Terrorist Hunter

I just finished an excellent book — Terrorist Hunter: The Extraordinary Story of a Woman Who Went Undercover to Infiltrate the Radical Islamic Groups Operating in America. It is the true story of Rita Katz, who grew up as a Jew in Iraq.

In 1967 Egypt, Syria, and Jordan went to war with Israel in what is now known as the Six Day War. The Islamic countries were soundly defeated. Muslims across the Middle East were embarrassed and humiliated. The Iraqi government took it out on Jews in their country, and unfortunately, Rita's father was one of those Jews. He was tortured and then hanged in the public square. Her mother smuggled Rita and her siblings out of the country and into Israel.

Eventually, Rita moved to the U.S. and found a job for which she was perfectly suited: As a terrorist hunter. She spoke Arabic perfectly, she had a degree in Middle Eastern Studies from Tel Aviv University, and she was intensely motivated to thwart the Jihadis' plans to exterminate Jews and subjugate the world to Islamic domination.

Her job was mostly research — trying to discover which charitable organizations were legitimate and which were funding jihad, trying to find out where the money goes, trying to discover which organizations have ties to which, and working to discover if there are known terrorists involved. Sometimes she dressed up as a Muslim, taped a hidden camera and recording device inside her robes, and went to mosques and Islamic conventions in the U.S. to see what she could find. And what she found was shocking.

Right there in downtown Chicago or San Fransisco, she found known terrorists speaking to thousands of people, telling them that they have a holy duty to undermine and ultimately overthrow the government of the United States and replace the Constitution with Shari'a Law. And technically, that's true. If any of the Muslims in those groups had read their Qur'an and their Hadiths, they would know the speaker was telling the truth. What was shocking was that they were getting away with what is essentially sedition, right under the noses of Americans.

Rita started this work in the 90's, before the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. But the book's story continues until well after 9/11, and surprisingly, not much has changed. It would seem simple to arrest someone for sedition and try them, but for one sticky fact: The sedition they preach is a key component of a religion, and we have laws respecting freedom of religion in this country. This will have to be resolved if the U.S. government is to survive. Islam may have to be singled out as something different than any other religion, which in fact it is. 

Islam is unique in many different respects, and some of that uniqueness has to do with its political aggressiveness. Rita discovered an enormous amount of money pouring in from Saudi billionaires to cleverly set-up "relief organizations" and "charitable organizations" and "think tanks" and she traced how the money gets transferred to one organization, who then gives it to another, and around and around it goes until it would be almost impossible to follow. But she tracked it down. The money ends up creating new mosques in America that advocate jihad against the West, and the money goes to paying families to send their sons on suicide missions into Israel.

One of the many ironies she discovered: Sometimes money is actually given to these charitable organizations by USAID!

Here's another one: Ordinary Americans, thinking they're helping the poor orphans of war-torn Palestine, are actually creating orphans with the money they privately donate to these groups. It is just unbelievable. I've read stuff like this before, and you probably have too, but here is a woman at the heart of the work — one of the people who helped uncover things nobody else has — giving you a first-hand account of her work and how she helped the INS (United States Immigration and Naturalization Service) prevent terrorists from entering the country, helped expel terrorists who had been enjoying the fruits of our free society for years, and how she helped the government after 9-11 shut off the unrestrained flood of money that had been flowing into Jihadi organizations.

One of the things I found most interesting about this book is how the FBI and CIA have such a hard time putting these people behind bars. They need exceptionally good evidence, and everything about their investigation has to be completely free of mistakes. So they don't bring someone to court until they have ironclad evidence. As a consequence, murderous Jihadis that our security agents know about are walking around as free as you and me. The FBI and CIA have to just keep watching and waiting and collecting evidence. I used to resent the security agents for this, but that's just one of the prices we pay for living in such a free society, and many of these agents are doing the best they can within the restraints placed on them.

Rita Katz is intelligent, passionate, and well-informed. And she is a very good writer. I recommend this fascinating book to you. Read it and loan it to someone. Open their eyes to the jihad taking place within our borders. And then tell them what they can do to stop it.

Citizen Warrior is the author of the book, Getting Through: How to Talk to Non-Muslims About the Disturbing Nature of Islam and also writes for Inquiry Into Islam, History is Fascinating, and Foundation for Coexistence. Subscribe to Citizen Warrior updates here. You can send an email to CW here.