In order to demonstrate the danger of bringing Gitmo terrorists to U.S. prisons, it is useful to go back to September 28, 2007, to a speech given by FBI Director Robert Mueller to the Council on Foreign Relations.
Part of Director Mueller’s point that day was to drive home the interconnectedness of the terror network, and just how little connectivity it takes to operate a worldwide web of terror. Director Miller used what he called “three threads” to illustrate the situation the United States faces every day:
“In April 2005, two college students from Atlanta allegedly traveled to Washington, D.C., to record videos of potential targets, including the Capitol and the World Bank headquarters. One of them subsequently traveled to Pakistan to seek terrorist training.
“The other traveled to Bangladesh to continue his terrorism-related activities. They have since been arrested and indicted on charges of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists. That’s one thread.
“Six months later, a Swedish national and a Danish man were arrested in Bosnia. They were found with plastic explosives and were preparing to bomb targets in Europe . That’s our second thread.
“And in June 2006, Canadian officials arrested 17 individuals, who were part of a homegrown cell known as the ‘Toronto 17.’ This group had acquired bomb-making materials and planned to attack a number of targets in Canada. That’s the final thread.
“Three different cases, spanning at least seven countries. These individuals seemed unrelated — but they were not. At the center of this web was a figure that seemed to exist only in cyberspace. He called himself “Irhabi 007.” Translated, this means “Terrorist 007.”
“This individual facilitated communications among the groups. He then posted thousands of files online, from videotaped beheadings to detailed manuals for constructing car bombs and suicide vests. He taught not just the ideology, but the technology of terrorism.
“Who was this terrorist facilitator? One might think he was a veteran of the Afghan training camps, or a lieutenant to Osama bin Laden. Instead, a phone number found in the safe house used by the Bosnian terrorists led to a basement apartment in London.There, British authorities found Irhabi 007. His real name was Younis Tsouli. He was then a 22-year-old student. He is now a guest of Belmarsh Prison in the U.K.
“While examining his computer, authorities discovered the surveillance videos of the Washington targets that had been filmed by the two subjects from Atlanta. Investigators also found that Tsouli had been in steady communication with the plotters in Canada, Denmark, Bosnia, and the United States.
“He used his computer skills to develop a global virtual network for terrorists and their supporters. And it took a global network of law enforcement and intelligence agencies to unravel these disparate plots and bring those responsible to justice.”
The obvious question about closing Gitmo flows from Director Mueller’s speech and is this: Does the relocation of scores of hardened terrorists from an isolated island to the U.S. mainland increase or decrease their connectivity to the terror web? Before you answer that question, you might want to read an article from the May 22 edition of Wired magazine on communication to the outside world from within maximum security prisons in the U.S.: “Prisoners Run Gangs, Plan Escapes, and Even Order Hits With Smuggled Cellphones.”
Among the article’s many unsettling revelations is the result of an October, 2008, search of every prisoner in the Texas State prison system. ” Officials found 128 phones, including a dozen on death row, as well as scores of chargers, batteries, and SIM cards,” author Vince Beiser recounted.
“Inmates aren’t allowed to have cell phones in any US prison, let alone on death row,” Beiser added, before hinting at the scope of illicit connectivity from within America’s prisons: “But the 21st century’s ubiquitous communications tools are nonetheless turning up by the thousands in lockups not just in Texas but across the US and around the world. Last year alone, officials confiscated 947 phones in Maryland, some 2,000 handsets and accessories in South Carolina, and 2,800 mobiles in California.”
A longtime corrections officer called my show last week, aghast at the prospect of mainlining trained terrorists into the federal prison system stateside. He urged the audience to consider the immediate and real opportunities at communication with the outside world that present themselves to any prisoner once embedded in the stateside prison system, even from within the famed “Supermax” facilities.
Defendants with no hope of parole, he noted, often declare themselves their own attorneys for the purpose of exploiting the gaps in communication security opened by such self-conferred status. Assurances of complete security, it seems, are given by the naive to the naive.
Only a fool would argue that the cordon thrown around terrorists within the U.S. will be as complete and as secure as that which exists around Gitmo. Those eager to continue the political war against the now- departed Bush Administration have simply decreed that the U.S. prison system can house all of the Gitmo terrorists without any increase in danger to the American public, and then mock the straw man of potential escape.
Of course, it isn’t escape that opponents of closing Gitmo fear, but connectivity of the terrorist population if only for the propaganda they might spread. Others worry that the ability to pass any sort of weapon to these fanatics has to increase once they mix within the prison system, even to the extremely limited degree that “Supermax” facilities permit.
Still others fear that the communities which house or are located near the stateside prisons housing terrorists immediately become potential target for jihadist sympathizers. The Gitmo terrorists aren’t the ordinary hardened criminal, but are instead religious fanatics eager to advance their cause through even self-sacrificial suicide violence. Can anyone really argue that there is no decrease in security by the closure of Gitmo?
Ideologues trot out the “Gitmo as a recruiting tool” mantra that Vice President Cheney effectively demolished last week and which has never stood up to even passing scrutiny when one considers the record of terrorist violence that existed prior to the opening of the prison.
What recruits new terrorists is propaganda and lies from existing terrorists. Increasing the connectivity of the Gitmo terrorists with their still-at-large colleagues –by even a small margin– is the real recruitment bonus at stake in the debate over the closure of the facility.
Examiner columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com.
