Newspaper Publisher Arrested as Iraq Agent

An Arab-language newspaper publisher was arrested Wednesday in a Chicago suburb on charges of being an agent of Saddam Hussein, spying on the Iraqi opposition in the United States with such James Bond-style gear as a pen containing a hidden microphone and camera.

The alleged agent, Khaled Abdel-Latif Dumeisi -- codenamed Sirhan -- was accused of funneling information on Iraqi opposition groups in the United States to secret agents working under diplomatic cover at the United Nations, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in U.S. District Court in Chicago.

Dumeisi, 60, is charged with failing to register as a foreign agent, and could face up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted. Arrested at his home in Oak Lawn, Dumeisi appeared briefly in federal court, where U.S. Magistrate Judge Edward Bobrick set a preliminary hearing for July 17.

The complaint spins a tale of phony press credentials and journalistic Deep Throats, including a girlfriend of an unidentified Iraqi opposition leader, who allegedly betrayed her lover by supplying to Dumeisi lists of phone numbers he called. Those who know Dumeisi in the small world of Arab American media said he is a minor player, publishing a once- or twice-monthly newspaper that has shifted its focus over the years but emphasized Iraq in recent months, often criticizing U.S. policy to remove Saddam Hussein.

According to the complaint, Dumeisi was recruited by Iraqi agents in 1998, about the same time he started Around-the-World News, a publishing company whose periodicals included the monthly Al-Mahjar, which had offices in suburban Burbank, Ill. The government said the arrest was triggered by a dossier found in April at an Iraqi Intelligence Service safe house in Baghdad during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Justice Department officials stressed that Dumeisi was not being charged with espionage, but said the charge against him was serious. Federal law requires that individuals other than diplomatic officers who work for foreign governments register with the attorney general.

“Those who gather information in the United States about people living in America for the purpose of providing the information to hostile governments should understand that the FBI will pursue them vigorously,” Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago, said in a prepared statement.

Dumeisi’s attorney, James Fennerty, said his client has been cooperating with federal authorities since 1999, and in May testified before a grand jury.

Fennerty said he met briefly with Dumeisi on Wednesday and the two were considering how to proceed -- and trying to determine precisely what the government is after.

Dumeisi is Palestinian-born but holds a Jordanian passport, and has lived legally in the United States for about a decade, according to his lawyer. He is divorced and has seven children, six of them U.S. citizens.

In interviews with the FBI, Dumeisi acknowledged that he had regular contact with Iraqi personnel at the U.N., but said it was for purely journalistic reasons. According to the complaint, he also acknowledged that he regularly traveled to the U.N. mission to attend events such as the invitation-only celebration of Saddam Hussein’s birthday in April.

The government said Dumeisi produced press identification cards for Iraqi intelligence officers, giving them access to conferences and public gatherings that they could otherwise not attend because of restrictions imposed on travel in the United States by foreign diplomats.

Dumeisi also periodically received money -- $2,000 or $3,000 -- from Iraqi personnel at the U.N. to keep tabs on the Iraqi opposition in America, the complaint said. One of his U.N. contacts, Abdul Rahman I.K. Saad, was expelled by the State Department in June 2002 on suspicion of spying on the U.S., according to the complaint.

His sources of information included a woman who worked for a long-distance phone company who was “romantically involved with a man who was a possible future president of Iraq,” according to court papers.

The documents said she gave Dumeisi a list of phone numbers the man called after Dumeisi “offered to help her learn more about him.” The government said Dumeisi provided the phone information to the Iraqi U.N. mission.

He also received instruction on the craft of intelligence from the intelligence service, and was trained to use a pen with a hidden camera and microphone, which he used to record an interview of an Iraqi opposition member, “clipped to the center of his shirt near the buttons for it to work better,” according to the government.

Dumeisi allegedly had a cellular telephone conversation every Thursday at 1 p.m. with Iraqi personnel at the U.N., and allegedly developed a rudimentary code system to communicate with them. During a search of his home, a copy of the code turned up tucked inside the sleeve of a pocket calendar, the documents said. The FBI said that when he sensed danger, Dumeisi would convey the message that his car was inoperable.

The FBI said it had been investigating Dumeisi for more than four years. But officials said evidence pointing to an Iraqi agent in the United States didn’t surface until this spring when members of the Iraqi National Congress obtained a dossier from an Iraqi intelligence safe house in Iraq.

The file included reports of the activities of an agent -- codenamed Sirhan -- identified in the report as having a “pro-Iraqi/Arab newspaper in Chicago called the Al-Mahjar.”

The government said three former employees who worked with Dumeisi at Al-Mahjar were cooperating in the investigation, as was an admitted former Iraqi intelligence officer who met Dumeisi two years ago at the Iraqi Mission to the U.N.

Dumeisi’s newspaper was initially called Palestine, but in 1996 he changed it to Al-Mahjar -- The Immigrant Community, said Yusef Shebli of the Arab Community Radio Program on WPNA-AM in Chicago.

Dumeisi’s motivation was apparently all business -- to broaden the scope of the paper and avoid scaring off prospective advertisers. Dumeisi worked at the Arab Community Radio Program for a short time in the late 1990s.

According to Shebli and others, Al-Mahjar is, for the most part, a one-man show, a pro-Hussein mouthpiece for a limelight-seeking Dumeisi.

“He didn’t make the paper for the community,” Shebli said. “He made it for himself. He wanted to be the most important Arab journalist in Chicago. He tried to use the paper to get into social circles.”

“But,” Shebli added, “I doubt he posed any danger to anyone.”

Ray Hanania, a Middle East analyst and syndicated columnist who has known Dumeisi for several years, said the publisher declined to join the National Arab-American Journalists Assn. because he felt it focused too much on U.S. interests in the Middle East.

Like other associates and neighbors, Hanania described Dumeisi as kind, gentle and rather unassuming. If he acted as a foreign agent without registering as one, as the government alleges, he seems an unlikely spy, associates said.

“If Saddam Hussein was relying on him for spying, I know there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,” Hanania said. “There really aren’t that many Iraqis here who need to be spied on. It’s not like you’re talking about the shah of Iran and his family.”

Dumeisi is at least the second person in recent months to be charged with acting as an illegal Iraqi agent. A similar charge was brought in April against Raed Rokan al-Anbuke, the son of a former Iraqi diplomat in New York, who was accused of purchasing a miniature camera for an Iraqi intelligence officer and supplying information about Iraqis in the United States.

Schmitt reported from Washington and Slater from Chicago.