Lightning Out of Lebanon: Hezbollah Terrorists on American Soil

The leafy suburbs of Charlotte, N.C. seem an unlikely place for a Hezbollah base of operations. Yet it was there that a group of Shia Lebanese emigres gathered in a home to watch videos proclaiming "death to America." Readability is a hallmark of this book, which recounts how U.S. federal and local law enforcement collaborated to break up the Hezbollah Charlotte cell. Members were using seemingly innocuous cigarette smuggling and other illicit activities to raise massive amounts of funds for Hezbollah. U.S. investigators arrested several members in July 2000, with guilty verdicts being handed down in late June 2002. Authors Barbara Newman and Tom Diaz present the legal and bureaucratic obstacles that investigators faced when trying to prosecute the Hezbollah cell. One was the FBI's "Chinese Wall," a series of restrictions that prevented information sharing between agents working on criminal cases, and those dealing with terrorism. In the Charlotte case, aggressive investigators were able to craft innovative means to skirt these obstacles and break up the cell. The authors argue that tough, aggressive measures are needed to combat terrorists on American soil, and believe that these can be effective without damaging the liberties that Americans hold most dear. They make a number of other important claims, some of which were corroborated in the U.S. government's 9/11 Commission report. One is that notwithstanding sectarian differences, there is extensive cooperation between Sunni and Shia terror groups, including Al Qaida and Hezbollah. Beyond alerting Americans to the presence of terrorists on our soil, this book is a valuable contribution to the debate on how we should deal with the problem. U.S. government officials at home and abroad would do well to read it, and reflect on it. Obviously the vast majority of Arab-Americans, Muslims included, are peaceful, upstanding citizens who make a vital contribution to American diversity, in-tune with our immigrant heritage. Yet this book is an eerie reminder that hostile groups do exist, retaining a lethal ability to strike. Hezbollah's strong ties to Iran make this an especially disturbing possibility. As the authors note, Hezbollah's 1992 and 1994 Argentina attacks on Jewish interests also sent a clear message to the U.S.: we can do in America what we did here. Those who want to do us harm will always have the advantage of exploiting our society's freedoms. Yet one hopes that the lessons of the Charlotte case and the 9/11 attacks will lead American authorities to increase their vigilance and aggressiveness without destroying civil liberties. Barbara Newman and Tom Diaz believe this balance is possible. This book would have been stronger, and more credible, with more substantiation. To take one example, the authors assert that Hezbollah perpetrated the 1996 Khobar Towers attack in eastern Saudi Arabia. While this is a highly probable claim, there is no definitive proof tha

I was particularly interested in this book because I live reasonably close to Charlotte, North Carolina, and I remember being pretty surprised at the news in 2000 that a cigarette-smuggling ring of Hezbollah operatives had been broken up in the Queen City. My interest waned fairly quickly, though, as I thought of the suspects as criminals rather than terrorists. Back before 2001, you just didn't think about terrorists planning to take their murderous jihad to American soil - especially North Carolina. Of course, such perceptions changed after 9/11, and the story of law enforcement's success in crippling this particular terror cell is of paramount interest to me now. Lightning Out of Lebanon: Hezbollah Terrorists on American Soil is a real eye-opener. Besides making an unassailable case that Hezbollah terror cells are operating within numerous United States cities right now, it shows just how lax and inefficient our counterterrorism efforts were and still are, how uncooperative "friendly" governments can be in terrorist matters, and how obscenely easy it has been for terrorists to gain illegal entry into the country and establish themselves here. The ring leader of the Charlotte Hezbollah cell even secured a government small business loan to aid him in his money-raising efforts. The book is also inspirational and hopeful, however, as it shows how effective our law enforcement and security agents can be when they work together as equals. This is not just the story of the Charlotte Hezbollah cell; Lightning Out of Lebanon gives an insightful overview of Hezbollah itself - its history, tactics, and deadly potential. According to the authors, Hezbollah is potentially much more dangerous than Al Qaeda because it is much more efficient, disciplined, and organized. And Hezbollah is most certainly here in America - in numerous cities from coast to coast. Today, these terrorists may only be engaging in criminal activities as a means for raising blood money, but tomorrow, at just a word from their bosses in Lebanon and Iran, they could awaken and commit terrible acts of mass murder and destruction in our very heartland. It is infuriating to see just how easily a Hezbollah cell such as the one in Charlotte could prosper. These terrorists' secret has always been to fly under the radar and to engage in criminal activities that, in and of themselves, don't seem to be all that substantial. Smuggling cigarettes from North Carolina to tax-happy Michigan was unlikely to generate much more than a slap on the wrist (or to generate too much concern from potential Tarheel juries). Immigration Services were so prostrate and overloaded that the bad guys didn't even have to make fake IDs and personal documents - they could easily get them from agencies such as the DMV and Social Security themselves. The Charlotte ring leaders had multiple IDs provided by these official agencies. Multiple fake marriages were rarely discovered, providing terrorists with a

Most Americans by now know of but how many know of Hezbollah and what it is and what it does? How many know who Mohammed Youssef Hammoud is? How many know how Special Forces, FBI, Dominos Pizza, cigarettes, Canada are connected? Al Qaeda and Usama Bin Laden are well known, but they are not, if one reads this book, the ones we should be worried about. What do these cities Charlotte, Dearborn, New York City, Newark, Boston, Chicago, Louisville, Houston, Atlanta, Tampa, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Portland have in common and why should you be worried? Can we say 'terror cells'? The authors are not some right wing or left wing nut people, but authors with reputable credentials and a sense of patriotism that is so refreshing. The way they talk about how so many in the FBI are willing to not only make lousy pay, but love this country enough that they are willing to die for it, speaks volumes. Also made me mad, because it seems that the higher ups in the FBI as well as the White House, don't seem to give much of a damn. This book is a must read for anyone who doesn't want their head in the sand, and who wants mature, thought provoking reading material that will make them think and hopefully push for some real action. And if you ever have the chance to hear the authors speak either in person on on C-SPAN you wont be disappointed.

This is a highly informative little book on Hezbollah, the Lebanese terrorist organization with a global reach. The authors detail the history of religious conflict in Lebanon, the birth of Hezbollah out of the early 1980s Lebanon Civil War, and the role of the Iranian government in financing and facilitating Hezbollah's illicit deeds. They review well chronicled tales of Hezbollah terrorist attacks on US interests abroad - most famously, the 1983 Beirut Marine barracks bombing and the Kohbar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996 - and against Israel. They also tell us a great deal about Hezbollah's extensive operations in South America's lawless Tri-Border Region (the area bordering Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil) and its deadly attacks on the Israeli embassy (1992) and a Jewish community center (1994) in Buenos Aires. The experience in Argentina, the authors say, illustrates how Hezbollah operatives infiltrate a foreign country and establish support cells that can be activated with lethal effect whenever the leaders in Lebanon or their Iranian sponsors deem it in their interests. In the U.S., the authors focus on Hezbollah support cells in Charlotte, NC and Dearborn, MI, although they identify at least 14 US cities where the terrorist organization is known to be active. The support cells engage in various criminal enterprises to raise funds for Hezbollah. In Charlotte, the illicit activity of choice was smuggling cigarettes into parts of Michigan in order to avoid heavy local sales taxes. This cost Michigan taxpayers some $3.7 million in lost tax revenue, much of which found its way to Hezbollah's coffers in Lebanon. In order to break up the nefarious ring, the authors show how the FBI, ATF and local law enforcement officials had to overcome ill-considered Federal laws strictly limiting cooperation between intelligence and criminal branches, and a timid, don't-rock-the-boat mentality that held sway prior to September 11th. The so-called "Chinese Wall" erected by Congress in 1978 and reinforced and heightened by Janet Reno's Deputy Jamie Gorelick (later a 9/11 Commission member) comes in for stinging criticism. This book is especially timely now with the Cedar Revolution unfolding in Lebanon and Hezbollah vying for political legitimacy and international recognition. It will provide any reader with a better understanding of one of the world's most lethal terror networks.

What are Hezbollah terrorists doing in the United States? Why are they in Charlotte, Dearborn, New York City, Newark, Boston, Chicago, Louisville, Houston, Atlanta, Tampa, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Portland? And why are they engaged in criminal activities there? This book explains some of the answers about who they are, how they get here, and what many of them do once they are here. And it explains, suspense and all, how a cell of terrorists in Charlotte was rounded up. The moral of this tale is simple. We could have stopped the 9/11 terrorists a couple of times, had we simply allowed our intelligence people and crime investigators to cooperate. We will need to be prepared for more terror. And unless we do something to prevent it, one day there will be an even bigger disaster. We are vulnerable to attacks on our food, water, power, and transportation. "The biggest threat to our civil liberties is our continuing inability to deal with the threat [of terrorism] in a reasonable time." Obviously, if several hundred thousand Americans were to die in one or more terrorist attacks, both that and our response to it would reduce our liberties severely. Here are the concluding recommendations, some of which may seem a little repetitive, of this rather exciting and thought-provoking book: * Realize that a determined army of radical Islamists long ago declared war on America * Realize that Hezbollah is in the front rank of this army * Avoid making scapegoats of our law enforcement and intelligence agenicies as institutions * Put handcuffs on the terrorists, not the law enforcement agencies * Understand as a nation that the goals of those agents who hunt terrorists is not to harm the innocent but to catch and convict the guilty * Do a better job of controlling our borders * Come up with a consistent national form of secure identification * Study the "trip wires" of organized terrorism so that we will know when they are being triggered * Integrate our vulnerability to terror into our national thinking * Honor those in law enforcement and counterterrorism who combat the terrorists I'm not sure exactly what we ought to do. But I think this is a great time to decide, before some major attacks hurt us and also panic us into making quick decisions that we may later regret.