By David McLemore
The Dallas Morning News
SAN ANTONIO — The story sounded plausible: sixty Afghan and Iraqi terrorists smuggled in by a Mexican drug cartel to attack an Army post in Arizona.
As quickly as the story spread from a report last month in the Washington Times and reverberated around talk radio and conservative blogs, it died.
The FBI dismissed the reported plot as not credible.
But the discredited scheme to blow up Fort Huachuca underscores a reality that haunts law enforcement and homeland security specialists: the fact that one day a terrorist could be among the thousands who cross the border illegally each year.
State and federal officials charged with homeland protection, including securing the border, quickly stress that an illegal immigrant from a nation linked to terrorist groups is not necessarily a terrorist.
"[But] every report, every rumor has to be investigated. We have to err on the side of caution,” said Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Homeland Security office.
“We operate on the knowledge that groups like al-Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah have communities of support in Texas and the U.S.,” he said.
“We know terrorists have expressed interest in working through Mexican smuggling organizations to exploit our very porous border to enter the U.S. for terror operations.”
Border Patrol officials defer to the FBI and other agencies any questions about whether suspects believed to have direct links to terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda have been apprehended at the border.
But they emphasize that only a minuscule number of people picked up at the border are from one of the 35 countries designated by U.S. intelligence agencies as “special interest” for the potential to export terrorism.
In fiscal 2007, which ended in September, less than 1 percent of the 24,000 non-Mexican citizens apprehended by the Border Patrol came from special-interest countries.
For example, seven came from Iran, eight from Iraq and 10 from Pakistan.
Of the total, an even smaller group was turned over to the FBI for further investigation after their fingerprints triggered a “watch list” alarm.
Mr. McCraw acknowledged that the overwhelming majority of people from suspect countries picked up at the border have no involvement with terrorism.
“There were 436 people from countries with known al-Qaeda presence arrested along the Texas/Mexico border in the past few years,” he said.
“Obviously, not all these people are al-Qaeda. Maybe none.
“But one terrorist getting through is too many. We have to think about the ones that didn’t get caught.”
Mr. McCraw made headlines in September when he said in a speech in Dallas that terrorists with ties to Hezbollah, Hamas and al-Qaeda have been arrested along the Texas border.
His comments echoed comments by National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell to the El Paso Times last summer that a small number of people with known links to terrorist organizations have been caught crossing the border.
The FBI and the National Intelligence Office have not provided any details about these arrests.
In 2005, U.S. Rep. John Culberson, R-Houston, appeared on a radio talk show hosted by Sean Hannity and dropped a bombshell.
“They had an al-Qaeda terrorist, an Iraqi national who was on the FBI’s terrorist list as an al-Qaeda member, in the Brewster County jail,” Mr. Culberson told Mr. Hannity.
“He had been apprehended by Mexican authorities, handed over by the Mexican authorities to the Hudspeth County sheriff, with whom the Mexican authorities had a good working relationship.”
It was great radio. And it was untrue. Brewster County Sheriff Ronnie Dodson told the Big Bend Sentinel a few days later that the congressman got his stories mixed up. He had no terrorists in his jail.
“We had one guy about a year and a half ago who had a ‘jihad’ tattoo on him,” the sheriff told the Sentinel. “He was interviewed and cleared by the FBI. And we had a guy from Presidio in jail who had drawn a picture on his pants of Osama bin Laden, and we didn’t know if that was a joke or not. That was way over a year and a half ago.”
FBI officials in Midland issued a statement that reports of al-Qaeda terrorists being detained in West Texas had been “blown way out of proportion, but with the purest of motives.”
Like the supposed Fort Huachuca plot, it’s the kind of thing that will happen again, Mr. McCraw said.
“These reports get out into the public and get magnified quickly before the facts can be confirmed, and that’s a shame,” he said.
“But it’s difficult to vet a terrorist. They don’t readily admit they’re terrorists. And they don’t look like terrorists. They look like Americans.”
The Washington Times report said officials at Fort Huachuca changed security measures after being warned of the nonplot in confidential government advisories, including one from the FBI.
Federal officials won’t divulge information about active investigations.
The most high-profile case of an illegal border crossing involving a suspected terrorist was that of Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, who was convicted in Michigan in 2005 of raising funds for Hezbollah.
According to his indictment, Mr. Kourani was smuggled across the Mexican border in February 2001 in the trunk of a car.
He was sentenced to 41/2 years in prison for collecting substantial amounts of money for Hezbollah in Dearborn, Mich.
Federal prosecutors said his brother was the military security chief for Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Hezbollah, a Beirut-based political and paramilitary organization, has been designated by the United States as a terrorist organization.
Mr. McCraw said vigilance must be tempered with an intelligent response. We can’t give in to fear even while acknowledging the risks, he said.
“This is now very much a thinking game. We have to work smartly to plug the holes along the border,” he said.
“We have to secure the border from our enemies — the criminals, the drug smugglers and the terrorists. When we secure the border, we secure Texas.”
Copyright 2007 The Dallas Morning News