This is an old story....and Newsweek should have put the date in the byline, NOT merely used a copyright sign at the end. At a minimum, it's sloppy journalism. However, it's possible that Newsweek has a hidden agenda. What is it? I don't know....it's hidden. Or not. Just one more nail in their coffin.
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Even though neither Shah nor Sabir ever had a real relationship with Al Qaeda, Soufan says the case is a classic example of how the FBI should work. During the course of their dealings, Shah had identified three associates—including one who had been to a training camp in Pakistan, and another who had offered to provide funding to mujahedin in Afghanistan and Chechnya. "It was a good catch," he says. "We got three guys. We got them cold and we got them by the book. I consider this a proactive counterterrorism operation."
The FBI says it is doing all it can to forge links with members of the Islamic community that will lead to tips about suspicious behavior. John Miller, the bureau's assistant director for public affairs, told a Senate panel last week that the FBI has been stepping up its recruitment programs in American Muslim communities—it even sponsored a "Children's Day" fair at Giants Stadium last year for the Muslim community in New Jersey.
But for all its efforts, the FBI still has only a handful of Muslim agents and only 40 who are "proficient" in Arabic despite incentive packages that include 25 percent pay hikes for Arabic speakers. (It has been unable to find any agents who are proficient in Urdu and Pashto, the key languages in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where Qaeda leaders are believed to be hiding.) The bureau and other agencies have been hampered in part by tight security restrictions against hiring Arabic and other foreign-language specialists who have traveled or have relatives overseas—a rule that makes it more difficult to recruit native speakers.
Hanging on to the ones they have isn't easy, either. Soufan himself has gone the way of many hardworking agents. After struggling against some of the government's tactics in the war on terror (he reportedly objected to the CIA's aggressive interrogation techniques), he left the agency. Now he's putting his expertise to work for Rudy Giuliani's private security firm. The pay is better, and it's a lot less dangerous. But it means there's one less gumshoe working the Qaeda beat.
© 2007
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