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Available
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Publication
Ecco (2003), Edition: 1, Hardcover, 352 pages
Description
This is the story of an anonymous counter-terrorism expert, a young woman, who, in disguise, has penetrated front groups of anti-American terrorist organizations operating in this country. She chronicles her escape from Iraq via Iran to Israel, following a great tragedy that befell her family at the hands of Saddam Hussein. She also details how she became involved in intelligence gathering for the United States, her adoptive country, while working for an antiterrorism group. With her unique insights into how terrorist groups veil their true operations by various means, she was able to infiltrate and identify dangerous terrorist organizations and entities working undetected in the United States. This book provides fascinating and shocking information on how federal agencies, chiefly the FBI and the State Depart-ment, repeatedly ignored or mishandled important information she provided. She reveals her role in exposing terrorist supporters who the White House considered to be friends, in preventing the government from funding terrorist activities, and in the deportation of terrorists and their supporters. She also reveals how she discovered a billion-dollar scheme that rich Saudi Arabians set up to filter money to terrorist groups, through charities and businesses in the United States -- information that the FBI sat on for years, until after 9-11.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member mattviews
Terrorist Hunter, by Anonymous, is bone chilling, sinister, and disturbing to read. While I am gazing fish-mouthedly page after page the inside scoops of terrorist groups into which this brave undercover woman infiltrates, an inexplicable sadness penetrates me: why is it that the good guys have to
Anonymoyus is an Iraqi woman whose father had been arrested and executed for being a spy. She escaped to Israel from Iraq and eventually moved to the United States. A mother of three whom gave up her prolific garment business in Israel, anonymous and her husband Leo started fresh in the United States. Driven by poverty and desperately needed a job, fate has brought her to an underground research institute that specialized in investigating, researching and scrutinizing Islamic charities and non-profit organizations in the US that function as the terrorist group fronts and have allegedly fund these groups in their Middle Eastern headquarters.
The sensitive and clandestine nature of the job requires the author to remain anonymous and infiltrate into numerous Islamic briefings, meetings, conferences, and rabid rallies. In doing so, she not only is able to identify such dangerous terrorist organizations, she also becomes an antiterrorism expert in tracing to the root, trimming to the bone, and nailing to the core those who headed such organizations and the means with which they bring mujahideens into the United States and the cunning routes through which money is transferred to fund the groups in the Middle East.
The book fearlessly and unreservedly unravels fascinating and shocking information on how the lack of sharing information, the lack of communication between INS, FBI, and CIA provide a loophole for the burgeoning decoy of terrorism. The main trouble with such bureaucracy is that it contains too many checks and balances, whether to restrain leak of intelligence or protect confidentiality. It is somewhat surprising that anything is ever decided. The inflexibility has disastrous consequences (manifest in the 1993 World Trade bombing followed by the 9-11 all-out-war attack) as it becomes salient that security bureaus are incapable of responding adequately to the challenges and threats the country faces.
More shocking is the fact that INS is not aware of the terrorists (and their real identities) who might be entering the country, as the immigration agency does not gather intelligence information. To make matter worse, the FBI and CIA, while gather up a voluminous amount of documents and intelligence, do not share such information with the INS. Anonymous depicts the FBI (and its policy) as being imbecile as it refuses to act before the crime is committed. As far as six years prior to the 9-11 attack, mujahideens who were apprehended in both the United States and the Philippines (where the terrorists planned to assassinate the Pope and blow up several jetliners over the Pacific Oceans) brought manuals detailing in hijacking, bombing, and assassinating techniques. The FBI has failed to properly use the information that could have been used to stop the murderers before they embarked on their deadly mission. What is scarier is that Usama Bin Laden has long conceived the idea of hijacking planes and crash them into the buildings, why are such documents and information overlooked?
As anonymous deepens her investigation, it doesn't surprise me that some of the largest charity organizations are working fronts and de facto financial arm for the Hamas in the United States. Leaders of such organizations are no freaks but university professors and scholars who had received an education outside of their homelands. These are supporters and preachers of barbaric suicide attacks and martyrdom. They invoke Allah's curse on the "tyrannical" Americans and who call for jihad and incite their worshippers to support the fight against the US and all Jews. Therefore, intelligence agencies make a huge mistake in disbelieving the Islamic fundamentalism is significant threat to the US and not following such leaders. Anonymous also makes a point that following Timothy McVeigh's indictment of the Oklahoma bombing, the FBI makes a bad move in dismissing the idea that the terrorists will strike home. What naivete.
Terrorist Hunter is a book that nobody should miss. The anonymous author has written an edge-of-the-seat, tell-it-all account of the surreptitious and deceitful functioning of the most dangerous organizations in the United States. Practices of such organizations are nothing but minatory and sinister. In writing this memoir, the author has not only risked her life but those of her children and family. In exposing the identities of the terrorists and their roots, the book also serves as a wake-up call to the intelligence agencies and call for a collaboration of these agencies to fight terrorism.
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hide behind notwithstanding the terrorists enjoy the freedom in a country against which they hold a grudge? How could these people express such rabid hatred toward a country that has provided them shelter and freedoms?Anonymoyus is an Iraqi woman whose father had been arrested and executed for being a spy. She escaped to Israel from Iraq and eventually moved to the United States. A mother of three whom gave up her prolific garment business in Israel, anonymous and her husband Leo started fresh in the United States. Driven by poverty and desperately needed a job, fate has brought her to an underground research institute that specialized in investigating, researching and scrutinizing Islamic charities and non-profit organizations in the US that function as the terrorist group fronts and have allegedly fund these groups in their Middle Eastern headquarters.
The sensitive and clandestine nature of the job requires the author to remain anonymous and infiltrate into numerous Islamic briefings, meetings, conferences, and rabid rallies. In doing so, she not only is able to identify such dangerous terrorist organizations, she also becomes an antiterrorism expert in tracing to the root, trimming to the bone, and nailing to the core those who headed such organizations and the means with which they bring mujahideens into the United States and the cunning routes through which money is transferred to fund the groups in the Middle East.
The book fearlessly and unreservedly unravels fascinating and shocking information on how the lack of sharing information, the lack of communication between INS, FBI, and CIA provide a loophole for the burgeoning decoy of terrorism. The main trouble with such bureaucracy is that it contains too many checks and balances, whether to restrain leak of intelligence or protect confidentiality. It is somewhat surprising that anything is ever decided. The inflexibility has disastrous consequences (manifest in the 1993 World Trade bombing followed by the 9-11 all-out-war attack) as it becomes salient that security bureaus are incapable of responding adequately to the challenges and threats the country faces.
More shocking is the fact that INS is not aware of the terrorists (and their real identities) who might be entering the country, as the immigration agency does not gather intelligence information. To make matter worse, the FBI and CIA, while gather up a voluminous amount of documents and intelligence, do not share such information with the INS. Anonymous depicts the FBI (and its policy) as being imbecile as it refuses to act before the crime is committed. As far as six years prior to the 9-11 attack, mujahideens who were apprehended in both the United States and the Philippines (where the terrorists planned to assassinate the Pope and blow up several jetliners over the Pacific Oceans) brought manuals detailing in hijacking, bombing, and assassinating techniques. The FBI has failed to properly use the information that could have been used to stop the murderers before they embarked on their deadly mission. What is scarier is that Usama Bin Laden has long conceived the idea of hijacking planes and crash them into the buildings, why are such documents and information overlooked?
As anonymous deepens her investigation, it doesn't surprise me that some of the largest charity organizations are working fronts and de facto financial arm for the Hamas in the United States. Leaders of such organizations are no freaks but university professors and scholars who had received an education outside of their homelands. These are supporters and preachers of barbaric suicide attacks and martyrdom. They invoke Allah's curse on the "tyrannical" Americans and who call for jihad and incite their worshippers to support the fight against the US and all Jews. Therefore, intelligence agencies make a huge mistake in disbelieving the Islamic fundamentalism is significant threat to the US and not following such leaders. Anonymous also makes a point that following Timothy McVeigh's indictment of the Oklahoma bombing, the FBI makes a bad move in dismissing the idea that the terrorists will strike home. What naivete.
Terrorist Hunter is a book that nobody should miss. The anonymous author has written an edge-of-the-seat, tell-it-all account of the surreptitious and deceitful functioning of the most dangerous organizations in the United States. Practices of such organizations are nothing but minatory and sinister. In writing this memoir, the author has not only risked her life but those of her children and family. In exposing the identities of the terrorists and their roots, the book also serves as a wake-up call to the intelligence agencies and call for a collaboration of these agencies to fight terrorism.
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LibraryThing member badgenome
The incredible story of then-anonymous Rita Katz. Katz is an Iraqi Jew who, at a very young age, fled the country with her family after the Hussein regime executed her father as an Israeli spy. After growing up and marrying in Israel, she and her husband moved to the US, where she - much to her
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shock - would again be confronted with the ugly face of Islamic antisemitism. This time she was better equipped to fight back, using her knowledge of Arabic to infiltrate radical mosques and uncover terror-financing groups operating under charitable fronts- and she's been wildly successful, as attested by the fact that anybody who has paid close attention to the news over the past six years will have seen her name pop up at some point. Rita's personal story is first heartbreaking, then thrilling, and her insights are of value to anybody interested in the nuts and bolts of how terrorism is funded. Her frustration with the government is palpable- and her skepticism proved to be well-founded very recently when Katz's SITE Institute handed one of the recent bin Laden videos over to the White House prior to As-Sahab's official release, on the condition that they don't publicly release the tape until al-Qaeda did. It was leaked, of course, rendering worthless techniques SITE had spent years and countless man-hours honing. Show Less
LibraryThing member Zare
This book gives a rather disturbing picture of what is behind all those charity/humanitarian organizations, describes heavy bureaucratization of security services, lack of coordination [and even will for cooperation] between various government agencies and paints a rather grim picture of every-day
If you are interested in topic of international efforts against terrorism this book is for you.
Recommended.
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security in general.If you are interested in topic of international efforts against terrorism this book is for you.
Recommended.
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LibraryThing member NickHowes
A person who made a difference in the war on terrorism. The author, a non-governmental antiterrorism researcher largely using public records such as tax forms, spent years unraveling the web of jihadist organizations like al-Quaeda in the US. Unlikle many investigators, she is fluent in Arabic.
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Identified in lawsuits by her targets, so-called charitable organizations, Rita Katz often attended Islamic meetings literally undercover in a burkha to hear what the Arab speakers said...speeches often scandalously inflammatory, as opposed to what was reported. Frequently hindered by the FBI which, even after 9/11, took in information but gave out none, she provided to government and press background on the worldwide terrorist movement and its financial ties to the US. Highly recommended. Show Less
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Language
Physical description
352 p.; 9.28 inches
ISBN
0060528192 / 9780060528195