Rita Katz
Encyclopedia
Rita Katz is a terrorism analyst and the co-founder of the Search for International Terrorist Entities Institute (SITE Institute
), a private intelligence firm based in Washington, DC.
The Institute tracks global terrorist networks, and intercepts and distributes secret messages, videos, and advance warnings of suicide bombings from terrorist groups' communications networks.
speaker, was born in Basra in Southern Iraq in 1963 to a well-to-do Iraqi Jewish family. After the Six Day War and shortly after Saddam Hussein
's Ba'ath Party seized power in Iraq in 1968, her father was arrested on charges of spying for Israel
. The family's property was confiscated by the state, and the rest of the family put under house arrest
in a stone hut. The following year, after having been tortured, Katz's father was convicted and executed in a public hanging in the central square of Baghdad to the roaring applause of more than half a million Iraqis; the government offered free transportation to people from the provinces, and belly dancer
s performed for the crowd. Katz's mother managed to escape on foot with her three small children to Iran, and from there they made their way to Israel.
The family settled in the seaside town of Bat Yam. While in Israel, Katz served in the Israeli Defense Forces and studied politics, history, and Middle Eastern studies at Tel Aviv University
. She later married a medical student, and in 1997 came to the United States with her husband, who received a National Institutes of Health
fellowship, and their three children.
s living in America are moderate. But that a small group of people, funded by some Saudi Arabia
ns and others, are trying to radicalize them.
In approximately 1997 she began working for a Middle Eastern research institute. As a result of her research, she realized that the Holy Land Foundation was a front group for Hamas
. Wanting to examine it more closely, she attended a fundraiser
of theirs dressed as a Muslim woman. Soon thereafter, again disguised as a Muslim woman, wearing a burqa
and wearing recording equipment, she began attending Islamic conferences and fundraisers, visiting mosques, and participating in pro-Palestinian rallies in the U.S. as an undercover investigator in order to expose links of American Islamic groups to foreign terrorist groups.
Katz's SITE Institute, co-founded with Josh Devon in July 2002, was funded by various federal agencies and private groups. It analyzes "corporate records, tax forms, credit reports, video tapes, internet news group postings and owned websites, among other resources, for indicators of illicit activity". It provided information on radical Muslim groups operating in the United States, and led to closures of organizations, deportations, and ongoing investigations. She spends hours every day monitoring password-protected online chat room
s in which Islamic terrorists discuss politics, exchange tips, and announce their plans and accomplishments. She and her researchers research online sources for intelligence, which her staff translates and sends out by e-mail to about 100 subscribers. Among her subscribers are people in government, in corporate security, and in the media. She has worked with prosecutors on more than a dozen terrorism investigations, and many American officers in Iraq rely on her e-mails to, for example, brief troops on the designs for explosives that are passed around terrorist Web sites.
With the SITE Institute, which she co-founded to monitor Islamic extremist websites and to expose terrorist front groups, she worked with federal investigators in terrorism cases. She was cited in Richard Clarke
's book, "Against All Enemies
", as having helped to provide information to the government on the Al Qaeda network. Clarke wrote that she and Steven Emerson
, for whom she formerly worked, regularly provided the White House with a stream of information about possible Al Qaeda activity inside the U.S. that was apparently largely unknown to the FBI before the 9/11 attacks. They gave Clarke and his staff the names of Islamic radical Web sites, the identities of possible terrorist front groups, and the phone numbers and addresses of possible terror suspects—data Clarke was unable to get from elsewhere in the government. She also served as a consultant in a $1 trillion wrongful-death suit seeking to hold Saudi government and business interests accountable for the 9/11 attacks.
In May 2003, Katz related her story on the CBS
newsmagazine, "60 Minutes
," but in disguise, discussing her work helping the U.S. in a number of terrorism-related investigations by sneaking undercover into mosques linked to radicals. She also wrote a book entitled Terrorist Hunter: The Extraordinary Story of a Woman Who Went Undercover to Infiltrate the Radical Islamic Groups Operating in America under the name Anonymous, to protect herself and her family from retaliation from groups that she said were linked to al-Qaeda
, Hamas
, Islamic Jihad
, and Hezbollah. In the book she tries to reveal what she sees as the gravity and extent of the presence of Islamic fundamentalism in America, and that government agencies still do not all work together as one to fight terrorism, but instead hide information from each other, try to take over investigations, and even deliberately slow down terrorism investigations.
SITE's work was cited in The New York Times
and the Washington Post about twice a month as of 2006. In January 2007, Al-Jazeerah
reported that the National Association of Muslim American Women filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, Criminal Section, and also with the Executive Office for the United States Attorneys at the U.S. Department of Justice, alleging that as a result of misleading and false information provided to U.S. law enforcement agencies, the media, and various governmental bodies, various Jewish organizations and individuals including Katz had sought to create an environment in the U.S. that is hostile towards U.S. Muslims, resulting in the deprivation and violation of Muslim civil liberties
and civil rights
.
In October 2007, it was revealed that Katz had discovered and issued to the Bush administration a copy of an Osama bin Laden
video which had yet to be released by al-Qaeda. Katz issued the video via a private link to a SITE web page to White House counsel Fred F. Fielding
and Joel Bagnal, deputy assistant to the President for Homeland Security. Within 20 minutes, computers registered to various parts of the Executive Branch began downloading the video, and within hours a transcript referencing SITE had appeared on Fox News. Katz had requested that the web page remain confidential, and has reported that dissemination of this information tipped off her Al-Qaeda supporters who had since eliminated the ability of SITE to gather such information.
"Rita really knows what she's talking about—who's responsible for attacks, what's a legitimate terrorist organization, and what's not", said Robert Worth, a New York Times reporter.
, and attempts to intimidate her, adding:
In one case, in 2005 federal Judge Leonie Brinkema
dismissed Katz from the lawsuit by a leader of the International Institute of Islamic Thought
, Iqbal Unus, and Katz's dismissal was upheld on appeal unanimously by a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2009.
Critics of Katz claim she is giving terrorists a larger platform than they would otherwise have, and is too eager to find plots where they don't exist. Some people also do not think a private group with limited resources can do as good a job as government agencies can. Katz maintains professionals missed many signals about al-Qaeda before 9/11, and she is simply filling a gap. A 2004 audit showed that the FBI alone had thousands of hours of untranslated intercepts.
SITE Institute
The Search for International Terrorist Entities Intelligence Group is an organization that tracks the online activity of terrorist organizations. The SITE Institute was founded in 2002 by Rita Katz and Josh Devon, who had left the Investigative Project...
), a private intelligence firm based in Washington, DC.
The Institute tracks global terrorist networks, and intercepts and distributes secret messages, videos, and advance warnings of suicide bombings from terrorist groups' communications networks.
Early life
Katz, a fluent ArabicArabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
speaker, was born in Basra in Southern Iraq in 1963 to a well-to-do Iraqi Jewish family. After the Six Day War and shortly after Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
's Ba'ath Party seized power in Iraq in 1968, her father was arrested on charges of spying for Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. The family's property was confiscated by the state, and the rest of the family put under house arrest
House arrest
In justice and law, house arrest is a measure by which a person is confined by the authorities to his or her residence. Travel is usually restricted, if allowed at all...
in a stone hut. The following year, after having been tortured, Katz's father was convicted and executed in a public hanging in the central square of Baghdad to the roaring applause of more than half a million Iraqis; the government offered free transportation to people from the provinces, and belly dancer
Belly dancer
A belly dancer is one who performs a belly dance. The phrase may also refer to:*"Belly Dancer" , a single by R&B singer Akon*"Belly Dancer" , a hip hop song*The Belly Dancer, a 2001 Turkish drama film...
s performed for the crowd. Katz's mother managed to escape on foot with her three small children to Iran, and from there they made their way to Israel.
The family settled in the seaside town of Bat Yam. While in Israel, Katz served in the Israeli Defense Forces and studied politics, history, and Middle Eastern studies at Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University is a public university located in Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, Israel. With nearly 30,000 students, TAU is Israel's largest university.-History:...
. She later married a medical student, and in 1997 came to the United States with her husband, who received a National Institutes of Health
National Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health are an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and are the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research. Its science and engineering counterpart is the National Science Foundation...
fellowship, and their three children.
Career
Katz believes that most MuslimMuslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
s living in America are moderate. But that a small group of people, funded by some Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
ns and others, are trying to radicalize them.
In approximately 1997 she began working for a Middle Eastern research institute. As a result of her research, she realized that the Holy Land Foundation was a front group for Hamas
Hamas
Hamas is the Palestinian Sunni Islamic or Islamist political party that governs the Gaza Strip. Hamas also has a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades...
. Wanting to examine it more closely, she attended a fundraiser
Fundraiser
A fundraiser is an event or campaign whose primary purpose is to raise money for a cause. See also: fundraising. A fundraiser can also be an individual or company whose primary job is to raise money for a specific charity or non-profit organization...
of theirs dressed as a Muslim woman. Soon thereafter, again disguised as a Muslim woman, wearing a burqa
Burqa
A burqa is an enveloping outer garment worn by women in some Islamic religion to cover their bodies in public places. The burqa is usually understood to be the woman's loose body-covering , plus the head-covering , plus the face-veil .-Etymology:A speculative and unattested etymology...
and wearing recording equipment, she began attending Islamic conferences and fundraisers, visiting mosques, and participating in pro-Palestinian rallies in the U.S. as an undercover investigator in order to expose links of American Islamic groups to foreign terrorist groups.
Katz's SITE Institute, co-founded with Josh Devon in July 2002, was funded by various federal agencies and private groups. It analyzes "corporate records, tax forms, credit reports, video tapes, internet news group postings and owned websites, among other resources, for indicators of illicit activity". It provided information on radical Muslim groups operating in the United States, and led to closures of organizations, deportations, and ongoing investigations. She spends hours every day monitoring password-protected online chat room
Chat room
The term chat room, or chatroom, is primarily used by mass media to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing...
s in which Islamic terrorists discuss politics, exchange tips, and announce their plans and accomplishments. She and her researchers research online sources for intelligence, which her staff translates and sends out by e-mail to about 100 subscribers. Among her subscribers are people in government, in corporate security, and in the media. She has worked with prosecutors on more than a dozen terrorism investigations, and many American officers in Iraq rely on her e-mails to, for example, brief troops on the designs for explosives that are passed around terrorist Web sites.
Richard A. Clarke
Richard Alan Clarke was a U.S. government employee for 30 years, 1973–2003. He worked for the State Department during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush appointed him to chair the Counter-terrorism Security Group and to a seat on the United States National...
's book, "Against All Enemies
Against All Enemies
Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror is a 2004 book by former U.S. chief counter-terrorism advisor Richard A. Clarke, criticizing past and present presidential administrations for the way they handled the War on Terrorism. The book focused much of its criticism on President George W...
", as having helped to provide information to the government on the Al Qaeda network. Clarke wrote that she and Steven Emerson
Steven Emerson
Steven Emerson, is an American journalist and author, who writes about national security, terrorism, and Islamic extremism.Emerson is the author of six books, and co-author of two more. His television documentary Jihad in America won the 1994 George Polk Award for best Television Documentary, and...
, for whom she formerly worked, regularly provided the White House with a stream of information about possible Al Qaeda activity inside the U.S. that was apparently largely unknown to the FBI before the 9/11 attacks. They gave Clarke and his staff the names of Islamic radical Web sites, the identities of possible terrorist front groups, and the phone numbers and addresses of possible terror suspects—data Clarke was unable to get from elsewhere in the government. She also served as a consultant in a $1 trillion wrongful-death suit seeking to hold Saudi government and business interests accountable for the 9/11 attacks.
In May 2003, Katz related her story on the CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
newsmagazine, "60 Minutes
60 Minutes
60 Minutes is an American television news magazine, which has run on CBS since 1968. The program was created by producer Don Hewitt who set it apart by using a unique style of reporter-centered investigation....
," but in disguise, discussing her work helping the U.S. in a number of terrorism-related investigations by sneaking undercover into mosques linked to radicals. She also wrote a book entitled Terrorist Hunter: The Extraordinary Story of a Woman Who Went Undercover to Infiltrate the Radical Islamic Groups Operating in America under the name Anonymous, to protect herself and her family from retaliation from groups that she said were linked to al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda is a global broad-based militant Islamist terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad...
, Hamas
Hamas
Hamas is the Palestinian Sunni Islamic or Islamist political party that governs the Gaza Strip. Hamas also has a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades...
, Islamic Jihad
Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine
The Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine known in the West as simply Palestinian Islamic Jihad , is a small Palestinian militant organization. The group has been labelled as a terrorist group by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, Australia and Israel...
, and Hezbollah. In the book she tries to reveal what she sees as the gravity and extent of the presence of Islamic fundamentalism in America, and that government agencies still do not all work together as one to fight terrorism, but instead hide information from each other, try to take over investigations, and even deliberately slow down terrorism investigations.
SITE's work was cited in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
and the Washington Post about twice a month as of 2006. In January 2007, Al-Jazeerah
Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera is an independent broadcaster owned by the state of Qatar through the Qatar Media Corporation and headquartered in Doha, Qatar...
reported that the National Association of Muslim American Women filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, Criminal Section, and also with the Executive Office for the United States Attorneys at the U.S. Department of Justice, alleging that as a result of misleading and false information provided to U.S. law enforcement agencies, the media, and various governmental bodies, various Jewish organizations and individuals including Katz had sought to create an environment in the U.S. that is hostile towards U.S. Muslims, resulting in the deprivation and violation of Muslim civil liberties
Civil liberties
Civil liberties are rights and freedoms that provide an individual specific rights such as the freedom from slavery and forced labour, freedom from torture and death, the right to liberty and security, right to a fair trial, the right to defend one's self, the right to own and bear arms, the right...
and civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
.
In October 2007, it was revealed that Katz had discovered and issued to the Bush administration a copy of an Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...
video which had yet to be released by al-Qaeda. Katz issued the video via a private link to a SITE web page to White House counsel Fred F. Fielding
Fred F. Fielding
Fred Fisher Fielding is an American lawyer, and held the office of White House Counsel for US Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.-Personal life:Fielding was born in Philadelphia and raised in Mechanicsville, Pennsylvania...
and Joel Bagnal, deputy assistant to the President for Homeland Security. Within 20 minutes, computers registered to various parts of the Executive Branch began downloading the video, and within hours a transcript referencing SITE had appeared on Fox News. Katz had requested that the web page remain confidential, and has reported that dissemination of this information tipped off her Al-Qaeda supporters who had since eliminated the ability of SITE to gather such information.
"Rita really knows what she's talking about—who's responsible for attacks, what's a legitimate terrorist organization, and what's not", said Robert Worth, a New York Times reporter.
Controversy
In July 2003 two of the groups she discussed in her book and on television (the Heritage Education Trust and the Safa Trust) sued her and revealed her name and identity. The number of lawsuits she was named in rose to three, all in connection with her work helping the government investigate Islamic charities in northern Virginia. In two of the suits, targets of the investigation said they were defamed in the 60 Minutes" television broadcast. Katz said she has been the victim of a smear campaignSmear campaign
A smear campaign, smear tactic or simply smear is a metaphor for activity that can harm an individual or group's reputation by conflation with a stigmatized group...
, and attempts to intimidate her, adding:
"As they were never able to challenge the accuracy of my research, and as they were upset by the ramifications of it in terms of arrests, indictments, and raids, a few Muslim activist organizations have on occasion tried to portray me as a Muslim-basher. I have no quarrel with Islam or Muslims, and I only target terrorists and their supporters."
In one case, in 2005 federal Judge Leonie Brinkema
Leonie Brinkema
Leonie M. Brinkema is a United States District Court judge, in the Eastern District of Virginia.-Early life and education:...
dismissed Katz from the lawsuit by a leader of the International Institute of Islamic Thought
International Institute of Islamic Thought
The International Institute of Islamic Thought is a privately held non-profit organization.The Institution is concerned with issues of Islamic thought...
, Iqbal Unus, and Katz's dismissal was upheld on appeal unanimously by a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2009.
Critics of Katz claim she is giving terrorists a larger platform than they would otherwise have, and is too eager to find plots where they don't exist. Some people also do not think a private group with limited resources can do as good a job as government agencies can. Katz maintains professionals missed many signals about al-Qaeda before 9/11, and she is simply filling a gap. A 2004 audit showed that the FBI alone had thousands of hours of untranslated intercepts.
Book
- Terrorist Hunter: The Extraordinary Story of a Woman Who Went Undercover to Infiltrate the Radical Islamic Groups Operating in America, (as Anonymous). EccoImprintIn the publishing industry, an imprint can mean several different things:* As a piece of bibliographic information about a book, it refers to the name and address of the book's publisher and its date of publication as given at the foot or on the verso of its title page.* It can mean a trade name...
, May 6, 2003. ISBN 0060528192
Select articles
- "American servers of terror", San Francisco ChronicleSan Francisco Chroniclethumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
, with Josh Devon, August 11, 2002 - "Getting at the Whole Network; A lawsuit helps expose more of al Qaeda", National ReviewNational ReviewNational Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
, with Josh Devon, August 20, 2002 - "The Weakness of the West; Stopping al Qaeda", National Review, with Josh Devon, September 17, 2002
- "Collaborating Financiers of Terror: Hamas and al Qaeda", National Review, with James Mitre, December 16, 2002
- "Terror Tools; Saudi-funded front in Michigan", National Review, with Josh Devon, March 11, 2003
- "Ending Al Qaeda; War’s many fronts", National Review, with Josh Devon, March 20, 2003
- "Perilous Power Play; FBI vs. Homeland Security", National Review, with Josh Devon, May 27, 2003
- "A Global Network; What’s really happening on some U.S. paintball courses", National Review, with Josh Devon, June 30, 2003
- "WWW.JIHAD.COM; E-Groups abused by jihadists", National Review, with Josh Devon, July 14, 2003
- "Al Qaeda’s Fitna; The jihad on Muslims", National Review, with Josh Devon, February 6, 2004
- "Center of the Jihadist World; They call it “Londonistan” for a reason", National Review, with Michael Kern, July 11, 2005
- Katz, Rita. "It’s Real; The arguments over that Zawahiri letter suggests we don’t know our enemy", National Review, October 21, 2005
- "The Coming New Wave of Jihad", The Boston GlobeThe Boston GlobeThe Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...
, March 13, 2006 - "Terrorist 007, Exposed", The Washington PostThe Washington PostThe Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, with Michael Kern, May 26, 2006 - "Osama's olive branch to Shi'ites", The Boston Globe, with Josh Devon, July 26, 2006
- "Web of Terror", ForbesForbesForbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...
, with Josh Devon, May 7, 2007 - "Franchising Al Qaeda", The Boston Globe, with Josh Devon, June 22, 2007
Testimony
- "The Online Jihadist Threat", Testimony Before the House Armed Services Committee; Terrorism, and Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee, U.S. House of Representatives, with Josh Devon, February 14, 2007
- "The Online Jihadist Threat", Testimony Before The Homeland Security Committee; Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment, U.S. House of Representatives, with Josh Devon, November 6, 2007
External links
- SITE Intel Group website
- "Islamist Networks in the United States; A Luncheon with Rita Katz, Director of the SITE Institute", The Nixon Center, November 19, 2003
- "Tracking the Terrorists Online", Yassin Musharbash, Der SpiegelDer SpiegelDer Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...
, August 29, 2008