LEGAL DOPE, GAY MARRIAGE, AND AL QAEDA RECRUITS (via Tom Morin)

Al-Qaeda Seeks Canadian Operatives: To get around tighter U.S. security, Osama Bin Laden is trying to recruit disaffected Muslims north of the border (ELAINE SHANNON, Jul. 08, 2003, TIME)

It stands to reason that Canadians who grew up 200 miles from Detroit are a better bet to navigate America's anti-terror tripwires than, say, native-born Kuwaitis or Yemenis. That's why the FBI and CIA were so concerned about Abdulrahman Mansour Jabarah, 24, an al-Qaeda suspect killed on July 3 by Saudi authorities in a firefight near the Jordanian border. Jabarah is the older brother of Mohammed "Sammy" Jabarah, who is currently in U.S custody and has, according to U.S. officials, admitted involvement in a series of al-Qaeda plots in Southeast Asia. What marks the Jabarah brothers as somewhat unique among al-Qaeda operatives is their background as Canadians - their Iraqi father and Kuwaiti mother had emigrated to St. Catherines, Ontario, about 200 miles north of Detroit, in 1994. The boys are believed to have traveled to Pakistan and joined Al Qaeda in the late 1990s, and despite his relative youth, one U.S. official describes the brother killed last week as "a nasty, nasty man."

The FBI believes that al-Qaeda recruiters are aggressively enrolling youths like the Jabarahs, with U.S., Canadian or Western European passports and good command of the English language and the North American interior. While the network had always tried to recruit people with U.S. and other Western passports, FBI counter-terrorism chief Larry Mefford recently revealed that al-Qaeda was "refocusing its efforts" to sign on disaffected Americans, green-card holders and Muslims who had spent time
in the U.S. as students or visitors who had a good command of English and a working knowledge of American society and culture. This effort comes in response to the Bush administration's tightening up the supply of visas available to would-be visitors from nations such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, Pakistan, Egypt and Southeast Asian countries where al-Qaeda has a strong presence. Recruits with greater access to and knowledge of the U.S. have a better chance of navigating some of the traps set by U.S. and Canadian authorities to catch terrorists coming from abroad.

They're the ones wearing dress socks with their shorts. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 12, 2003 6:07 AM