BUSH WATCH...AL-ARIAN AND BUSH

Fla. Professor Is Acquitted in Case Seen as Patriot Act TestA federal jury acquitted former Florida professor Sami al-Arian yesterday of conspiring to aid a Palestinian group in killing Israelis through suicide bombings, dealing the U.S. government a setback in its efforts to use secretly gathered intelligence in criminal cases against terrorism suspects. The trial was a crucial test of government power under the USA Patriot Act, which lowered barriers that had prevented intelligence agencies from sharing secretly monitored communications with prosecutors. The case was the first criminal terrorism prosecution to rely mainly on vast amounts of materials gathered under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), whose standards for searches and surveillance are less restrictive than those set by criminal courts....Al-Arian, 47, was found not guilty on eight of 17 counts, including conspiracy to maim or murder. Jurors deadlocked on the rest of the charges, including ones that he aided terrorists....The case became pivotal in last year's Florida Senate race. Former housing secretary Mel Martinez (R) defeated former university [of South Florida] president Betty Castor (D) after charging that she did not do enough to sever al-Arian's ties to the school. Castor noted that al-Arian campaigned for President Bush in 2000 and met with White House adviser Karl Rove in 2001 on religion-based initiatives. 12.07.05
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The Patriot Act Can't Make Up for a Weak Case The verdict...revives a debate over whether the government was too slow to act on intelligence gathered in the 1990s about Al-Arian and other suspects. "If everyone was playing off the same sheet of music, maybe this case gets indicted in 1997 instead of 2003," McCarthy said. "If that happens, it may be an entirely different result."... Al-Arian, a Kuwaiti-born Palestinian, was a computer engineering professor at the University of South Florida, well known in the Tampa area for his activism. Suspicions about his links to terrorists arose in 1994, when he was featured in a PBS documentary, "Jihad in America," that identified him as a leading fundraiser for Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group that calls for the destruction of Israel and is known for suicide bombings. The concern grew after a man he hired to run a Tampa think tank left the United States to become the new head of the Palestinian group. The government launched an intelligence investigation of Al-Arian in the mid-1990s, acquiring dozens of secret wiretaps and generating more than 20,000 hours of intercepted phone calls. But despite the years of intense surveillance, U.S. officials did not seek charges at the time. Officials have long cited the mythical "wall" prohibiting intelligence agents from sharing information with prosecutors — a barrier that was removed by the Patriot Act. Over the years, Al-Arian became a prominent civil rights advocate and spokesman for Palestinian causes. Months before the Sept. 11 attacks, he attended a briefing at the White House complex as part of a Muslim affairs group. He was charged in a February 2003 indictment that accused him of supporting terrorist bombings in Israel by using an academic think tank and a Tampa charity he founded as fundraising fronts. The case was heralded by then-U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft as an example of the value of the Patriot Act. At trial, the government put on a sprawling case. It included hours of transcripts of secretly monitored phone conversations, graphic videos and testimony from more than 80 witnesses. But the government was unable to link Al-Arian to a single illegal act. There was much evidence that he sent money to what defense lawyers called the charitable arm of the Palestinian group, including to the families of four killers imprisoned for murdering three Israeli soldiers in the early 1990s. But the jury concluded that supporting needy families of killers was not tantamount to aiding terrorists. Legal experts said the case boiled down to something that prosecutors frequently find hard to prove: evidence of criminal intent. The nature of the allegations may have fallen outside the definition of what the jury thought "real" terrorism to be. The age of the evidence also appeared to be a factor. 12.07.05
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Not Guilty Verdicts in Florida Terror Trial Are Setback for U.S. In bringing the case against Mr. Arian in 2003, the [Justice] department relied on the easing of legal restrictions under the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act to present years of wiretaps on the defendants in a criminal context. In the conversations cited by prosecutors, Mr. Arian was heard raising money for Palestinian causes, hailing recently completed attacks against Israel with associates overseas, calling suicide bombers "martyrs" and referring to Jews as "monkeys and swine" who would be "damned" by Allah. But much of the conversation and activity used by prosecutors predated the 1995 designation by the United States of Palestinian Islamic Jihad as a terrorist group, a designation that prohibited Americans from supporting it. Several legal analysts and law professors said Tuesday that the government appeared to have overreached in its case. In the mid-1990's, news coverage of Mr. Arian drew attention to his opposition to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and led some critics to label the University of South Florida as "Jihad U." Many Muslims in Florida continued to support him, however, and, as an influential Muslim activist, he continued to have access to the most senior Democratic and Republican officials, meeting with Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and others. Criticism accelerated after the Sept. 11 attacks, particularly in light of Mr. Arian's appearance on a program on the Fox News Channel just weeks later, in which the host, Bill O'Reilly, confronted him with his past statements calling for "death to Israel." Mr. Arian's indictment in 2003 led to his firing by the university, a move that had been debated for years. And the disclosure of his close dealings with Palestinian militants as cited in the indictment prompted even some university backers to rethink their support for him. 12.07.05
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Trial exposed al-Arian but didn't convict him Either the government wasted a lot of time and money on the wrong case, or it was the right case and the government couldn't make it even after 10 years of work. Reaction from jurors leaned toward the former. They told The St. Petersburg Times that the vote had been much closer to acquittal than conviction on the deadlocked charges. The trial did expose the former University of South Florida professor as having far more sympathy for the terrorist tactics of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which has carried out bombings of Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza, than he had claimed when characterizing himself just as a supporter — through Islamic organizations he started — of the Palestinian cause. "Pride and glory overwhelmed us," he said in a fax to the group after a 1994 bombing. As jurors noted, though, even such hateful speech isn't criminal. The issue was not whether Dr. al-Arian raised money for Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He did. The issue was whether the group used that money to finance terrorism, which is hard to prove. Indeed, Dr. al-Arian's attorney called no witnesses after prosecutors presented their case. One problem for the government was choosing to go after a mostly pre-9/11 case in a post-9/11 setting. It has been 11 years since PBS broadcast a documentary that linked Dr. al-Arian to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It has been four years since the Patriot Act widened the government's ability to monitor what could be domestic fronts for foreign terrorists. It also has been four years since the Bush administration hosted Dr. al-Arian, among many others, at the White House as part of an outreach program to Muslims in the United States. In one way, the trial did some good for the country. A hateful person, charged with crimes related to the most important national security issue of the moment, went before an American jury and got a fair hearing. One by one, jurors commented that the government hadn't produced conclusive evidence. They did not criminalize speech. 12.08.05
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Eric Boehlert: Sami Al-Arian: The Terror Verdict TV Networks Ignored When then-Attorney General John Ashcroft personally announced the Al-Arian indictment on Feb. 20, 2003, in a press conference carried live on CNN (Ashcroft tagged Al-Arian the North American leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad), the story garnered a wave of excited media attention. ABC's "World News Tonight" led that night's newscast with the Al Arian arrest. Both NBC and CBS also gave the story prominent play that evening. But last night, in the wake of Al-Arian's acquittal, it was a different story. Neither ABC, CBS nor NBC led with the terror case on their evening newscasts. None of them slotted it second or third either. In fact, according to TVEyes, the 24-hour monitor system, none of networks reported the acquittal at all. Raise your hand if you think the nets would have covered the trial's conclusion if the jury had returned with a guilty verdict in what the government had hyped as a centerpiece to its War on Terror. The story at least received cursory coverage on the cable news channels. CNN's Wolf Blitzer correctly called the verdict "stunning." Over at Fox News, which has been shadowing Al Arian for four years, they put on a brave face. Bill O'Reilly looked glum talking to fellow Al-Arian-hater Steve Emerson, who has spent more than ten years telling anyone who would listen that Al-Arian is a criminal mastermind. But I wonder what the mood is like inside the Tampa Tribune newsroom, which years ago drove itself off the cliff with its obsessive, breathless and ominous Al-Arian coverage. Actually, 'obsessive' really does not do justice to the Tribune when it comes to Al-Arian. Guess how many articles and columns the paper has published on the topic over the last decade? 100? 200? 300? 400? Keep going. 500? 600? Nope. According to Nexis, the paper has printed more than 700 stories mentioning Sami Al-Arian. That's approximately one dispatch every five days…for ten years running. 12.07.05
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Professor in Terror Case May Face Deportation Stunned by the acquittal of a former Florida professor on terrorism charges, federal law enforcement officials said Wednesday that they might seek to have him deported to the Middle East. Federal prosecutors said they might still decide to retry the former professor, Sami al-Arian, on some or all of the nine criminal counts on which a federal jury in Tampa deadlocked on Tuesday. But if the government opts not to retry him, officials said, they would probably bring separate immigration charges that could result in Mr. Arian's deportation - and which would require the government to meet a lower burden of proof against him. Federal law enforcement officials were still trying to figure out Wednesday what went wrong in a case that was more than a decade in the making. Mr. Arian, whose vocal support for militant Palestinian causes had put him under American surveillance since the early 1990's, was acquitted on eight counts against him, and the jury deadlocked on nine others....Law enforcement officials said they remained confident that Mr. Arian represented a clear danger....Mr. Arian, a former professor of computer engineering at the University of South Florida, is already being held on what is known as an immigration detainer, which serves as a backstop to criminal charges. Born in Kuwait, he is a permanent resident of the United States but has no formal citizenship, and his lawyers consider him a "stateless Palestinian." William Moffitt, one of Mr. Arian's lawyers, said he was hopeful that the government would not seek to deport Mr. Arian or try him again on criminal charges. After nearly three years in jail under difficult conditions, Mr. Moffitt said, "this man has suffered enough, and I would hope the government would say enough is enough." David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who represented Mr. Arian's brother-in-law in the earlier deportation case, said the government could have a somewhat easier time deporting Mr. Arian because of changes imposed by Congress this year that make associating with a banned or terrorist group a deportable offense. 12.07.05
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"ALLEGED TERRORIST MET WITH WHITE HOUSE ADVISER" KARL ROVE, PHOTOGRAPHED WITH BUSH DURING CAMPAIGN "A former university professor indicted this week as a terrorist leader attended a 2001 group meeting in the White House complex with President Bush's senior adviser, Karl Rove, administration officials said yesterday. Sami Al-Arian, a former computer engineering professor at the University of South Florida, had been under investigation by the FBI for at least six years at the time of the June 2001 briefing for a Muslim organization. Numerous news accounts also had said federal agents suspected Al-Arian of links to terrorism. Al-Arian and his family also were photographed with Bush during a March 2000 campaign stop near Al-Arian's suburban Tampa home.... Al-Arian posed with Bush and his wife, Laura, at the Florida Strawberry Festival on March 12, 2000, a moment captured in an Al-Arian family photo. Nahla Al-Arian said Bush noticed her traditional headscarf and asked to meet her family. "The Muslim people support you," she recalled telling him. The family said that Bush gave their lanky son, Abdullah, the nickname "Big Dude."...And Bush sent a letter of apology to the suspect's wife after the Secret Service ejected their son -- who was then a congressional intern -- from the White House complex during a separate June 2001 meeting of Muslims interested in the president's faith-based initiative.Al-Arian's appearance at the White House came six days earlier, also as part of the administration's outreach to Muslims, officials said.... Al-Arian has told The Post that he and wife Nahla campaigned for Bush in Florida mosques and elsewhere because they thought him the candidate most likely to fight discrimination against Arab Americans." 2.22.03
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"BUSH...HAD SINGLED ["BIG DUDE"] OUT IN THE CROWD" "July 16, 2001 Newsweek 'Big Dude' Gets Profiled Lynette Clemetson and Keith Naughton With Gretel C. Kovach in New York and Ana Figueroa in Los Angeles It was one of the coolest moments of his life. Abdullah Al-Arian was finally old enough to vote for president, and George W. Bush, on a campaign hop through Tampa, Fla., had singled him out in the crowd. Bush called the college student "Big Dude" and posed for pictures with his Arab-American family--an ethnic group politicians have long ignored. Al-Arian had registered Democratic, but he was so encouraged by Bush's outreach to the Arab community that he voted for him and took a... " 2.23.03 www.bushwatch.com
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"PROFESSOR IN TERROR INDICTMENT WAS A BUSH SUPPORTER" "Sami Amin al-Arian, the University of South Florida professor charged with being the US leader of a Mideast terrorist group, was an influential figure in Tampa's small Muslim community whose political activism landed him in a photograph with President Bush during the 2000 campaign. ''He was a Bush supporter,'' said Robert McKee, an attorney who is representing Arian in a legal dispute with the university. ''As close as the election in Florida was, Sami may have put him over the top. He got out the vote in the Muslim community in Florida, and now Bush's attorney general is going after him.''...A photograph taken during a campaign stop in the Tampa area shows George and Laura Bush, both smiling, flanked by Arian, his son Abdullah, and three women wearing Islamic scarves. Newsweek magazine published the picture in July 2001. Asked about the photo, White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said yesterday that Bush met Arian and his family at a strawberry festival in Florida. ''Then-Governor Bush just walked around greeting people,'' Buchan said. Arian did not contribute money or volunteer work to the Bush campaign, she said. Her account differed from Newsweek's in its July 16, 2001, issue: ''It was one of the coolest moments of his life. Abdullah al-Arian was finally old enough to vote for president, and George W. Bush singled him out in the crowd. Bush called the college student `Big Dude' and posed for pictures with his Arab-American family - an ethnic group politicians have long ignored.'...Remembering his campaigning for Bush in Florida and the president's thin margin of victory there, Sami Arian was indignant. ''We certainly delivered him many more than 537 votes,'' Newsweek magazine quoted him as saying." 2.22.03
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ALLEGED TERRORIST AL-ARIAN STORY "PAINFUL FOR...BUSH REPUBLICANS" "Not only were the al-Arians not avoided by the Bush White House - they were actively courted. Candidate Bush allowed himself to be photographed with the al-Arian family while campaigning in Florida. Candidate Bush denounced the immigration laws that detained - and ultimately deported - Mazen al-Najjar. In [June] 2001, Sami al-Arian was invited into the White House complex for a political briefing for Muslim-American leaders. The [same] month his son, Abdullah, who was then an intern in the office of Congressman David Bonior, joined a delegation of Muslim leaders at a meeting with John DiIulio, head of the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives. After the group entered the complex, a red flag belatedly popped up over the al-Arian name, and the Secret Service ordered him out of the complex. The entire delegation marched out with young al-Arian - and soon afterward, President Bush personally apologized to the young man and ordered the deputy director of the Secret Service to apologize as well.... The al-Arian case was not a solitary lapse. The Bush campaign in 2000 very determinedly reached out to Muslim voters. Indeed, Muslim-Americans may have tipped the election to George Bush. One survey suggests that the 50,000 Muslim voters of Florida, normally staunch Democrats, reacted to Al Gore's selection of Joe Lieberman as his running mate by voting 80% for Bush. That outreach campaign opened relationships between the Bush campaign and some very disturbing persons in the Muslim-American community. Many of those disturbing persons were invited to stand beside the president at post-9/11 events....Is it too much to ask a wartime White House - please, please choose your friends more prudently!" 2.23.03 www.bushwatch.com
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"SECRET SERVICE HAD FLAGGED AL-ARIAN AS A POTENTIAL TERRORIST PRIOR TO HIS VISIT" TO THE WHITE HOUSE "For George W. Bush, it was just another campaign stop. But for Sami Al-Arian, a University of South Florida engineering professor, it was a golden opportunity. When Bush appeared at Tampa’s Strawberry Festival in March 2000, Al-Arian sidled up to the candidate and had his picture taken....Bush joked around with the professor’s son, Abdullah, nicknaming the 6-foot-3 teen “Big Dude.” Al-Arian later told friends he even used the occasion to press Bush on a key issue among Muslim Americans: the Justice Department’s use of “secret evidence” to deport accused terrorists. In those pre-9-11 days, Bush was eagerly courting the growing Muslim vote-and more than willing to listen to seemingly sincere activists like Al-Arian. When he debated Al Gore later in the year, Bush even made a point of bringing up the secret-evidence issue. Al-Arian was thrilled-and began registering local Muslims for the Republican Party and praising Bush at local mosques. “I think I personally played a big role in electing Bush,” he boasted at a Muslim American dinner last April. Al-Arian’s politics took on a decidedly darker cast last week when federal agents arrested him at his home in south Florida and charged him with being a top leader of one of the world’s most violent terrorist organizations: Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).The Iranian-backed group has carried out a rash of suicide bombings that have killed more than 100 Israelis, as well as two Americans. Al-Arian had long been under government scrutiny for his alleged connections to the group...A law-enforcement official told NEWSWEEK the Secret Service had flagged Al-Arian as a potential terrorist prior to [his visit to the White House.]. But White House aides, apparently reluctant to create an incident, let him through anyway." 2.23.03 www.bushwatch.com
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The views expressed are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect those of Bush Watch.