The American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has had some great successes in fighting the war against terrorism. But some critics, including Senator Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Insight on the News reporter J. Michael Waller argue that the FBI is compromising its anti-terrorism efforts because of pressures from certain Muslim-American groups.

There is no doubt that the FBI has had some successes in the war on terror. The agency made a series of arrests the day after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. On March 21, 2003, the FBI shut down a group that was smuggling money to overseas terrorist groups. On June 27, 2003, FBI agents arrested seven men in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland suspected of having ties to the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group. On June 29, 2003, agents arrested Muhammad Aatique on suspicion that he was a member of a terrorist group planning attacks in Chechnya, Kashmir, and the Philippines. While there have been other successes, there are fundamental problems within the FBI.

According to Insight on the News:

Well into the war on terrorism, the FBI is a house divided. On one side, agents are wrapping up terrorist-support networks coast to coast that include radicalized American Muslims bent on unleashing a murderous jihad against their own country. On the other side, in Washington, a culture of political correctness seems to have settled in the bureau's upper management, which some insiders describe as a Clintonlike pandering to the latest favored victim group.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, a favorite self-proclaimed victim has been an aggressive band of Washington-based groups that purport to represent the nation's Muslims and hyphenated Arabs. That constituency is known as the "Wahhabi lobby" for many of its members' alleged ties to Saudi Arabia, whose state religion is considered by many to be an extremist and violent Wahhabi sect of Islam [see "'Wahhabi Lobby' Takes the Offensive," Aug. 5, 2002].

Sources say the FBI has silenced a senior counterterrorism agent, Robert Wright of the Chicago field office, for exposing how senior figures in the bureau blocked investigations of al-Qaeda terror networks inside the United States prior to Sept. 11, and for complaining that a Muslim special agent, Gamel Abdel-Hafiz, refused to wear a wire when questioning terror suspects, allegedly saying, "A Muslim doesn't record another Muslim."...

It is frightening that elements of the U.S. government are putting political correctness before the safety of their own citizens. Some of the so-called "pro-Muslim" groups trying to interfere with U.S. government anti-terrorism efforts include The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the American Muslim Council (AMC). Both CAIR and the AMC have extremely dubious histories.

First, let's look at CAIR. Siraj Wahhaj, one of CAIR's advisory board members, is an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing case. Nihad Awad, CAIR’s Executive Director, has declared himself a supporter of Hamas and the PLO, which are both on the official U.S. list of terrorist organizations. And Bassem Khafagi, CAIR's director of community relations, "was arrested by the FBI in January in connection with a terror-financing front group he helped found that is allegedly tied to both Iraq and al Qaeda." Randall Todd Royer, a former CAIR worker, was charged and arrested on June 27 for his ties to terrorism.

Now for the AMC. When Eric Vickers, AMC spokesman, appeared on Fox News and MSNBC, he refused to label groups like al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations. One AMC employee ("lobbying coordinator"), Sami Al-Arian, was arrested on February 20, 2003 for being "a fund raiser and organizer for a Palestinian terrorist group" (Islamic Jihad).

These people have influence in Washington? Yes. According to Insight on the News:

[FBI Director] Mueller and other top FBI officials have met subsequently with the AMC and other high-profile Washington groups, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), that claim to be mainstream but seem to antiterrorism specialists to be more opposed to the FBI's efforts to fight terrorism than to the terrorists themselves...

According to testimony at the June 26 hearing of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security, the FBI has retained members of the vocal Wahhabi lobby to run "sensitivity-training" classes at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va.

This is absolutely ridiculous. We're spending time and money giving FBI agents "sensitivity-training" so they won't upset terrorists? Political correctness has gone too far. We're fighting a war for the survival of freedom and democracy, not playing tidily-winks. Please write to the President, your Senators, and your Representatives, and tell them to put a stop to this nonsense at the FBI: