Weekly Terrorism Spotlight

Volume 1, Issue 9 (May 13)

INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

Homeland Security warns of Internet jihad

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued several warnings on Islamic terrorists using the Internet to recruit for jihad

Warnings of Internet use by Islamic terrorists to recruit for violent jihad attacks in the U.S. came form the top last week.

Homeland Security Department sources reported on their counterpart U.S. Senate committee’s hearings and a report released by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

According to statements made at hearings reported on by Homeland Security’s National Terror Alert Response Center, Internet recruitment augments the threat of homegrown terrorism.

The marketing is sophisticated, and campaigns by groups such as the Islamic-jihad famed al-Qaeda network, aim to bring in fresh young prospects in their fold for action within the U.S.

“The use of the Internet by al-Qaeda and other violent Islamist extremist groups has expanded the terrorist threat to our homeland,” the report stated.

“No longer is the threat just from abroad…the threat is now increasingly from within.”

The report, written by the bipartisan committee’s staff, recommended U.S. government action on development of a comprehensive outreach and communications strategy to expose the ideological underpinnings of Islamic terrorism.

The report stated efforts should be intensified to discredit “the violent Islamist ideology as a cause worth supporting, let alone a cause worth advancing by attacking and killing one’s neighbors and fellow citizens.”

U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman [D-Conn.], a committee leader, characterized current efforts against pro-terrorist Islamic jihad marketing as, “disjointed, or uncoordinated, and insufficient.”

Lieberman said ‘thousands” of pro-al-Qaeda web sites and a virtual “clearing house” adding legitimacy to messages al-Qaeda approves of give the Islamic jihad side the upper hand for now.

Homeland Security Department Secretary Michael Chertoff is on record stating the government’s long-standing concern about Internet recruitment.

Chertoff said radical Islamists use it to develop their homegrown jihad strategy from a safe distance. “I don’t thing it’s necessary to send radical recruiters into the United States…there’s risk in doing that,” he said.

“I have no question…bin Laden and al-Zawahiri, and others like them, quite consciously use the media, including the Internet, as a recruiting tool,” he added. “I would say the principle way to enter the U.S. is through the Internet.”

Realization of the threat of homegrown terrorist activity rose through last year, but little has been done about it, committee and counter-terror leaders warn.

The rising threat will continue “for the foreseeable future,” Chertoff said. “It’s not something that’s going to evaporate in a week or two. I think it’s…going to be with us for a while.”

Meanwhile, latest policy initiatives include taking terms of common threat understanding out of the dialogue from the administration of U.S. President George Bush, according to U.S State Department reports.

The Bush administration has determined to use terms such as “extremist” and “terrorist” without reference to “Islamist” or even “Islam-fascist” ideological terms.

State Department leaders from Secretary Condoleezza Rice down, and Bush administration spokesmen, state they hope to de-legitimize ‘extremist” marketing for violence by distancing it from popular, mainstream Islamic religious expression.

Apologists are seen in the FBI department as well. While confirming last week terror cells are growing in the U.S., and reporting the discovery of “several,” FBI Director Robert Mueller said the department confides in its “Muslim outreach program” to get the job done.

“As to whether we have found affiliates, or as you would call them, cells of al-Qaeda in the United States, yes, we have,” he said in public session before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.

“Every opportunity I have, I reaffirm the fact that 99.9-percent of Muslim-Americans…are every bit as patriotic as anybody else in this room, and that many; of our cases are a result of the cooperation from the Muslim community in the United States,” Mueller added.

Mueller said the FBI is increasing its counter-terror activities in America, seeking investigative information “that would stop a terrorist attack in advance,” but the intelligence program he referred to is only in its formative development.

Christian Action Network notes for the record, one, Mueller was speaking to members of the House Judiciary Committee with him “in this room,” and two, the formative development of the new program begins more than six years after September 11, 2001.