This story is for you:During the criminal investigation of the Portland Seven case, we learned through an undercover informant that, according to one defendant (Jeffrey Battle), before the plan to go to Afghanistan was formulated, the group allegedly contemplated attacking Jewish schools or synagogues,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Gorder, a prosecutor in the case, told me in a statement responding to my questions. “Battle indicated that they had been casing Jewish schools and synagogues.”
In his May 8, 2002, conversation with a government informant, federal prosecutors said in a sentencing memorandum, Battle discussed this plan. “If every time [the Israelis] hurt or harm a Muslim over there [in Palestine] you go into that synagogue and hurt one over here, okay, they’re gonna say, wait a minute, we gotta stop, we’re seeing a connection here, okay …,” said Battle. “We were going to hit all at the same time as each other. … We were willing to get caught or die if we could do [murder] at least 100 or 1,000, big numbers.”
After the 9/11 attacks, however, Battle and five other members of the Portland cell decided that rather than attack inside the U.S. they would travel via China and Pakistan to Afghanistan to join forces with al Qaeda there.
In the late fall of 2001, calling themselves by the Arabic name Katibat Al-Mawt (“The Squad of Death”), the group made their way from Portland, Ore., toward the China-Pakistan frontier. When they failed after repeated attempts to gain entry into Pakistan from China, two of the six immediately returned to the United States. Three remained for a while in various parts of Asia, where Battle, at least, continued his futile efforts to gain entry into Pakistan. One of the six eventually did make it to Pakistan.
All along the way, these terrorists left an electronic trail.
Squad of Death member Maher “Mike” Hawash, a 37-year-old naturalized American software engineer born in the West Bank city of Nablus, had done very well in the United States. According to an affidavit prepared for the federal court by Oregon State Police Officer Thomas McCartney, Hawash and his wife had earned a gross income of $357,668 in 2000 derived “primarily from Hawash’s salary at Intel Corp.” But as with Osama bin Laden himself, affluence did not turn Hawash away from terrorism, and he eventually pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply services to the Taliban.
He, too, had an electronic international communication with Al Saoub.
“After Hawash returned to the United States, he received a phone call from Al Saoub asking for money,” prosecutors alleged in their sentencing memo for the Battle and Ford cases. “Hawash arranged for $2,000 to be sent by someone in Nablus in the West Bank area of Palestine to defendant Al Saoub in China.”
And Hawash was not the only person in the United States that Squad of Death “Emir” Al Saoub telephoned from overseas while on his trek to Afghanistan. So did the NSA discover the Portland Seven through intercepts? Apparently not.
In a January 17 front-page story that deprecated the effectiveness of the NSA program, the New York Times cited the Portland Seven as one case that actually “might have” been assisted by NSA intercepts. But U.S. District Judge Mike Mosman, who had served as the Portland-based U.S. attorney who oversaw the prosecution of the Portland Seven, says otherwise. When I asked Judge Mosman if NSA intercepts were in any way involved in the case, he said, “I first heard about NSA intercepts in mid-December when I read it in the New York Times.”
The judge pointed to a more conventional genesis for the investigation. “It began with a tip from a deputy sheriff from Skamania County,” he said.
By the time our informant recorded this statement from Battle,” said Gorder, “we had information that a number of other persons besides Battle had been involved in the Afghanistan conspiracy. Several of these other individuals had returned to the United States, but we did not have sufficient evidence to arrest them.”
“Pre-Patriot Act, we faced a dilemma,” said Gorder. “Should we arrest Battle immediately to make sure that he didn’t now carry out a domestic attack? If so, the other suspects would undoubtedly scatter or attempt to cover up their crimes. The intelligence side of the FBI could still conduct surveillance of Battle, but pre-Patriot Act they were forbidden to communicate what they learned with prosecutors and their own criminal investigators. With the intelligence-sharing changes of the Patriot Act, the FBI was able to conduct FISA surveillance of Battle to detect whether he received orders from some international terrorist group to reinstate the domestic attack plan on Jewish targets and keep us informed as to what they were learning. This gave us the confidence not to prematurely arrest Battle while we continued to gather evidence on the others.
“Ultimately, we were able to file charges on six defendants, and later a seventh,” said Gorder. “Without these changes in the Patriot Act, our case would have been the ‘Portland One’ rather than the Portland Seven.”
Another provision of the Patriot Act that the prosecutors found helpful was Section 220, which allows a judge in a jurisdiction where a crime is committed to issue a search warrant for an e-mail account even if the Internet Service Provider is in another jurisdiction. In the case of the Portland Seven, Gorder said, “[U]nder the old law an agent would have been required to spend taxpayer money to fly to New York and California to obtain a search warrant, rather than go to see a judge here in Portland.”
‘Everybody’s Scared’
Finally, there is the psychological impact the high-profile Patriot Act had on Jeffrey Leon Battle and others who were involved—or who might have become involved—in a conspiracy to wage war against America.
“As an aside, you might be intrigued to know that at least some of the defendants in the Portland Seven case were aware of the broad outlines of the Patriot Act—and complained that it crimped their terrorist plans,” said Gorder. “Jeffrey Battle explained why his group eventually failed in their mission to get to Afghanistan—because their plan was not sufficiently organized, in part due to the Patriot Act.”
In fact, Battle specifically invoked President Bush’s name in reflecting on his own failure as a terrorist. He once told an informant: “[T]he reason it was not organized is, couldn’t be organized as it should’ve been, is because we don’t have support. Everybody’s scared to give up any money to help us. You know what I’m saying? Because of the law that Bush wrote about, you know, supporting terrorism whatever the whole thing. … Everybody’s scared … [Bush] made a law that say, for instance, I left out of the country and I fought, right, but I wasn’t able to afford a ticket but you bought my plane ticket, you gave me the money to do it … By me going and me fighting and doing that they can, by this new law, they can come and take you and put you in jail for supporting what they call terrorism.”
Gorder notes that although laws prohibiting material support for terrorists existed before the Patriot Act, the Patriot Act made them better.
See, the Patriot Act is working. It is stopping terrorists. It is helping fight the fight. It was not abused, has not been abused. So, why take pride in killing it, Senator Reid, Dr. Dean, et.al.?
