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Subversion From Within: Saudi Funding of Islamic Extremist Groups Undermining US Interests and the ... Page 1 of 8

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TESTIMONY OF MATTHEW LEVITT SENIOR FELLOW IN TERRORISM STUDIES, THE WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY BEFORE THE SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE SUBCOMMITTEE ON TERRORISM UNITED STATES SENATE

"Subversion From Within: Saudi Funding of Islamic Extremist Groups Undermining US Interests and the War on Terror from within the United States" September 10, 2003 INTRODUCTION Well into the war on terrorism, Saudi Arabia continues to serve as the capital of international terrorist financing. Through groups like the Muslim World League (MWL), the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), the al Haramain Islamic Foundation, as well as the Islamic Affairs Bureaus located at Saudi embassies and consulates worldwide, the Saudis continue to fund radical Islamic groups supportive of, or engaged in, international terrorism. TIER 1: FINANCING TERRORISM Some cases are both clearcut and extreme. For example, after his arrest in Indonesia on June 5, 2002, Omar al-Farouq, al-Qaeda's operational point man in Southeast Asia, told his interrogators that al-Qaeda operations in the region were funded through a branch of al-Haramain. According to al-Farouq, "money was laundered through the foundation by donors from the Middle East."[l] In another case, Italian prosecutors revealed that "Syria has functioned as a hub for an al-Qaeda network" run out of Europe and linked to prominent al-Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.[2] Transcripts of operatives' conversations — first revealed in the Los Angeles Times — "paint a detailed picture of overseers in Syria coordinating the movement of recruits and money" between cells in Europe and Ansar al-Islam training camps in northern Iraq. Moreover, one of the al Qaeda cell members arrested in Italy — a Somali -- is suspected of funding the November 2002 al-Qaeda attack on Israeli tourists in Mombassa, Kenya, while another associate — a Moroccan — is an accused forger and admitted associate of members of the Hamburg cell connected with the September 11 attacks. In one intercepted phone conversation, a senior al Qaeda operative is overheard assuring his subordinate about funding, saying, "Don't ever worry about money, because Saudi Arabia's money is your money."[3] Several charities definitively tied to international terrorism were either based or maintained branch offices in the United States, including the Muslim World League (MWL), the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), the Benevolence International Foundation (BIF), the Global Relief Foundation (GRF), the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), and others.[4] TIER 2: FINANCING TERROR SUPPORTERS Other cases, like the activities of a host of purportedly political or social-activist groups operating in the United States, are far more subtle. For example, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which says it was "established to promote a positive image of Islam and Muslims in America,"[5] was co-founded by Omar Ahmed, the same person who

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10/30/03

Matthew A. Levitt on Iran on National Review Online

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Heart of the Axis Al Qaeda has long called Iran home.

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National Security Council is scheduled to hold a T headministration "senior level meeting" Thursday to formulate policy toward Iran. Electronic intercepts indicating senior al Qaeda operatives in Iran were behind the Riyadh bombings suddenly sparked official "concern" regarding the hospitality master terrorists enjoy with the compliments of their Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) and Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) hosts.

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They should be concerned. Experts now believe Iran's nuclear program is much farther along than previously thought. Iranian dissidents recently identified two previously undisclosed uraniumenrichment facilities. This mix of weapons of mass destruction, together with frenetic state sponsorship of terrorism and sheltering of al Qaeda leadership figures, places Iran firmly at the pinnacle of the Axis of Evil.

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The problem is that officials should have been concerned long ago. The links between Iran, described by the CIA as the world's "foremost state sponsoroj the network of networks that is al Qaeda are not new. .

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News that al Qaeda's current military operations chief, Saif al Adel, among the

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Delete | Reply | Reply to All | Forward | Redirect | Blacklist | Message Source | Resume | Save as | Print Back to INBOX 4 ^ Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2003 14:04:08-0400 From: MATT LEVITT <[email protected]>4f' Subject: Fwd: POLICYWATCH #799: UNTANGLING THE WEB - CROSSOVERS AMONG INTERNATIONAL TERRORIST GROUPS

POLICYWATCH

Analysis of Near East Policy from the scholars and associates of THE WASHINGTON INSTITUTE Number seven Hundred and Ninety-Nine October 24, 2003 UNTANGLING THE WEB: CROSSOVERS AMONG INTERNATIONAL TERRORIST GROUPS

By Matthew Levitt

On October 22, 2003, Matthew Levitt, the institute's senior fellow in terr9rism studies, testified bef9re the U.S. Senate committee on Banking, Housing, and urban Affairs. The following is an edited version of his remarks. The full text of his statement is available at www.washi ngtoni nsti tute.org/media/1evi tt/1evi tt!02203.htm Constricting the Operating Environment NO counter-terrorism effort, however extensive, will put an end to terrorist attacks or fully uproot terrorism. There will always be people and groups with entrenched causes, an overwhelming sense of frustration, a sejf-justifying worldview, and a healthy dose of evil, who will resort to violence as a means of expression. The goal of counterterrorism, therefore, should be to cpnstrict the operating environment in order to make it increasingly difficult for terrorists to carry out their plans. This includes cracking down on logistical and financial support networks as well as operational cells. Academic experts frequently argue that terrorism is an inexpensive business and that combating terrorist financing will not prevent terrorist attacks, in fact, it is extremely expensive to maintain safe houses, buy loyalties, maintain the physical infrastructure of terrorist organizations, pay salaries to members, and meet the various other costs associated with terrorism. Denying terrorists the opportunity to conduct support activities undermines their ability to perpetrate attacks, even if their radical ideology and violent intentions remain. one of the most effective ways to constrict the operating environment and crack down on terrorist financing is to target the network of logistical support groups. Many of these groups are not particular to a single terrorist organization, in fact, militant Islamist organizations from al-Qaeda to Hamas interact and support one another in an international matrix of logistical, financial, and sometimes operational terrorist activity, unfortunately, two years into the war on terror, these and other groups, along with a variety of Middle Eastern state sponsors, still receive inconsistent attention despite a sharp rise in their activity, inattention to any one part of the web of militant Islamist terrorism undermines the effectiveness of measures taken against other parts of that web. The Matrix of Terror http://kinesis.swisnmail.com/webmail/imp/message.php?index=1217

10/24/03

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Matthew Levitt on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi on National Review Online

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The Zarqawi Node in the Terror Matrix Linking the terrorists.

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By Matthew Levitt

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n mapping out Iraq's links to international terrorism before the United Nations Security Council, Secretary of State Colin Powell highlighted the case of senior al Qaeda commander Fedel Nazzel Khalayleh, better known as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. In fact, Zarqawi exemplifies not only the Iraq role in the web of international terror but serves as a case in point of the terror matrix itself. Zarqawi's activities Jean-Francois Revel, on behalf of al Qaeda span the globe, a leading French intellectual and from Afghanistan to Great Britain, with friend of the U.S., equally diverse links to other terrorist shows how Europe groups, from Ansar al-Islam in Iraq and and the rest of the . world caught the Hezbollah in Lebanon to al-Tawhid in French disease of Germany and Beyyiat el-Imam in An ti'Am erica n is nrt. Turkey. At least 116 terrorist operatives from Zarqawi's global network have already been arrested, including members in France, Italy, Spain, Britain, Germany, Turkey, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.

The French Disease of Anti-Americanism

WHO IS ZARQAWI?

A Palestinian-Jordanian and veteran of the Afghan war against the Soviets, Zarqawi first appeared as a terror suspect when Jordan indicted him in absentia for his role in the al Qaeda millennial bombing plot targeting the Radison SAS hotel in Amman as well as other

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Mr. Matthew A. Levitt

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MR. MATTHEW A. LEVITT Senior Fellow in Terrorism Studies, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

PLENARY SESSION I

"The Causes of the 9/11 Attacks and the Scope of the Threat" Quick Links to Speakers ® Sen, Richard G. Lugar ® Dr, Chung Hwan Kwak ® Amb. Bill Richardson ® Arnaud de Borchgrave ® Matthew A. Levitt ®Dr.ShibleyTelhami & Dr. Graham Allison ® Lawrence S. Eagleburger ®BilLGertz ® Amb. Philip S. Kaplan ® Dr. Timothy Charles Brown ®Dr. Daniel Pipes * Dr. MuazzarnGill ^ Faiz Rehman ® Robert Baer ® John O'Sullivan ® Hafez Al-Mirazi ^ Georgie Anne Geyer ^DimitriK-Simes ® Dr JFrank Kaufmann ® Amb. Phillip V. Sanchez ^Martin Walker ® Douglas P.M. Joo

The attacks in New York, Washington, and Sommerset County, Pennsylvania, on September 11 brought the specter of international terrorism into the living room of every member of the global community. That morning's events will go down in history as the "where-were-you-when," the combined Kennedy assassination and Pearl Harbor of this generation. In fact, September 11 was a watershed event in the history of terrorism. Until September 11, fewer than 1,000 Americans were killed in terrorist attacks in the United States or abroad in over 30 years. Until this attack, no one terrorist operation killed more than 500 people at one time.[i] Citizens of 85 different countries suffered casualties on September 11. [ii]

Most scholars see the 1968 hijacking of an Israeli E1-A1 flight by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) as a watershed event marking the advent of modern-day terrorism. Since then, scholars have asserted time and again that the primary purpose of terrorist attacks is to draw attention to a cause or a plight, not to kill people. In the words of one scholar, "terrorists want a lot of people watching and listening and not a lot of people dead."[iii] And in fact, the hijackers of at least one of the flights played on this assumption, telling their passengers they intended to land at an airport and present their demands to the U.S. government. September 11 ushered in a new era of terrorism in which terrorism is not merely a means of conveying a message; in part, it is the message. Some experts recognized this shift earlier than others. In 1994, former Director of Central Intelligence James Woolsey assessed that "today's terrorists don't want a seat at the table, they want to destroy the table and everyone sitting at it."[iv] In the summer of 2000, the National Commission on Terrorism published a report noting

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10/23/03

"Confronting Syrian Support for Terrorist Groups" (May 2003)

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^Middle East Intelligence Bulletin Jointly published by the United States Committee for a Free Lebanon and the Middle East Forum

Vol. 5

No. 5

Table of Contents MEIB Main Page

May 2003

Confronting Syrian Support for Terrorist Groups

~~'

VIatthew A. Levitt "^

After the unveiling of an American backed Israeli-Palestinian plan known as the road map earlier this month, US Secretary of State Colin Powell embarked on a trip to the Middle East. Significantly, however, he did not stop in Israel or the West Bank on this trip, but went straight to Damascus to warn Syrian President Bashar Assad "in the strongest possible terms" that the United States will not tolerate his government's continued sponsorship of terrorist organizations that have carried out scores of suicide bombings in Israel during the past two and a half years.iu As one member of Powell's entourage put it, "we didn't come here bearing carrots. "121 This display of American resolve - the true test of which will come in the weeks and months ahead - stems partly from the recognition that the peace process cannot be revitalized as long as Syrian sponsorship of Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), and Bashar A&sad other terrorist groups continues unabated. Unlike in the past, however, the United States is not demanding that Syria merely "rein in" terrorist groups opposed to the peace process, but that it end its involvement in terrorism completely. In light of the Assad regime's sponsorship of terror attacks against US troops in Iraq and new intelligence regarding al-Qaeda's network in Syria, American officials are not likely to tolerate anything short of Syria getting out of the terror game altogether. Syrian Meddling in Iraq The war in Iraq highlighted Syria's status as a state sponsor of terror bent on frustrating US efforts to bring peace, security and democratization to the Middle East. Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara asserted quite plainly, "Syria's interest is to see the invaders defeated in Iraq/'m He added, "The resistance of the Iraqis is extremely important. It is a heroic resistance to the US-British occupation of their country. "HI Taking Shara's position one step further, Syria's senior mufti called for suicide attacks on American soldiers in Iraqjsi Indeed, thousands of Arab irregular forces - some volunteers, some members of terrorist groups like Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and Fatah splinter groups - crossed the Syrian border into Iraq to battle coalition forces. Coalition commanders commonly referred to these irregulars as "Syrians" because most of them were Syrian, and most of those who weren't carried Syrian travel documents, in some cases specifically marked "reason for entry: Jihad. Length of stay: Indefinite. "M In one case, US military forces captured a large group of Syrians and confiscated seventy suicide jackets each filled with twenty-two pounds of military grade C4 explosives, and mercury detonators, m In

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10/7/03

Matthew A. Levitt on Terrorism & Britain on National Review Online

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Testing Britain's counter-terror resolve. By Matthew A. Levitt

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ast week, two disparate events tested Britain's resolve to take bold action in the war on terrorism. London passed the first hurdle with flying colors, arresting a wanted fugitive, and will hopefully show similar determination by shutting a terrorist front organization operating openly out of London. Coming on the heels of intelligence revealing al Qaeda plots to crash a hijacked aircraft into an important British building, it is critical London signal its continued resolve to fight terror.

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Last Thursday, British authorities arrested a former Iranian diplomat (traveling on a student visa with no diplomatic status or protection) for his role in a 1994 Hezbollah bombing attack in Argentina. London bristled at Iranian threats to downgrade bilateral relations and withdraw its ambassador over the arrest, seeking instead to forge a common European front on relations to Iran and exploring the possibility of an EU-wide downgrading of relations with Tehran over the exposure of Iran's frenetic nuclear program.

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The following day, the U.S. Treasury Department fingered the Palestinian Relief and Development Fund, or Interpal, as a U.K.-based Hamas front organization and branded it a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity." While it received a clean bill of health

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PolicyWatch 671

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POLICYWATCH Number 671

October 28, 2002

UNTANGLING THE TERROR WEB: AL-QAEDA IS NOT THE ONLY ELEMENT By Matthew Levitt On Thursday, October 24, the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a new terrorist threat alert (this time warning of attacks on transportation systems), highlighting once more why attention has been focused on al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups since September 11, 2001. A year on, however, other Middle Eastern terrorist groups and state sponsors of terrorism still receive inconsistent attention despite a sharp rise in their activity. In fact, militant Islamist groups from al-Qaeda to Hamas interact and support one another in an international matrix of logistical, financial, and sometimes operational terrorist activity. Inattention to any one part of the web of militant Islamist terror undermines the effectiveness of measures taken against other parts of that web. Links between Terror Groups September 11 produced a political will, markedly absent after previous attacks, to take concrete action to counter and disrupt the terrorist threat to America and its allies. Yet, while efforts targeting Osama bin Laden and his associates are concerted and continuous, similar efforts are lacking when it comes to other terrorist groups of global reach and state sponsors of terrorism. In the months after September 2001, groups such as Hamas and Hizballah were placed on new U.S. government terrorism lists, and the primary Hamas front organization in America was shut down. Since then, however, these groups have received only fleeting attention — usually in the wake of increasingly heinous terrorist attacks. But the links between terrorist groups reveal a matrix of illicit activity on an international scale. Consider the following examples of the terror web: • On February 15, 2002, Turkish police arrested two Palestinians and a Jordanian who entered Turkey illegally from Iran on their way to conduct bombing attacks in Israel. The three were members of Beyyiat el-Imam (a group linked to al-Qaeda) who fought for the Taliban and received terrorist training in Afghanistan. They were dispatched by Abu Musab Zarqawi, then in Iran and now believed to be in Syria after receiving medical treatment in Iraq. Zarqawi has been linked to Hizballah, as well as to a terrorist cell apprehended in Germany that had been operating under the name Tawhid. German prosecutors announced that the group, tied to the recently arrested Abu Qatada in Britain but controlled by Zarqawi, was planning to attack U.S. or Israeli interests in Germany. Eight men were arrested, and raids yielded hundreds of forged passports from Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Denmark, and other countries. • The International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) finances the activities of a diverse crosssection of international terrorist groups. From 1986 to 1994, bin Laden's brother-in-law Muhammad Jamal Khalifa headed the IIRO's Philippines office, through which he channeled funds to al-Qaeda affiliates, including Abu Sayyaf and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. In 1999, an IIRO employee in Canada was linked to the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. More recently, official Palestinian documents seized by Israeli forces in April 2002 establish that the IIRO donated at least $280,000 to Palestinian charities and organizations that U.S. authorities have linked to Hamas.

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10/23/03

Matthew A. Levitt on Khaled Shaikh Muhammad on National Review Online

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Wartime status check. By Matthew A. Levitt

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he capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, al Qaeda's operational commander and 9/11 mastermind, demonstrates that the United States can, in fact, walk and chew gum at the same time. The fact that the greatest success to date in the war on terrorism occurred well into the planning stages of the war to liberate Iraq should give pause to critics who said these two wars could not be fought at once. Indeed, the information investigators are already collecting — from his interrogation and the materials seized when he was captured, including his laptop, cell phones, "pocket litter," and other documents, to the sudden surge in international phone and e-mail "chatter" officials are monitoring — strongly suggests there will be more such successes in the war on terror in the near future. MANAGING INTEL Over the past few months, several respected terror analysts have aired the legitimate concern that fighting a conventional war in Iraq would drain precious intelligence resources from the ongoing, more dangerous, and immediate war on terror. And it is true that supporting military action has historically trumped other intelligence functions in times of war. By many estimates, traditional war fighting demands as much as 80 percent or more of the intelligence community's resources to support forces on the ground. But this fails to account for two critical factors: (1) the introduction of

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