IARA was so successful in its public relations efforts that in the late 1990s the group actually received U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) contracts worth at least $2 million to help distribute humanitarian relief funds in Africa, according to documents reported by NEWSWEEK in 2004.

Suspicions that IARA might be diverting the funds for terrorism prompted USAID—under pressure from then-White House counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke—to cancel the contracts. But according to Wednesday's indictment IARA improperly retained $84,922 of those funds and then used some of them to hire Siljander, funneling the money through two other nonprofits called the National Heritage Foundation and International Foundation. Siljander managed the accounts at the foundations, the indictment charges. IARA's goal in retaining the ex-congressman was to have itself removed from a list of Islamic charities being investigated by the Senate Finance Committee and to have itself restored as an approved government contractor, according to the indictment.

What exactly Siljander did for IARA is not mentioned in the indictment. A spokeswoman for Sen. Chuck Grassley, who chaired the committee at the time and oversaw the Islamic charity probe, said a former staffer does recall being contacted by a former congressman on IARA's behalf, but "there was no response to it on our part." But according to the indictment Siljander lied to the FBI about the arrangement, insisting that he had not been hired to do any lobbying or advocacy work for the group and that the monies he received from it were "charitable donations intended to assist him with writing a book about bridging the gap between Islam and Christianity," according to the indictment. He later made similar statements to a federal grand jury, the indictment says.

Terror Watch, written by Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball appears online weekly

© 2008