Friday, April 23, 2010 – Rudy Atallah, Michael Ledeen, Dan Burton

Erick Stakelbeck, correspondent and terrorism analyst for Christian Broadcasting Network news, substitutes for Frank today.  Erick initiates the show with his insights on the War on Islamic Fascism, and why we need to be concerned about homegrown Jihad.  Former Pentagon’s Director of Counter-terrorism for Africa Lt. Colonel Rudy Atallah analyzes the emerging Al-Qaeda safehavens in North Africa.  Dr. Michael Ledeen of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies discusses the Iran-Syria axis in the Middle East.  Congressman Dan Burton (R-IN) provides updates on the trial of the Navy SEALs for roughing up a terrorist.

MONOLOGUE: April 23, 2010

First, I want to discuss something with you that I have followed, and I know Frank has followed on this program very closely over the past several years, and that is homegrown jihad. Yes, jihad. It’s not a spiritual struggle – violent jihad is what drives and motivates so many Islamic terrorists. It is the motivating factor and we’re seeing a big upswing of it right here on American soil. Now, FBI Director Robert Muller said just last week that “homegrown terrorism is just as big a threat as al-Qaeda”. That’s from the Director of the FBI. Did you know that in 2009, which I call the ‘year of homegrown jihad’ that we had no less than 12 Islamic terrorist plots right here on American soil? Now some of those had direct links back to al-Qaeda in the tribal regions of Pakistan, in Somalia, but the great majority of those twelve plots were from self-starters – homegrown jihad self-starters who were inspired by al-Qaeda but had no direct links to al-Qaeda. And you think of those twelve plots, thankfully ten of them were broken up, but two were successful. Fort Hood, in which Nidal Hassan did everything, frankly, but walk around the base wearing a T-Shirt that said ‘I am an Islamic Terrorist’ – it should have never happened.

And we also had that much forgotten attack last May in Little Rock, Arkansas, where a U.S. military recruiter was also murdered in cold blood by an Islamic jihadist who had trained, who had studied, in Yemen. Thankfully, ten of those plots were broken up. And another plot, now we’re in 2010, may also have been broken up in the past few months, it’s something you haven’t heard much about but I broke exclusive new details about this case on Wednesday on CBN News – out of Columbus, Ohio, of all places, ladies and gentlemen – the heartland of America; Middle America. We had a jailhouse convert to Islam. He converted in prison by the name of Abdullah Mohammed Muslim. That was the name he took when he converted to Islam in prison. He was formerly known as Jonny Clagg. Now this is a Caucasian, we’ve seen so many white converts to Islam gravitating towards jihad over the past few years, obviously just last month we had ‘Jihad Jane’ and ‘Jihad Jamie’ the two white, blue-eyed, female converts to Islam and the more white converts al-Qaeda can get, frankly, the better it is for them to escape detection. So Mr. Abdullah Mohammed Muslim of Columbus, Ohio, is a very interesting case.

In October 2009 his house was raided which I’ll get into shortly, but just a few weeks ago on March 24^th he plead guilty to some very serious charges -  I’m going to run them down for you real quick and I want to elaborate on why you should know about this case but none of us have heard anything. There has been a complete media blackout. In October 2009 Abdullah Mohammed Muslim’s house was searched by ATF agents. Mind you this is a white convert to Islam, a jailhouse convert who are often the most radical. The most radicalized come out of prisons very often times. And also mind you his own attorney says “he travelled to the tribal regions of Pakistan”. Now, you don’t go to the tribal regions of Pakistan where al-Qaeda’s hierarchy is based where al-Qaeda runs, by some estimates, over 100 training camps. You don’t go there for the scenery, needless to say. So here’s what ATF agents found in Mr. Muslim’s house in Middle America – Columbus, Ohio: they found enough material to make 5 pipe bombs, they found several smoke canisters and an AK-47 rifle, another heavy assault rifle, a military/SWAT ballistic vest plus one ballistic face mask, one military flak jacket, a 9mm semi-automatic rifle, over 1000 rounds of ammunition and a CD with digital images of the Anarchist’s Cookbook and similar documents which I obtained. This is pretty troubling, right? Let’s review – this is a man who is a white convert, a jailhouse convert, his own attorney says that he has been to the tribal regions of Pakistan – hmm, I wonder why? And there’s a large weapons arsenal found in his home including enough material to make 5 pipe bombs. Yet federal officials in Ohio say, ‘this has nothing to do with terrorism’ – nothing to do with terrorism at all. Really?

Let me tell you when I started investigating this case, and really there has been a media blackout, not only is this important regarding the October raid of his home, there was another separate raid of Mr. Muslim’s home last year – actually about a year and a half ago in November 2008. Same deal – agents found a large weapons arsenal. So he plead guilty and there was about a 10 month period there where he was walking the streets a free man, after pleading guilty. Now during this time he was able to restock his weapons arsenal. Not only that, an informed source in Columbus tells me that Mr. Muslim was walking the streets and associating with known radical Islamists including a guy on a terrorist watch-list. How does this happen? When I called the Cincinnati field office for the FBI (if you want to talk to the folk in Columbus you have to go through Cincinnati most of the time) I talked to the spokesman there, a guy by the name of Michael Brooks, and I said ‘Hey! Can you tell me about the case of Abdullah Mohammed Muslim, the guy who’s been to the tribal regions of Pakistan, who agents found a large weapons arsenal in his home including pipe-bomb materials?’ he had no idea what I was talking about. He said ‘the FBI had nothing to do with that case Mr. Stakelbeck but I’ll make some calls.’ So he called the ATF, he called the State Department actually who also got involved because our good friend Mr. Muslim was involved with passport fraud and identity theft (I wonder what he was trying to do there?!). The FBI spokesman got back to me around some of the details and he stressed ‘we had no involvement in this investigation; it was an ATF/State Department thing.’

Ladies and gentlemen I have to tell you, and once again this is Eric Stakelback sitting in for the great Frank Gaffney, that’s disturbing. The FBI in Cincinnati didn’t know anything about this case? This was a possible case of home-grown jihad! The Director of the FBI Robert Muller said just last week that home-grown jihad is just as big a threat as al-Qaeda. Yet the spokesman for the FBI field office didn’t know anything about this case? That’s disturbing isn’t it? And I’ll tell you, I think this home-grown jihad explosion fits into a pattern from what we’re seeing from al-Qaeda. I think what we’re seeing right now is al-Qaeda transitioning to what I call the ‘chip away’ strategy. Now what does that mean? Just last month Adam Gadan, al-Qaeda’s American mouthpiece, another white convert by the way, made a video tape saying, ‘Look. Even if an attack fails like the underwear bombing on Christmas Day, even a failed terrorist attack is still effective because of what it does to the American people’s psyche.’ Think of the underwear bomber on Christmas Day – think of the gnashing of teeth, the weeping among the Obama administration. A complete lack of confidence – it was like keystone cops. It portrayed weakness to our enemies abroad – that was the reaction to the underwear bombing. That’s a victory for the jihadists. Mr. Gadan knows it and it is what I think we’re going to see right now.

We know al-Qaeda wants to obtain weapons of mass destruction. We know that al-Qaeda wants to top 9/11 on American soil. A few months ago, just in January I interviewed a guy in London by the name of Saad al-Faqta, a guy with direct links to Bin Laden and the al-Qaeda network, a wanted terrorist. I sipped tea with him in his living room if you can believe that, but as I was leaving I looked at him and I said, ‘Mr. al-Faqta, what do you see coming between the West and the Islamic world?’ He looked me in the eye and said, ‘My friend I see attacks bigger than 9/11 on the horizon for the West.’ And this is coming from an al-Qaeda mouthpiece, who by the way lives like an honored citizen in a nice house in northwest London but that’s another story with the Brits: Londonistan.

But, we know that’s what they want to do. We know it, but here’s the deal: We’ve had excellent intelligence work, we’ve had excellent law enforcement work since 9/11, and we’ve had a little bit of luck. I think al-Qaeda on American soil right now is going to go to this ‘chip away’ strategy that Mr. Gadan alluded to. What do I mean by that? Each chip away; an underwear bomber here, a Fort Hood shooting there, maybe a Mumbai-style attack in a Middle American city – yes, they don’t have the history-altering qualities of 9/11. They’re not going to cause the mass carnage that we saw on 9/11 but I’ll tell you what: if you go into a Middle American city and a few young jihadis start fanning out with assault rifles and start yelling ‘Allah, alakbah’ and start firing, it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to walk in a shopping mall and start firing. That could cause some real psychological damage in the U.S. It could shatter the confidence of American citizens. A sustained effort like this, a ‘chip away’ effort of low-level, low-tech Islamic terrorist attacks on American soil could cause a great deal of damage here – it really could. Of course economic damage – our economy is already faltering and it’s going to falter even more under Mr. Obama.

Could you imagine a sustained amount of Islamic terrorist attacks, kind of self-starter, lone wolf, Nidal Hasan type carryies out an attack – kills 13 people at a military base which by the way Mr. Gadan, the al-Qaeda mouthpiece, also encouraged. A Mumbai-style attack, an underwear bomber takes down a plane with 200 people – it’s not 9/11 but it’s pretty bad. If you have a sustained, sustained effort and these attacks are happening on a regular basis I’ll tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that’s a big deal. That’s scary stuff – it would have a definite effect on the American public and quite frankly from what I’ve seen I don’t know how the Obama administration would react to that or handle that. But I have to say I’m not too confident, I’m not too keen to see how they would react based on what I’ve seen over the past year and a half since the ‘Obama messiah’ came into office.

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