Saffuri's Ties to Terror Suspects; Is Khaled Saffuri, a prominent Palestinian activist with connections to terror suspects, exerting undue influence on the Bush administration, or is he getting a bad rap?

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 1, 2004

Byline: Kenneth R. Timmerman, INSIGHT

The rise of Khaled Saffuri to political prominence within the U.S. Muslim community has all the ingredients of a Horatio Alger success story. Brought up as a stateless exile in Kuwait, Saffuri came to America as a student in 1982, went to college in San Diego, and soon gravitated into the world of Muslim activism.

A talented fund-raiser and behind-the-scenes power broker, Saffuri built bridges to politicians in both parties by generously contributing to their election campaigns, from California libertarian Rep. Dana Rohrabacher in the GOP to Rep. Cynthia McKinney, the hard-left Georgia Democrat. He has worked to get President Bill Clinton to intervene in Bosnia. He has taken members of Congress on trips to Arab countries. He has lobbied hard but quietly against pro-Israel legislation. In 1998, along with Republican activist Grover Norquist, Saffuri established the Islamic Institute in Washington with the stated purpose of promoting free-market ideals in the Muslim world and of bringing American Muslims into the Republican Party.

Recognition of his role came with a thunderclap during the 2000 presidential campaign, when Karl Rove named him the Bush campaign's point man for Muslim outreach. With George W. Bush in the White House, Khaled Saffuri had arrived.

By all accounts, Saffuri put his new prominence to use, promoting the friends who had helped him achieve his newfound status and advocating for the issues about which they cared. One by one, he introduced them to President Bush and his entourage. With Saffuri frequently smiling in the background, they proudly posed for campaign photographs and, later, attended White House events.

Now, however, some of the very people Saffuri introduced to Bush and Rove are in federal prison on terrorism-related charges. Others have been expelled from the country. Still other former colleagues and donors have become subjects of a massive federal probe into U.S. funding of terrorist organizations that is code-named Operation Greenquest.

In a series of interviews with Insight over the course of more than two years, Saffuri and his supporters claim he has been given a bum rap by critics who point to the alleged terrorist ties as a reason why the White House should distance itself from Saffuri and his friends.

Norquist, the conservative fund-raiser and antipork president of Americans for Tax Reform, cofounded the Islamic Institute with Saffuri in 1998. Norquist insists that any attempt to tie Saffuri to terrorist supporters is "guilt by association." Those who make such accusations, Norquist tells reporters, are "racists and bigots."

But Saffuri's ties to radical Islamists and apologists for terror are neither superficial nor coincidental. An Insight investigation has uncovered a consistent pattern of fund-raising and influence operations in which Saffuri played a prominent role side by side with Abdurahman Alamoudi, a well-known Muslim activist who was Saffuri's employer at the American Muslim Council (AMC). Alamoudi was arrested last September on charges of illegally taking cash payments from the government of Libya in exchange for lobbying the Bush administration to lift sanctions against the Qaddafi regime.

Alamoudi also was one of the leaders of a vast network of Hamas supporters operating across the United States under the guise of American Muslim activist groups.

At a rally in front of the White House on Oct. 28, 2000, Alamoudi told the audience that reports he was a supporter of Hamas were accurate. "Anybody support this Hamas here? Anybody's [sic] is a supporter of Hamas here? Anybody's [sic] is a supporter of Hamas here? Hear that Bill Clinton? We are all supporters of Hamas! Allah akbar [God is great]! I wish to add here I am also a supporter of Hezbollah!"

On June 2, 2000, the U.S.-based al-Zaitounah newspaper interviewed Alamoudi in English on his pro-Hamas activities at the AMC. "Our position with regard to the peace process is well-known," he said. "We are the ones who went to the White House and defended what is called Hamas." According to the Jerusalem Post, Alamoudi attended a leadership conference in Beirut in January 2001 along with top leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and al-Qaeda. These and other Alamoudi actions and statements were cited by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Brett Gentrup in a September 2003 affidavit in support of Alamoudi's arrest.

Saffuri tells Insight that Alamoudi won praise from American Jewish leaders for his work on Bosnia in the 1990s. "I have a letter from 1997 from the AJC [American Jewish Committee] to Alamoudi and cc'd [copied] to me," he says. Saffuri promised to send Insight a copy of the letter, but an aide later reported he was unable to locate it. Officials at the AJC could find no trace of such a letter either. Saffuri also told Insight that the AJC "joined" the American Task Force on Bosnia, which AJC officials say is untrue.

"The only time Jewish organizations did something not really together but in coordination with Muslim groups were demonstrations against the genocide in Bosnia," says Yehudit Bartsky, an aide to AJC President David Harris. But that cooperation evaporated in 1994, once statements by Alamoudi and other Muslim leaders condemning the Oslo agreements became public. "Everybody was shocked to see they were opposed to Oslo, which all the Jewish organizations supported at the time," he says. After the horrific spate of suicide bombings in 1996, which the AMC and other Muslim organizations refused to condemn, those ties such as they were evaporated. "So 1997 would be really late," Bartsky adds.