Glenn Greenwald's critique -- regarding the recent U.S. indictment of 38-year-old Iraqi Faruq Khalil Muhammad Isa (currently in Canada) -- is spot on about "terrorism" coming to simply mean opposing United States' interests or resisting U.S. military invasions.
U.S. authorities have now dropped any requirement that the "terrorists" target or kill civilians as part of a political objective, the classic definition of terrorism. Isa stands accused of "providing material support to a terrorist conspiracy" because he allegedly backed a 2008 attack in Mosul, Iraq, killing five U.S. soldiers.
As Greenwald wrote, "In other words, if the U.S. invades and occupies your country, and you respond by fighting back against the invading army -- the ultimate definition of a 'military, not civilian target' -- then you are a . . . Terrorist."
But the reverse of Greenwald's example is also true, that those "terrorist" groups throughout the world who commit violent acts or kill civilians at U.S. instigation, encouragement or in line with U.S. interests are NOT considered "terrorists."
For example, before 9/11, the Chechen "rebels" -- who had orchestrated mass civilian hostage takings, suicide bombings and hijackings and who were accused of having planted bombs in apartment buildings in Russia-- were not deemed to be "terrorists" for purposes of satisfying the "foreign power" element of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
The Chechen fighters were apparently seen as on "our" (the U.S.) side in opposing the Soviet Union in the final days of the Cold War and against Moscow's authority when the old Soviet Union was splintering into pieces in the 1990s.
Zacarias Moussaoui
That blind spot regarding the Chechens played out as a factor in the FBI's failure to act effectively to stop the 9/11 attacks in which a key early suspect, Zacarias Moussaoui, was identified as a follower of and recruiter for Ibn Omar al-Khattab, a Muslim extremist and Chechen guerrilla leader long allied with al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
The Department of Justice Inspector General "Review of the FBI's Handling of Intelligence Information Related to the September 11 Attacks (November 2004)" and other 9/11 inquiries eventually concluded that FBI supervisors erred, among other things, by not understanding that the Chechen group could have been deemed to be a "foreign power" even though it had not been previously "recognized" by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, nor had the U.S. State Department put Ibn Khattab's Chechen group on the official Foreign Terrorist Organizations list.
Footnote 123 on page 142 of the Inspector General Report contains this telling detail: "Martin [a pseudonym for an undercover FBI agent] suggested to the OIG that the reason that groups engaged in a civil war were not pled as terrorist organizations under FISA was because they were not "hostile' to the United States or working against U.S. interests.
"When asked whether it was a requirement under FISA for a terrorist organization to be hostile to U.S.interests to fulfill the foreign power requirement, Martin said that he did not know whether this was a legal requirement, but that he believed that it was assumed in the statute based on the terrorist organizations that had been pursued by the government."
This fact-of-life within the FBI -- that only "hostile" militants were put on the official U.S. terrorist list and that some Islamic extremists were viewed as generally aligned with U.S. interests (or at least not threats) -- created confusion among FBI supervisors in the weeks and months before the 9/11 attacks.
A Warning Ignored
An April 2001 memo clearly warned and spelled out that Khattab was "heavily intertwined" with Osama bin Laden's plans to launch terrorism attacks against the U.S.
However, the confusion over how to define "terrorism" when it fits with U.S. interests explains how and why the FBI failed to grasp that Khattab or his violent Chechen group were "terrorists" even when the April 2001 memo urgently warned that the two leaders (Khattab and bin Laden) were planning to attack the U.S.
This blind spot proved devastating just weeks before the 9/11 attacks when FBI Agent Harry Samit from the Minneapolis Field Office interviewed Moussaoui on Aug. 17, 2001, and concluded that Moussaoui, who had paid cash for classes to learn how to fly a jetliner, was almost surely a dangerous terrorist.
But Samit could not get his FBI superiors in Washington to understand the danger and approve a warrant to search Moussaoui's possessions.
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