Snakes in the Grass

America’s real domestic terrorists

I suspect that few today even know who Mark Fidel Kools is — which is, perhaps, perfectly understandable.  Mr. Kools is the illegitimate son of John Kools.  John was a gangster who operated in the Watts section of Los Angeles, California, and, as a consequence of his domestic terrorism as a gangster, was sent to prison.  The State of California released John from prison in 1974 — but not before falling in with another gang, which we today call the Moslem Brotherhood — an organization funded by the Saudi Kingdom as part of their Wahhabist invasion of western civilization.  John Kools, having converted to Islam (at the taxpayer’s expense), changed his name to Akbar.

At the time of John’s release from prison, Mark was three years old.  By then, his mother had also converted to Islam and married William Bilal, also a convert to Islam.  Mrs. Bilal is known today as Quran Bilal.  With apparent pride in her former lover’s accomplishments, Mrs. Bilal changed Mark’s name to Hasan Karim Akbar.

In 1988, Hasan began attending the University of California (Davis); he graduated nine years later with bachelor’s degrees in Aeronautical and Mechanical Engineering.  During his somewhat elongated college experience, Hasan participated in the Army Reserve Officer’ Training Corps (ROTC), but he was not offered a commission upon his graduation in 1997.  Deeply in debt, Hasan subsequently enlisted in the US Army.

A few years later, Hasan served as a sergeant with the 326th Engineer Battalion, 101st Airborne.  In 2003, the Army staged elements of the division at Camp Pennsylvania in Kuwait.  In the early morning hours of 23 March 2003, Akbar cut off the generator that powered the lights inside the encampment.  He then tossed four fragmentation grenades into three tents where other soldiers were sleeping, causing numerous injuries.  In the resulting chaos, Akbar used his service rifle to kill Army Captain Christopher S. Seifert, an intelligence officer whom Akbar shot in the back.  Air Force Major Gregory L. Stone was killed from one of the four hand grenades.

An Army court-martial convicted Akbar of murder and sentenced him to death.  Having exhausted all of his appeals, he remains on death row at the disciplinary barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.  All that remains, in this case, is presidential authority to carry out the execution.

Also awaiting execution at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, is former Army major Nidal Hasan.  We all know what he did at Fort Hood, Texas.  While awaiting his execution, Hassan petitioned the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant for citizenship.  Whether he remains in close contact with former sergeant Akbar is unknown, but it is plausible that they offer one another comfort and encouragement since they are both confined on death row.

Carrying forward in my snake hunt, I similarly expect that few people today know who Ali Abdul Saoud Mohamed is.  Mr. Mohamed has a long and interesting history working against the interests of the United States of America and its people.  He was born in Egypt in 1952.  For some period of time until 1984, Ali Mohamed served in the Egyptian army as an intelligence officer, reaching the rank of colonel.  From around 1979 through 1984, he was instrumental in training anti-Soviet fighters en route to Afghanistan.

Afterward, back in Egypt, Mr. Mohamed went to the US Embassy in Cairo, asked to speak to the CIA Station Chief.  During this meeting, Mohamed volunteered his services as an informant against the emerging Al-Qaeda organization.  Apparently, the CIA was unaware of Mohamed’s former association with the Egyptian Army or his involvement with Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.  Despite the CIA’s suspicions that he might be an Islamist agent, they appointed him as a junior CIA intelligence officer and tasked him with collecting information about the Islamist movements.  One of his first tasks was to infiltrate a mosque with known ties to Hezbollah.  Mohamed affiliated with the mosque but soon informed the Imam that he was working for the United States as a spy.  He may have suggested that this situation would be an excellent opportunity to feed the Americans misinformation about Islamist movements.

As it turned out, Mohamed was not the only informant in that particular mosque.  There was another who informed the CIA that Mohamed was a double agent.  The CIA subsequently dismissed Mohamed and took measures to bar him from entering the United States.  However, Mohamed somehow evaded the ban and once more went to the United States.  He married an American woman, became a US citizen, and joined the U. S. Army.

After Mohamed’s initial training, he found his way into the US Special Forces.  In that organization, his leaders encouraged him to pursue advanced degrees in Islamic Studies.  They wanted Mohamed to become an instructor so that he could teach courses involving the Middle East.  They thought he was a pretty sharp tack, not knowing he was a former Egyptian army colonel.  Mohamed was a “self-starter,” they said.

Throughout his service in the US Army, Mohamed collected information from the Army.  He made copies of technical manuals, doctrinal publications, and training manuals to inform Al-Qaeda better how to defeat the American armed forces.  He provided information about weapons, tactical formations, and Special Forces operations.

In 1988, Mohamed took a 30-day leave from the Army and returned to the middle east.  He informed his superiors that he wanted to fight in Afghanistan.  When he returned, he bragged about killing Soviets, and to back up his claim, he showed people his “war relics.”  Alarm bells sounded in the head of his immediate commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Anderson, who initiated action to have Mohamed investigated by Army Intelligence.  Anderson’s reports went unanswered; no investigation was ever conducted (that we know about) — which led Anderson to wonder if Mohamed was part of the US clandestine services. 

Mohamed left the US Army in 1989, finding work with a defense contractor providing security at a factory that produced Trident Missile systems.  When he wasn’t doing that, he began training Middle Eastern refugees and American-born Islamists in such areas as demolitions, including those who were later associated with the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, Mahmud Abouhalima and Ramzi Yousef.

In the early 1990s, Mohamed returned to Afghanistan.  He trained Al-Qaeda volunteers in unconventional warfare techniques, including kidnapping, assassination, and aircraft hijacking, which he had learned during Special Forces training.  According to some, Mohamed even trained a wealthy Saudi fighter named Osama bin-Laden and later helped bin-Laden plan the US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.  Mohamed became the “go-to” guy when bin-Laden or Ayman al-Zawahiri needed to know or understand something about the US Army.  In 1993, Mohamed toured California with Zawahiri, who posed as a Kuwait Red Crescent Society representative.  Together, the two men hoped to raise money from Islamic-American charities to fund Jihadi movements (otherwise known as global terrorism).

In May 1993, Mohamed became an FBI informant in San Jose, California.  In exchange for worthless information, Mohamed provided Al-Qaeda and Egyptian Islamic Jihad with valuable American intelligence.  It was also in 1993 that Mohamed was nearly arrested in Canada while meeting with a representative of Osama bin-Laden.  He escaped arrest by telling Canadian authorities that he was an FBI informant, and they promptly released him.

After the 1998 bombings, FBI agents searched Mohamed’s apartment and discovered his complicity in terrorist activities.  Such evidence included plans and scripts of Al-Qaeda training, plans to meet with Osama bin-Laden, and so forth.  On the day Mohamed was scheduled to give testimony in another case, FBI agents arrested him.

Federal authorities charged Mohamed with several offenses, including five counts of conspiracy to kill US nationals, conspiracy to kidnap, murder, and maim others outside of the United States, conspiracy to kill government employees, conspiracy to destroy US buildings and property, and conspiracy to destroy or disrupt utilities vital to the security of the United States.  Mohamed faced the death penalty, but he made a deal with the federal prosecutor.  He would plead guilty in exchange for life in prison.  To date, Ali Mohamed has not appeared in court.  He remains in federal custody at an undisclosed location.

These are the snakes among us.  How many of these snakes exist is — unknown.  What the US government is doing about the snakes inside America is equally obscure.  It would be comforting to have some indication that the United States is on top of the problem rather than unwittingly playing a role in global terrorism.  Still, I cannot comment about that possibility, either.  However, here’s what we know: all three men are US citizens, all three are Moslems, all three murdered American citizens, and all three remain alive at the taxpayer’s expense.  Pest control specialists say that if you see one cockroach, there are 50 more that you don’t see.  I wonder if the same ratio applies to venomous snakes.

In a televised interview, Ali Mohamed explained his rationale for becoming a terrorist: “Islam without political dominance cannot survive.”  If this isn’t good advice, then I’ve never heard it.

Sources:

1. Atwan, A. B.  The Secret History of Al-Qaeda.  UC Berkley, 2006.
2. Bergen, P.  Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden.  Free Press, 2001.
3. Esposito, J. L.  Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam.  Oxford University, 2002.
4. Mura, A.  The Symbolic Scenarios of Islamism: A study in Islamic political thought.  Routledge Publishing, 2015.