Steven Emerson - Jihad Incorporated: A Guide to Militant Islam in the Us

This report is dedicated to Jason Scott Korsower, a man of exquisite patience, drive, and intellect whose work is reflected in this report in the core material on terror financing. May he rest in the peace he loved and sought for all people.

by Congressman Peter Hoekstra

Vulnerabilities Discovered 56

n September 11, 2001, Americans felt the full fury of al Qaeda as it came to our shores, killing some three thousand people in attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside Washington, DC.

As I write this, the United States has managed to go five full years without another tragic attack occurring on its soil. Yet, it would surprise and shock most Americans to learn of the extent to which al Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups have implanted themselves in the United States. From nonprofit "charities" operating under false cover to actual al Qaeda cells to "homegrown" terrorist cells, jihadist groups have been active on American soil for years. Moreover, they continue to stay active: besides al Qaeda being here, Hizballah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Lashkar e Tayba, and numerous other groups have recruited supporters, raised funds, disseminated propaganda, planned operations, or carried out paramilitary training. Although the government has done an excellent job in tracking and prosecuting many of these groups, the freedoms of our open society have also afforded protection to others in the radical Islamic orbit.

The government relies on an arsenal of legal weapons to track and prosecute jihadist groups. However, at the same time, organizations in the nongovernmental arena can and do play a pivotal role in shining a light on the activities of those same groups. Often, these public interest organizations -groups like Steven Emerson's Investigative Project on Terrorism-can expose the activities of the radical Islamists in ways that the government cannot.

The governmental role in the War on Terror, in uncovering and fighting the terrorists wherever they may appear, falls both to the executive branch headed by the president and to the US Congress, where I have been privileged to play a role as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

As I said on the floor of the House when we considered-and decisively approved-the Global War on Terror resolution in June, the war we find ourselves in with radical Islamists was not of our choosing, but it is the central struggle of our time, the first major conflict of the Information Age.

That war, I noted, did not begin on 9/11. Though that was the occasion that brought the issue squarely to public concern, the battle had begun to come into focus as far back as "2/26" -February 26, 1993, the date of the first, less utterly disastrous, attack on the World Trade Center. Then came the intervening attacks on the Khobar Towers in June 1996, the strikes on our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, and the attack on the USS Cole in October 2000.

While those terrorist forays carried overseas datelines, it is vital to recognize the threat of homegrown terrorism -a strain of the terror virus that has already been experienced in Spain, the United Kingdom, Australia, the Netherlands, and, most recently, Canada - and that is unquestionably in the planning stages in our own country as well.

It is in drawing public attention to the dangerous reality of those threats that groups such as terrorist investigator Steven Emerson's Investigative Project on Terrorism come into play. The Investigative Project on Terrorism is a public interest organization that tracks, monitors, and exposes the activities of jihadist groups operating on American soil. Emerson founded the organization in 1995, shortly after broadcast of his pioneering documentary Jihad in America on public television in November 1994. Today, it is considered one of the largest repositories of intelligence in the world on the activities, funding, and operations of radical Islamic groups here in the United States and their ties to overseas groups.

Independently supported by contributions from US donors only, the Investigative Project on Terrorism has been in the forefront in the war against militant Islam. The organization works closely with law enforcement and intelligence agencies as well as with members of Congress. I have often received invaluable information from Emerson and his team of investigators, sometimes better than the intelligence I get from official US governmental briefings.

In Jihad Incorporated, Emerson and his staff have chronicled the history and operations of militant Islam in the United States. Impeccably sourced, the book lays out in shocking detail the operations of the entire spectrum of radical Islamic groups operating here. Based on court records, law enforcement sources, open-source intelligence, and internal Islamic organization documents, Jihad Incorporated is a veritable encyclopedia as well as a definitive chronology of the history of jihadist groups that have been active in the United States. The Investigative Project on Terrorism has performed a true public service in compiling this material. It makes for unsettling reading but it is indispensable to anyone interesting in the nation's security and in knowing more about al Qaeda, Hamas, Hizballah, and virtually every other radical Islamic group in the United States.

The global war against radical Islam will be long, and it will require the patience and perseverance of the American people. That, in turn, will require broad awareness of just the sort of detailed, carefully researched, and substantiated information that this volume provides.

Congressman Peter Hoekstra

Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, July 2006

,he Investigative Project was founded in late 1995 by Steven Emerson, who now serves as the project's executive director. The project's foundation lay in the knowledge and research materials used for the documentary Jihad in America, broadcast on November 21, 1994. Today, the project maintains the largest nongovernmental data and intelligence library in the world on militant Islam. Project archives contain more than four million documents; thousands of hours of clandestine video- and audiotapes of militant Islamic training, fund-raising, and recruitment gatherings; and tens of thousands of original terrorist manuals, telephone books, and periodicals. The project has in its employ analysts, translators, audio and visual specialists, and undercover operatives.

The project assists the White House, the FBI, the Justice Department, DHS border security agencies, the Secret Service, the Pentagon and its Office of Special Operations, and the Treasury Department in its counterterrorism activities. On numerous specific occasions, the work of the project has enabled law enforcement to successfully intervene in terrorist activity when evidence was otherwise lacking. Key prosecutions against terrorist financiers and leaders operating in the United States have come about, in many instances, because of the singular initial investigations conducted by the project, many of which have been undertaken since 9/11.