"That's fine if you take it as a given that you have the devil here," he continued. "The problem is that you end up with people like Sami Al-Hussayen. . . . Whenever you live in that realm, you're going to make mistakes and you're going to hurt innocent people."
Using One Case to Build Another
In the end, most cases on the Justice Department list turned out to have no connection to terrorism at all.
They include Hassan Nasrallah, a Dearborn, Mich., man convicted of credit-card fraud who has the same name as the leader of Hezbollah, or Party of God. Abdul Farid of High Point, N.C., was arrested on a false tip that he was sending money to the Taliban and was deported after admitting he lied on a loan application. Moeen Islam Butt, a Pakistani jewelry-kiosk employee in Pennsylvania, spent eight months in jail before being deported on marriage-fraud and immigration charges.
And there is the case of Francois Guagni, a French national who made the mistake of illegally crossing the Canadian border on Sept. 14, 2001, with box cutters in his possession. It turned out that Guagni used the knives in his job as a drywall installer. He was deported in March 2003 after pleading guilty to unlawfully entering the country.
"His case had nothing to do with terrorism, as far as I've ever been told," said Guagni's attorney, Christopher D. Smith.
Some of the cases, however, remain murky. The question of involvement in terrorism lingers even after formal allegations of such ties have been dropped.
Consider the case of Enaam Arnaout, director of the Illinois-based Benevolence International Foundation, who was indicted amid great fanfare in October 2002 for allegedly helping to funnel money and equipment to al Qaeda operatives on three continents. The charity was shut down.
Less than a year later, prosecutors dropped six of the seven charges against Arnaout, and he pleaded guilty to a single count of racketeering for funding fighters in Bosnia and Chechnya. During a sentencing hearing in August 2003, U.S. District Judge Suzanne B. Conlon told prosecutors they had "failed to connect the dots" and said there was no evidence that Arnaout "identified with or supported" terrorism.
The administration views the case differently. Bush, in a speech Friday at the National Counterterrorism Center in Northern Virginia, said investigators had "helped close down a phony charity in Illinois that was channeling money to al Qaeda."
Sabin, the Justice Department's counterterrorism chief, said he could not discuss the specifics of most cases. But he said one case in particular illustrates the government's strategy: the conviction of Abdurahman Alamoudi, who admitted to taking $1 million from Libya and using it to pay conspirators in a scheme to kill Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah.
Alamoudi, who once worked with senior U.S. officials as head of the American Muslim Council, has agreed to cooperate with federal investigators as part of a plea agreement. Sabin said the case is "a significant success story" that shows how prosecutors can use one case to help build others.
"We have been successful in obtaining information and fueling our intelligence gathering efforts with many of these cases," Sabin said.
Research database editor Derek Willis contributed to this report.
TOMORROW: Authorities have increasingly turned to immigration charges in the battle against terrorism.
Living With the Terrorism Label