gonzo.JPGLew will be interviewed by Peter Hart of FAIR on CounterSpin tomorrow at 2PM – find stations here. The MP3 and podcast will be available at the same link on Friday – and don’t forget to check out all the other great CounterSpin programs while you’re at it. – Siun

If you’re wondering how the “al-Marri-can’t-be- detained-as an-enemy-combatant- without-a- charge-being-filed” decision by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affects the case of Jose Padilla, the short answer is – it doesn’t. The decision comes too late. The Justice Department managed to weasel around a previous Supreme Court which was on the verge of freeing Padilla of those “enemy combatant” charges, and instead, the DoJ — voila — discovered new charges – conspiracy – dug up from aging wiretaps. So on it goes.

* * * *

We return to non-Arabic speaking, non-Arabic reading FBI agent John T. Kavanaugh, Jr. He was explaining to the Miami jury in the conspiracy case against Jose Padilla, that he, and others at the Justice Department, had parsed out the coded meaning of certain words and phrases overhead in the wiretapped taped phone conversations.

“Mr. Kavanaugh also said a reference to ‘eating cheese’ was code for waging jihad. But he said he had no idea what a reference to a “reservation on the female donkey” meant.

The jurors didn’t need a translation when Padilla addressed the others he was talking as “Bro.”

While this is not exactly the stuff of Captain Midnight’s Decoder Ring, it’s a slam dunk that Padilla and his co-conspirators were not planning a secretive, destructive foreign operation.

There is no example here of the cryptanalyst’s finest hour in a minute-by-minute breaking of the Japanese coded messages from Tokyo to Washington, D.C. on December 7, 1941, no blazing success story as the Americans baffled the Japanese by using the exclusively oral language of the Navahoes, and nothing bearing the imprint of the all seeing-all knowing National Security Agency, no network of global surveillance. Just audio tapes of guys talking shit. They do that – guys talk shit.

What is being presented to the jury is the prosecution’s interpretation of the code gleaned from the 300,000 taped phone conversations :

“go to the picnic” = travel to an area of jihad

“the first area” = Afghanistan

“the trade” and “commerce” = jihad

“married” = killed or martyred

“the dogs” = the United States government

“playing football” and “to eat cheese” = engaging in jihad

“the students” = the Taliban


Another revelation of how far the prosecution is bending over to prove conspiracy comes from the fact that one of the conspirators has been a public voice for the civil rights of Islamic fundamentalists. San Diego Union-Tribune reporter Jeff McDonald had this new angle to the story. It turns out that years before 9/11 “a group of Muslim extremists in San Diego was raising money and recruiting fighters…”

As early as 1993, the FBI was wiretapping at least two San Diego men who agents suspected were members of [what the FBI called ] a “sleeper cell” plotting terror strikes across the globe.

One of the two was Mahammed Zaky, and his “protége” Kifah Jayyousi, now one of Padilla’s co-conspirators. Both railed about Russian brutality in Chechnya. Zaky was so incensed that he fought with the Chechen soldiers and was killed in that conflict by a Russian soldier in 1995. Jayyousi continued the struggle from the San Diego area. But it was a rather public “sleeper cell.”

Three times in the 1990s, Jayyousi wrote letters to the editor of The San Diego Union Tribune in which he complained about news coverage of Islamic fundamentalists or opinion pieces published by the newspaper.

Jayyousi also seemed to put down rather public roots in the community.

He moved to San Diego in the mid 1980s and became a father when his wife delivered twin boys, Mohammed and Karem, birth records show.
The family later settled in a four bedroom house in Lemon Grove . . .in 1993 and moved to the smaller home in Claremont, a few blocks west of the Islamic Center of San Diego, the largest mosque in the county.

In October 1993, Kifah Jayyousi opened a bank account in the name of “Islamic Group,” according to the federal indictment handed down in Florida. Investigators labeled it an “overt act.”

Now we’re starting to get an idea of just how secretive this conspiracy was. Hassoun jokes with Padilla in response to Padilla’s demur about chitchatting on the phone about going to Busch Gardens in a New York Times exclusive.

We take the whole family and have a blast,” Mr. Hassoun said. “We go to, uh, our Busch Gardens, you know … You won’t regret it. Money back guarantee.Mr. Padilla, laughing, suggested that they not discuss the matter over the phone.

“Why?” Mr. Hassoun said. “We’re going to Busch Gardens. What’s the big deal!”

Padilla is so “covert” that he publicly converts to Islam and officially changes his name to be recognized as a Muslim. Jayyousi lays down roots in Southern California after his friend is killed by Russian troops, opens a bank account and begins to publish The Islamic Reporter, which the Justice Department labels as a newsletter promoting violence as a religious obligation.

A co-conspirator who becomes a home owner and who writes letters of complaint to the editor of the San Diego Union-Tribune, all three under the watchful eye and listening ear of the FBI.

What, exactly, was the threat, where, exactly is the evidence that they methodically planned ”to murder, kidnap and maim” people in other countries? Or is this the same kind of bullshit from the Department of Justice on a par with its boss Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who gave (or just couldn’t remember) reasons for dismissing eight prosecutors?

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