Two Viewpoints on the Loftus Lawsuit Against Al-Arian

If only half of what John Loftus alleges against Sami Al-Arian is true, it is one hell of a bombshell.

Loftus filed a civil suit against Al-Arian (a.k.a. The Martyr), alleging the University of South Florida engineering professor laundered money from Saudi Arabia and funneled it into the most notorious terrorist organizations on our list.

If that is true, the Palestinian activist made suckers out of a lot of intelligent people — including journalists — who have defended him and minimized the disturbing statements and actions that made him news in the first place. I kept reading that poor Sami was being unfairly persecuted. He'd been investigated to the hilt but hadn't been charged with anything, they said. He may have said a few stupid things, we were told, but that sure was a long time ago. He may have been emphatic when he shouted "Death to Israel," but the remark was misinterpreted. He didn't really mean death to the people of Israel, but rather, the notion of Israel, we were told. No, poor Sami, the victim, the Martyr. He doesn't know anything about terrorism except what he reads in the newspaper.

I always wondered, then, why the guy invoked the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination 99 times when testifying in the secret evidence trial for his brother-in-law, Mazen Al-Najjar.

What Loftus has done is connect some of the dots of a paper trail that appears to identify Al-Arian as far more involved in terrorist organizations than anyone has publicly alleged before. In fact, his lawsuit suggests that Al-Arian's groups provided financial support to Al Qaida and even purchased communications equipment for Osama bin Laden.

That makes for one fantastic story, too fantastic for me to fully believe, but Loftus, president of the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg, knows how to time things and make his point. For example, his suit pinpoints 555 Grove St. in Herndon, Va., as the headquarters for some of Al-Arian's groups.

Around the time Loftus released the lawsuit to the media March 20, the feds raided 555 Grove St., carrying a search warrant bearing Al-Arian's name. The records seized belonged to the International Institute for Islamic Thought, a group that funded activities of Al-Arian's World and Islam Studies Enterprise, his think tank formerly based at USF.

Gotta wonder 'bout that.

I'll tell you one thing: The Al-Arian die-hards should hold off before further investing themselves in that man's defense. They are starting to look like fools.

And, those ready to pounce on Al-Arian shouldn't wave Loftus' lawsuit too high in the air. You have to be suspicious about a non-practicing lawyer who would use the court in this way to make his point. He said he wants to force Al-Arian to respond to questions in a deposition that he had earlier refused to answer, invoking the Fifth. Well, Al-Arian can invoke the Fifth Amendment in a civil case, too. And, some of the remedies Loftus seeks — preventing Al-Arian from publishing and distributing literature for Palestinian Islamic Jihad — violate the First Amendment.

When I finished reading the suit, I reached this conclusion: If it's all true, Al-Arian is one sinister son of a witch. If half of it is true, it is a sorry statement about the U.S. justice system when it can't take down someone who has sponsored terrorism. If even 25 percent of it is true, Al-Arian needs to be prosecuted or deported.

I don't think it's all true, because if it were, Al-Arian would have had to have indeed been brilliant. Sly, calculating, cunning, astute, shrewd and sneeeeeeeeaky. Able to play five chess games at one time. But, this is the same man who went on The O'Reilly Factor, expecting something good to happen? The same Ph.D. who applied for citizenship, then tried to vote at the polls before he even got it? Huh? Is that man smart enough to be the Grand Master of terrorism? Doubt it.

Al-Arian called Loftus a "lunatic" and repeated his tired line that he's pure as snow because "nothing illegal has been found" about his activities. Gee, how would he even know what the feds have found?

The records Loftus cites indicate the feds have of plenty of ammo for prosecution, but his contention that the Clinton administration killed the case for political reasons seems a stretch. The suit contends the money lines trace right to Saudi Arabia — and Saudi royalty, something that would have caused too much embarrassment for the Saudis if it were exposed.

But look how the Clinton administration backed down after the early revelation that the Egypt Air 990 crash was caused deliberately by an Egyptian co-pilot. The Egyptians went crazy, the report vanished from the radar and we waited 2 1/2 years to get the most antiseptic report that didn't judge motives, but did say it appeared to be the co-pilot's actions.

If the feds have dropped the ball, they need to pick it up, make the case, arrest Al-Arian, prosecute him, jail him, deport him — do something. If we can't nail someone paying for terrorism and murder from our own soil, then why bother fighting terrorism overseas? The war is lost right here.

I can't imagine Loftus' unusual lawsuit will actually result in anything, but, as far as a media strategy goes, it's brilliant. It lays out a case and puts it on a schedule that keeps it in the news for a while. Time will tell us whether he's really got the goods or is using the court system to protect him from a defamation suit.

—Fawn Germer

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On March 25, Sami Al-Arian received an envelope with two one-dollar bills as an anonymous contribution to the beleaguered USF professor's "charitable activities." The Coquina Key return address on the envelope was a familiar one to Al-Arian.

He had seen the same address a few days earlier — on a March 20 lawsuit filed by John Loftus, president of St. Petersburg's Holocaust Museum. The litigation accuses Al-Arian of a host of misdeeds, including being a terrorist and laundering Saudi Arabian money for criminal activities. Key to the suit is a claim that Loftus is an "aggrieved person" because he contributed to and was defrauded by a charity (nonexistent, not that that bothered Loftus) run by Al-Arian. Normally, a lawyer would attach a copy of a check to a lawsuit if a client claims that a charity violated Florida's Deceptive or Unfair Trade and Practices Act. Loftus, with his measly two bucks, is trying to create his "injury" after he already filed the lawsuit, a novel tactic even in Florida. I've yet to find a lawyer — having consulted about eight — who thinks Loftus' lawsuit will go anywhere. Indeed, the real scamster is Loftus himself, not Al-Arian. And the most scammed party, aside from the public, is the U.S. government, which was stampeded into raids on respected Muslim research organizations in the Washington, D.C., area by their mention in Loftus' lawsuit.

An examination of Loftus and his lawsuit shows this to be perfectly in character. He isn't the man his propaganda proclaims. He is a huckster of wild, fabricated and unproven conspiracy theories. And his lawsuit is a bogus smear.

Loftus is, in fact, a study in the careful re-creation of a discredited "expert." In most recent press accounts, he is described as a "prosecutor" who chased Nazis for the U.S. Justice Department. He's also depicted as a "whistleblower" who revealed amazing conspiracies by the U.S. government, usually against Israel.

For example, a March 22 St. Petersburg Times story — which lacked any pretense of skepticism or fact checking — referred to the Loftus of a generation ago as a "young federal prosecutor." The Washington Post on March 24 called Loftus "a former Nazi hunter for the Justice Department." Echoing the claims are scores of other stories, often in the Jewish press, but also flooding the mainstream media ever since the Al-Arian suit and subsequent cover-your-ass raids by G-men. Only one problem with the adoring depiction of Loftus — one unfortunately held by many worthy supporters of the Holocaust Museum: It ain't exactly so. In 1982, Holocaust archivist and author Charles R. Allen interviewed Allan Ryan, Loftus' boss at the agency that prosecuted ex-Nazis. Allen, in an article in The Jewish Veteran, recounted that he asked Ryan if Loftus had prosecuted Nazi war criminals. "No," Ryan replied, "he did not. He did legal research for our trial attorneys."

Frank Daugherty, an investigative reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News in the 1980s, told Allen: Loftus "lets other people call him a Justice Department prosecutor of Nazi war criminals, which he never was. He lets them praise him as a whistleblower when he never was."

His earlier debunking largely forgotten, Loftus still finds an audience by wrapping overblown conspiracies in ways that appeal to or tantalize fearful or uninformed audiences.

And that's what the Al-Arian lawsuit is all about. Few people in the United States have endured scrutiny as intense as Al-Arian has. Despite assertions to the contrary in Loftus' lawsuit, many people, including me, have combed copies of all the material taken by federal agents in 1995. A controversial person, yes; evidence of terrorism, no. Al-Arian's detractors keep rehashing the same points — allegations thoroughly examined and totally dismissed in October 2000 by a federal judge. His foes point to the fact that he once invoked the Fifth Amendment to 99 questions. Yet these detractors aren't bright or honest enough to see the obvious explanation — prosecutors were trying to ensnare Al-Arian in a perjury trap. If he had answered "no" to a question, the feds would have found someone to testify "yes," and then indicted Al-Arian on perjury. That's cheap and dishonest, just like Loftus.

He bases the most sensational parts of his lawsuit — a wiretapped phone call by Al-Arian that has all the authenticity of a comic book spy tale — on "confidential client sources." What a neat trick. Anyone could win a lawsuit if they didn't have to prove their case beyond claiming secret sources.

Loftus has no "aggrieved" party, thus no basis for a claim. He's well past the four-year statute of limitations for any of the alleged wrongdoings — organizations headed by Al-Arian have been defunct for six years.

If Loftus is saying that Al-Arian solicited funds for charity that were then used to help families of terrorists, he should sue the Catholic Church, which certainly distributed tons of money to relatives of IRA gunmen.

Loftus' demands for things such as seizing Al-Arian's assets — prior to a trial, even — is lunacy and not even remotely envisioned in Florida law.

Notably, Loftus has yet to serve Al-Arian with the lawsuit. The reason is obvious. Loftus may not be much of an attorney, but he probably realizes there is no way to prosecute the suit. Yet, he has 120 days to serve Al-Arian, and during that time, he can bluster and defame as much as he wants.

And that's the real purpose behind the lawsuit — to smear someone.

—John F. Sugg

This article appears in Mar 27 – Apr 2, 2002.