GRANMA INTERNATIONAL
Havana. June 27, 2005
TERROR IN FLORIDA
IT is hard to find a better symbol of the Palestinians’ generally disastrous attempts to present their case in the United States than Sami al-Arian. The Kuwaiti-born professor at the University of South Florida set up the World Islam and the Studies Enterprise (WISE), a pro-Palestinian think-tank, in 1990.
As a pleader for the Palestinian cause, he subsequently met both President Clinton and (then) Governor George Bush; after the September 11 attacks he had a famous shouting-match about the Middle East on Fox News with Bill O’Reilly, a staunch conservative defender of Israel. This week, jury selection began in a trial in which Arian stands accused of financing terrorism.
The government alleges that Mr Arian and six other defendants used WISE to funnel cash Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The money was then used to finance attacks which have killed more than 100 Israelis and two Americans. Mr Arian also faces money-laundering and racketeering charges.
Interestingly, the case began in 1994 when a PBS documentary, Jihad in America, focused on a number of WISE conferences at the University of South Florida organized by Mr Arian and Mazen al-Najjar, his brother-in-law, who was also a professor in Tampa. A year later, the university stopped sponsoring WISE conferences. Mr. Najjar was arrested in 1997 on visa charges and deported. Mr Arian was arrested in 2003.
As he was led into Tampa’s FBI office, Mr. Arian insisted that it was "all about politics." More than 200 Israelis are expected to testify at his trial, mostly for the prosecution. His lawyers have insisted that he will never get a fair trial in Tampa, where his alleged sins have been remorselessly examined in the local press. In an attempt to switch the venue, they have presented the federal judge who is overseeing the case with a poll showing that 55% of people in Tampa residents believe that Mr Arian is guilty, while only 33% do in Atlanta.
The start of Mr Arian’s trial has now been delayed until June while the judge considers the change-of-venue motion. But America’s definition of terrorism may be also being tested in another case in Florida – that of Luis Posada Carriles.
While Mr
Arian denies any involvement in terrorism, Mr Posada is a self-styled freedom
fighter, who has been plotting violent attacks on the regime of FV for 45 years.
He is also wanted in Venezuela as a prime suspect in the bombing of a Cuban
airliner in 1976 in which 73 people died (he has adamantly denied any
responsibility). The CIA-trained Cuban was arrested for entering the country
illegally. It is unclear what the Bush administration will do with him. But,
politics apart, what exactly is the difference between Mr Posada and Mr Arian?
(Published in The Economist, May 21-27.)
http://granmai.cubaweb.com/ingles/2005/junio/lun27/27terror.html
COLUMN ONE
18 Years Waiting for a Gavel to Fall
A group of Palestinians have been in legal and personal limbo for nearly
two decades as the U.S. has sought to deport them. Their case
foreshadowed post-9/11 policy. First of two parts
By Peter H. King Times Staff Writer
June 29, 2005
On a rain-soaked Saturday afternoon nearly two decades ago, a handful of young Palestinians gathered at the Glendale Civic Auditorium to prepare for an evening fundraiser. The event — a night of ethnic food, folk dances and political speeches delivered in Arabic — would be attended by an estimated 1,200 men, women and children, most of them immigrants from the Middle East.
It had been promoted as a festival to celebrate the 18th anniversary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist-oriented faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The underlying purpose, organizers said, was to generate donations for "the homeland," in particular to provide medical care and schooling in Palestinian refugee camps.
"People," the crowd would be reminded that night in the call for contributions, "the revolution will not continue, and the march to Palestine will not go on, with words alone."
The preparations seemed fairly unremarkable. Posters were taped to walls. Palestinian magazines, including copies of a PFLP publication, Al Hadaf, were arranged on tables. A troupe of amateur dancers practiced a folk dance known as the dabka.
Before the rehearsal, one dancer removed the American flag from its standard on the stage and leaned it against a back wall in the wings. This did not pass unnoticed.
Earlier that day, FBI Special Agent Frank H. Knight had hidden himself inside an engineering booth outfitted with a window that overlooked the auditorium. He would remain at his post deep into the night, snapping rolls of pictures, recording snippets of the speeches and narrating what he saw into a tape recorder.
For three years Knight had been tracking a number of these Palestinians, suspecting they were agents of the PFLP, an organization with a mixed record of social good works, military operations and terrorist strikes. Unable to convince FBI headquarters that he had evidence of illegal activities, Knight had come to Glendale with a new plan.
He brought with him an agent from the Immigration and Naturalization Service: If he could not prosecute the Palestinians, perhaps he could have them deported.
Knight did not speak Arabic, and many of his conclusions about that Saturday, Feb. 15, 1986, would be based on intuition. He reported, for example, that the music, speeches and "general mood" all "sounded militaristic." He thought it suspicious that some men in an opening procession were dressed in khaki shirts and camouflage trousers.
"This would not be a normal attire for obtaining cash for orphans," Knight surmised. "It is one to get cash for guns."
And although he could not read the posters, the agent noticed that some depicted people holding AK-47 assault rifles. This led him to conclude, three minutes into his narration, that "it is obvious that this fundraiser has nothing to do with building hospitals or schools. It is solely for raising money for terrorist activities."
Finally, there was the business of the American flag. Not only had it been removed before the program, Knight would report, the banner was never returned to its standard. Years later, Knight was pressed in a deposition to explain why he considered this relevant.
Certainly moving a flag off the stage did not constitute a criminal act, did it?
"I've been to other events, and the American flag usually stays in the standard. With this group — the PFLP, they removed the American flag…. And it makes a statement…. "
"What kind of statement?"
"An observation," Knight responded. "They treat the flag the way they would treat the enemy. And, so, it wouldn't be a part of their event."
The revolutionary rhetoric and perceived slights to the flag, the "martial" music and posters, the khaki clothing — all of these in time would be presented as evidence of seditious inclinations, part of the government's brief in a pioneering attempt to deport seven Palestinian men and the wife of one of them, a Kenyan.
The "L.A. 8," they would be called.
This is the story of their case. It is a case that has rattled around the courts now, incredibly, for 18 years, and yet remains unresolved. It is also a case that foreshadowed what was to come for many Arab and Muslim immigrants in America years later, in the aftermath of terror.
Long before Sept. 11, 2001, and President Bush's subsequent declaration of a "war on terror," long before the Patriot Act and the proactive tactics it licensed, back in a time when the difficult question of how to root out potential terrorists without trampling on civil rights seemed more academic than immediate, there was the case of the L.A. 8.
Since January 1987, when the eight were arrested, the case has bounced from immigration court, through federal district courts, up to the U.S. Supreme Court and back again, with side visits to individual immigration status hearings. Along the way, it tested legal questions that would loom large after Sept. 11.
Do foreign nationals enjoy the same free-speech protections as citizens? Can particular immigrant groups be singled out for removal to advance U.S. policy objectives? When does advocacy for a political cause — Palestinian statehood, say — lapse into material support for terrorists with similar goals but more sinister methods?
The government architects of the case point to it as providing a framework, years ahead of its time, for the strategy of seeking to identify and remove possible terrorists and their supporters in America before they can strike.
"Our job is to protect the American people against things that may happen in the future," said William B. Odencrantz, who came to the L.A. 8 case early on as a supervising lawyer for what was then called the Immigration and Naturalization Service. "We're not concerned with convicting people after they blow up buildings. What we want to do is keep them from being in a situation where they can blow up a building in the first place.
"And so that's the kind of story we've been trying to sell for 18 years with respect to this particular incident."
Critics of the case view it, conversely, as an early model of an anti-terrorism strategy they regard as a campaign of stereotype and overreach. They argue that to place fundraising for Palestinian refugee camps — and, for that matter, dancing the dabka — on par with the dark works of international terrorists not only diverts government resources from the hunt for "real terrorists," but undercuts basic constitutional protections.
For the accused, the case has kept them ensnared for nearly two decades. Released from detention while the litigation played out, they have built seemingly innocuous lives in Southern California, raising children, buying homes, starting businesses. Yet they have done so with a gnawing, daily awareness that their purchase on the landscape remains precarious, with the government unwavering in its determination to see them removed.
"At first," recalled Maria Obeid, wife of one of the eight, "it was: 'Can we have kids? Let's not have kids because we don't know what is going to happen. Let's not buy a house, because something might happen. Let's not get this job, because something might happen.'
"I mean, everything that you want to do is stopped. And it's not just us, it's everybody, and it's psychological torture."
The eight were never accused of plotting or committing any act of terrorism — or any crime, for that matter. As William H. Webster, FBI director at the time, testified before Congress not long after the case broke: "If these individuals had been United States citizens" — rather than green card holders and foreign students — "there would not have been a basis for an arrest."
Rather, they were targeted for removal, technically a civil proceeding, on grounds that they allegedly had raised money for the PFLP. More specifically, the initial charges involved the eight's efforts to distribute Al Hadaf, the PFLP magazine — a publication available in public libraries, on college campuses and even at the U.S. Library of Congress.
The government contended that the magazine linked the defendants to an organization advocating the "doctrines of world communism," a deportable offense under a provision of the McCarran-Walter Act, which was conceived during the McCarthy era as a means to remove immigrants with Marxist leanings.
The charges against the L.A. 8 have been reworked at least three times since, reflecting changes in immigration and anti-terrorism laws, some of which were tailored to be applied retroactively to this case. For all of that, however, the matter is far from finished.
Two of the eight, Khader Musa Hamide and Michel Ibrahim Shehadeh, are scheduled for trial in immigration court next month, with the government seeking to deport them under a provision of the Patriot Act that forbids giving material support to terrorist organizations. The outcome of their trial could influence the fate of the others. Should the government prevail, it could in theory take the same tack against the rest of the L.A. 8.
The respondents, as defendants are called in immigration court, hope the trial will bring an end to the case — a hope tempered by experience.
"I think we are going to win, but now what is the price of winning?" asked Hamide, alleged leader of the eight and a father of three who now makes his living as a wholesaler of coffee beans. "It's already been 18 years of hell and misery for all of us. Is it going to take another 18 years? I mean, we want to go on with our lives."
Los Angeles in the early 1980s, the Los Angeles in which this case took root, was in the midst of transformation, on its way to becoming what boosters at the time liked to call a "world city."
The agents of change, by and large, were immigrants.
Refugees were pouring in from seemingly every corner of the planet, from Soviet Armenia, Mexico and El Salvador, Cambodia and South Korea, from the Philippines, Thailand and Pakistan.
Many did not leave their political passions and causes behind in the old country. Palestinians were no exception. They followed closely the fighting then underway with Israeli troops in Lebanon. They kept themselves informed on the dismal conditions of the refugee camps.
"Back then," Shehadeh recalled, "we were getting reports that people in the refugee camps were eating dogs and rats. They were so besieged. And the whole Palestinian community worldwide was energized to rebuild hospitals, start clinics, to help alleviate human suffering."
One response, he said, was to raise money at events like the one held in Glendale. Various Palestinian organizations would sponsor them. Ayman Obeid, one of the eight and a performer at the event, said the gatherings served another purpose: giving displaced and homesick immigrants an opportunity to take comfort in like company.
When he looked out from the stage, Obeid said, "I did not see any terrorists. I saw families. They brought their kids. For them it was to see live music, dance. Their eyes were lit. They thought we were kind of the Boyz II Men group. Because we liked what we did, and they liked what they saw, and that was the extent of it."
After the performances, he said, would come a pitch for donations, which he characterized this way: " 'And can we get some money to send to the needy?' And that was it."
As they look back now, some of the eight recall the early 1980s as a time for hope. They were young, outspoken advocates of the Palestinian cause, and sensed momentum in their drive to push American public opinion their way. They were engaged not only in fundraisers, but also in campus rallies, protests, leafleting, voter drives.
"We wanted to influence the U.S.," Hamide said. "We wanted to be like the Jews of the United States. Do you know what I am saying? To work from within the system. That is why we demonstrated in the streets. We engaged every group that was willing to listen to us, whether it was on campuses, churches, community groups and political people.
"Anybody who was willing to listen to us, we went to them, with literature, with dialogue, with whatever it took. Books, you name it — with dance, with food, with anything we could. We wanted to bring out the truth."
Those with opposing views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict took notice of a heightened Palestinian profile across America. In 1983, a booklet published by the Anti-Defamation League of B'Nai B'rith reported, "Beginning in June with Israel's military action against the PLO in Lebanon, a pro-Arab propaganda network, which had been growing steadily in the United States for many years, erupted in full force."
At the same time, there were suspicions in Southern California that the Palestinian activists might be up to more than political propaganda. An investigative article in the now-defunct New West magazine asserted that Palestinians in Los Angeles had created "an operational base for international terrorism" and that the government was "doing little."
In the article, an FBI supervisor complained about a lack of legal "tools" and said: "We can't even start to investigate a terrorist group until we have solid information that they are planning, say, to bomb a building … not that they are talking about it. But that they have already bought the fuses and the wires and the electric clock."
Enter Frank H. Knight, a tall, silver-haired agent who was to become an almost mythic, monster-like figure in the memories of the L.A. 8.
Knight, a Midwesterner, had joined the FBI in the late 1970s. He was well into his 30s, having served as an Army officer in Vietnam and a junior high school science teacher.
He was assigned to the Los Angeles office's counter-terrorism detail in 1980 and picked up the trail of Hamide and the PFLP in 1983. Over the next four years, he would prove himself to be not only determined but also creative, developing theories about domestic terrorism and how to combat it that appear to have been years ahead of their time.
Now 61, retired from the FBI and living in San Diego, Knight declined to answer questions about the case because it remains open. With one exception, other prosecutors and investigators, through public affairs officers, took the same stance, as they have from the start.
The years of litigation, however, have churned up dozens of memos, teletypes and internal reports. Also, Knight was deposed for four days in 1996 by an L.A. 8 lawyer, and his testimony provides significant insights into his conception of the case.
For three years, Knight and fellow investigators tailed Hamide, a Burbank busboy who had immigrated to the United States from Bethlehem, in the West Bank, on a Jordanian passport in 1971.
They followed him to the Go-Between Express Bar-Cafe in Silver Lake, where he was overheard saying something about "presentation of the cause" and "problems" as he pored over documents with two companions.
They followed him to a Carl's Jr. in Glendale and caught more snippets of conversation — "rent a building," "progressive Republican" and "May Day."
They staked out his Glendale apartment and watched him lug boxes of publications, including copies of Al Hadaf, from his car. An L.A. sheriff's deputy happened to live in the same building and happened to notice the regular visits of several Arab males to Hamide's apartment.
What prompted Knight's initial interest in Hamide and the PFLP remains less than clear. There were mentions in early reports of tips from other FBI field offices, as well as a widespread effort before the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics to check out anyone who might conceivably be connected to any terrorist plot against the Games.
After the arrests in 1987, Anti-Defamation League officials claimed that the investigation had been triggered by information developed by their organization. They would back away from this boast a few years later, however, in the wake of embarrassing disclosures that ADL operatives in several cities, including Los Angeles, had kept thousands of covert files on people they deemed worthy of extra vigilance. Indeed, ADL files on Hamide and Shehadeh did turn up.
As his investigation proceeded, Knight began to read up on Palestinian politics and, in particular, the PFLP. Founded in 1967, it had claimed responsibility for a number of terrorist acts, including political assassinations and the hijacking of jetliners. As it evolved and became part of the social fabric of the Palestinian territories, it also opened medical clinics and schools.
These good works did not impress Knight. Asked in his deposition about the day-care centers and kindergartens, he replied: "You engage in these activities for many reasons. One being humanitarian reasons. The other is as a recruitment vehicle. Gain the hearts and minds of the mother, and she'll send her son to war."
Knight believed it was impossible to be dedicated to the PFLP, with its Marxist dogma, and still be a law-abiding American resident. "The PFLP," he declared in one report, "is interested in no less than the subjugation of the entire world under a communist regime, and not the mere establishment of a Palestinian state. PFLP people, by virtue of their creed, hate the United States and all the U.S. Constitution stands for."
The members of the L.A. 8, not surprisingly, disagree with this stark view. Without admitting they were agents of the PFLP, those interviewed for this article did say there were aspects of the organization they found attractive.
The PFLP was secular, they said, and it promoted feminism. Its social programs were effective. It was staunch in its insistence on Palestinian statehood, and by the early 1980s its fighting wing seemed to be moving away from attacks on civilians and toward operations against military targets.
That they could hold these views and still claim not to support PFLP-sponsored terrorism, was something Knight could not accept: "To the committed PFLP member," he asserted in one document, "pulling a trigger is no different than selling a subscription to Al Hadaf, and soliciting money for the cause is the same as killing Zionists. Every act has a political message. Every utterance carries a terrorist purpose."
By 1984 the object of Knight's investigation had become clear: to "neutralize" the PFLP in Southern California by removing Hamide. He described Hamide, who had studied marketing at the University of Oregon and had gained permanent-resident status, as "intelligent, aggressive, dedicated," with "great leadership ability." Taking him out of action, he wrote to his superiors, would "severely hinder the PFLP in L.A."
Knight began to stake out fundraisers organized by Hamide, noting that he did little of the physical work but gave plenty of orders. The speeches at the events, Knight would later report after obtaining translations, were "all anti-peace, anti-United States peace settlement, anti-Jordanian peace settlement and anti-Israel." One summary also mentioned "anti-Reagan" overtones. Still, it was a difficult criminal case to build.
Various Palestinian charity organizations were listed as the official sponsors of the fundraisers, and donation checks were made out to them. Knight, relying on what he said was a single confidential source, regarded this as a sham. In any event, the money raised at the Southern California events he staked out was never traced to find out exactly where it was spent.
Knight believed it made little difference if the funds were earmarked for benign works — donations to a PFLP kindergarten simply would free up money for PFLP AK-47s. "We know that the United States is a moneymaking apparatus for the PFLP from their captured documents," Knight testified in his deposition. The group committed "lots of attacks on people, a lot of military attacks, as well. And it's not free. It costs money. And money is fungible."
In his view, even the dancers who performed at fundraisers were supporting PFLP terrorism.
"They put on a show for you," Knight said of the dabka performers. "And it's the whole ambience that's generated in the thing that causes people to reach into their pockets and give money."
There was, however, a problem with Knight's theory.
His superiors in Washington were not buying it.
Three times he laid out the evidence he'd gathered and asked headquarters for permission to open an official investigation, a bureaucratic step paving the way for criminal prosecution. The responses were blunt.
"FBIHQ has again reviewed LA's request," one communique read, " … and determined that Hamide is associated with Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) principals and activities.
"The circumstances presented concerning his PFLP activities do not demonstrate preparation for terrorism, but rather, the exercise of his rights as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and its Amendments. Therefore, LA's request is again denied."
An FBI agent in New York who shared Knight's interest in the PFLP suggested he team up with immigration authorities. There was, the agent wrote Knight, a significant upside to this then-novel approach: "INS deportation hearings are not criminal trials, and the rules of evidence are less stringent, such as hearsay, disclosure of sources, etc."
Knight met with an attorney of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Los Angeles. He was briefed on the McCarran-Walter Act and the provision dealing with the deportation of communists. He revisited the Marxist ideologies expressed in the PFLP magazines that Hamide and his associates distributed.
He also requested that an INS agent be loaned to his investigation. This was done, although the INS supervisor who authorized the assignment later would say he had been left somewhat in the dark about what kind of case Knight was attempting to build.
"I don't think we knew what the full deck of cards was," former INS District Director Ernest Gustafson recalled. "I'm not so sure we were completely in the loop." Nonetheless, the INS would authorize the arrests.
Knight informed the FBI of his plans: "This novel approach," he wrote, "would utilize information developed from FBI investigations with the INS deportation laws." He met in Washington with superiors and came away believing that the U.S. attorney general supported the effort.
After the INS agent joined his investigation, Knight learned that Hamide was about to be sent a letter of invitation to become a full-fledged U.S. citizen — the final step in the immigration process. Acting on Knight's information, the INS withheld the invitation.
Shehadeh, too, was close to becoming a naturalized citizen when, on Jan. 26, 1987, two men and a woman, all dressed in gray, came to his Long Beach house. They announced they were from the INS. As he opened the door, Shehadeh's first, vaguely formed thought was that these immigration officers had come to welcome America's newest citizen.
That they would do this at dawn, he recalls thinking, did seem strange.
As they remember it now, all these years later, the morning of the arrests unfolds in a series of surreal, dream-like scenes. "I remember every detail," said Hamide. He remembers how the officers and agents burst into his Glendale apartment with guns drawn. They showed him a subpoena. He did not understand. It seemed to indicate that they had come to seize magazines.
"So I gave them my magazines. That's funny," he recalled, without a trace of mirth. "That is really very indicative of this case. They came in with a subpoena for a magazine. No baseball bats, no guns, no whatever. Because they knew: I ain't got none."
Aiad Khaled Barakat recalls the knock on his door. He looked down from an upstairs window and saw a lone Glendale police officer on his porch. There was a problem, the officer explained. They needed to talk.
"The minute I turned the key to unlock the door," Barakat said, "the door went like a bulldozer. They pushed it like 10 feet back and people came in, about 15 or 18. A lot of them."
Shehadeh remembers the sweat that rolled down the chin of the agent who held him in a headlock. His 3-year-old son had burst into the front room, wailing, and another agent placed him on the couch. Shehadeh tried to wriggle free, wanting to comfort the boy. The agent tightened his grip.
"Don't be stupid," Shehadeh remembers him warning. "You don't want your son to watch you get hurt."
Shehadeh was told that he belonged to a terrorist organization and was under arrest. They handcuffed him and led him outside. A police helicopter wheeled low over the house, and that is when the thought clicked: He had witnessed this scene before.
"The raid on my house in Long Beach," he said, "looked exactly like the raids in the West Bank: early-morning raids, with helicopters and guns and police and uniforms. Taken away in a hazy dawn, you know. Except this was happening in America."
Looking back now, what perplexes him the most was how calm he remained. He did not lose his temper. He did not lash out and demand to know what was going on. It took him some time to sort out his emotional response.
"In the back of a Palestinian mind," he explained, "somebody is always going to come and take you away at any time. A Palestinian expects this nonsense. We live with it."
Amjad Obeid, Ayman's brother, had just returned from Las Vegas, where he had eloped with his girlfriend, Maria Garcia. He was a Palestinian Muslim. She was a Mexican American Catholic. They had agreed to keep the marriage secret for a few months, to give them time to break the news gently to their parents.
Now Maria's mother was on the telephone. She'd seen a Spanish-language newscast about Palestinian terrorists being arrested that morning. One of them looked like Maria's friend Amjad. She would not be comforted to learn from her daughter that he was no longer just a friend. He was her new son-in-law, the suspected terrorist.
Placed in a patrol car, Amjad Obeid was puzzled. "I remember when I got in the car there was one individual that sat with me in the back, and he was just showing me photos of me dancing at events. But I still didn't make anything out of it — why would they? What's going on, you know? And here is just a thick book of nothing but pictures of me dancing."
Ayman Obeid, who was studying at Cal State Long Beach with his brother, was asleep in his underwear. He opened his eyes to the barrel of a gun. They allowed him to dress and then put him in a police car. Seated next to him was agent Knight, "a big, big, tall guy," he said. "A tough guy. He was very tough. Intimidation was part of the plan: 'We are the government, and you are nobody.' "
He said the agent warned him that if he didn't cooperate, he'd be hauled off to a Middle East country known for its hostile treatment of Palestinian troublemakers, a country where they'd "love to have you for lunch."
Knight scolded him: "You guys here on the visa. You say you came to study in our country, and you're doing this to us? How dare you do this? You know, we can just flick you, and nobody will care about you."
Flick you?
"Yes," Obeid said, those were the agent's "exact words."
He raised a flattened hand, as if to swat at the table where he sat.
"Flick you, like a fly."
They initially were kept in isolation cells and described ominously as national security threats. Trips to the federal courthouse in downtown L.A. were made in convoys of unmarked vans, driven at a pace that was, to these shackled terrorism suspects, truly terrifying.
"One hundred miles an hour," Hamide recalled, "like they are transporting the biggest Mafia head in Italy to court: 'You are going to kill us, man!' And there was no reason for it. They knew that…. The whole thing was a put-on."
That they were transported in shackles and not permitted to shave made them look more plausibly like international terrorists, even though the government eventually would acknowledge that they were not accused of any acts of terrorism.
Rather, they were to be deported for their ties to an "organization that causes to be written, circulated, distributed, published or displayed, written or printed matter advocating or teaching economic, international and governmental doctrines of world communism."
Arab American leaders condemned the arrests as a "witch hunt" and "old-fashioned Arab bashing." There were suggestions that the roundup represented a "crude response" by the Reagan administration to the taking of U.S. hostages in Beirut.
Another theory was that the government wanted a test case — in the event war broke out in the increasingly volatile Middle East — to establish a precedent for detaining large numbers of foreign nationals. Shortly after the arrests, a secret government document discussing just such a plan was leaked to the media.
The document, "Alien Terrorists and Undesirables: A Contingency Plan," appeared to plot a legal course not unlike that being followed in the L.A. 8 case: In the instance of war, immigrants from the Middle East, not liable for criminal prosecution but considered undesirable, would be arrested for immigration violations and detained at a camp in Oakdale, La.
Government officials sought to downplay the document's importance, saying it was merely a draft of a possible approach. Its airing, nonetheless, rallied support for the arrested Palestinians. The American Civil Liberties Union and the National Lawyers Guild, along with high-profile lawyers such as Leonard Weinglass, of Chicago Seven fame, came riding over the hill.
After 18 days in detention, the eight were led in chains into the courtroom of Immigration Judge Roy Daniel for a bond hearing. Outside, Irv Rubin, national leader of the militant Jewish Defense League, marched about with a placard: "Commie Dogs Beware."
The government came into court with generic treatises on the PFLP, pictures of Palestinian men dancing and promises of more-persuasive secret evidence that, under orders from the U.S. attorney general, could be produced only in chambers, away from the respondents, their lawyers and the public.
The judge wondered aloud what the various PFLP atrocities described in the government literature had to do with these particular Palestinians. Had they hijacked airplanes? Had they plotted bus bombings? He refused to hear the secret evidence.
The government lawyer described the fundraisers and demonstrations. She also offered to share in chambers Knight's classified FBI report on the PFLP.
"I'm going to ask you to do that in public," Daniel said.
The government lawyer responded that, because of "national security" interests, she could not. Maybe she could approach the bench and whisper her secrets in the judge's ear? He refused and ordered the eight released, some on their own recognizance, the rest after they posted nominal bail amounts.
They smiled, hugged one another, and were put back in chains for the drive to Terminal Island, where they would be freed. Outside the courthouse, their supporters danced the dabka.
Later, as he and the others were led out of the detention facility, Hamide glanced backward over his shoulder and spotted Knight, peering down from an overhead stairway.
Their eyes locked, he said, and in that moment Knight shot Hamide a look he has never forgotten. "It was like," he said, " 'You bastards.' Just a cold-blooded look of hatred."
*
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Looking back
Here are major points in the L.A. 8 case, along with key events related to U.S. policy:
1983: FBI Special Agent Frank H. Knight begins tracking L.A. Palestinians.
1984: FBI refuses Knight's official investigation request.
Summer Olympics come to Los Angeles, culminating months of scrutiny of potential terrorism suspects.
1986: Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine fundraiser takes place in Glendale.
1987: Khader Musa Hamide, his wife, Julie Mungai, and Michel Ibrahim Shehadeh and six others are arrested. Group later consists of eight people.
Immigration Judge Roy Daniel releases all eight pending proceedings.
1990: Immigration Act of 1990 replaces McCarthy-era provisions allowing deportation of noncitizen communists.
1992: Hamide and Shehadeh begin their first deportation trial, which stalls because of developments in a civil case.
1995: Oklahoma City bombing kills 168 and injures more than 800; anti-terrorism laws are toughened.
1996: U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson cites free-speech rights in blocking deportation of the eight.
1999: U.S. Supreme Court ruling favors government; case returns to immigration court.
2001: Sept. 11 attacks kill nearly 3,000 and lead to passage of the Patriot Act with language that allows the L.A. 8 case to continue.
2004: Mungai, a Kenyan native, is granted permanent residency; Aiad Khaled Barakat is denied citizenship.
2005: July 13: Tentative date for Hamide and Shehadeh's second deportation trial.
*
Amjad Obeid: A dancer at fundraiser, this Cal State Long Beach student had just returned from eloping to Las Vegas when he was arrested.
Basher Amer: He was pulled out of college chemistry finals and arrested; only L.A. 8 member who has left Southern California.
Julie Mungai: Khader Musa Hamide's Kenyan wife now has permanent-resident status.
Ayman Obeid: Manager at a bank branch in Monrovia is seeking permanent residency.
Aiad Khaled Barakat: Helped distribute Palestinian magazines. He has been refused citizenship.
Michel Ibrahim Shehadeh, with his wife, Maxine: Arrested in front of son, 3, in a raid that reminded him of the West Bank.
Khader Musa Hamide: Alleged leader of the L.A. 8, the father of three is a wholesaler of coffee beans.
Naim Sharif: Became a permanent resident after successfully challenging the government's use of secret evidence.
Sources: Times research,
Infoplease.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-fg-laeight29jun29,1,4281992.story
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-fg-laeight30jun30,1,743032.story
COLUMN ONE
Lives of Worry, Sadness, 'Why?'
The L.A. 8, arrested in 1987 for allegedly aiding terrorists, still express
bewilderment over it all. And the government still presses its case.
By Peter H. King Times Staff Writer
June 30, 2005
Picture a tidy, two-story house on the far eastern fringe of metropolitan Los Angeles, folded inconspicuously into the land of the tiled rooftop and the two-hour commute. At the front window stands an Arab man, 47 years old, with dark, brooding eyes and slumped shoulders. He stares out at the street, watching, waiting.
This is on the morning after Sept. 11, 2001. The man's name is Khader Musa Hamide. A Palestinian, he has lived in the United States for 30 years. He is a coffee bean wholesaler, an Internet day trader and the father of three boys. He is also, as he puts it, a "quote-unquote suspected terrorist."
For many years now, Hamide has fought off attempts by the United States government to deport him for activities related to his visible, vocal advocacy of Palestinian causes. He was arrested in early 1987, along with his Kenyan wife and six other Palestinian immigrants.
They initially appeared destined for rapid deportation to the Middle East. The proceedings stalled on legal challenges, however, and the L.A. 8, as they came to be called, were allowed to carry on with their lives as best they could while they waited for the litigation to run its course. They are waiting still.
On this grim morning, the man at the front window barely resembles the dashing young organizer captured years earlier in FBI surveillance photographs. He attributes his aging more to his troubles than to the passage of time. He has lost his hair. He has lost friends. And he has lost his sense of trust: Behind every new face, he sees a potential FBI undercover agent.
More than anything, though, he has lost his political voice, which, certain government documents suggest, was precisely the point of the investigation in the first place. This is a man who once demonstrated defiantly in front of the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles, who once exhorted hundreds at a 1986 Glendale fundraiser to reach into their wallets, telling them, "People, the revolution will not continue, and the march to Palestine will not go on, with words alone."
Now he tries to keep his political views to himself. His weekends are filled not with rallies for the revolution, but with suburban errands, ferrying kids to basketball practice in his van. He worries that his neighbors might discover he's a principal in a terrorism case. One man up the block, in fact, did piece it together, and his children haven't come to play since.
"I can see that," Hamide will concede. "If somebody thinks that there is a quote-unquote suspected terrorist living in the neighborhood …
"Well, you know."
Fretting about neighborhood gossip on this morning, of course, would seem misplaced and maybe moot. Hamide has convinced himself that, given the terrible events of the day before, the FBI will start at once to round up every "Arab that has a brain."
Surely, he reasons, a Palestinian who already has been labeled a tool of terrorism by the United States, who for nearly 15 years has resisted a relentless government campaign to be rid of him, surely he will be among the first swept up. This is why Hamide watches the street. He is waiting, as he will recall years later in an interview, for the sedans with multiple antennae, the agents in their windbreakers. In 1987 they had surprised him at dawn, bursting into his apartment a dozen or so strong, guns drawn. This time he is ready.
"OK," he mutters to himself. "Come and get me. I've got my shoes on. Come and get me."
But the agents do not come, not on this day, not on any day since.
Instead, for Hamide and other members of the L.A. 8, the case simply will stagger along as it has from the start, with more legal filings and cross-filings, more revisions of the charges, more meetings with the lawyers, more paperwork to add to the heaping pile. And also, more time to ponder what they see as the central mystery of their peculiar legal predicament.
"Why? This is the biggest question," Hamide says. "Why us? And why is the government so persistent in this case? We honestly don't understand."
The Los Angeles Herald Examiner announced the arrests with a headline stripped across its front page: "War on Terrorism Hits L.A." When they recall that headline today, 18 years later, members of the eight will make a point of noting that the Herald Examiner no longer exists.
Their case has outlasted the paper — along with five U.S. attorneys general, the McCarthy-era anti-communism law under which they were originally charged, the Soviet Union, numerous Middle East peace initiatives, Yasser Arafat, the coming and going of numerous "marathon" legal struggles, the Rodney King trial, the O.J. Simpson case, the Clinton impeachment, and their youth.
For the accused, the case long ago bolted the boundaries of mere jurisprudence. They tend to speak of it today as something almost animate — a hulking, many-limbed beast that stomped into their lives one gray January morning in 1987 and has refused to leave. The case, they say, has broken apart marriages and disturbs the sleep of their children. It impedes their concentration, and has cost them jobs. It dictates the terms of their lives.
They seem to recognize more readily in others the marks the case has left on them all. They will shake their heads and confide how much a certain one of them has aged, how another, beset by depression, could not leave his couch for three years, how the child of still another required treatment for psychological scarring caused by the case.
"You can see it in their eyes," said Aiad Khaled Barakat, a tall, gaunt 44-year-old. "Look at them and you see the case."
What do you see?
"Worried. Sadness. You see wonder. That's what you see."
This bewilderment at what has befallen them is accompanied by a detectable wariness. Not all would agree to be interviewed, fearing repercussions. Those who did talk frequently offered up, with a certain urgency, anecdotes meant to demonstrate how ordinary their lives are, how thorough their assimilation into American mainstream — stories about the speeding ticket they beat, or the money they donated to tsunami relief, or the homeless man they set up in a successful window-washing business.
"I've been here for 33 years," said Hamide, now 51. "I eat like Americans. I act like Americans. I dress like Americans. I talk like Americans. I think like Americans. I do everything like Americans."
Indeed, from a distance, it would appear that the L.A. 8 have blended seamlessly into the Southern California landscape. Walk down Monrovia's main street in the middle of a workday afternoon and there, in front of the bank he manages, is Ayman Obeid, dressed in a starched shirt and creased trousers, cigarette dangling between his fingers as he discusses business with two customers. From time to time he's invited into classrooms, where he introduces youngsters to banking and the value of saving a dollar.
Drop in on Barakat's apartment in Arcadia, and on the family room coffee table are rolled-up blueprints for a public school renovation.
After his arrest, a budding venture in home building failed. Barakat then joined his brother in another construction firm, and they have made a success of it, securing bids on schools, public libraries, recreation halls, even winning a piece of the action on a Hollywood mogul's 45-room mansion.
Michel Ibrahim Shehadeh bought a pizza parlor a few miles from Disneyland — Pizza Town. Most days this spring he could be found amid the stainless steel ovens; at the counter toiled his 21-year-old son, who as a 3-year-old had watched with horror as his father was hauled away in handcuffs.
Hamide works out of his home, and eavesdropping government agents who once strained to catch snatches of his conversations with supposed subversives now would hear him haggling about the wholesale price of coffee beans while trying to quiet a small child who had wandered into the room.
They would hear him explain why he couldn't meet this particular day to talk about his terrorism case: "I have a nanny problem."
All in all, Hamide would observe on another day, "we've been pretty good capitalists."
This was a sly reference to the initial charges filed against the eight, allegations that their distribution of magazines published by the Marxist-leaning Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine made them subject to deportation under a provision of the McCarran-Walter Act, an immigration bill passed amid the Red Scare of the early 1950s.
After their arrests, a federal lawsuit was filed on their behalf, challenging the provision as a form of guilt by association. Before the challenge reached a judge, the government dropped the Marxist-related charges. Instead, it now sought to deport six of them on immigration technicalities — such things as violating the terms of a work permit or taking fewer college courses than required on a student visa.
"To use a football analogy," William B. Odencrantz, then regional counsel for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, told reporters at the time, "we don't care how we score our touchdown, by pass or run. We just want to get them out of the country."
Hamide and Shehadeh, alleged leaders of the group, had already gained permanent-resident status, so the visa violations tactic was not applied to them. Instead, they were recharged with other provisions of the immigration act: first, for associating with an organization that advocates "the destruction of property," and then for affiliating with a group that advocates the assassination of government officials of "any organized country."
"In those days," said Odencrantz, now with the Department of Homeland Security, "we really lacked the tools to properly deal with aliens involved in terrorist activities, whether they were threatening our domestic situation or engaged in activities that would foster terrorism around the world."
This would change over time. An immigration statute drafted in 1990 to replace the McCarran-Walter Act — after its constitutional flaws were exposed by the L.A. 8 case — allowed the deportation of aliens who had provided material support to terrorist organizations. The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing led to a further toughening of anti-terrorism law.
Finally, in the aftermath of Sept. 11, there would come that sling blade of counter-terrorism laws, the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001, more commonly known as the Patriot Act.
All of these legislative changes contained language that allowed their retroactive application to the L.A. 8 case. Indeed, it is under the Patriot Act that the government next month will again attempt to deport Hamide and Shehadeh.
"This is the horrendous thing about being an immigrant," Hamide said. "There is no double jeopardy. They can arrest you in '87 and charge you with a law that was enacted in 2001. It is just never-ending."
The legal dexterity that allows the government to bring new charges for past activities is what concerns others in the L.A. 8. Technically the July proceedings in immigration court will not involve them, but one enduring lesson of their experience has been to never underestimate the government's resolve to see them removed, be it by pass, run or dropkick.
If Hamide and Shehadeh win, Barakat said, "I will feel comfortable. If they lose … "
He paused here and completed the thought wordlessly, with a drag on his cigarette, a shrug and a certain look in his eyes, a look of worry and sadness and wonder.
The law offices of Van Der Hout, Brigagliano and Nightingale occupy the fifth floor of a box of a building in the heart of San Francisco. A cabinet that runs along an interior wall is stuffed with files generated by the L.A. 8 case and its numerous side skirmishes, litigation that explored the boundaries of free-speech rights for noncitizen residents.
Inviting a reporter to plunge into these archives one afternoon, a legal aide apologized that they were not yet fully organized. She said she was working on it — is always working on it. Apparently, maintenance of the L.A. 8 files is akin to the repainting of the Golden Gate Bridge, a perpetual work in progress.
For all the legal churning the case has created, the basic forensic facts have not changed over the years. The case revolves, now as then, around the results of FBI Special Agent Frank H. Knight's stakeouts of a handful of events in the mid-1980s — translated transcripts of fiery speeches, surveillance photos of the eight setting up the hall at the fundraiser in Glendale, dancing a folk dance known as the dabka.
As the facts have remained the same, so have the fundamental legal positions.
Prosecutors have continually maintained that the money raised through the efforts of Hamide and the others made its way to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. And even if the PFLP ran kindergartens and clinics in Palestinian refugee camps, this did not mitigate the terrorist acts it also claimed to have committed. As one Justice Department attorney pointed out, "The Nazis built the autobahn."
The L.A. 8 and their lawyers, meanwhile, have framed the case as an assault on inalienable freedoms: the right to speak freely, to express even unpopular political viewpoints, to be protected from selective prosecution and guilt by association. They insist, in short, that the Palestinians were targeted because they stood, loudly, on the wrong side of U.S. policy on the Middle East.
"That's really what this case has been about," said L.A. 8 lawyer Marc Van Der Hout, "trying to stifle political dissent and political activity. It's about the government trying to stop political support in this country for groups abroad that it doesn't like, and that's the bottom line."
There have been several times in the run of litigation when it appeared the case might be resolved in the eight's favor. Their most satisfying victory came in April 1996. U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson, a Reagan appointee, moved to block the deportation process, ruling that the eight had been unfairly singled out because of their political viewpoints and that their affiliation with the PFLP was protected free speech.
The decision had added significance in that Wilson was the first judge — and to this point the only one — to weigh all of the government's evidence, a previously classified 10,000-page monument to the persistence and investigative ingenuity of FBI agent Knight. The judge found it less than persuasive.
"The government," he wrote, "has submitted book-length tracts published by the PFLP explaining its interpretation of Marxist-Leninist ideology. It has submitted dozens of issues of Al Hadaf, the PFLP's official newspaper, none of which mention any of the plaintiffs. It has also submitted extensive hearsay compilations of the acts of terrorism linked to the PFLP over the years, in none of which any of the plaintiffs are in any way implicated."
Wilson turned to Knight's stakeout of the 1986 Glendale fundraiser, scoffing at the agent's conclusion that khaki clothes and posters depicting AK-47 assault rifles were proof of support for terrorism.
"Instead of following the trail of the money collected at the Glendale dinner," Wilson wrote, "the government simply advances the bald assertion that because the event had a militant tone, it must have been intended to support exclusively the PFLP's terrorist activities. There is no basis in logic or in the proffered evidence for this assertion."
Three years later, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his decision, determining that the eight had gone prematurely to the federal courts for relief, before the deportation process had played out. However, the opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, went beyond the technical issues the lawyers had been asked to brief.
Turning to the substance of the case, Scalia disagreed with a lower court ruling that a defense claiming selective prosecution — that is, the targeting of certain groups by law enforcement because of race, gender, political associations — could be applied to the L.A. 8 case.
"An alien unlawfully in this country," he declared, "has no constitutional right to assert selective enforcement as a defense against his deportation." Moreover, the government "should not have to disclose its 'real' reasons for deeming nationals of a particular country a special threat — or indeed for simply wishing to antagonize a particular foreign country by focusing on that country's nationals."
In the aftermath of 9/11, this has meant that federal investigators can target specific immigrant communities, detaining or deporting anyone found to have overstayed a visa or otherwise run afoul of immigration fine print — without fear of facing a selective-prosecution challenge in court. "As a result," warns David D. Cole, another L.A. 8 lawyer who came to the case, pro bono, through the Center for Constitutional Rights, "Arab and Muslim foreign nationals with any possible immigration problem are well advised to do nothing — such as speaking out, demonstrating or joining political associations — that might bring them to the attention of the federal government."
In other words, hunker down, lie low, which is pretty much what the L.A. 8 have been doing for the last 18 years.
They no longer see much of one another. They don't subscribe to Palestinian magazines. Few of them attend Palestinian events, and only one, Shehadeh, has remained politically active. They would not be surprised to discover that their telephones were still tapped. Most try to avoid political discussions with strangers.
None dance the dabka anymore.
"No, not since '86, that infamous year," Ayman Obeid said. "I have just kind of isolated myself from the whole thing. I do not dance. I can dance now, I taught it. But do I dance? No."
In fact, he went on, "I don't even want to be in the vicinity of somebody who says, 'I love Palestine,' because I don't know. I know what I thought, and I know what I wanted for my life, for Palestine. But I don't know your background. So I don't want to be in the same set as you are, because I don't know what they think of you."
By "they" he meant the FBI.
From beneath his banker's dress shirt, Obeid produced a medallion that hung from a chain around his neck.
"It says 'Palestine' in Arabic," he said. "I've never taken it off. I love where I come from. If you don't, then you're not a man, or a woman, of heritage and background. Did I want to be an Arab? I don't know. Did I want to be a Palestinian? I don't know. But I am, so it is who I am….
"I mean, why can't I sing and dance for my country? I mean, everybody does it. Arabs, Italians, Armenians, Greeks. Greek movies we go to, and we pay money to see them. I bet you if I have a Palestinian movie, not only are we not going to have people going there, but probably they will shut down the movie theater. I mean, I hope I'm wrong, but why cannot I say what I feel as long as it is at a peaceful gathering?"
Then he stuffed the medallion back inside his shirt.
The early government decision to go after six of the eight on technical visa violations in effect scattered their individual cases through the system, and as a result their current immigration statuses vary.
Basher Amer, pulled from his chemistry finals by the arresting officers, beat the charge that he had failed to take the minimum course load required by his student visa: He'd received bum advice from a college counselor. He has since returned to Bethlehem, in the West Bank, the only one of the eight to have left Southern California.
Hamide's wife, Julie Mungai, received permanent-resident status in December, a decision that came after the immigration judge noted how dated the case was: "I think we have had enough time to deliberate…. Time has been favorable to the respondent. They have a good family, good jobs."
As the family rose to leave the courtroom, the judge had words of encouragement for one of Hamide's young sons. Maybe, the judge said, the boy would become president of the United States one day, or at least attorney general.
Amjad Obeid, Ayman's brother, also has won permanent-resident status. Told that this terrorism suspect was now employed as a state transportation engineer, the immigration judge only laughed.
Ayman is awaiting a decision on his permanent-residency application; until then he must renew his work permit regularly if he is to continue as a bank manager.
Barakat and Naim Sharif at first were denied permanent-resident status after an immigration judge heard the FBI's secret evidence against them. This led to a successful challenge in federal court.
Over the last year, Barakat has sought in vain to gain citizenship. In immigration hearings, the case workers have peppered him with questions about the PFLP and his pro-Palestinian activities in the 1980s.
"Do you agree with the methods of the PFLP, their terrorist activities?" he is asked at one hearing, according to a transcript.
"I don't agree with any terrorist act," Barakat responds.
"At the time, you weren't in support of the PFLP?"
"I am not in support of any terrorist act. I support the PLO, and the PFLP is part of it. I support that we want an independent state for the Palestinians."
The hearing officer keeps pressing. He asks Barakat about his participation in events that were promoted as a celebration of the PFLP's founding.
"When you went to these events, did you know they were PFLP events?"
"They were not PFLP events. They were celebrations of that date."
"So you were celebrating the PFLP?"
"The people, yes."
"If you weren't in support of the PFLP, why were you attending a celebration of it?"
Even in the cold type of the transcript, Barakat's mounting exasperation becomes obvious.
"I have no ideology," he says at last. "I don't not like this guy because of his beliefs." He went to PFLP parties, he says. He went to Fatah parties. He went to Egyptian parties, Iranian parties, Armenian parties. "I go to any party that has dance, cultural, Middle Eastern food. I love to meet people, especially women, and dance. I was a young guy."
The stakes for the eight have risen as the years have piled up. The L.A. 8, they often say, have become more like the L.A. 28, with the children and spouses who have come aboard since the arrests.
Asked if he had ever considered just giving up, Hamide's response was emphatic: "No. Absolutely not. And for a very good reason. Because it is my life, for one thing. And my family's life. I have nowhere else to go."
As their children have grown older, the parents have confronted the dilemma of what and how to tell them about Dad's terrorism problem. For Amjad Obeid, that moment came last Christmas Eve. His 14-year-old daughter had been bombarding him with questions. Why didn't he travel with them to Mexico when they went to see her mom's family? Why, if he was Arab, did he not visit the Middle East? Why did he need a lawyer?
"So Christmas Eve, I was just driving with her. I said: 'You know what? I think you're old enough to know. You're entitled. Here's the story.'
"She was shocked and surprised and then, knowing her intelligence, she went on the computer and she read the whole Supreme Court brief and very much understood the case."
Because of their immigration status and the repercussions of the case, most of the eight have not managed to visit the Middle East, even as their now elderly parents begin to pass away. It's not clear that Israel would permit them to enter the occupied Palestinian territories; it's also not clear that they would be allowed back into the United States. In essence, they have become detainees of the country that wants to deport them.
At a later immigration hearing, Barakat tries to explain the urgency behind his effort to become a U.S. citizen.
"This has been over 16 years, 17 years," he says. "I need to go visit my family, serious…. My father passed away. When he was sick I couldn't go see him. And my mom, she is about 80 years now, and she is sick."
The hearing officer asks if formal travel restrictions are in place: With a green card, he should be able to fly overseas.
"Israel won't let me in," Barakat explains.
"I see," the hearing officer says.
"I need an American passport so I can get in. We get problems there, we come to the freedom country, we start getting problem. I don't know where to go."
In December 2004, Barakat learned that his bid for citizenship had been denied: He lacked "good moral character." The 14-page rejection leaned heavily on the works of FBI agent Knight: "You were observed rehearsing for the entrance ceremony of the event. The FBI declassified records of the investigation indicate that you participated in setting up the event."
When they contemplate the case, as they seem to do constantly, what baffles the Palestinians most is the government's persistence. Their early victory in the bail hearing, the many federal court rulings in their favor, the enormity of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — all of these, to them, would have provided the government a natural opening to drop a difficult and even embarrassing case.
They have developed many theories to explain why, instead, the case was kept alive. There is the legal guinea pig theory — that the case was designed to establish precedent for removing immigrants who support disfavored foreign groups. There is the bureaucratic inertia theory — that in time the case became something of a self-justifying institution.
There is the theory that the case has been driven by some mysterious order from on high — that someone in the top tier of government has it out for them. And there is the theory that it was rooted in their fledgling success in the early 1980s as proponents of Palestinian statehood.
The government lawyer Odencrantz did not necessarily reject all of these theories. Yes, he said, the case has provided a vehicle to test "very important" legal issues and to accumulate the "tools" needed to proactively deal with terrorism threats. As for bureaucratic inertia, yes, "the case has its own momentum. As they have bitterly resisted the decision to remove them, we see no reason that their resistance should cause us to simply say: 'Well, we'll forget it. It has gone on too long.' "
As for 9/11, the ramming of hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center and Pentagon did not suggest to the government that circulating PFLP magazines and participating in folk dances perhaps no longer met the terrorism bar. From a brief filed in the L.A. 8 case after 9/11:
"This case involves an issue of critical importance to the nation's ability to deport aliens who have provided financial and material support to a foreign terrorist organization. In light of the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the importance of this issue cannot be overstated."
Within weeks of the Sept. 11 attacks, L.A. 8 attorney Cole received a call in his Washington office from a congressional aide. The lead Justice Department attorneys on the case, he was told, were in the conference room where the bill that would become the Patriot Act was being drafted. Perhaps Cole should come over. He did, but the Justice Department lawyers protested.
"The compromise was that I got to sit outside," Cole said. "It was like being a lawyer in a grand jury proceeding. I sat outside and the [congressional] folks would come out and say, 'What do you think of this? What are the implications of this?' And then they'd go back in."
The questions convinced Cole that the government lawyers "were definitely in there trying to write a law that would basically knock these guys out of the park."
In its final form, the Patriot Act did render moot many of the legal issues in the L.A. 8 case.
As a result, the coming trial of Hamide and Shehadeh will revolve around two questions: Did the money raised at the fundraisers actually go to the PFLP, and, if so, did the two know, or should they have known, that it would be used to underwrite terrorist activities?
Asked whether, if the government prevails, deportation charges will be brought against other members of the L.A. 8, Odencrantz replied:
"Probably not."
Probably not?
"Probably not. Obviously, if we get information that suggests one of the others did something…."
One day in late May, six weeks before the scheduled start of the trial, Shehadeh and his wife were scrubbing the kitchen at Pizza Town one final time. The next day they were to turn over the keys to new owners.
"This way," Maxine Shehadeh said, "whatever they dish out, we will be able to deal with it."
Michel Shehadeh expressed confidence, as had Hamide, that they would win. If they did not, he said, there would be the opportunity to appeal again through the federal courts. That the case might come to provide a constitutional test of the Patriot Act is not out of the question — and, in an odd way, might even be fitting.
"The lawyers," Shehadeh said, "have been saying it may be another 20 years."
It was not clear if he was joking.
The talk turned to the topic of Frank Knight. They all seem to have Knight stories — how he would appear at seemingly every court hearing over the years, how he would look coldly beyond them whenever they tried to make eye contact or engage him in small talk during recesses, his palpable fury when rulings went their way, his intimidation tactics, his threats to flick them from the country, like flies.
They wonder what drove him. Was he out, as Barakat put it, "to win a star"? They question his methods. They mimic his gait and mock his performance in deposition, four days of sometimes combative, sometimes stammering testimony about the fungible nature of money, about the "statement" one makes by moving the American flag off a stage, about how to connect the dots between a folk dance performance in Glendale and an assassination in the West Bank.
"He always struck me as professorial, always deep in thought," Shehadeh said. "Who knew he was just deeply unthoughtful?"
And now, here he was, Frank Knight himself, standing in the doorway of his San Diego condominium. He was 3 inches shorter and substantially thinner than the hulking 6-foot-5 linebacker of a man the Palestinians had described. He was wearing jeans, a polo shirt, running shoes.
He smiled almost shyly as he congratulated his unexpected visitor for tracking him down. Unfortunately, Knight said, government policy prohibited him and any other agents who worked the L.A. 8 case from discussing it.
"It's not that we don't want to talk," he said. "We can't. We would end up in jail."
He fairly beamed when it was suggested that he and the New York agent who had conceived of the plan to go after the eight with immigration laws had been, it turned out, many years ahead of their time.
"We were two Lone Rangers," he recalled.
As he remained in the doorway, Knight was given a rushed update on the lives the Palestinians had carved for themselves in the years since he first began to track them — running a bank branch, opening a pizza parlor near Disneyland, building public schools, selling coffee beans, buying houses, raising families, all of it.
"Well," he said, smile quickly fading, "if you have read my reports, if you have done your homework, you should know they shouldn't be in those positions. But I really can't talk."
Come back, he suggested, when the case is over. He would be happy to discuss it then, he said, for hours, for days, "for as long as you want."
It was a polite offer,
delivered with one last winning smile, but of course it ran counter to the one
incontrovertible rule that has governed the case of the L.A. 8 for 18 years now:
For whatever reason, it is never over.
latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-a2-correx1.2jul01,1,759106.story
FOR THE RECORD
July 1, 2005
The L.A. 8 — A time chart that accompanied an article in Wednesday's Section A about a long-running terrorism case known as that of the L.A. 8 made reference to a "Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine fundraiser." Whether money raised at the 1986 event went to the Popular Front organization is a matter of dispute and the central issue in the case.