Jihad USA Circa 1973?

This appears to be going mostly un-noticed and it shouldn't, as reading the excerpted details below reveals that certain patterns of concern in fighting US-based Islamist terrorism existed as far back as 1973.

The longish story is here, but scan the troubling details below ... they may sound familiar: student visas, the Canadian border, a college professor assisting terrorists, claims of responsibility in Arab media, where have we heard those before? Evidently, we just weren't sharp enough to put the pieces together in '73. Potential evidence and even the bullets from the assassination have now been destroyed.

In the early morning of July 1, 1973, Col. Yosef Alon - a charismatic former fighter pilot who helped establish the Israeli Air Force - was gunned down in his suburban Maryland driveway.

Thirty-four years later, the case is unsolved.

Alon's mission in the U.S. was vital. Beginning in 1970, he was assigned for three years to the Israeli Embassy in Washington as the assistant air and naval attache.  He was not a spy.

An autopsy revealed Alon had been hit five times. Four bullets caused superficial damage, and a fatal one struck his heart.

The same day, monitors from the State Department heard this Palestine Liberation Organization radio broadcast from Cairo:

"After the assassination of martyr Mohammed Boudia at the hands of the Zionist intelligence elements in Paris, Colonel Yosef Alon ... was executed," the Voice of Palestine radio announced. "His is the first execution operation carried out against a Zionist official in the U.S."

Boudia was a high-ranking Black September operative living in Europe. He died in an explosion in Paris, two days before Alon; it is widely believed that Mossad agents planted a bomb under the driver's seat of his parked car.

The gunman was only about six feet away when he opened fire.

Corn, like other agents, felt that whoever had killed Alon was a professional and had stalked him.

"That was the feeling that I got," said Corn, now retired. "That they knew his movements."

After dismissing robbery and romantic-entanglement scenarios, FBI agents focused on the most logical one: an act of Arab terrorism.

The CIA had learned from a "Fedayeen senior official" that two students had entered the U.S. via Canada and traveled on either Lebanese or Cypriot passports to Washington.

They stayed with other students and made contact with a local professor who helped them carry out the mission. The professor rented a car for the students and placed the weapons inside it. After the students had shot Alon, they ditched the rental car with the weapons still inside.

The students got into another car they had rented and drove to Dulles International Airport, then took a domestic flight to the West Coast and ultimately ended up in the Middle East via the Far East, the source told the CIA.

Comments

[bloodrage bob]

interesting that this info is only now coming out, is it not? as i recall, 1973 was also the year the state dept and the NSA got tapes of that little islamic pig arafat ordering the murder of a US diplomat. his own voice, mentioning the guy by name.

they sat on THAT info for 30 years also. "classified". "national security". "need-to-know". you understand.

i wonder why? did they not WANT us to know??

[rwilymz]

"did they not WANT us to know??"

Probably not, no.

What good would it have done?

It would give those with a biased view "proof" that their biases are justified.

It would be viewed as "propoganda" by those whose biases lie in the opposite direction.

It would be ignored by most people who know or care nothing about the subject.

It would pass directly through the government information that we don't necessarily want others to know we know.

[Fred Beloit]

Yes, but rwily, don't you think one could list those reasons for any sort of war news or bad news whatever? But the Government lets war and bad news out 24/7.

[southdakotaboy]

I wonder how long it will take Bobtheklansmaninstamford to say it was Bush's fault.

[rwilymz]

It's more than "bad news". It's information we got from sources where, if it were made public that we had the information, the source[s] would have been surmisable, and we either have just shot our foreign intel trade agreement in the temple, or we just killed a HumInt source.

[bloodrage bob]

sorry, rwilymz, must disagree. it was more than "hiding our capabilities from our enemies" at work when the state dept. sat on/covered up the islamopig murders of 1973.

what it WAS was our self-appointed betters in washington deciding for us what exactly they feel we should be allowed to know or not. the PLO islamomonkeys *broadcast* their involvement in the alon murder *on the RADIO*. so how exactly does washington - and more specifically, the state department - sitting on/obscuring/refusing to disseminate this information fall under the ever-more-frequently-used whopper of "obscuring our capabilities"? ("we have a hitherto-unknown top-secret capability of....*tuning the AM radio to the PLO station and listening to what they broadcast*!!")

it's the same song, same verse: "you proles shut up and pay your taxes. you're much too stupid and simplistic to understand the subtleties of what *we've decided for you* to be the new geopolitical 'reality'. now do as you're told, don't pester us for information YOU paid for, and we might allow you to live in peace." try as i might, i can't find that clause in the constitution....

[rwilymz]

"it's the same song, same verse: "you proles shut up and pay your taxes. you're much too stupid and simplistic to understand the subtleties of what *we've decided for you* to be the new geopolitical 'reality'. ..."

And? Is that incorrect? Just count the number of Armchair Ikes all wanting to run the deal in Iraq because "they know better". The reality is: they don't. And neither do the ideologues on the other side, either, the Barstool Pattons -- all of whom wanted to run Clinton's Kosovo. Yes, there are things that can be criticized, but no one but the experts with the experience can do it anywhere near successfully. Adding your ignorant two cents' worth is a waste of time, because your two cents are nothing but plugs. Doesn't matter which side of the aisle you're on, either.

Citizens-on-the-street who are today claiming to be able to run the war better than the generals are the same stupid and simplistic buffoons who, eight years ago, were claiming to be able to run Clinton's Kosovo better. Today they're democrat buffoons, eight years ago they were republican buffoons. In both cases they are buffoons.

Watching two sittings of _Saving Private Ryan_ does not qualify anyone as an expert in battlefield tactics any more than watching reruns of _Hogan's Heroes_ qualifies them as experts on the Geneva Conventions. Yet there's millions upon millions of disgruntled Americans today all claiming superior expertise in both because they don't like Bush's war in Iraq or the handling of combatants in Gitmo. "Sincerity" =/= "authority", and nearly all of the "sincere" critics are sincerely wrong.

Nor does reading multiple John Lecarre novels qualify anyone as experts in foreign intrigue.

Exactly what were you going to do with the information that the PLO was assassinating western diplomats if you'd been specifically told in 1973? Gonna pull a "minuteman" thing and go off on a Holy Crusade [word selected deliberately] against Arafat and his minions? How would that have helped?

Or were you simply going to badger the government to do something about the PLO until you wore yourself out, or distracted and annoyed the nation? And how would *that* have helped? Wet-panty government badgerers sure do help the thing with Iraq, don't they? Boy howdy!

"try as i might, i can't find that clause in the constitution...."

Find these words:

A2§2: "The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices... He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments."

The Constitution -- as you apparently do not know -- outlines and limits the authority of the government. The government is, through the Executive Branch, uniquely authorized to run the military and conduct foreign policy. They were doing the job[s] we elected them to do.