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Politics : WHO IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN 2004 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (5472)	10/14/2003 10:43:25 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10965

THE WESTERN FRONT URL:http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/bminiter/?id=110004159 Clerical Error Are radical Islamists choosing chaplains for America's military and prisons? BY BRENDAN MINITER Tuesday, October 14, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT Today the Senate Judiciary Committee will step into the center of the growing controversy over the military and Federal Bureau of Prisons chaplain programs. Sens. Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.) and Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) will hold hearings to grill FBI, Defense Department and other federal officials on apparent security breaches at Camp Delta, the prison that houses hundreds of enemy combatants in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The immediate concern is that the security at Camp Delta has been compromised. Capt. James Yee, a chaplain, was charged on Friday with failing to follow orders in handling sensitive information. Two others, both translators, have been charged as well. Senior Airman Ahmad I. al-Halabi faces an array of charges, some of which carry the death penalty, for allegedly gathering more than 100 messages from prisoners to pass to operatives in Syria. Those messages might have helped terrorists world-wide figure out who's in custody and what they might have told American officials. Such a breach of security could end up killing American civilians by making it harder to capture terrorist leaders or to thwart future attacks. Just as ominously, information may have also been gathered on the soldiers guarding the base. Service members on patrol at Camp Delta now have to worry about reprisal attacks aimed at their loved ones back home. There's also concern that interrogations may have been sabotaged by purposeful mistranslations. The authorities are now reviewing recordings of the interviews. Sen. Schumer already has a good idea how this may have happened, and how to correct it. The military relies on outside organizations to approve the religious credentials of its chaplains, and it uses only two groups for Muslim accreditation, the Graduate School for Islamic Social Sciences and a subgroup of the American Muslim Foundation, the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council. The co-founder of the latter group is under arrest for allegedly taking thousands of dollars in illegal payments from Libya. This outside accreditation process is the weakest security link. As Mr. Schumer pointed out in a letter to the Defense Department a few weeks ago, both groups used by the military are "under investigation as part of the U.S. Customs' operation Green Quest for their possible role in helping funnel $20 million to terrorists through offshore financial institutions." A third group, the Islamic Society of North America, accredits Muslim chaplains for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. All three groups receive money from Saudi Arabia. Islamic Society board member Siraj Wahhaj is an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Spurred on by an investigative report in The Wall Street Journal about radical Muslim clerics converting prisoners in New York state prisons, Mr. Schumer has been pushing for months for a thorough review of how the federal government selects chaplains. He wants to know if moderate Muslim accrediting groups are barred from the process and whether the Muslim clerics who are now in the military and federal prisons are a security risk. This isn't political grandstanding. Unlike the Catholic Church, Islam has no central authority. There are no Islamic seminaries in the United States that are attached to well established universities. That makes finding an accrediting group much more difficult. The process for selecting such groups, then, must be much more rigorous. The Muslim groups that accredit chaplains for the federal government have not been found guilty of any crimes. These groups also dispute that they have any connection to radical Islamists. And the individuals charged with wrongdoing at Camp Delta haven't been convicted, and therefore are entitled to the presumption of innocence. But Sens. Kyl and Schumer deserve praise for pressing ahead with hearings. Apparent breaches of security at Camp Delta demand a response. Bureaucracy--even in the military--responds to political signals. Those who select chaplains are better positioned to win the behind-the-scenes battles and tighten security if our elected officials make clear they are taking the problem seriously. Mr. Miniter is assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com. His column appears Tuesdays.