See Something, Say Nothing

by Philip Haney

  The NTC’s Tablighi Jamaat Initiative was a distinct investigative effort that connected members of the movement to terrorist organizing and financing at the highest levels, including Hamas and al-Qaeda. It had resulted in twelve hundred law-enforcement actions, including visa refusals, visa-waiver cancellations, and denial of entry. All of this happened in just the first nine months of the initiative, which had been approved by the DHS chief counsel in August 2011.

  Observing from my seat in the far corner of the room, I never said a word during the entire meeting, but I listened carefully while taking notes in shorthand.

  “We’re here today because we just want to make sure we’re all on the same page on this issue. We know that members of Tablighi Jamaat are fundamentalists, but they’re not terrorists,” a State Department official insisted.

  “We look really closely at the Tablighi Jamaat people [who apply for visas], but we can’t stereotype them,” he explained. “Just because they belong to an Islamic group, it doesn’t mean they are terrorists themselves.”

  He acknowledged “vetting them is a challenge” but concluded, “We all know the group is way too big just to say that membership alone makes them ineligible for a visa.” He then disclosed that “human rights,” the State Department’s Civil Rights Division, is working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement on the issue.

  In a PowerPoint presentation we had prepared to make our case, a colleague of mine pointed out that US foreign consulates had approved only 25 percent of the requests for visas made by individuals affiliated with Tablighi Jamaat.

  There was total silence in the room for some ten seconds.

  It wasn’t Customs and Border Protection that was rejecting Tablighi Jamaat visa applicants at a rate of 75 percent. Instead, as we showed them, it was their own consulate officers who didn’t have confidence in these people.

  One of the State Department lawyers raised his hand.

  “How can we get that information in the PowerPoint to all of our consulate offices?”

  At that moment, the scope of our initiative was about to go global. Or so we thought.

  Despite the overwhelming evidence, not only did the State Department not spread the information and designate Tablighi Jamaat as a terrorist group, but the Obama administration effectively shut down our initiative, ordering that intelligence based on religious affiliation be disregarded on the basis of civil rights and civil liberties concerns.

  By the time of that March 2012 visit from the State Department, I had watched the DHS, beginning with the George W. Bush administration, move from a law-enforcement-based approach to national security to a “civil rights”–based policy that became known as Countering Violent Extremism, or CVE.

  Emphasizing “engagement and dialogue,” CVE focuses on protecting civil rights and civil liberties. Not of American citizens in general, but particularly of Muslims, both citizens and foreigners, who in many instances are associated with a threat to the nation’s security.

  The new emphasis already had gained steam in 2009 when I was ordered to remove information from more than eight hundred records concerning individuals associated with Muslim Brotherhood front groups in the United States who had proven links to the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas. The links had been verified in federal court in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation trial, the largest terror-financing trial in US history.

  It was the keeper of the administration’s CVE policy – the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties – that, together with the State Department, “moved” our Tablighi Jamaat Initiative “in other directions,” as verified by Department of Homeland Security memos obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

  Ultimately, interfering in the Tablighi Jamaat Initiative at NTC in 2012 prevented us from effectively intervening against individuals and organizations linked to this dangerous worldwide movement.

  SAN BERNARDINO

  Three years later, in December 2015, two figures linked to the Deobandi movement, Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, fired automatic weapons at a holiday party in San Bernardino, California, killing fourteen people and wounding twenty-one after amassing a large stockpile of weapons, ammunition, and bomb-making equipment in their home.

  Farook was described as a devout Muslim who showed up to pray every day at a Deobandi-affiliated mosque in the San Bernardino suburb of Muscoy, called the Dar Al Uloom al Islamiyah. Dar Al Uloom, which means “house of knowledge,” is a brand name for all of the Deobandi schools in the world, including several in the United States.

  Farook also had attained the status of hafiz, meaning he had been certified by Deobandi imams as having memorized the entire Quran. Consequently, he likely was well known within the community and had earned prestige and esteem for his pious devotion to the teachings and laws of Islam.

  Two brothers who attended the Dar Al Uloom mosque with Farook described him as “a very nice person, very soft.”1 By the way, that is exactly how Anwar al-Awlaki was described before he became the world’s leading English-speaking promoter of jihad against the West, particularly against America. It turned out that Farook, according to an FBI affidavit, listened to Awlaki’s recorded sermons.

  “We never saw him raise his voice. We never saw him curse at anyone, disrespect anyone. He was always a very nice guy, always very simple, very straightforward,” Nizaam Ali, twenty-three, told NBC News of Farook. “He had a lot of manners.”2

  Of particular interest to me was the criminal complaint filed against suspected accomplice Enrique Marquez by FBI special agent Joel T. Anderson. It notes that in late 2005, Marquez and Farook “discussed the Tablighi Jamaat movement and MARQUEZ began to pray more frequently at Farook’s residence.”3

  That short statement from paragraph 23 of the FBI affidavit offers insight into how members of Tablighi Jamaat operate. They are “promoters of Islam,” or what we in the West would call “proselytizers” or “evangelists.”

  The FBI notation also counters a prevailing belief that “radicalization” largely takes place via the amorphous Internet rather than through direct, one-on-one interaction, as with most other human activity.

  Farook’s wife, Malik, appears to have been linked to the Deobandi movement either through her study at the Al-Huda girls school – another worldwide network of fundamentalist Salafi schools, with locations in the United States and Canada – or through her possible affiliation with the Lal Masjid, the “Red Mosque,” in Islamabad, Pakistan. The Lal Masjid is well known in Pakistan and Afghanistan as a training center for jihadists who are in transit to the battlefield.

  LAW ENFORCEMENT 101

  The San Bernardino killer Farook fit the profile of the Tablighi Jamaat members I regularly interviewed when they came through Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport, known as the world’s busiest airport by passenger traffic.

  My law enforcement colleagues and I would not necessarily have regarded Farook as a potential threat if he had been known to have “raised his voice” or “cursed” or “disrespected” someone.

  Instead, it was specifically because of his overt adherence to a particular religious doctrine and global movement that attention should have been paid to him when he reentered the United States from his 2014 trip to Saudi Arabia, where he met the woman who became his fiancée.

  A surveillance camera image that captured the couple July 27, 2014, standing in line at customs in Chicago showed Malik in a black abaya – a cloak typical of Saudi Arabia that covers a woman’s hair and body – and Farook with an Islamic headdress and a beard.

  Had I inspected the photograph in Farook’s passport showing him with no beard or Islamic headdress, I would have been curious about what he had been doing in the meantime.

  While dressing in traditional Muslim clothing is certainly not in itself a portent of a threat, when combined with other information a portrait could emerge of a young American citizen who had undergone a radical transformation and now posed a potential securi
ty risk.

  Farook’s relatively abrupt change in appearance and his association with the Tablighi Jamaat movement would have prompted me to ask him a few more questions, either while he was standing in line or at the counter as I processed his passport.

  It’s basic, commonsense Law Enforcement 101.

  If the Tablighi Jamaat Initiative had not been shut down in 2012, it’s plausible he would have been added to our database and possibly to the Terrorist Screening Center’s no-fly list, because of his association with the San Bernardino mosque.

  It is also just as plausible that Farook’s intended fiancée would have been denied a K-1 visa, either because of his affiliation with the California mosque or because of her affiliation with the Al-Huda school. Both institutions were already part of the Tablighi Jamaat Initiative by mid-2012.

  As it was, DHS relied, for example, on information she supplied on immigration Form I-485 in response to questions such as whether or not she had used or sold weapons or engaged in “terrorist activity.”4

  She, to no one’s surprise, said no before amassing a huge stockpile of assault weapons, ammunition, and explosive devices in their Redlands, California, residence.

  “ARMY OF DARKNESS”

  The Deobandi school of Sunni Islam, which emerged in northern India in the late nineteenth century, was dubbed in the Urdu language Tablighi Jamaat, or proselytizing group. Later, in Arabic, it became known as Dawah and Tabligh, meaning “calling and proselytizing.”

  While relatively unknown in the United States, in Britain and elsewhere it is known as the “Army of Darkness” because of its secretive way of moving through the world’s cities and towns, particularly in English-speaking countries that are not as familiar with the movement.

  Mohammad Sidique Khan, who plotted the July 2005 terror attacks in London, prayed at a Dawah and Tabligh–affiliated mosque in northern England. John Walker Lindh, an American who fought for the Taliban, was also believed to have attended Dawah meetings in the United States.

  The movement, with an estimated 70 million followers worldwide, is also connected to the “Portland Seven” group of Muslims in Oregon arrested in 2002 and convicted of attempting to join al-Qaeda forces fighting the United States, the six Yemeni-Americans in Buffalo convicted of aiding al-Qaeda, the 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot, the 2007 London car bombing attempt, and the 2007 Glasgow Airport attack.5

  In Atlanta, I obtained valuable information from the foreign Tablighi Jamaat members I interviewed, including where they were going, what mosques they were visiting, the names of the imams, letters of invitation, phone numbers, and the names of their colleagues. All of this information eventually became part of the NTC’s Tablighi Jamaat Initiative.

  The TJ members would either be flagged before arrival by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers with expertise in analysis, or referred to me by an officer in “primary,” the initial point of contact for passengers going through customs. If I saw one or more waiting in line, I would tell my colleagues who were assigned to work the line, “That’s a Tablighi Jamaat member; when he comes through the line, send him over to my booth, and I’ll interview him.”

  Even though I was never technically assigned to “secondary” – where passengers who merit further questioning are sent – I performed secondary duties by request. Whenever they would get a hard case, a supervisor would call me in my booth, or they would page me on the intercom.

  After the interviews, I wrote a summary of what I found and posted it in the database, called TECS, the Treasury Enforcement Communications System.

  Collecting this kind of relevant data over time is what enables law enforcement officers to “connect the dots” and determine whether or not a threat to the homeland exists. TECS is an archive database, meaning that anyone at any other port in the country can have instant access to information that other CBP officers enter into the system.

  THE MADRASSA BOYS

  At my post in Atlanta, I regularly encountered over several years a group of twenty-five to thirty young Deoband–Tablighi Jamaat members who traveled between their homes in the United States and an overseas madrassa. We got to know one another so well that I dubbed them the “Madrassa Boys,” while they called me “the guy with the white hair.”

  I was watching the first generation of US citizens and lawful permanent residents to go through the seven-year program that prepared them to become imams.

  It was fascinating to see them transform not only from boys to young men but also into pious, sharia-compliant candidates for positions of leadership within their communities.

  Nearly all were the sons of immigrants who had been selected between the ages of ten and twelve by their parents and the Shura Council, the designated leadership of the local mosque, to train to become imams.

  The boys were taken out of public school and put in a parallel madrassa system in the United States. Most never graduated high school or even received a GED. Instead, they concentrated on memorizing the Quran, and by the time they were of the age when students normally graduate from high school, they were qualified to leave America and go to the Darul Uloom Zakariyya madrassa in Johannesburg, South Africa.

  Remarkably, the federal government already knew that the madrassa and others like it are centers of “radicalization.” Nevertheless, these American citizens and permanent residents had been allowed to travel back and forth through US borders.

  I still remember the names of some of the Madrassa Boys, and I fear that one day, one or more of them may turn up in the news as did Syed Farook, or Muhammad Abdulazeez, who opened fire on two military recruitment centers in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on July 16, 2015, killing four Marines and a Navy sailor, and wounding a police officer before he was finally killed by police in a gunfight.

  DEVELOPING THE CASE

  My colleagues and I interviewed the Madrassa Boys annually for four straight years when they returned to the United States from South Africa for the Islamic month of Ramadan.

  It was almost funny, watching them spot me as they came through the customs line in Atlanta, then shake their heads with a look of, “Oh, no, it’s him again, the guy with the white hair.”

  In the first year, I obtained an occasional address and the name of a mosque or two. By the second year, I was gathering considerably more biometric information, including names of family members and their imams.

  In other words, we were connecting the dots.

  Often, people who end up involved in terrorism are drawn in by someone in their own family. This linkage is well known within the intelligence community and is one of the most important “dots” when a case is being developed.

  A good example of this was the close relationship between Syed Farook and Enrique Marquez Jr., who was suspected of supplying the rifles for the San Bernardino attack. Marquez was converted to Islam through Farook in 2005 and fraudulently married the sister of Farook’s brother’s wife.

  HOW DID YOU KNOW?

  One Sunday morning, June 19, 2011, William Ferri, assistant port director in charge of passengers at five airports in the metro New York area as well as the seaport of New York and New Jersey, placed a call to me on my personal line.

  DHS policy forbids CBP officers from answering their personal phones on the line, so as soon as there was a pause in the flow of passengers, I went to the break room and returned his call.

  “Haney,” he said, “we’ve got these five guys at the port, and I don’t know what to ask them.”

  What I didn’t know at the time was that Ferri was at home and that the watch commander on duty at Newark had reached out to him.

  I told him, “Don’t let them go. They’re Tablighi Jamaat, and they’re going to Masjid Al-Falah in Corona-Queens, New York.”

  The New York mosque is the US headquarters of Tablighi Jamaat. In Arabic, Al-Falah means “success and well-being,” especially with regard to conforming to the commands of Allah regarding daily living, such as not drinking alcohol.

  So,
Ferri called back the watch commander at Newark, telling him, “Don’t let those guys go; they’re Tablighi Jamaat, and they’re going to Masjid Al-Falah in Corona-Queens, New York!”

  The watch commander replied, “Okay, but how the hell did you know that? You’re not even here at the port.”

  All five, traveling on the Visa Waiver Program, were denied entry.

  The Newark Tablighi Jamaat case became one of the key components of the emerging Tablighi Jamaat Initiative.

  Remarkably, Ferri had served as an Internal Affairs fact finder the first of nine times I was investigated during the course of my career. We met when he interviewed me in Atlanta on December 14, 2006, and five and a half years later, we broke a major case together.

  GOING TO NTC

  By late 2011, it was clear that my colleagues and I in Atlanta had put together a major case on Tablighi Jamaat, so I developed a PowerPoint presentation on my findings and presented it to our port director, Stephen Kremer, on October 26, 2011. CBP supervisors Frank Rodriguez and William Brannen also watched as I sat in Kremer’s seat, and they took seats on the other side of his desk.

  I told Kremer my goal was to “knock you off your chair in the first ten to fifteen seconds of this presentation.”

  I guess I did, because as soon as I was done, he looked right at me and said, “Haney, you’re going to NTC.”

  I began my temporary duty yonder assignment, or TDY, at the NTC in late November 2011 with the intensive, three-week training program. Shortly after I was “released to the floor” and settled in to the high-speed pace of the NTC work routine, they transferred me over to the Advanced Targeting Team.

  Now, I was working on my own case at NTC, building on what we had already learned in Atlanta and in a few other ports about Tablighi Jamaat. As we brought the case up to speed, it quickly grew in status from a collection of local events to a national “project” and soon a global “initiative,” the highest-level designation at NTC.