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12/05/2001
President Bush's decision to declare the Holy Land Foundation an arm of
Hamas and order its assets confiscated followed eight years of
investigation into the Richardson group, according to an FBI memorandum.
Federal agents eavesdropped on private meetings between foundation
officers and Hamas representatives, developed informants, and worked
closely with Israeli investigators, according to the memo.
Investigators concluded that some of the Palestinian foundation's key
decision makers were Hamas members, the foundation was the primary U.S.
fund-raising organ for Hamas, and most of its expenditures went to build
support for Hamas and its goal of destroying Israel.
The "action memorandum" was prepared by the FBI's assistant director of
counterterrorism for the director of the Treasury Department's Office of
Foreign Assets Control in early November.
The Treasury office is responsible for enforcing executive orders that
call for the freezing and seizure of assets belonging to individuals or
organizations designated as being involved in terrorism.
Its conclusions, the memo stated, were based on:
• Electronic surveillance of conversations in which Hamas leaders and
Holy Land Foundation officers discussed the foundation's role in Hamas
fund raising.
• Contributions made to the foundation by Mousa Abu Marzook, a former
U.S. resident who was political leader of Hamas in the 1990s.
• Analyses showing that the majority of funds collected by the
foundation went to support Hamas activities, including schools,
hospitals and annuities for the families of suicide bombers.
• Identification of Shukri Abu Baker, president of Holy Land Foundation,
and officers in Gaza and the West Bank as Hamas members. The memo says
Mr. Baker was identified at an Islamic conference in California in 1994
as senior vice president of Hamas.
Mr. Bush, Attorney General John Ashcroft and Treasury Secretary Paul
O'Neill invoked language found in the memorandum during Tuesday's
announcement of sanctions against the Holy Land Foundation.
"The message is this: Those who do business with terror will do no
business with the United States – or anywhere else the United States can
reach," Mr. Bush said during the Rose Garden announcement.
Tom Hamilton, a Dallas attorney for the foundation, said he was unaware
of the FBI memo. He referred questions to another member of the Akin
Gump law firm in Washington, who did not return a phone call.
Mr. Baker and the foundation's chairman of the board, Ghassan Elashi,
could not be reached for comment. They have long maintained that they
have no affiliation with Hamas and said Israel and its U.S. supporters
are waging a political campaign to harm poor Palestinians.
An unsigned, undated letter taped to the foundation's front door on
International Parkway in Richardson repeated those assertions of
innocence.
"The foundation is a humanitarian organization that has worked to serve
the need both here and abroad since 1989," the letter stated. "We feel
the Holy Land Foundation has been unfairly targeted in the nationwide
smear campaign to smear Muslims and the institutions that serve them."
Until Tuesday, representatives of the foundation had maintained that
their organization had never been contacted or questioned by federal
investigators during its 12-year existence.
The FBI memo shows that federal agents had been monitoring the
foundation as early as 1993, the same year that a Chicago-area car
dealer told Israeli investigators that the Holy Land Foundation was a
Hamas front.
Later that year, the FBI used electronic surveillance to listen to a
conversation in a Philadelphia hotel room involving two foundation
officers and several other men identified as Hamas activists.
"The overall goal of the meeting was to develop a strategy to defeat the
Israeli/Palestinian peace accord, and to continue and improve their
fund-raising and political activities in the United States," the memo
said.
Participants in the meeting decided that the United States was a
valuable place to raise money for Hamas, the memo stated.
"In the United States," the memo said, "they could raise funds,
propagate their political goals, affect public opinion and influence
decision-making of the U.S. government."
The foundation, which raised $13 million last year, sent the money to
its own offices in Gaza and the West Bank run by Hamas activists and
other committees controlled by Hamas, the memo said.
Some of the money went to what Mr. Baker called "families of the
martyrs," which the memo called crucial to the support for Hamas.
By providing annuities to families of Hamas members, the memo said, the
foundation provided Hamas with "a constant flow of suicide volunteers
and buttresses a terrorist infrastructure heavily reliant on moral
support of the Palestinian populace."
Mr. Bush noted in his announcement, in language that mirrored that of
the memo, that money raised by the foundation supported Hamas' campaign
of suicide bombings.
"Money raised by the Holy Land Foundation is used by Hamas to support
schools and indoctrinate children to grow up into suicide bombers," he
said.