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17 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A timely, objective, eye-opening look at Hezbollah, September 17, 2005
I was particularly interested in this book because I live reasonably close to Charlotte, North Carolina, and I remember being pretty surprised at the news in 2000 that a cigarette-smuggling ring of Hezbollah operatives had been broken up in the Queen City. My interest waned fairly quickly, though, as I thought of the suspects as criminals rather than terrorists. Back before 2001, you just didn't think about terrorists planning to take their murderous jihad to American soil - especially North Carolina. Of course, such perceptions changed after 9/11, and the story of law enforcement's success in crippling this particular terror cell is of paramount interest to me now. Lightning Out of Lebanon: Hezbollah Terrorists on American Soil is a real eye-opener. Besides making an unassailable case that Hezbollah terror cells are operating within numerous United States cities right now, it shows just how lax and inefficient our counterterrorism efforts were and still are, how uncooperative "friendly" governments can be in terrorist matters, and how obscenely easy it has been for terrorists to gain illegal entry into the country and establish themselves here. The ring leader of the Charlotte Hezbollah cell even secured a government small business loan to aid him in his money-raising efforts. The book is also inspirational and hopeful, however, as it shows how effective our law enforcement and security agents can be when they work together as equals.
This is not just the story of the Charlotte Hezbollah cell; Lightning Out of Lebanon gives an insightful overview of Hezbollah itself - its history, tactics, and deadly potential. According to the authors, Hezbollah is potentially much more dangerous than Al Qaeda because it is much more efficient, disciplined, and organized. And Hezbollah is most certainly here in America - in numerous cities from coast to coast. Today, these terrorists may only be engaging in criminal activities as a means for raising blood money, but tomorrow, at just a word from their bosses in Lebanon and Iran, they could awaken and commit terrible acts of mass murder and destruction in our very heartland.
It is infuriating to see just how easily a Hezbollah cell such as the one in Charlotte could prosper. These terrorists' secret has always been to fly under the radar and to engage in criminal activities that, in and of themselves, don't seem to be all that substantial. Smuggling cigarettes from North Carolina to tax-happy Michigan was unlikely to generate much more than a slap on the wrist (or to generate too much concern from potential Tarheel juries). Immigration Services were so prostrate and overloaded that the bad guys didn't even have to make fake IDs and personal documents - they could easily get them from agencies such as the DMV and Social Security themselves. The Charlotte ring leaders had multiple IDs provided by these official agencies. Multiple fake marriages were rarely discovered, providing terrorists with an easy way to remain in the country. The whole situation would be funny if it weren't so disastrously pathetic. In many ways, the Charlotte cell ran its operations from a Domino's Pizza establishment and even got a number of unscrupulous American acquaintances to take part in their nefarious crimes - Mohammed Hammoud's American wife, for example, came to serve as the true mastermind behind the group's highly profitable criminal schemes.
Fortunately, a number of dedicated law enforcement officials and prosecutors weeded out the true nature of Hammoud's organization - but it wasn't easy. It is always shocking to go back and see just how hamstrung our nation's defenders were before 9/11 thanks to the "China Wall" erected between criminal investigators and intelligence agents. You can't win many games when your own teammates aren't allowed to speak to one another. It took a man of daring and vision to get around that wall and get something done. FBI man Bob Clifford was such a man, and his strategy of deliberate aggressiveness proved very successful in the Charlotte case (despite Janet Reno's great concern over violating the civil rights of the terrorists). Clifford and his team even managed to secure the cooperation of Canadian law enforcement in developing evidence for the trial in question. Winning foreign cooperation was and is a rare achievement. This book recounts a number of cases where supposedly friendly governments such as France and Italy not only protected wanted terrorists from American justice, they actually let them escape to kill another day. One of the Charlotte Hezbollah cell members is sitting fat and happy in Vancouver because the Canadians won't extradite him. With friends like these, who needs enemies?
This book really is a history of both Hezbollah terrorism and recent counterterrorism efforts of the United States. Both the culture of the Lebanese hotbed of Hezbollah recruiting and the culture of US intelligence/law enforcement agencies are penetrated with great insight and objectivity by the authors. For every murderous terrorist in this story, there is a determined American hero who overcame great obstacles (most of which were put in place by the U.S. government itself) to truly save the day and make America a little bit safer.
This book is a less than gentle reminder of the incredible threat terrorists still pose to Western democracies, especially the United States. Hezbollah, the authors pretty much prove, may well be a bigger threat than Al Qaeda - and that's a pretty disturbing revelation. Having revealed all of the weaknesses of past counterterrorism efforts, the authors conclude by putting forth a number of recommendations on how to better reform a system that is still broken. There could not be a more timely and perhaps more important read than Lightning Out of Lebanon - especially for those who unwittingly aid the terrorists by putting the civil liberties of fanatical Islamist killers over the security concerns of this country in a time of war. This book provides ample evidence that we must do more, not less, to protect ourselves from the bloodthirsty killers of Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, and other terrorist groups.
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17 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hezbollah 101, April 23, 2005
This is a highly informative little book on Hezbollah, the Lebanese terrorist organization with a global reach. The authors detail the history of religious conflict in Lebanon, the birth of Hezbollah out of the early 1980s Lebanon Civil War, and the role of the Iranian government in financing and facilitating Hezbollah's illicit deeds. They review well chronicled tales of Hezbollah terrorist attacks on US interests abroad - most famously, the 1983 Beirut Marine barracks bombing and the Kohbar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996 - and against Israel. They also tell us a great deal about Hezbollah's extensive operations in South America's lawless Tri-Border Region (the area bordering Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil) and its deadly attacks on the Israeli embassy (1992) and a Jewish community center (1994) in Buenos Aires. The experience in Argentina, the authors say, illustrates how Hezbollah operatives infiltrate a foreign country and establish support cells that can be activated with lethal effect whenever the leaders in Lebanon or their Iranian sponsors deem it in their interests.
In the U.S., the authors focus on Hezbollah support cells in Charlotte, NC and Dearborn, MI, although they identify at least 14 US cities where the terrorist organization is known to be active. The support cells engage in various criminal enterprises to raise funds for Hezbollah. In Charlotte, the illicit activity of choice was smuggling cigarettes into parts of Michigan in order to avoid heavy local sales taxes. This cost Michigan taxpayers some $3.7 million in lost tax revenue, much of which found its way to Hezbollah's coffers in Lebanon. In order to break up the nefarious ring, the authors show how the FBI, ATF and local law enforcement officials had to overcome ill-considered Federal laws strictly limiting cooperation between intelligence and criminal branches, and a timid, don't-rock-the-boat mentality that held sway prior to September 11th. The so-called "Chinese Wall" erected by Congress in 1978 and reinforced and heightened by Janet Reno's Deputy Jamie Gorelick (later a 9/11 Commission member) comes in for stinging criticism.
This book is especially timely now with the Cedar Revolution unfolding in Lebanon and Hezbollah vying for political legitimacy and international recognition. It will provide any reader with a better understanding of one of the world's most lethal terror networks.
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14 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An exciting and true tale of terrorists in North Carolina, April 5, 2005
What are Hezbollah terrorists doing in the United States? Why are they in Charlotte, Dearborn, New York City, Newark, Boston, Chicago, Louisville, Houston, Atlanta, Tampa, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Portland? And why are they engaged in criminal activities there?
This book explains some of the answers about who they are, how they get here, and what many of them do once they are here. And it explains, suspense and all, how a cell of terrorists in Charlotte was rounded up.
The moral of this tale is simple. We could have stopped the 9/11 terrorists a couple of times, had we simply allowed our intelligence people and crime investigators to cooperate. We will need to be prepared for more terror. And unless we do something to prevent it, one day there will be an even bigger disaster.
We are vulnerable to attacks on our food, water, power, and transportation. "The biggest threat to our civil liberties is our continuing inability to deal with the threat [of terrorism] in a reasonable time." Obviously, if several hundred thousand Americans were to die in one or more terrorist attacks, both that and our response to it would reduce our liberties severely.
Here are the concluding recommendations, some of which may seem a little repetitive, of this rather exciting and thought-provoking book:
* Realize that a determined army of radical Islamists long ago declared war on America
* Realize that Hezbollah is in the front rank of this army
* Avoid making scapegoats of our law enforcement and intelligence agenicies as institutions
* Put handcuffs on the terrorists, not the law enforcement agencies
* Understand as a nation that the goals of those agents who hunt terrorists is not to harm the innocent but to catch and convict the guilty
* Do a better job of controlling our borders
* Come up with a consistent national form of secure identification
* Study the "trip wires" of organized terrorism so that we will know when they are being triggered
* Integrate our vulnerability to terror into our national thinking
* Honor those in law enforcement and counterterrorism who combat the terrorists
I'm not sure exactly what we ought to do. But I think this is a great time to decide, before some major attacks hurt us and also panic us into making quick decisions that we may later regret.
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