homeland Security to relax U.S. immigration for Palestinian and other foreign “refugees” who have provided “limited” material support to terrorists also dovetails with CAIR lobbying.
Under the Bush administration, the Justice Department implicated CAIR in a criminal conspiracy to raise money for Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group.
CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad, aka Omar Yehya, was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007-2008 Holy Land Foundation case. He and CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad remain under FBI investigation, senior FBI officials have confirmed in letters to Congress. Until their ties to Hamas are resolved, the FBI says it will not formally recognize CAIR as a Muslim outreach partner or meet with CAIR officials. The FBI has effectively banned CAIR pending the outcome of the probe.
Starting in the fall of 2008, Guandolo said, “the FBI cut off all ties with CAIR because of their ties to Hamas.”
He explains that CAIR was created in 1994 by the U.S. branch of Hamas, known as the “Palestine Committee,” to function as the “political arm” of the Palestinian terrorist group. A year before founding the front group, Ahmad and Awad had attended a secret meeting with “senior leaders of Hamas” at a Philadelphia hotel that was bugged by the FBI. An internal FBI memo written by the former head of the FBI’s counterterrorism division describes “all attendees” of the meeting – including Ahmad and Awad – as “Hamas members,” Guandolo points out.
“CAIR was the fourth organization created by Hamas to recruit jihadis, raise money and gain media favor for Hamas in America,” Guandolo said, adding that phone books, organizational charts, secret manifestos written in Arabic and other documents the FBI has seized indicate Awad and Ahmad were in leadership positions in the U.S. Palestine Committee prior to the creation of CAIR.
“CAIR is Hamas,” Guandolo flatly states.
Since 9/11, several CAIR officials – including senior officials working in the group’s national office located within blocks of the U.S. Capitol – have been convicted or deported on terrorism-related charges.
CAIR denies any ties to terrorism and slams Guandolo as an “Islamophobe” who seeks to deny constitutional rights for Muslim-Americans.
In a headline posted on the home page of its website, CAIR maintains that Guandolo once said “mosques have no right to exist,” but that claim disappears when visitors click on the headline and go to the full statement. CAIR never sources or supports the claim.
Guandolo says it’s a typical “smear tactic” of CAIR.
A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy as well as the U.S. Army Ranger School, Guandolo joined the FBI in 1996 after resigning his commission in the Marine Corps, where he served as a commander in Iraq and Bosnia.
After the 9/11 attacks, Guandolo was assigned to the counter-terrorism division of the FBI’s Washington field office where he investigated U.S. front groups for the radical Muslim Brotherhood and its Palestinian branch, Hamas. In 2006, Guandolo developed the FBI’s first counter-terrorism training program focusing on the global Islamic jihad movement. He was designated a “subject matter expert” by FBI headquarters.
In 2007, Guandolo was presented the “Defender of the Homeland” award by U.S. Sens. Joseph Lieberman and John Kyl. Before resigning from the FBI in December 2008, Guandolo twice received the United States Attorneys Award for Investigative Excellence. He served on the bureau’s SWAT team as well as its surveillance unit.
He now works as a counter-terrorism and security consultant for law enforcement, the intelligence community and the military. He also teaches at the Joint Forces Staff College and the U.S. Army War College.
In 2011, Guandolo delivered a three-day seminar on counter-terrorism to members of the FBI’s National Joint Terrorism Task Force and several other federal agencies at Marine headquarters in Virginia.