Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

An unlikely terror suspect

Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball:

A widening federal probe into a radical Islamic support network that allegedly assisted "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla has netted its most surprising catch: the former top building manager for the Washington D.C. public schools.

Kifah Wael Jayyousi, who served as "chief of facilities" for the Washington D.C. school system between 1999 and April 2001, was arrested by U.S. Customs agents at Detroit airport last Sunday while returning to the country from Qatar where he has been working for the past two years.

In a criminal complaint unsealed this week and in a court hearing today, Jayyousi, 43, was described as a key player in a U.S.-based network of extremist Muslims who raised funds and recruited soldiers to wage "violent jihad" in Chechnya, Bosnia and Afghanistan. He is charged with providing material support to terrorists.

Jayyousi and two associates were "primary participants in a triangulated North American support cell," said federal prosecutor Russell Killinger in a detention hearing in Detroit today. "They were supporters of every single violent terrorist organization that was active [during the 1990s]. I can't tell you how many thousands of people were killed" by these terror groups.

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One possible explanation for the fact that Washington school officials would have known nothing about the probe was indirectly cited by Killinger, the lead prosecutor in his case. He noted today that the surveillance of Jayoussi was a secret "intelligence" investigation—authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)—and not a criminal case. Prior to 9/11, he noted, there was a "wall" that prevented FISA wiretaps from being shared with criminal investigators. (As a result, FBI agents, who might have been expected to review Jayyousi's status under a standard background check required by the Washington public schools for its top officials, would not have known Jayyousi was under investigation.) The tearing down of the "wall"—and the sharing of intelligence evidence with criminal investigators—was one of the major effects of the Patriot Act passed after 9/11 and has allowed the Justice Department to bring cases like the one against Jayyousi.

According to the criminal complaint, Jayyousi and two associates—Kassem Daher (a Canadian resident who has since fled to Lebanon) and Adham Amin Hassoun (a south Florida man now in custody awaiting trial on terror-related charges in Miami)—had been the prime targets of a FISA investigation into terrorist-support activity since 1993. The three men set up a web of nonprofit charities—with names like the American Islamic Group and American Worldwide Relief—that operated under the guise of humanitarian relief while actually raising money and recruiting fighters for jihadi groups closely linked to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization, according to the government's charges.

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The criminal charges against Jayyousi make no mention of Padilla, the former Chicago gang member and presidentially decreed "enemy combatant" who sources say is another central figure in the sprawling, if little-noticed, FBI investigation that roped in Jayyousi.

But the criminal complaint against Jayyousi describes in some detail his close relationship with his alleged confederate Hassoun, a Palestinian-American computer engineer who is described as the "East Coast representative" of Jayyousi's American Islamic Group and who allegedly recruited Padilla. The complaint and other evidence in the case suggests that the activities of Padilla may have been one reason that the Justice Department renewed its interest in Jayyousi after essentially dropping its probe of him in 2000.

The reporters suggest the government will have a difficult time witht he case. It is not clear why these men should not be tried by a tribunal.