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04-20-2007, 01:20 AM
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, April 18, 2007 4:20 PM PT

Homeland Security: Lost in all the coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre are the prosecutions of two Americans who allegedly joined al-Qaida. How many more are living here among us?

A new federal indictment says Christopher Paul of Ohio was a full-fledged member of al-Qaida who trained with terrorists in Afghanistan and plotted to blow up U.S. government buildings and military bases.

Paul, a.k.a. Abdulmalek Kenyatta, stayed in one of Osama bin Laden's guest houses, according to the indictment. A fax machine in his Columbus home contained names, phone numbers and contact information for key al-Qaida leaders.

As his case moves to trial, jury selection is under way in the terror case of Jose Padilla, who grew up in the Chicago area before converting to Islam and joining al-Qaida.

Padilla also trained in Afghanistan, and allegedly huddled with 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Karachi, Pakistan, to hatch a plot to detonate dirty bombs in America.

They are among some 120,000 Muslims who trained in al-Qaida and other militant camps in Afghanistan. That CIA figure, declassified in the joint congressional report on 9/11, does not include new camps opened in Pakistan. If just 1% of those graduates of Afghan training camps live in America, that's 1,200 well-trained al-Qaida terrorists lurking in our midst.

Yet to hear Washington, al-Qaida is not here; they're overseas. After 9/11, FBI Director Bob Mueller assured Congress that the 19 hijackers operated alone. If bin Laden deployed any sleeper cells here, he suggested they died on those planes.

But several months before Mueller testified, the FBI's Investigative Services Division concluded that the hijackers maintained a "web of contacts" in the U.S.

"These associates, ranging in degrees of closeness, include friends and associates from universities and flight schools, former roommates, people they knew through mosques and religious activities, and employment contacts," said the bureau's internal report, dated November 2001.

"Other contacts," it went on, "provided legal, logistical or financial assistance, facilitated U.S. entry and flight school enrollment, or were known from (al-Qaida)-related activities or training."

Shocked by the domestic terror network, the FBI has run down leads generated from the 9/11 investigation and come across one al-Qaida member after another. The number who have have been ferreted out in America since 9/11 is alarming.

But you wouldn't know it, because the cases have been reported in fits and starts. Neither the government nor the media have pieced them together to give the full picture of al-Qaida's presence inside our country.

We've found, in a cursory research effort, a list of at least 16 al-Qaida agents who've operated in America. Some are still at large.

They include, among others: Iman Farris, a full-fledged al-Qaida member who roomed with Paul in Ohio before his conviction on charges he conspired to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge; Adam Gadahn, the California convert wanted by the FBI for heading al-Qaida's propaganda wing; and Zacarias Moussaoui, the convicted al-Qaida terrorist who trained at American flight schools.

These are just some of the al-Qaida operatives we know about. The FBI, even as it gives the impression the nation is free and clear of terror cells, really doesn't have any idea the size of al-Qaida's ranks inside America.

"Our greatest threat is from al-Qaida cells in the United States that we have not yet been able to identify," Mueller admits.

Yet according to Muslim groups and their Democrat friends, we're not supposed to investigate to find out, not supposed to eavesdrop on their phone calls, or monitor activities at their mosques.

Five years after 9/11, the PC-handcuffed FBI still has not conducted a systematic sweep of the Muslim community to net al-Qaida agents and sympathizers.

Their investigations have been conducted in piecemeal fashion, and often only after receiving the blessing of CAIR and other Muslim-rights groups, who for all their claims of cooperation with law enforcement, have not helped us capture a single terrorist.

The fact that the FBI has managed to so far root out such an alarming number of al-Qaida just by chance, begs for a more comprehensive crackdown. Until that happens, we will continue to live under a false sense of security.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=261788168249840