Terror Incorporated – Hezbollah’s Global Islamic Web

“If they (the Jews) gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.”
Lebanese Hezbollah leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah (Beirut Daily Star)

“All the world is a battlefield open in front of us…..It is Jihad for sake of Allah and will last until our religion prevails from Spain to Iraq…. every participant in the crime will pay the price.”
(filmed in front of a photo of the World Trade Center)
Ayman al-Zawahiri ( al Qaeda), July 27, 2006

The “A-Team” of Terror

When Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah hinted after the Silkworm missile attack on the Israeli Saar-5 corvette Spear that “there will be more surprises coming”, cell phones in Washington and Israel began to ring. Was it possible that Hezbollah had found what the UN’s chief nuclear inspector Mohamed El Baradei could not?

In testimony before the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in late March 2003, the intelligence research chief of the Israel Defense Force, Yossi Kupferwasser said that Saddam Hussein had transferred Scud missiles and biological and chemical weapons to Syria between January 10th and March 10th, 2003 and had completed the transfer just ten days prior to the U.S. -led offensive launched against Iraq. According to Israeli intelligence sources (DEBKA), having received Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, Syria secretly disposed of them by moving them into eastern Lebanon for burial in the Beka’a Valley.

Kupferwasser testified that the banned arsenal was hauled in giant tankers from Iraq to Syria and from there to the Beka’a Valley under Syrian special forces and military intelligence escort and was discharged into pits 6-8 meters across and 25-35 meters deep dug by Syrian army engineers. The pits were then sealed and planted over with heroin poppy seedlings and cotton fields in two of the most fertile regions of Lebanon – the valley stretching between Jabal Akroum, the town of al Qbayyat and the Syrian border, and the land lying between the towns of Al Hirmil and al Labwah between the Orontes River and the Syrian frontier – areas controlled for years by Hezbollah. Their location is known and detectable with the right instruments and if Israel knows it, it’s a pretty good bet that Hezbollah knows it too.

This all leaves open the question whether chemical and biological weapons have now found their way into Hezbollah’s “surprise” arsenal as did the Silkworm missiles from Iran. If so, the potential of a chemical or biological attack by Hezbollah operatives against Israel, U.S. interests abroad or even on U.S. soil cannot be ruled out especially given Hezbollah’s history, global Islamist ideology and strategic relationship with Iran.

Of greater concern is the knowledge that Hezbollah operatives have already entered the U.S. through our southern border and according to recent reports have scoped twenty targets that Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boasts could “end Anglo-Saxon civilization.” Hezbollah spokesman Mojtaba Bigdeli went further in a recent Reuters interview: “We have 2,000 volunteers (read: “suicide bombers”) who have registered since last year. They have been trained and they can become fully armed. We are ready to dispatch them to every corner of the world to jeopardize Israel and America’s interests. We are only waiting for the supreme leader’s green light to take action. If America wants to ignite World War III … we welcome it”, and Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, often referred to as Hezbollah’s spiritual leader, has already exhorted his followers to confront “American interests everywhere” if the United States attacks Iran.

These are not idle threats from a powerless organization. Since 1984 Iran has created Hezbollah branches in more than 20 countries including the U.S. Shortly after the September 11th attacks, former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Bob Graham, stated that Hezbollah is “believed to have the largest embedded terrorist network inside the U.S.”

Today, American law enforcement officials are concerned the terrorist group, which has so far focused on fund-raising and other support activities inside the United States, could activate its American sleeper cells in solidarity with Iran and rein havoc in this country. References to cooperation between al Qaeda and Hezbollah abound in the September 11th Commission’s final report, suggesting that the boundary between Shiite and Sunni is not as pronounced as some analysts and academics might otherwise believe. As the Commission noted within the context of cooperation between al Qaeda and Hezbollah’s Iranian masters: “In late 1991 or 1992, discussions in Sudan between al Qaeda and Iranian operatives led to an informal agreement to cooperate in providing support – even if only training – for actions carried out primarily against Israel and the United States.”¹

Although the organization has yet to launch an attack on U.S. soil, its overseas activities are far from benign. One purpose has been to raise money and smuggle arms to Hezbollah terrorists (often through criminal activities ranging from credit-card fraud to cigarette smuggling). The other however, is to conduct surveillance behind “enemy” lines with a possible eye toward launching attacks on U.S. targets in the event of an armed conflict between the United States and Tehran.²

Lessons from Lebanon

There has never been any question about Hezbollah’s world-view. Hezbollah’s founding document calls for Islamic rule in Lebanon, an end to Western imperialism in the Middle East, and the destruction of the State of Israel. The indoctrination of its children in how to become “martyrs” (read: human grenades), its terrorist training camps in Iran and southern Lebanon, its criminal fundraising activities around the world, its mosques and Al Manor (its television station) all exist for these purposes alone. For these reasons, it endorses the taking of hostages, suicide in jihad operations and “the duty of all Muslims to engage in Islamic jihad if it ensures the ultimate goal [of] inflicting losses on the enemy” ³ and has done everything in its power to foment civil war between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq through its use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in mosques, marketplaces and public gathering places.

With the exception of al Qaeda’s attack on 9/11, no other foreign terrorist organization has been more lethal for Americans than Hezbollah. The terrorist organization has cells on every continent, and its operatives have committed horrifying attacks as far away as Argentina. It was Hezbollah, that “pioneered” the use of suicide bombing, and its history of slaughtering Americans is long, sordid and from the American perspective, unavenged.

On April 18, 1983, a Hezbollah suicide bomber drove a van filled with explosives into the U.S. Embassy in Beirut killing 63 persons including 16 Americans.

On October 23, 1983, Hezbollah suicide bombers destroyed the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut killing 241 American Marines and 58 French soldiers. At the time, Hezbollah leader Shaykh Husayn Al-Musawi praised the bombing by declaring, “I salute this good act and bow to the spirits of the martyrs.”

On March 16, 1984, Iran’s top Hezbollah agent in Beirut, Imad Mugniyeh, took CIA station chief William Buckley hostage and tortured him to death after extracting whatever information he could.

On September 20, 1984, the U.S. embassy annex near Beirut was attacked by Hezbollah suicide bombers killing 14 people including 2 Americans.

In December 1984, Hezbollah hijacked a Kuwaiti airliner and two American passengers employed by the U.S. Agency for International Development were “sorted out” by the hijackers and murdered.

In June 1985, Hezbollah hijacked TWA Flight 847, brutally murdered American Navy diver Robert Stethem and dumped his lifeless body on the tarmac of Beirut International Airport.

In 1988, Mugniyeh kidnapped, tortured and publicly hanged Marine Lt. Col. William Higgins who was on peacekeeping duty in Lebanon.

On March 17, 1992, Hezbollah coordinated the attacks on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina (killing 29 people) and later, on July 18, 1994, Hezbollah bombed the Argentina-Israeli Mutual Association (AIMA) building in Buenos Aires wounding 300 persons and killing another 86.

On July 25, 1996, Hezbollah’s fingerprints were traced to the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia that claimed another 19 Americans lives.

Hezbollah also maintains terror cells and infrastructure throughout Europe. In particular, the organization uses Europe as an operational launching pad for its operatives to enter Israel in order to conduct attacks, assist other operatives and conduct surveillance and collect intelligence on Israeli targets. For example, Ghulam Mahmud Qawqa, a Hezbollah agent who had engineered several attacks in Jerusalem and was captured in 2003 by Israeli police, admitted that he had been working with numerous Hezbollah cells in Europe to initiate a continent wide campaign against Israeli and Jewish targets for Hezbollah leadership.

Germany has also been a key fund raising center for Hezbollah. Most of the funds come from charitable organizations and are officially earmarked for Hezbollah’s social welfare work. In 2002, Germany closed down two charitable organizations raising money for Hezbollah – the al-Shahid Social Relief Institution, which was the German branch of a Lebanese charitable organization, and the al-Aqsa Fund, a Hamas front that also raised funds for Hezbollah. ⁴

In addition to the U.S., Hezbollah operatives have been found in France, Spain, Cyprus, Singapore, the “tri-border” region of South America (see below), and the Philippines, as well as in more familiar operational theaters in Europe and the Middle East. The movement draws on these cells to raise money, prepare the logistic infrastructure for attacks, disseminate propaganda, and otherwise ensure that the organization remains robust and ready to strike.

Al Manar (“The Beacon”)

A recent July 2006 Report on Hezbollah issued by the Anti-Defamation League has also drawn attention to the manner in which Hezbollah disseminates its message world-wide. Reaching a global audience approaching fifteen million people, Hezbollah’s television station Al Manar preaches hate and violence to its global audience and is used to incite terror against Americans and Israelis, disseminating anti-Semitic and anti-American programming and glorifying suicide bombers across Europe, North and South America, Asia and Africa. The Al-Manar Web site, which has included information on how to contribute funds to the “resistance” in “Israeli occupied lands,” allows a viewer to read news releases and view streaming video over the Internet. The site formerly resided on a server in Hoboken, New Jersey – at least ten Hezbollah-associated Web sites have moved from or been shut down by Web-hosting companies in the U.S. and Canada.

Blood Trade

Investigators searching the homes of the suicide bombers in the Casablanca attacks of May 2003 discovered documents inspired by the sermons of radical Islamist ideologue Abu Qatada. These sermons, among other things, justified criminal fundraising activity provided that the money was used to finance jihad. This has provided Hezbollah with the necessary religious justification for establishing a global web of criminal enterprises in support of terrorism.

A General Accounting Office (GAO) Report published on December 12, 2003 confirmed that Hezbollah earns and transfers millions of dollars for terrorist purposes through an elaborate global criminal network involving precious stones, metals, drugs, smuggling, extortion and the manufacture and export of counterfeit pharmaceuticals, American dollars and automotive products. In Lebanon in 2003, for example, $1.2M worth of counterfeit brake pads and shock absorbers were seized, the profits for which were earmarked for Hezbollah. ⁵ The organization not only uses Lebanon’s Beka’a Valley poppy crop for funds (much as al Qaeda used Afghanistan’s poppy crop for the financing its global jihad effort), but it uses the revenues to buy support from Israeli Arabs who are prepared to carry out operations against Israel. ⁶ It also employs front companies and phony businesses to funnel cash or extortion taxes to subsidize its terrorist networks.

In Africa for the past five years, Hezbollah has raised millions of dollars by selling diamonds in Europe mined in Sierra Leone. The U.S. Embassy in Freetown has published a report to the effect that rough diamonds worth $70M to $100M are smuggled out of the country each year for the purpose of buying and smuggling weapons for terrorist activities. The UN and Belgian police believe that Hezbollah sold at least $19M of the stones on the Antwerp diamond market in the year before the September 11, 2001 attacks. ⁷

In South America, the tri-border region (formed by the cities of Puerto Igauzu, Argentina; Foz do Iguazu, Brazil; and Ciudad del Este, Paraguay) has also proven to be a literal “gold mine” for Hezbollah’s global criminal enterprises, and one of the most successful of its financiers was Assad Ahmad Barakat. Barakat was part owner of Galeria Page, one of Ciudad del Este’s largest shopping malls. Evidence at his trial disclosed that he had used the mall and his wholesale import-export businesses as a front to recruit Hezbollah volunteers and as a large source of financial support for terrorist activities including the Israeli Embassy and the AMIA bombings in Argentina in the mid-1990s.

As deputy to a Hezbollah financial director, Ali Kazan, Barakat served as a treasurer for Hezbollah in the region, carried contributions to Lebanon for the group, and was the primary liaison for Hezbollah’s Secretary General Shaykh Hasan Nasrallah. He used his company, Barakat Import Export Ltda. to raise millions of dollars for Hezbollah in Lebanon by mortgaging the company in order to borrow money from a bank in what turned out to be a fraud scheme. Barakat was also involved in a counterfeiting ring that distributed fake U.S. dollars that generated cash to fund Hezbollah operations in the Middle East.

After his arrest in June 2002, Paraguayan authorities recovered a video of Hezbollah military operations from a personal computer in one of Barakat’s stores. The footage depicted the detonation of explosives, some of which showed people dying from these explosions. Another file included Hezbollah military orders for each town and village in southern Lebanon. Barakat is also known to have relayed information to and from Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon and, at their request, sought sensitive information about the activities of Arabs in the tri-border area.

In particular, he procured information about Arab community members who traveled to the United States or Israel and transmitted that information to Hezbollah’s Foreign Relations Department in Lebanon. He also regularly hosted and attended meetings of senior Hezbollah tri-border area leaders. According to information available to the U.S. government, he attended a meeting of the area’s Hezbollah members in the fall of 2000 in Brazil where Hezbollah members discussed their intentions to identify, locate and assassinate former members of the Army of South Lebanon and Israelis. ⁸

In June 2004, Barakat was designated as the key terrorist financier in South America using financial crime from counterfeiting to extortion to generate funding for Hezbollah. He is currently serving six and a half years in a Paraguay prison for tax evasion. Francis X. Taylor, the State Department’s coordinator for counter terrorism, noted in testimony to Congress on October 10, 2001 that the tri-border region had a “long-standing presence of Islamic extremist organizations” and named Hezbollah specifically as being involved in “fundraising activities and proselytizing among the large expatriate population from the Middle East.”

There are also an increasing number of reports of strategic and logistical cooperation between al Qaeda and Hezbollah in the area. Al Qaeda’s desire to bring the jihad to the United States makes the proximity of South America all the more appealing – especially with the knowledge that illegal access into America from both Mexico and Canada is far easier than through normal immigration channels. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage testified before a joint House-Senate Intelligence Committee that Hezbollah now has a capacity similar to al Qaeda to organize a mega-attack against U.S. targets and he noted its presence in South America. Other administration officials have asserted that over the long term, Hezbollah may be more dangerous to the United States than al Qaeda so the fears expressed recently by the FBI and Homeland Security officials concerning “sleeper cells” on U.S. soil are not unwarranted.

In the U.S., there are at least a dozen Hezbollah cells across the United States, each including a hard core of several dozen suspected terrorists (primarily in Detroit, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and Boston), a number with military training in Hezbollah camps – plus hundreds of supporters. The concern is that Hezbollah – among other groups – may have implanted U.S.-based sleepers not only to raise money, but also to orchestrate an attack if and when the timing is right. And it is that fear that keeps U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials up at night. Hezbollah’s infrastructure within the U.S. has mostly given financial and logistic support for a focused and successful guerilla war against Israel. As a fighting force in America, however, Hezbollah’s sleepers have yet to be tested.

What is known is that programs of Hezbollah’s Al-Manor television station have aired on Detroit’s Channel 23, and Hezbollah calendars have been distributed through the Islamic Center of America (ICA) in Detroit. Detroit, in fact, is home to one of the largest Muslim communities in the United States and several individuals from that community have already pleaded guilty to “providing material support to terrorists.” ⁹ Hezbollah is especially popular in Dearborn, where Osama Siblani, the publisher of the Arab American News, considers members of Hezbollah – along with Hamas and other jihadist groups – as ”freedom fighters” and shopkeepers are tuned in to Al Jazeera on a constant basis. As Diana West wryly noted: “To find TVs in the heartland tuned in to this station today is roughly akin to coming across an American town, circa 1942, tuned in to Axis propagandists Tokyo Rose and Lord Haw Haw.” ¹⁰

But it is Hezbollah’s illicit enterprises in America that have drawn the attention of our security and intelligence agencies. A Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) investigation into a pseudo-ephedrine smuggling scam in the American Midwest led investigators to Jordan, Yemen, Lebanon, and other Middle Eastern countries including bank accounts tied to Hezbollah and Hamas. ¹¹ DEA chief Asa Hutchinson confirmed: “a significant portion of some of the sales are sent to the Middle East to benefit terrorist organizations.” A senior U.S. law enforcement official added, “There is a significant amount of money moved out of the United States attributed to fraud that goes to terrorism” and American supporters of Hezbollah are the source. In March 2005, Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, a Lebanese citizen living in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in prison for conspiring to raise money for Hezbollah. Kourani admitted hosting meetings at his home where donations for Hezbollah were solicited by a guest speaker from Lebanon. According to the indictment unsealed by a federal grand jury in Michigan in January 2004, Kourani was a “member, fighter, recruiter and fund-raiser for Hezbollah.” ¹²

But a much more sophisticated plan to raise funds for Hezbollah was already well underway in North Carolina by then. In a detailed 85-page federal affidavit, filed under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act in July 2002, Mohammad and Chawki Hammoud, two brothers, were involved in a Hezbollah support cell in Charlotte, North Carolina, and were subsequently found guilty of a variety of criminal charges including funding Hezbollah activities from the proceeds of an interstate cigarette smuggling ring. On February 28, 2003, Mohammad Hammoud received an extraordinary 155 years in prison for racketeering and “material support” of Hezbollah. Seven other defendants plead guilty to a variety of charges including conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, cigarette smuggling, bank scams, bribery, credit card fraud, immigration fraud, identity theft, tax evasion, and money laundering. The cell had used so many identities that investigators had to dig through a mind-boggling 500 accounts to follow the money trail.

They relied on fraudulent Social Security numbers, passed bad checks, used stolen credit cards, passed stolen goods via mail drops, and engaged in forgery. Tax returns from cell members were exercises in creative accounting. Hammoud had made bank deposits in 1997 totaling $737,318, but reported total wages of just $24,693. The next year, another conspirator deposited $90,903, but listed no income at all. Hammoud’s cousin owned a house-painting company, employed illegal aliens to staff it, paid them under the table, and skipped on taxes! But credit card scams were their specialty. One of the Charlotte Hezbollah cell members adopted the identities of Middle Eastern students after graduation, expanded their credit card limits to the maximum, and then racked up half a million dollars on the cards before disappearing without paying them off. His phone had four different rings – each one for a different identity, and he used so many false names that he had to pull a book out of a friend’s safe and study it before going to the bank. ¹³

The Hammoud case began innocuously enough in 1995. A local sheriff’s detective Bob Fromme, working off-duty as a security guard at JR Tobacco Warehouse in Statesville, N.C., grew suspicious when he saw a group of Middle Eastern men repeatedly buying hundreds of cartons of cigarettes apiece. Each week, Hammoud and his support cell would pack three to four minivans full with cigarettes, each load reportedly worth some $13,000. Copying an old Mafia scam, the men then ran vanloads of cigarettes from North Carolina (taxed at only 50 cents a carton) to Michigan (where the tax was $7.50 a carton), and illegally pocketed the difference. Fromme persuaded the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to investigate. Just as they were poised to bring charges, the FBI swooped in and took over – linking the smuggling operation to the Hezbollah cell that Hammoud headed.

It is estimated that, between 1996 and 1999, they bought nearly $300,000 worth of cigarettes on ten credit cards. By the time of their arrest, the smugglers had accumulated some $8M – nearly a quarter of that pure profit. A substantial portion was then transferred in Vancouver, Canada to a Canadian Hezbollah operative who used the money to fund shipments of a wide range of “dual use” military gear to Hezbollah headquarters in Lebanon. The gear included night-vision goggles, GPS devices, mine detectors, radar, laser range finders, blasting equipment, and sophisticated software.

Hammoud’s entry into America was typical. Refused a visa by the U.S. Embassy in Syria, he made his way to Venezuela, bought a fake visa for $200, and in 1992 flew to New York, where he demanded asylum, then promptly disappeared. He followed a family member to Charlotte, where he ended up delivering pizzas for Domino’s. The rest, as they say, is history.

Investigations subsequently disclosed that eight of the key suspects in the Charlotte case hailed from the same neighborhood of south Beirut, a longtime Hezbollah stronghold. Hammoud, by age 15, was serving in the Hezbollah militia. The case outlined against the cell was about fund-raising, but there was enough evidence seized in the course of the investigation to justify a legitimate concern about terrorism in general. Evidence gathered in the case included photos of Hammoud brandishing an automatic rifle in Hezbollah headquarters and holding rocket launchers in Lebanon. Also seized from Hammoud’s house was a videotape of Hezbollah men with explosive belts around their waist “and the interpretation of the chanting was: ‘We pledge to detonate ourselves to shake the ground under the feet of our enemies, America and Israel.’” ¹⁴

Conclusion

An al Qaeda computer that had been used by bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders until they fled Kabul in the face of advancing American and Northern Alliance forces sheds light upon its intentions for America. It contained an unfinished justification of the 9/11 attacks. The essay, “The Truth about the New Crusade: A Ruling on the Killing of Women and Children of the Non-Believers,” was written by Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who worked with Khalid Sheikh Muhammad in organizing the September 11th attacks. It argued that “the sanctity of women, children, and the elderly is not absolute” and concluded that “in killing Americans who are ordinarily off limits, Muslims should not exceed four million non-combatants, or render more than ten million of them homeless” and they mean what they say. It is all part of the global Islamic jihad where the death of millions of civilians can be justified on the grounds that they are subhuman infidels. 15 While Sunnis have no great affection for heretic Shiites, or visa-versa, when it comes to infidels, apostates and the global Islamic jihad, there is very little ideological space that divides them. It is that alliance that challenges the Free World.

If to save itself from a humiliating defeat, Hezbollah unleashes chemical and/ or biological weapons against Israel, it is likely that the use of such weapons would not be limited to Israel alone. Geniis are difficult to put back into their bottles once they have emerged. If we have learned anything in the post 9/11 world, it is that the security paradigm of the past – the oceans and our “technological edge” would keep us safe – no longer applies in the age of mega-terror especially when the agents of terror live among us and are dedicated to the destruction of our way of life. 

ENDNOTES 

 

1.  Dan Darling, “Israel’s Enemy is America’s – The bloody history of Hezbollah,” Weekly Standard, July 16, 2006.

2.  “Hezbollah in America,” Washington Times, May 20, 2005. 

3.  Daniel Byman, “Should Hezbollah Be Next?” Foreign Affairs, November/December 2003. 

4.  “Hezbollah and the Current Conflict”, Anti-Defamation League, July 20, 2006.

5.  Intellectual Security, May, 2004 Archives. 

6.  Testimony of Juan Carlos Zarate, Assistant Secretary, Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, U.S. Department of the Treasury before the House Financial Services Committee, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, February 16, 2005. A third front in the war was opened within Israel on July 25 with the kidnap and murder of a Samaria resident and the shooting of two Border Guard policemen at a checkpoint at the entrance to Jerusalem. Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists in Gaza and Lebanon have urged Arabs in Judea and Samaria to open up the third front. Some Arab citizens in Israel also have already called for an all-out war on all fronts against Israel. (Arutz Sheva) 

7.  Edward Harris, “Hezbollah Extorting Funds from West Africa’s Diamond Merchants,” San Francisco Chronicle; see also, Douglas Farah, Blood from Stones: The Secret Financial Network of Terror, 2004; David McCormack, “The African Vortex: Islamism in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Center for Security Policy, January 5, 2005. 

8.  “Terrorist and Organized Crime Groups in the Tri-Border Area of South America,” Library of Congress, July 2003; Matthew Levitt, “Hezbollah Finances: Funding the Party of God,” Chapter from Terrorism Financing and State Responses in Comparative Perspective, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, February 2005; Matthew Levitt, “Hezbollah: Financing Terror through Criminal Enterprise”, Testimony before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, May 25, 2005; Mike Boettcher, “South America’s ‘tri-border’ back on terrorism radar, CNN.com, November 8, 2002; Jeffrey Fields. “Islamist Terrorist Threat in the Tri-Border Region,” NTI, October 2002; Marc Perelman, “Feds Call Chile Resort a Terror Hot Spot,” Forward, January 3, 2003; Jess Altschul, “Middle East Terror Groups Find Sanctuary, Revenue in South America: Tri-Border Area Hotbed for Crime-Terror Nexus, Hezbollah Firmly Established,” JINSA, January 15, 2004; Blanca Madani, ” Hezbollah’s Global Finance Network,” Middle East Bulletin Intelligence, Volume 4, #1, January 2002; “South America’s Terror Connection: Illegal Activity In The ‘Crossroads Of Crime’ Funds Terrorists, Worries U.S.,” CBS News, March 7, 2006; 

9.  “Hezbollah in America,” Washington Times, May 20, 2005, op.cit. 

10. Diana West, “Hezbollah and Main Street,” Washington Times, July 21, 2006. 

11. Matthew A. Levitt, ” The Political Economy of Middle East Terrorism,” Washington Institute for Near East Policy, January 15, 2003, as reprinted from the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, Volume 6, Issue 4, (December 2002). 

12. “Hezbollah and the Current Conflict”, Anti-Defamation League, July 20, 2006, op. cit. 

13. David E. Kaplan, “Homegrown Terrorists: How a Hezbollah Cell Made Millions in Sleepy Charlotte, N.C.”, U.S. News, March 3, 2003. 

14. Daniel Pipes, “(Charlotte’s Web and) the Hezbollah in America: An Alarming Network,” National Review, August 28, 2000; Jihad Watch, May 2005 Archives; Manuel Roig-Franzia, “NC Man Convicted of Aiding Hezbollah: Cigarette Smuggling Said to Fund Terror,” Washington Post, June 21, 2002, P. A11

15. Paul Marshall, “Four Million: The number to keep in mind this November,” National Review Online, August 27, 2004.