“Press Release for American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us.”
Simon & Schuster
February 11, 2002
PR
Newswire February 11, 2002, Monday
TO NATIONAL AND BOOK EDITORS
Simon
& Schuster Announces Release of AMERICAN JIHAD: The Terrorists Living Among
Us
NEW YORK, Feb. 11
Award-winning journalist and terrorism investigator Steven Emerson, widely recognized
as one of the world's "leading experts on militant Islamic terrorism,"
has worked full time since 1993 to track the origins and activities of militant
Islamic groups in the United States; he has uncovered when and why they first
came to America; how they have proliferated, and how they interconnect with
each other and with Islamic terrorist groups worldwide. In his new book
AMERICAN JIHAD: The Terrorists Living Among Us (Free Press, $26.00), Emerson
tells the first full story of these groups in the United States, beginning in
the late 1980s, when arms were first reported at a Brooklyn mosque. |
At first, the focus was on recruiting support for overthrowing
the Soviet regime imposed in Afghanistan. But quickly, the entire spectrum
of Islamic terrorist groups and militant Muslim organizations discovered the
incredible protection of operating under the radar screen in the United States.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad used the U.S. for recruitment, fundraising, and military
training. At the same time, Osama bin Laden's organization, Al-Qaeda,
established its first cells mosques based in Tucson, Arizona and Brooklyn, New
York.
Emerson recounts his eight-year investigation into militant
Islamic groups, detailing the ways in which almost every radical Islamic group
in the world established their tentacles in the United States. Paradoxically,
these groups saw the benefits of operating in the United States, even while
calling for the defeat of the United States and the West. Included among
them were: the notorious Algerian Armed Islamic Group; Al Muhajiroun, a British
group that expanded to Queens, New York; Jamaat-e Islami, a radical Pakistani-based
movement that opened branches in Brooklyn and Queens, New York; Gamaa' al Islamiyya,
an Egyptian terrorist movement active in some half a dozen cities; and an organization
closely associated with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, one of the most violent
organizations in the world that was affiliated with a major university in Florida.
In the eight years prior to thk has exposed him to considerable personal risk.
In 1995, not long after the release of his PBS documentary "Jihad in America,"
Emerson was informed by federal officials that a foreign-based Islamist death
squad had been dispatched after him, and told that he should leave his home
immediately. Since then he has been forced to live under false cover,
though he has continued to write and testify before Congress under his own name.
Through painstaking investigations, he has followed the terrorists' monetary
sources, monitored their attacks and plans, exposed their ties to charitable
foundations, and assisted a variety of government agencies in the battle against
them.
In AMERICAN JIHAD, Emerson documents a number of startling revelations:
* The full story of Hamas's entrenchment in America, including: how Musa
abu Marzook, the head of its political bureau, lived here for 15 years, approving
suicide bombings in the Middle East and raising funds from American supporters;
how Hamas trained operatives at weekend camps across the country; and how it
created a network of propaganda and fundraising foundations, and even, it appears,
a hi-tech company.
* The full story of Islamic Jihad's infiltration of the University of
South Florida, including: how four founding members of this infamous terrorist
group were associated with the university, ending only when one of them returned
to the Middle East to succeed that group's assassinated leader.
* The story of the Islamic Center in Tucson, Arizona, which: was a recruiting
ground for two of Osama bin Laden's top lieutenants; a contact point for the
first World Trade Center bombers; and a founding office for a major Hamas affiliate.
* Secret audio recordings of militant Islamic gatherings, including: evidence
that Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other groups have used the U.S. to coordinate
their activities with unprecedented closeness; proof of fund- raising in the
millions of dollars for worldwide terrorist activities; and detailed examples
of recruitment techniques.
* Proof of how terrorists and their supporters obtain visas, jobs, and
military equipment in the U.S. including: suggestive evidence that Osama bin
Laden applied for a U.S. visa in the 1990s; the story of two of his procurement
agents, recruited because they were U.S. passport holders, and the story of
would-be New York subway bomber Ghazi Ibrahim abu Mezer, who manipulated the
Immigration and Naturalization Service to remain in the country long enough
to nearly cause disaster.
In 1998, Emerson gave an interview in which he warned us, "The infrastructure
now exists to carry off twenty simultaneous World Trade Center- type bombings
across the United States." For years he has documented the fact that
international terrorist groups are not merely resident in the U.S., but have
achieved unprecedented levels of coordination as a result of their cynical and
ruthless exploitation of US freedoms and civil liberties.
The story told in AMERICAN JIHAD is how an American
journalist decided on his own to investigate the network of militant Islamic
fundamentalists operating in our backyard. His findings, laid out in chilling
detail, reveal the secret network of terrorists and extremists that have operated
for years below our radar screen. AMERICAN JIHAD provides the first context
and understanding for how one of the most notorious terrorist groups in the
world could have plotted the worst terrorist attack on American soil without
any detection or scrutiny by American authorities.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
STEVEN EMERSON is Executive Director of The Investigative
Project, the largest intelligence and data-gathering center in the world on
militant Islamic activities. His pioneering investigations into Islamic radicals
and their terrorist networks has been profiled recently on CBS' 48 Hours. Emerson
is considered one of the world's leading experts on militant Islamic terrorist
groups, in particular their activities on American soil. Since September 11,
2001, Emerson has been quoted in hundreds of newspapers and magazines and frequently
interviewed on network television.
Emerson has also served as an award-winning investigative
journalist who specializes in tracking and investigating the clandestine activities
of Islamic terrorist groups. For his 1994 documentary "Jihad in America,"
he received the George Polk Award for Excellence in Journalism and the Investigative
Reporters and Editors' Award for best national investigation into criminal activity.
His investigation has been cited as the basis for the introduction of President
Clinton's Omnibus Anti-Terror Legislation. He is the author of four previous
books, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post,
U.S. News & World Report, the Wall Street Journal and The New Republic.
From 1990 to 1993 he worked for CNN, until leaving to work on his documentary.
Early Praise for AMERICAN JIHAD: The Terrorists Living Among Us
"... American Jihad accurately and courageously informs the government
and people of the United States in detail that their enemy in the war on terror
resides not just in the caves of Afghanistan but also in their very midst, even
at their leading universities."
Daniel Pipes, New York Post, February 4, 2002
"READ THIS BOOK
Steven Emerson paid attention. Long before 9/11 he recognized
the threat. Rather than surprising him, the atrocities probably confirmed his
fears. For the past decade Emerson has studied Islamic extremism and the terror
network as they exist not only in Levantine villages and among the markets of
Peshawar but in cities and suburbs in the United States. His 1994 television
documentary, 'Jihad in America,' won awards for investigative excellence. Last
year -- post-9/11 -- he addressed Richmond's World Affairs Council. His American
Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us elaborates on themes he discussed with
the local audience. The book is thorough and audacious - and sobering. It opens
with a 1988 statement by Abdullah Azzam, whose organization provided an opening
to Osama bin Laden: 'The Jihad, the fighting, is obligatory on you wherever
you can perform it. And just as when you are in America you must fast -- unless
you are ill or on a voyage -- so, too, must you wage Jihad. The word Jihad means
fighting only, fighting with the sword.' The words were spoken in Oklahoma City.
Emerson gathered his information by attending conventions and rallies, listening
to broadcasts and tapes, watching videos, reading papers and magazines, and
talking with insiders who on occasion may have let him know more than they wanted
him to know. The network relies on committed terrorists but also on the naive.
Funds supposedly raised for charitable purposes are diverted by fronts to groups
planning and carrying out terror. Dollars from America subsidize the spilling
of innocent blood. As the hijackers of 9/11 so vividly demonstrated, terrorists
also exploit U.S. laws and customs, and the neighborly good cheer of the American
people. Malevolents who despise the concept of civil liberties use constitutional
protections and social practices as a burqa-like cover to disguise themselves
as they plot mayhem and death. Homeland security has many implications. The
U.S. has become a crucial link in a vicious chain. The attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon opened eyes to a reality Steven Emerson already
had seen. American Jihad belongs on the required reading list."
Editorial, Richmond Times-Dispatch February
1, 2002
"'American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us' (Free Press) is 'the'
indispensable guide to American Muslim extremists and their ties to international
terrorism, and its extraordinary timeliness will only increase the attention
its author is drawing."
Jeff Jacoby, February 7, 2002, Boston Globe
AMERICAN JIHAD: The Terrorists Living Among Us
By Steven Emerson
Free Press
0-7432-3324-7
256 Pages