Ties to Terrorism : Extremists Tap Into U.S. Money Tree

Rabbi Meir Kahane, a Brooklyn-born member of the Israeli Knesset (parliament), swept through Los Angeles, Chicago and New York last month to campaign for support among his American friends--a financial constituency no less important to his ambitions than the political one he commands back home in Israel.

Kahane, who founded, but has since left, the extremist Jewish Defense League, is said to raise about $500,000 annually in the United States. Such generosity has enabled him to set up 50 branch offices around Israel and to buy and install a secure radio telephone network linking his Kach Party offices within the country. Kach, which is on the far right of the Israeli political spectrum, advocates the expulsion of all Arabs from the Jewish state.

‘Raised a Lot of Money’

“There’s no question most of my funding comes from America, as is the case with most parties in Israel,” he said at an acquaintance’s home in Beverly Hills. “And this trip to Los Angeles has been the most important in years. We had a house party before the speech Monday night, with 200 people, and we raised a lot of money. A lot of money.”

Like scores of other individuals and groups, Kahane has tapped into the American money tree that provides millions of dollars for political causes abroad. Most of the money is collected legally and given by well-intended donors, yet federal authorities worry that too often funds raised here go to extremist organizations that, at best, support positions adverse to U.S. interests and, at worst, engage in terrorism.

“There’s a real contradiction,” said a State Department official and former U.S. ambassador, “because on one hand the United States is at the forefront of the fight against terrorism and trying to push other governments to move against terrorism. On the other hand, these governments come back to us and say, ‘Why don’t you do something about the terrorism in your country that affects our people?’ ”

50% of IRA Budget

The American connection provides about half the weapons used by the outlawed Provisional wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Northern Ireland. In the early 1970s, money collected in the United States accounted for 50% of the IRA’s annual $7-million budget, according to James Adams, author of “The Financing of Terror.”

A dinner in New York City last January, sponsored by Irish Northern Aid, drew a sellout crowd of 1,200 and raised more than $20,000. The organization says the money will go to the families of political prisoners; the British and Irish governments say it will be used to buy guns.

Between 1981 and 1986, the FBI attributed 17 terrorist attacks to the Jewish Defense League, and contributions still poured in, even though Kahane’s call to expel all Arabs from Israel has been dismissed by every mainstream Jewish organization in the United States.

Armenian and Croatian nationalists have used funds raised in the United States--and sometimes extorted from their local business communities--to underwrite campaigns of bombing and assassination. Cubans in Miami and Union City, N.J., have subsidized their dreams of a non-Communist homeland by issuing bonds that mature when Fidel Castro is overthrown. Cambodian refugees in Southern California are being asked by some of their local leaders to “sponsor a guerrilla” by donating $45 to outfit a rebel fighter.

“The general feeling in the United States is that raising money for humanitarian purposes is OK, money for lethal weapons is not OK,” said Brian Jenkins, an expert on political violence at the RAND Corp. in Santa Monica. “But you’ve got to remember money is fungible.

‘It’s Still a Dollar’

“A group can move a dollar from its humanitarian budget to its weapons budget to some other budget and it’s still a dollar. And if you reduce the burden an organization has to deal with in taking care of its people, you free money for weapons. Dollars are dollars.”

Jenkins points out that U.S. ethnic diversity means virtually every group has a constituency here from which to obtain support--yet competing groups, such as the Zionists and the Palestinians, the Armenians and the Turks, the IRA and the British, all have different interpretations of the same history.

The result is that what one group may see as a humanitarian cause addressing a just grievance, the other views as a means of perpetuating repression and terrorism. There are, for instance, more Jews in the United States than in Israel, more Muslims than in Jordan. More Palestinians live here than in any country outside the Middle East, more Armenians than anywhere except Soviet Armenia. Miami has a larger Cuban population than does Santiago de Cuba, Cuba’s second-largest city. The number of Americans with Irish blood exceeds 40 million--eight times the population of Ireland itself.

Irish Northern Aid (Noraid) finds its biggest support in the Irish communities of New York, Boston and Philadelphia. Its national publicity director, Martin Galvin, a New York City attorney who is banned by the British government from entering the United Kingdom, scoffs at charges that Noraid’s fund-raising supports anything but Northern Ireland families and anti-British lobbying efforts.

Dispute Weapons Connection

“The simple fact is that our money does not go to buy weapons,” he said. “We have no relationship with the IRA, though we believe the north of Ireland has the right to resist British occupation. Our books are open. If we were involved in weapons, the FBI would have put us out of business a long time ago.”

In a 1981 court case, however, the Justice Department forced Noraid to register as a foreign agent for the IRA, which the U.S. government considers a terrorist organization. According to the most recent report filed with the Justice Department, Noraid raised $189,890 in the first six months of 1987, of which $85,415 was used for local expenses and $90,000 was sent to An Cumman Cadhrach, a prisoner-relief organization in Dublin with links to the IRA.

An Irish diplomat in New York said it is suspected that Noraid raises three times more than it claims, with the excess being shuttled out of the United States to purchase weapons. Some of the transatlantic couriers have been off-duty New York City policemen headed to Ireland on vacation, it has been reported.

Noraid’s Boston “unit” alone claims to have raised $50,000 last year through concerts, dinners and dances. “We’ve been described as the most powerful organization in Boston,” said Irish-born contractor Jim Maunsell, sitting in Dorchester’s Emerald Isle bar, where the Irish clientele drinks Bass ale, watches videotapes of soccer matches in Ireland and reads the Irish Voice newspaper.

Noraid’s annual Boston dinner Feb. 16 did little to refute Maunsell’s contention: It drew 600 supporters, and in the booklet accompanying the banquet, full page ads were sponsored by four city councilors, two state representatives, the president of the state senate, the Middlesex County sheriff, three longshoremen’s locals and “The O’Briens,” who proclaimed “Victory to the IRA!”

‘Guns Murder Our People’

“There is nothing romantic about Noraid,” said Garret FitzGerald, the former Irish prime minister, who, like his predecessors, sees the IRA as a threat to the south as well. “It collects for the IRA. The IRA buys guns with the money. The guns murder our people. Why would Americans want to destroy our society?”

For some members of America’s ethnic minorities, involvement in the old country’s causes acts as an antidote for the guilt that comes with having found a better, safer, more prosperous life, many miles from the troubles that others must still endure. They must find a balance of identity between their allegiance to a former homeland and their place in a new society. Being anti-Turkish, for instance, has become part of the Armenian identity in the United States.

“Part of me feels disconnected,” said Sarkis Ghazarian, director of the Armenian Relief Society in Glendale. Armenian nationalists, almost all of whose relatives suffered at the hands of the Turks in 1915, want the eastern provinces of Turkey and Soviet Armenia returned to them as the independent state of Armenia.

“I want to remember my ethnicity that has political goals 10,000 miles away,” Ghazarian went on. “But I’m 37, and whether I see that in my lifetime, I don’t know. I have two children, 3 and 5. What do I do to bring up decent kids with a sense of worth and make them aware of this political situation that needs to be addressed? And if that liberation happens in their lifetime, do they want to live there?”

Three groups--the conservative Armenian Revolutionary Federation, the left-wing Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia and the Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide--believe that awareness can best be kept alive through terror. As with all terrorist organizations, none could survive without at least passive support from some elements of their ethnic community.

Killed 21 Diplomats

The groups assassinated 36 Turks, including 21 diplomats, worldwide between 1973 and 1984. Among the victims were the two Turkish consuls-general to Los Angeles, one killed at the Biltmore Hotel in Santa Barbara in 1973, the other shot at a Wilshire Boulevard stop light in 1982. Arrests were made in both cases, but Turkish diplomats were sufficiently fearful to informally request that the State Department run a check on all Californians whose names ended in “ian.” In rebuffing the request, a department official asked if that would include the state’s governor, George Deukmejian.

“What support comes from the United States to finance this terrorism I can’t tell you because we honestly don’t know,” said Daryal Batibay, the Turkish deputy chief of mission in Washington. “We simply don’t know how this terrorist network operates. It is very secretive, and it is not easy to blame anyone specifically.”

Historians note that the raising of both private and governmental funds to subsidize causes, good and bad, abroad is not new in the United States. Irish fund-raising here goes back to 1857, when the Fenian Brotherhood was organized secretly in Paris and New York. William Walker financed his turn-of-the-century military expedition into Latin America here. Spanish republicans, Mexican revolutionaries, Zionists, African liberation movements and Nicaraguan Contras all have found support here. More than $1 billion is raised privately for Israel here each year. Thousands of dollars are also collected for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

“It’s important that the Palestinians stay in the West Bank and this effort helps,” said Anan Jabara, national president of the Detroit-based Palestine Aid Society. She said $100,000 was raised last year for medical and educational programs in the occupied territories and that donations in January, during street battles between Palestinians and Israelis in the occupied territories, had been higher than in any month since Israel invaded Lebanon in June, 1982.

Inquiries Hit Stone Wall

When federal authorities do suspect money is collected illegally to support terrorist activities, their investigations often hit a stone wall.

“There’s a variety of fund-raising in the country that may not be what it purports to be,” said Steve Pomerantz, chief of the FBI’s counterterrorism section, “but it’s very difficult to say that dollar A was raised in the United States, then turn around and say these guns and grenades were purchased by dollar A. It becomes particularly difficult when the money is filtered through some guise of humanitarianism. Besides, there is no single statute that addresses the issue.”

The law does not forbid an American from collecting money for any cause, if he is acting independently and is not aligned with a foreign entity. He can even ship weapons if he has secured the proper export licenses. But anyone carrying more than $10,000 cash in or out of the country must declare the currency, and anyone raising funds to be used for political purposes in another country must register with the Justice Department and state the intended use of the money. More than 750 people and companies are registered as foreign agents under the act, representing various interests of countries from Albania to Zimbabwe.

“Some of the people screaming about the collection of money in this country for the Contras were involved in the collection of money for the Salvadoran guerrillas,” said the RAND Corp.’s Jenkins. “So it becomes a judgment call. I can’t see any legal foundation for the government to interfere with fund-raising unless it wanted to say, ‘This good cause is OK, this bad one isn’t.’ And those aren’t the kind of decisions I want government making for me.”

Researcher Nina Green contributed to this story.