School of War - Ep 185: Lara Burns on the Hamas Threat in America

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

Lara Burns, retired FBI Special Agent and head of terrorism research at the Program on Extremism at The George Washington University, joins the show to talk about how Islamist groups operate in the United States. ▪️ Watch the interview on YouTube - Ep 185: Lara Burns on the Hamas Threat in America ▪️ Times      •      01:32 Introduction     •      01:48 Terrorism squad     •     03:10 The Muslim Brotherhood     •      06:20 Hamas      •     14:26 The money        •      26:03 Oppressors      •      32:39 American Muslims for Palestine       •     35:18 All connected        •      43:07 Information campaign      •      50:19 Understanding      •      55:01 Fighting back Follow along on Instagram and on X @schoolofwarpod Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack

This is not our first time talking about contemporary Islamic extremism on school of war. We've touched on the subject while discussing Hamas' attacks on Israel or Israel's broader conflict with Iran, among other subjects. But today, we are going to talk about Islamic extremism in the United States, specifically the role played by Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and the post-October 7th unrest we've seen here at home, especially in our universities. And the backstory of how American campuses and its up in this dangerous situation. Let's get into it.

It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamous. The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a state of. We continue to face a grave situation in Iran. The people who have not these buildings there. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields. We shall never surrender.

Hi, I'm Erin McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I am delighted to welcome to the show today. Laura Burns. Laura is a 23-year veteran of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the head of terrorism research at the George Washington University Program on Extremism. She's the host of a podcast, Intifada, Hamas, and the U.S., then and now. Laura, thank you so much for joining the show.

Thank you so much for having me. Really appreciate it. 23 years in the FBI and your attorney and attorney as well, how did you, how did you join the bureau? Well, I always wanted to be in federal law enforcement from the time I was very young. When I graduated college, I was told that I needed to get something more as far as education, so I decided to go to law school, which was a very good decision because that law degree and the education that I received really helped me in my career as a law enforcement officer. So shortly after law school, I joined the FBI.

And you spent most of those 23 years working on terrorism cases. How did that come about? Did you know fairly early on that that would be your focus? Or just how did you get into that line of work? No, actually, when I joined the FBI, I thought I wanted to join the behavioral analysis unit and chase serial killers. Right. But very quickly found out that you just didn't get to pick where you worked. And I was assigned to health care fraud for about a minute and was transferred to the counterterrorism squad in the Dallas division about a year before 9-11.

Fun fact, my mother was a psychologist in the behavioral sciences unit, which is why I got to see Simons of the Lambs. Well, I think I was like nine years old. It was a little young for that movie, but her office at the time was physically in the movie. We were all very excited as a family about that. Wow, I bet you were. My Quantico connection, among some others. Okay, so we're going to talk most of our time today about Hamas and Hamas in the United States. But you can't really talk about Hamas without understanding something called the Muslim Brotherhood,

which I expect is going to be something that a lot of listeners have heard about but wouldn't be able to say much about. What is the Muslim Brotherhood and how did it get started? So that's a really great question. It is a movement and ideology that began in 1928 in Egypt. It is currently the largest modern Islamist movement in the world. And when I say Islamist, that's different than Islam. Islam is a religion, whereas Islamism is a place. political ideology that believes that the Islamist's version or their interpretation of Islam

should govern every aspect of life in society, from education to religion to social aspects, that all aspects of society are governed by their interpretation of Islam. And that movement was founded, as I said, in 1928 and very quickly spread through the Arab world, but then by the 1960s had spread to the United States. States and other Western countries. Now, when you say something like the Muslim Brotherhood spreads to the United States, what does that mean in practice? So you have people who have, if they're seeking Islamic government, essentially revolutionary intent in the United States, and some of these people are foreigners, some of them are U.S. citizens. Like, help me understand the picture of what

that looks like. Sure. So it is a little bit different for us to think about as Americans, right? You know, we plan things, you know, we plan lunch, we plan vacation, we plan maybe we were going to go next year. But we don't plan hundreds of years in advance. And the Muslim Brotherhood is very different than that. You have to understand the ideology is that ultimately what they seek is the entire world being governed by their version of Islam. But they believe that they are to accomplish that through gaining the hearts and minds of the people by spreading their ideology. and they believe that they must continue that spread of that ideology until they have a majority of the hearts and minds.

But at that point, then violent jihad is appropriate to assert the non-Islamist government that is ruling. So when you're talking about the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States, yes, they had members of the Muslim Brotherhood that came to the United States and set up an infrastructure here in the 1960s and certainly by the 1980s it was well-founded. but did they at that point intend to immediately conduct any form of, you know, jihad to assert the government? No, it's a long-term plan. The plan is to first spread the ideology and do that to the point where they believe they have succeeded. And at that point, they believe that they should, you know, be in control of the government and society. We're going to spend most of our time talking about the United States and the networks that are here. And in particular, how post-October 7th, you can see the manifestations of those work on places like higher education campuses.

But just to stay abroad and with the origins of this movement for a second, if you look at different Muslim or Arab countries, you see the fortunes of the Brotherhood kind of rise and fall depending on where we're talking about. And of course, it's in Gaza in some ways where the rise has been strongest and most permanent with the organization called Hamas. What is Hamas and how does it nest within this broader Muslim Brotherhood network? Well, first and foremost, Hamas is a terrorist organization. But let's talk about how they originally were founded, right? So the Muslim Brotherhood, as we said, in the 1980s had an established presence through most of the Arab world and was solidly organized in the Gaza Strip at the time and led by a man named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. He was the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza. He was responsible for creating and administering organizations, social organizations, for the purpose of spreading that ideology.

like we talked about. So mosques, schools, universities, social clubs, that ideology was already being spread in Gaza before the outbreak of the first Intifada. Now that outbreak, the outbreak of the first Intifada in December of 1987 was a very interesting event. So as you likely know, the spark that led to the end of fata was a car accident between an Israeli driver and some Palestinian drivers were Palestinians passed away, and there, you know, is a difference in belief of if that was an intentional act or not, but what resulted was the uprising. But the Muslim Brotherhood recognized at that point that they needed to take action because the party that was leading that intifada, that uprising, was the Palestinian Liberation Organization, led by a man

named Yasser Arafat. That was a secular organization. And it was not an Islamist organization. And the Muslim Brotherhoods recognized they were about to miss the boat in Gaza. And so with that, they determined it was then time to create Hamas to be what they call their tool and striking wing to annihilate the country of Israel. And they did that. They basically worked with Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and some other founders of Hamas to convert what was the Brotherhood in Gaza to the Hamas terrorist organization. And there are a lot of things that the Brotherhood had been in.

involved in before the uprising that hinted at, you know, military terrorist actions, things like that. But really, they were formed as a result of that intifada so that Hamas could not just annihilate Israel, but could also take control from the Palestinian Liberation Organization, take control and gain power that they wanted. It was about control and power. Right. And so Hamas has to kind to kind of get to the right of the PLO in some ways, right, to make this play. You just said it, and in a way it's obvious, but in a way maybe it's not, why couldn't Hamas as part of some deal or whatever just accept the existence of the state of Israel so long as it can conduct its rule according to its own principles and its own territories? Why does that seem to be structurally

impossible? Well, I mean, their founding charter, they stated it very clearly that they intend to annihilate Israel. And if you look at their own charter that they originally published when they were founded or shortly thereafter, it is very clear their hatred towards the Jewish people. They believe that the Jews are enemies of God. And with that, there can be no Jewish state. So it is a fundamental principle that Hamas and, frankly, the Muslim Brotherhood, hold that the Jewish people are the enemies of God. So as the first intifada is happening, as Hamas is coming to prominence in that part of the world, meanwhile, in the United States, you start to see these organizations spring up that are in effect, right, branches of Hamas in the

United States. So I'm talking about this sort of network of acronyms, which I'll ask you to sort of tell us about these places. But they're sort of anodyne sounding by design, right? So IAP, HLF, Holy Land Foundation, UASR, this is the late 80s, and I guess at the center of all these is the Palestine Committee, right? What are all these groups? How do they come to be? Why should, Why should we care about things that, I mean, Palestine Committee, you know, it doesn't sound like a terrorist organization? Tell us about this group. It's a very interesting question and points that you also bring up.

But when we talk about this history with these organizations and things like that, and I know we're going to get to what's happening at present day, it's very important to understand the beginning, the beginning of the Hamas terrorist organization abroad and here in the United States. And why is that? Well, think of it like if you were to receive a book as a gift and the book had a hundred in two chapters. Would you open the book and begin reading at chapter 80? That's where we are today. You don't, because if you do, then you don't understand the plot or the characters or the nuances.

So you must begin at chapter one. So that's why we look back to when Hamas was founded. At the time Hamas was founded in December of 1987, early 1988, the leader of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, what they call the Masulah alam, in the United States, was a man named Musa Abu Marzouk. who would quickly rise to be the first Political Bureau chief for the Hamas terrorist organization, and even today is still involved with the Hamas Political Bureau making decisions that impact what's going on in the world. He was the leader of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. In early 1988, the International Muslim Brotherhood sent a delegation to the United States and said, you will support Hamas, United States chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood,

through the Brotherhood's Palestine Committee. So that was all of the individuals within the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood who were already from that area, right? And they were to support Hamas with media, money, and men, according to orders from the International Muslim Brotherhood. And the three organizations that were founded and operated in pursuit of that were the propaganda arm, which was at that time, the Islamic Association for Palestine, the fundraising arm, which was the occupied land fund, that was the original name for the Holy Land Foundation. same organization, same leaders. They just changed the name because it was a little politically charged. And then the United Association for Studies and Research, which was the think tank slash political command hub that Marzuk used because as he rose to power in the Hamas Political Bureau, he was still running the U.S.-based Hamas infrastructure living in the United States. Right.

And as all this is happening just to kind of keep things in context, the PLO is the main event. when people are thinking about terrorist attacks and hijackings and all this kind of stuff in the late 20th century, that's mostly sort of left-wing pro-Palestine groups like the PLO. This stuff that you're describing as front of mind, front-of-seen as it is today, that was kind of fringe stuff at the time within the sort of pro-Palestine anti-Israel movement, correct? That is correct. And the Muslim Brotherhood and the Hamas leaders recognize that. And in fact, if you look back at historical documents that were seized and publicized, in trials since that time and you look back and you see, Hamas understood that. So a lot of its

energy in that first Intifada, the period between 1987 and 1993, was focused not on attacks against Israel, which they certainly did. They killed Israelis, but focused on gaining power and control over Yasser Arafat, Fata, and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. And in fact, You know, we have older documents that show requests for funds coming into Musa Abu Mursug. And that money, the requests were based on the need to buy weapons to use against Fata instead of the Israelis. So that first into Fada was really about Hamas finding its strength and its power as much as it was anything else. Right, right. You mentioned money.

I want to understand a little bit sort of paradigmatically how the money works here. Is there money coming from the Middle East to support these groups? Are these groups raising American money to send to the Middle East? Both help me. I mean, these are nonprofit organizations, or rather these are nonprofit organizations which are a front for terrorist organizations. All this kind of stuff depends on money. How does the money actually work? So that money process has evolved through the years, as you would expect, because we're talking about a period of over three decades, right?

But in the beginning, when this infrastructure was founded, it was both. Money was coming from overseas to really empower the U.S.-based infrastructure because they recognized what a resourceful land this was and how they were protected by our constitutional rights. So there was a need to invest a lot of money that came in. And, you know, the money was in part coming from Iran, where Marzouk himself, the leader of the U.S. Hamas infrastructure obtained Iran's fiscal sponsorship as early as 1992. But then also the goal was to have these front organizations be self-sustaining, meaning that they spread their propaganda and raised money here to ultimately be sent over to fuel the Hamas social infrastructure. And a lot of that concept is hard for people to grasp when they look at this terrorist

organization and we'll get to that as we go through the chronology of this organization. But the foundation of the Hamas terrorist organization is and has always been. It's social infrastructure. Without, just like the Muslim Brotherhood, without being able to win the hearts and minds of the people, they cannot achieve their military goals. They must gain that support. And they do that by providing aid through their social infrastructure to a needy society. But everything with Hamas comes at a price. Everything.

We will build a school for your children so that they will. and attend kindergarten, but they will learn our version of radical Islam. They will learn that hate and violence is the solution to their problems. We will build your hospitals, but we will build a tunnel under it and hide our weapons. You know, we will feed the needy, but if we come knocking, you'll need to provide a child or a teenager to drive that bomb across the border. Everything is with a price with Hamas, but the goal was to have the infrastructure successfully operating here where it could raise money and fuel that social infrastructure, and then, of course, parts of that money went on to every other aspect of Hamas.

Certainly, the organizations could also act as a funnel for money, coming abroad, coming through the charitable organization as a charitable donation, and then going back out. So they've evolved their tactics over the years, and certainly the arena or the landscape is much more complex when you talk about the groups that are operating now that we'll get to in a bit. But at the beginning, it was definitely both. Yeah.

In terms of the ideology, you know, when you see these awful kind of pornographic spectacles of the hostage transfers and the releases of the bodies in Gaza just in the last few weeks, you know, some people watch that and they're surprised. They're kind of shocked. You know, they're seeing the children there, you know, singing and celebrating and everything. And if you know the history as you're explaining it, well, this is what happens when, what is it, 2007 that Hamas takes over in Gaza, right? Right. As the ruling party of Gaza. Well, that's, what, 18 years now, almost of how? Hamas rule, you go for 18 years under Hamas rule, you get a society that looks like this,

that's an actual terrorist society through and through uncomplicatedly. You are correct, and it even started before they had actual control. And why is that? Because they were feeding the school systems, the soccer clubs, you know, the education, and basically the rearing of the youth, which was done under and with their radical ideology at every turn. If you went to your soccer club, there was going to be a poster of a bomb maker as a hero. You know, every aspect of society that Hamas had its hands in was responsible for, you know, convincing the youth at the time who were now adults, that violence is the answer to your problems. Right.

So I want to take us to the year 1993 when your employer, former employer, the FBI wiretapped a meeting of many of the key Americans who are in this story, the representative. of these different organizations we've been talking about who convened to discuss the affairs of the day. This is a little bit before your time, right? Before you joined the Bureau? Yes. So I was not yet old enough to be an FBI agent, but I was close. I was close. Then you went on to lead one of the major cases that I think leveraged stuff that was recorded in this meeting amongst others, right? But tell us about the Philadelphia meeting. Tell us what you guys got on tape. Yes. So can I back up just for a second and explain why the Philadelphia meeting happened? Of course.

Okay, so the first Intifada, the uprising, right, where we're talking about. So in September of 1993, the government of Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization led by Yasser Arafat agreed to a compromise. They agreed to pursue a path to peace, to a two-state solution, and to Palestinian self-rule. And they solidified that agreement on the White House lawn, and it was a, you know, kind of a watershed event. And people in Gaza and the West Bank, like, outwardly celebrated because there was no guarantee that it was going to work, but it was a potential path to peace. And they were going to be allowed to have self-rule under Yasser Arafat. Well, as you can imagine, Hamas didn't want that. One, they oppose any compromise with Israel and will only accept the complete annihilation of the country.

but two, they did not want Yasser Arafat to be the representative of the Palestinian people. They wanted that power and control. And so immediately, when the Oslo Accords were signed, Hamas vowed to derail those accords. And on the day that that ceremony was held and that peace agreement was signed, the leaders of the U.S.-based infrastructure, including the leaders of the so-called charitable organization and the media organization got on the phone and decided. they needed to have a meeting. And they planned the meeting and it was held in Philadelphia in early October of 1993 where it was a two-day meeting and it was recorded and ultimately

it has been declassified and published at trial so it's public record. They convened and determined how they would go about continuing to support Hamas in the United States, derail the peace accords, undermine the Palestinian Authority self-rule, but do so and still survive here. Because they recognize that the U.S. government was going to designate them as a terrorist organization at some point. And so, you know, when we're talking about this meeting was essential really to understanding this entire U.S.-based infrastructure's agenda. And they planned then. And what they planned at that point is what we are seeing happening on our streets and campuses today. And I know we'll get to that.

But they set out a number of points that they intended to achieve. and furtherance of this derailment. And those included, you know, sponsoring social infrastructure organizations abroad, supporting the jihad. But then also, there were a number of things they intended to do in the United States in order to survive and continue to support Hamas. And what they agreed upon in that meeting was that they needed to infiltrate the media, the political realm, and universities.

And they talked at length about why that was. And one of the individuals who led the Islamic Association for Palestine at the time actually stated it was a catastrophe that United States universities that produced the U.S. government's next leaders had no Islamist presence. And they talked about the need to put teachers in there who had the right ideology to begin teaching the students their way of thinking. So that was one item. And we can go about talking about the other items that they intended to do here in the United States. but they solidified their support for Hamas and how they intended to do it from the United States for decades to come.

I think it's important to just reflect on the fact that all of what you just laid out is on tape. Because sometimes it's possible to have this conversation about the Muslim Brotherhood and infiltration and all this kind of stuff. And it sounds conspiratorial. It sounds a little kooky. It sounds like, you know,

people are sitting in their basements, dreaming this stuff up. You have this on tape from, I presume, I'm picturing in my mind like a drab conference room somewhere. like the actual players having these actual conversations about blueprints that have been put into effect. That is correct. I mean, it is their words, not ours. And we have the documents that had been seized and various search warrants that were, again, made public at a trial that we'll talk about later, that support exactly what they were saying in this meeting where they, you know, they came to all of these agreements. And, you know, one item that they agreed to, and I don't know if you want me to go into it now, but one item that they agreed to was they recognized that they were going to come under scrutiny by the U.S. government, and they needed to create an organization in the D.C. area to serve their purposes,

one that could lobby for them and represent their interest when adverse actions from the media to governmental actions occurred. And two of the individuals who were speakers at that conspiratorial meeting who were there and agreed upon this agenda, months later went on to create and found the Council on American Islamic Relations, care, which is today the largest Muslim advocacy group in the country in the D.C. area. And it is still operated by one of the same individuals in the Hadawad, who attended a conspiratorial meeting, agreed to these items, and then months later created care. And how many times over the years have representatives of care been to the White House or been welcome at public events? And you're stating here. And again,

And this is on tape in a matter of public record in the courts that the origins of this organization are an outgrowth of a literal terrorist conspiracy. Certainly. And it's even more interesting than that. So all of these organizations at this conspiratorial meeting recognize the fact that they had to lie to the Americans. They said it without question that they had to lie. They said war is deception. Deceive, camouflage. deceive your enemy. Those are the words that they used. They recognized that their message at the time would be unacceptable to American ears. So they agreed that they would operate under the cloak of charity and various things like that that Americans could understand. They talked about civil rights. They talked about humanitarian rights. Concepts that are important to Americans. But they talked about them in a way that they wanted to manipulate those things to conceal their true agenda, which

was the support for Hamas. Right. And this is where you see a sort of rhetorical common cause in particular with the left, that it's less about, you know, we want to wipe Israel from the face of the map, which behind the scenes is absolutely the message, along with all the elements of Islamic political rule that come into it. But more publicly, it's about oppressor versus oppressed, the loss of Palestinian rights, all the bad things that not only Israel, but America is doing in their case, right?

It sounds like a more generic kind of more normal left-of-center complaint about America and the Western world. Certainly. And they began using that terminology 30 years ago, more than 30 years ago, when they really started trying to normalize their narrative in terms that people could understand. And certainly, you know, the term oppressor and oppression, that's something that rings true to a lot of us in this country, right? We don't want to think about anyone being oppressed.

And so they appeal to that, right? They use the terms that appeal to Americans who don't know what their true agenda is. You know, they see an organization that says, well, as CARE does, you know, we oppose violence against anyone. Well, if you look at the words of their founders in the conspiratorial. meeting and in other events, festivals and things like that, they don't mean that. They mean that, you know, that they should have those rights, but no one else should. And the killing of Jews is acceptable. So their narrative is designed to gain the support of mainstream America because they use the terms that mainstream America supports. But mainstream America does not understand that

their true agenda is something much more nefarious. And so I think it's important to note. And, you know, one of the quotes from this conspiratorial meeting where they're talking about education, they move on from wanting to put professors in universities to start changing the minds of young leaders, they talk about the educational system of K through 12. And they agreed that it would be a disaster if their children in the United States grew up with the idea of, and this is a quote, surrendering to. peace with Jews, end quote. That's a compelling quote. That is not surrendering to oppression. That is surrendering to peace. And that statement really kind of defines, again, their agenda here as far as seating their message and that radicalization process, spreading of the ideology. So between 1993 and today, we've been through numerous kind of iterations at this point of this blueprint and some rebrandings as well, though not of care, interestingly enough. Care seems

to have gone the distance. But some of the other organizations involved in this network you've been describing have gone out of existence on paper to be reborn under different names and in different organizations. And a big part of that trauma for them, as it were, was this massive case that you led for the FBI, ultimately the prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation and its leadership. Tell us a little bit about that episode and what it means for the broader story. So I think it's important to understand the facts just really quickly that led to the designation and prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation itself. So we talked about Hamas wanting to

derail those accords. Well, what they did, beginning in 1994, was begin a series of brutal suicide bombings targeting civilians in Israel, in Jerusalem, where a number of U.S. citizens were murdered, were victims of terrorist activity, were witnesses to terrorist activity, and the United States government began taking actions against Hamas overseas. They designated them as a terrorist organization. They, you know, there were sanctions that existed, but the terror activities only increased, right? And so ultimately, we were left with front organizations that were operating to support this organization that was just becoming more and more violent by the day. And then 9-11 happened.

And then after 9-11, there was a great awareness that terrorism could impact the United States. And so with that, within a few months, the Holy Land Foundation, it's, was designated as a front for Hamas and shut down. So its assets were frozen. And then a subsequent criminal prosecution occurred over a number of years, which ultimately led to the conviction of the organization and five of its officers in 2008. There were some other events that occurred along that time, right? So the Holy Land Foundation is shut down, but its officers weren't yet prosecuted.

So other organizations with the same mission, with some of the same personnel, with some of the same fundraisers began to pop up, sending money to some of the same organizations in the West Bank and Gaza. So replacement organizations, for lack of a better term. Well, during the pendency of the HLF criminal prosecution, a civil lawsuit was filed in Illinois by a family whose son was a victim of Hamas terror. And in that case, they sued among other parties, the Holy Land Foundation, the Islamic Association for Palestine, and the United Association for Studies and Research. as fronts for Hamas, claiming they were liable for Hamas killing their son. That's the Boeim family.

That's the Boeim case. That's exactly right. And ultimately, a jury found in favor of the Boeim family and awarded, the family was awarded quite a large sum of money. But the HLF was already, as you said, defunct by that point, it had been closed by the government. And so the Islamic Association of Palestine was still operating. It was in Chicago. It held its annual festivals in Chicago.

and it very quickly dissolved. And so the judgment could not be collected upon. The leader of the UASR had several years before already left the United States to go join the Hamas political advisor or prime minister in Gaza, Ismailhenea, as his political advisor. And so there was really nobody to necessarily collect against. But very shortly, the leaders of the Islamic Association for Palestine opened a new organization that had the same modus operandi and the same annual festivals and the same agenda. And that organization was the American Muslims for Palestine.

Two follow-up questions. Where is AMP today and that guy who runs off to Gaza? Sorry, I'm blanking on his name. Ahmed Yusuf. Is he still with us? Ahmed Yusuf, I'm not sure. I'm not certain if he has survived the... October 7th he was still with us, but we don't know right now.

We don't know right now. Interesting. He was influential enough that I can see him being outside of the... territories when a lot of the activities have occurred. But that is, that it is unlike what I've been talking about, which are facts, that is a theory. Sure, sure. It's going to be the king. It's good to be close enough to knowledge of what's coming to be able to flee, leave all the foot soldiers back behind. Yeah. Fair enough. And then AMP in this group of successor organizations will bring the story up to October 7th. What is the, what does the landscape of these organizations

look like closer to the present day? So the American Muslims for Palestine operates as a, you basically the same thing with propaganda, media, you know, disseminating the messaging that basically Hamas once disseminated. And pre-October 7th, you know, they were doing, you know, the same thing that the IEP did. It would have annual conventions where they hosted individuals who spoke, you know, in a way that was clearly pro-Muslim Brotherhood, pro-Islamist, without overtly hanging the Hamas flag up front. but continuing the false narratives that Hamas likes to feed into society. And, you know, they hosted, you know, speakers that had ties to both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. And so they continued to garner that support.

And interestingly, one of the co-founders of the AMP was the original founder of the Students for Justice of Palestine, the original chapter of it. in California many, many, many years ago. That organization really did not become prominent or, you know, visible until, you know, a few years ago, it really started to gain some, some power and movement. But the individual who founded that is a co-founder of the AMP. So let's talk about SJP, because as you point out, it is now quite prominent. It is, this is kind of one of the critical points because to the extent that people come across, I doubt the average person has heard of the Holy Land Foundation or even maybe American Muslims for Palestine, even though it's in existence today.

But if you are on campus, you're at a major American university today. You're watching the protest scene. You're trying to get to class. It's very possible, even likely, that you've heard of SJP, students for justice in Palestine. You've seen their flyers. You've seen demonstrations or encampments that they've either organized or been part of the coalition of student radicals that organize. And it appears to be connected to all of this other. stuff, which is to say it appears to be connected to literal terrorist organizations.

Say more about that and about SJP's role in the network. So even before October 7th, SJP was disseminating very anti-Israel, anti-Semitic type of rhetoric in order to garner support from individuals who would not typically support a terrorist organization. They hold themselves out as a student organization who is fighting oppression and, colonialism and things like that. But the individuals behind the bigger movement have a very specific agenda. And that is a pro-Hamas, even a pro-Iran, pro-Iranian access of resistance agenda that is anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, but more importantly for those of us who don't really understand what

all that means, anti-U.S., anti-West, anti-democracy. And so, when you see these activities going on on campuses and on the streets of the country, certainly there are a number of individuals who are participating in those activities that don't understand the words that they're saying. They do believe that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. They have no idea that the people that have organized these activities actually seek to annihilate all of the Jewish people. They don't know that.

Certainly there's an element of that. But the people that are behind this movement do know that. So when Osama Abu Ershad of the AMP stands at an SJP protest activity and says, we are going to take back this university, like we're going to take back this country, like we're going to take or like we are taking back Gaza, that is a significant statement. Because he knows how and he knows who we are. how we are taking back Gaza. Hamas is taking back Gaza

through violence, terrorism, and murder. Right? He understands that. A good many of the people probably don't. But they are consuming the rhetoric that is put in nice words and nice terms that everyone can get behind. No one wants people to be oppressed.

Everyone wants people to have their civil rights to be upheld. And so they march along with those. But the people behind it know exactly what they're doing. And the cognitive disconnect is even slightly wider than that, right? Because it's not only, you know, a movement with genocidal intent, but you can see, you know, sort of one of these wayward, blue-haired student radicals

in the passion of the moment sort of signing up for violence. It's that following the violence, radical Islamic rule is going to be imposed. That's the governing vision of the future. And not only in Israel, but the vision of the movement is beyond Israel. That's the political goal writ large. Certainly. And it's a long-term goal. And I think that's part of the reason.

that we in American society have such a hard time digesting that because we don't think like that. But this movement, whether you're talking about the Muslim Brotherhood or whether you're talking about Hamas, that is their intent. And certainly, a number of the individuals that are involved in this protest activity for Hamas calling for the death of America, if Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood were to govern our society, all of those rights that Hamas and its infrastructure used, and abuses here, they go away. They don't exist. There is no, you know, right to free speech unless it is their speech. Yeah. I want to think about the university scene a little bit more broadly.

Let's step back from SJP a little bit and just consider where they fit into the ecosystem of radicalism. So, so you have SJP, which is with apologies to my friends in the Federalist Society. It's kind of like the Federalist Society for, you know, Sunni extremism. And then you've got, you've got faculty, for example. Sometimes faculty who are funded from grants for foreign powers, not always. You've also got faculty who may just just believe this stuff and you've got combinations of the two teaching radical ideologies in their classrooms. So that's another piece of it. You've got administrators working with foreign powers who are sympathetic to the goals of the Muslim Brotherhood. Just help us understand. I mean, SJP is an important part of the

story when it comes to actual protests and building occupations and things like that. It's a key part of the story. But it's not the only part of the story on campus. Help us understand a bit what's going on there in a broader sense? So, I mean, I think to make it simple, all of our enemies that are aligned in this cause are seeking to infiltrate our society from basically every angle, right? Just like they said in that Philadelphia meeting, we're going to infiltrate politics, media, and universities. And so, yes, you have the components of the student protest activity, these student groups. You have some of the... these entities that have the faculty groups, but you certainly have a lot of foreign money coming

in to these universities. And the question that should be asked is, is this foreign money coming in with or without strings? And who are the, what are the sources of the money? Well, I can't speak to all of them, but certainly we know just from looking at public records and what's available online that, I mean, two of the biggest, you know, funders that I've heard of recently and open source reporting are Qatar and even Iran. Yeah. And so you have this flood of money from countries like that. And then you have the groups themselves like SJP.

Do we know where SJP's money comes from? So SJP has made that very difficult because if you understand kind of just a little bit about the law, and I'm no expert in 501C3s, but if you are a registered charitable organization, tax-exempt organization, there are certain documents you have to file that are public record. and if you're not and you are not incorporated somewhere, then finding out who the money sources are or who the donors are or who the leaders are, frankly, it is much more difficult because there aren't those documents out there.

So by design, SJP is not one of those entities where you can go. They claim each chapter is independent. So it is very difficult for a private practitioner with only public source information available. to determine exactly where that money's coming from. Who's directing the expenditures? Who is behind the scenes? What we do know is that, you know, as early as October 8th,

a lot of this protest activity was already extremely well organized and structured. And so that can't happen without some funding. A lot of these organizations have begun using what they call fiscal sponsors that, you know, people can donate money to this third party and then the money is disseminated out, and you can't really tell how much or what. And so there are a lot of ways that they can kind of conceal

and make it harder for individuals, entities, and frankly, even governments to determine what the source of the money is. So what you're saying is what the people behind SJP want the world to see is a group of basically organic student groups. And you hear the phrase student group, and it sort of suggests uns seriousness,

ad hoc management, etc., sort of springing up in response to the injustices of the world, and in particular of Israel and the United States, you know, to rally for justice. But yet what you then actually see on the ground speaks to coordination, planning, and resources. Correct. And, you know, some would even articulate perhaps some advanced knowledge of events because they were so well organized and prepared with not only their narratives, but how they were going to operate the various different protest activities that they were involved in. So just, and I, and I,

Of course, this does move a bit into the realm of speculation, but if you think about the pre-October 7th planning meetings in Gaza or, for that matter, other countries, you mentioned Iran and Qatar as places where people may have had some level of foreknowledge of these things. And you imagine how you would go through as a strategic thinker thinking about the October 7th attacks. Well, an international information campaign would obviously be a part of it. If you are actually going to make a bid for putting at risk, if not actually taking meaningful steps towards the elimination of the state of Israel, which is what it does. It does seem that the people in Gaza thought that they were attempting to do that, or they might have a shot at doing that day. Of course you would have some kind of information operation plan writ large. Certainly. And arguably, it is the most important part of Hamas's agenda. Because if you think about it, without all of the support that they've managed to garner, you know, the war probably would not still be going on. But what Hamas has always done, dating back to the first suicide bombing that they used in 1994 is they commit a violent act.

They brutally murder people. And then the government of Israel has to defend itself or, you know, whether you agree with what they did or not, they retaliate, right? And then Hamas stands on the backs of the dead and points at the other rulers of the Palestinian Authority and says it's their fault. And the Israelis are committing genocide. and we are the only ones who can save the world. And that message has been, you know, evolving over a period of three decades. And here we are today. I mean, arguably without that, the media campaign, things would be very different right now.

So these blue-haired 19-year-olds who are off occupying campus buildings, though not that it's always the students, by the way, doing the occupying. They're obviously adult agitators who are part of this stuff. But what you're saying is that they're dupes of literal international terrorist organizations. Yes. And a very master strategist. I mean, Musa Abu Mazzouk, I would say, is probably one of the most manipulative and strategic individuals I have ever studied. And where is he today? The last I know he was in Qatar, maybe I'm not sure he's actually there right now or not.

So talk for a little bit, if you would, about the U.S. government response to all this. You obviously led a significant part of it from within the Bureau. my understanding is that at some point, efforts targeting organizations like Hamas were downgraded on the, you know, in my view, not entirely defensible theory that organizations like al-Qaeda or later ISIS bore a direct threat to the United States, whereas Hamas did not. Correct me if I'm wrong about that, but help me understand how the American government has prioritized going after organizations like this over the, over recent history. So certainly in the wake of 9-11, there was a very aggressive anti-terrorism approach where the tolerance for any sort of activity in support of a terrorist organization was basically non-existent. And so very aggressive efforts like the case that we talked about, the Holy Lamb Foundation trial and prosecution. But, you know, over time, and I am no longer with the government, so I can't speak on behalf of the government. But, you know, there are only a number, so many resources to go around, right? and the terrorism landscape is ever evolving, as you well know, right?

And so post-HLF trial, right, the government considered that to be a huge success. We dismantled a terrorist front organization. And other threats were emerging that posed a direct, what we call homeland threat to United States, to U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. And so certainly resources were focused to, you know, the threat that was deemed the most important of the day. And that did evolve over a long period of time. I mean, you went from having, you know, the al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which was led by On Mora Laki, and his ability to really issue the al-Qaeda propaganda to Westerners, because his ability to speak English was so pronounced. That was a huge threat. By the way, On Warlakey was a fundraiser for the Holy Land Foundation before 9-11.

And so, you know, and then after that, we had the homegrown violent extremists and then the emergence of ISIS, which was clearly a threat. And so over time, I do believe that everyone in society, not just the U.S. government, turned away because it wasn't in our face. But with groups like Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, when they're not in your face, is actually when they're, in my opinion, the most lethal. because they haven't gone away. Putting people in jail doesn't deter them. People dying doesn't deter them. They are going to achieve that ultimate goal or die trying, right? And so if they're quiet, that just means they're reevaluating and planning.

And I think that's where, you know, probably most of society kind of lost focus there because we were looking elsewhere. I mostly remember Alaki because, of course, he gets droned during the Obama administration. and there was all this hand-wringing at the time that we always killed an American citizen in this counter-terror operation in Yemen. I remember thinking that all that hand-wringing seems strange to me. I mean, if American had gone off

and joined the Wehrmacht in World War II, which, by the way, quite a few did. Folks descended from German families did leave the United States and go fight for the Nazis. It happens where a big country. People go off and join the enemy from time to time. Well, sometimes you get killed in combat

when you do that kind of thing. But I remember that being, he was sort of a social media influencer, early innovator in the field. He was a very early innovator. And again, really intelligent man, who was also a very eloquent speaker. And so his message reached a lot of people that otherwise would not have accepted a message of hate and violence. He was able to, you know, make it sound pretty and poetic as opposed to brutal and violent, murderous.

So this is what you do. You follow these things full time. You've been watching campus since October 7th and city streets and just America in general. What would you say to an audience that's interested in these sorts of things about how to decode what they're seeing, beyond the sort of generalities that we've said so far. But when you've been watching events on campus or events on America City Streets of the last year or plus, what are some of the most striking things that you've seen or noticed that you feel like people aren't seeing what's behind them? Like just maybe you can tell us a story or two. I think people are accepting narratives that are put in front of them without independently attempting to understand what is actually going on. And I don't blame them. It's hard. It's a complex story. It is in order to understand what's happening. You have to understand the history.

And I mean, we're out of school. We graduated from college. We as adults. I mean, who wants to go back and take a history class? Nobody. Not many of us. But in order to, I think we have a duty as a way. Western society who wants to uphold and live by the tenets of our Constitution, we have a duty to actually understand this conflict and these terror groups and their agendas here on U.S. soil and not just accept a narrative because it appeals to your sense of morality, right? I mean, these groups that ultimately intend to so discord in our society, and that's what they want to do, they want to plot us against each other, their messages are false. They'll contain, you know, truthful pieces in them, and they contain words that we want to get behind. But as American citizens or as U.S. citizens, we have a duty to society to actually understand what is

happening and then do the right thing. And, you know, that's another problem is that during the 1993 Philadelphia meeting, the conspiratorial meeting, when they were planning to create care, they actually stated one of the goals of that organization should be to intimidate everyone else to adopt their narrative or be quiet. And so what you're seeing today is loud voices from individuals feeding a false narrative. And what we need are voices that understand the actual truth to speak up. And it's scary because the narratives coming out of these groups that intend to intimidate you if you don't agree with them. It's scary. People are afraid to speak the truth because of the slanderous statements that organizations like the AMP and care will lave at you, allegations that they'll make.

So they are succeeding in intimidating us if we know the truth and then don't speak up. Cool. A lot of what you've described in the last few minutes in particular seems like it should have pretty significant criminal nexus, that is to say, prosecutable acts within it. And yet I personally don't see as much prosecution as I kind of would expect to see based on everything you've just said. So I would say that, you know, there can be a number of varieties of prosecutions against these organizations, you know. But if you're looking at what in terrorism is the gold standard, like what you want to achieve is bringing a case against an individual or instance. for providing material support to terrorism. That is a very complex set of elements that go into the actual statute, that you must then prove to a jury of 12 beyond a reasonable doubt. So that is an exceptionally difficult charge to make in general and prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

But then now you're dealing with groups of people who are conducting this activity who have the benefit of prior prosecutions. They know all of the tools of the trade. They know from the HLF trial what the government does to investigate. And they subvert it. And so now you have, you know, groups of individuals that are well educated. They know the law very well, probably better than most Americans. and they know how to, you know, operate under the cloak of various, you know, constitutionally protected activities.

And that makes bringing a case like that extremely complicated. So this interview is going to be broadcast for a room of folks who care passionately about these issues, care passionately about the war against anti-Semitism, support Israel and who have been, like we have, following events on American campus. in the streets since October 7th, of course, before October 7th as well. Put yourself in their shoes. They care about these things. They want to be more informed and they want to take action. They want to do things that are going to help the situation and address the crisis that you're describing. What kinds of things can they do? What can they support? What's out there that they can be

leaders themselves? I mean, I think there are a number of things that people in society can do to aid in this effort. And it all goes back to, you know, we need power and numbers. We need people to speak the truth. And one of the ways that the program on extremism is really trying to further that what you call an educational piece is we're seeking to train people on the history of Hamas and the history of the Muslim Brotherhood and their agenda so that they understand what the things that they are seeing, what they actually mean, what's actually going on.

we are doing this, we'll speak to anyone who listens. We're providing training to law enforcement, to campus administrators, and, you know, to advocacy groups, anyone who is interested in really getting a better understanding about this threat so that they too, or they then, can take that message and, you know, pass it along. I mean, that's really, that's what it is. It's to me, the most important thing that can be done is education, educating the society, educating law enforcement and educating campus administrators. Because what comes with education? It is important. You cannot fix a problem if you don't know where the root of it is. And in order to fix this problem, we in society need to understand what the roots of it are. And so really, you know, our program,

we're aggressively trying to educate and also inform policymakers and provide written documentation and reports that outline very factually based, you know, details about what it is that's happening and why it's happening. And there are other organizations out there, I'm sure, that are also doing the same or another doing the same. Also, you know, there could be changes in legislation that allow law enforcement to have additional tools to fight this problem, right? Many of the statutes on our books have been there for decades. The threat landscape has changed. And, you know, certainly with the advent of and the usage of social media as powerful it is today, where these false narratives and false imagery can spread to a million people in one second, there need to be, you know,

the legislation needs to be updated to empower law enforcement to tackle the problem, to empower the IRS to be able to, you know, scrutinize these organizations that are operating as 501c3. That means if they're operating as a 501c3, they have to have rules. that they comply with. And, you know, the IRS needs to have the ability and the resources to thoroughly examine those tax-exempt organizations. They're operating at the benefit of the taxpayers, right? They are getting a benefit from the U.S. taxpayer.

They should be held accountable for the laws that they must comply with. And certainly, additional scrutiny should be placed on these organizations if they're receiving money from conflict zones or sending money to conflict zones. Laura Burns of the George Washington University program on extremism. It's been a fascinating conversation. Thanks so much. This is a nebulous media production.

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