May 1, 2012, - 5:03 pm
Homeland Security Intelligence Chief’s Guilty Plea Shrouds Mystery of Palestinian Muslim Intelligence Analyst
As longtime readers know, I’ve been following the story of James M. Woosley, who was Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE’s) top intelligence official, and his embezzlement scam. (Don’t confuse him with the honorable James Woolsey, the former CIA Director.) Woosley’s guilty plea, today–to embezzlement of tens of thousands of dollars–should be a major news story, but isn’t. And it should be a major story, not just because Woosley had the highest security clearance and was the top intelligence official at the Department of Homeland Security’s largest agency. As I’ve noted on this site, it’s a major story because his key conspirator in the scheme, former ICE intelligence analyst, Ahmed Adil Abdallat, is a Palestinian Muslim from Jordan, who had several Jordanian passports (about which he lied to the FBI), smuggled nearly $2 million to several Jordanian bank accounts, made several mysterious, unauthorized trips to Jordan and the Middle East, and spent years in Saudi Arabia. For that $2 million secreted out of the country and his participation in Woosley’s scams, he got a wrist slap–just a year in prison. That’s especially scary (and nauseating) since we don’t know for whom Abdallat was really working back in Palestinian-dominated Jordan or what he did there on his secret trips. Or how much classified intelligence information he gave them and how much of our national security he compromised.
Homeland Security’s Partners in Islamic Crime: Former ICE Intelligence Officials James M. Woosley & Ahmed Adil Abdallat
We don’t know where Abdallat’s money went, but it’s very likely that the illegally obtained Homeland Security funds were laundered to Palestinian terrorists. And that’s assuming that all of the money was actually from Homeland Security. Only about $570,000 appears to have come from phony receipts and “work” for Homeland Security. The source of another $1.2 million in Abdallat-controlled Jordanian bank accounts and apparently sent overseas by Abdallat is unknown. The FBI has been unable to determine where the money came from, other than that it was wire transferred to Jordan from the U.S. and that it could not possibly have been legitimately earned by Abdallat.
Pursuant to Woosley’s plea deal, he will also get a slap on the hand–one to two years in prison. And that’s because federal officials want this story to go away. Woosley had top ICE officials all over the country involved in his embezzlement and fraudulent expense report scams. As I noted on this site, a man who headed ICE’s Los Angeles office and was slated to become the Director of Investigations for the entire ICE agency was caught up in the scam with his girlfriend, another top agent. And many ICE agents tell me that there are so many agents who were involved in this scheme that a good percentage of top ICE agents would be implicated if a thorough investigation was done. They tell me that many agents who knew and/or worked for/with Woosley would submit phony expenses and Woosley would get his cut of their action.
Instead of being the major news that it is, the story is being hushed and swept under the rug. And a lot of ICE agents are angry. They are Homeland Security’s cops, and their agency is rife with a huge corruption scandal that’s been largely ignored. The feds did go after some of Woosley’s family members and girlfriend–who were involved in the scams extorting contractors (and I wrote about some of their involvement previously). But, mostly, it’s been whitewashed.
And the whole scam could have been–and perhaps was–used against Woosley for blackmail and extortion purposes by terrorists or anyone else. Maybe that’s why Abdallat had $2 million in Jordanian bank accounts and was allowed on mysterious trips to Jordan. We’ll never know because light sentences and quickly hammered out plea agreements were worked up by a federal government eager to see this go away.
Read the federal Criminal Information against James Woosley. Read his Statement of Offense. Both documents give more of the details of his offense (or, rather, the part of it that the feds will admit to).
More:
One ICE employee involved was Ahmed Abdallat, the agency’s intelligence supervisor in El Paso, Texas. Abdallat, a former colonel in the Jordanian Air Force, joined the agency in 1995 and worked throughout the Middle East, including three years in Saudi Arabia.
Abdallat’s salary was by no means enough to make him rich, yet in 2010 he made three wire transfers to Middle Eastern accounts totaling $570,000, and he maintained personal accounts in Jordan totaling $1.2 million, authorities say.
Shannon Enochs, an FBI special agent, said during a lengthy court hearing that the FBI does not know where Abdallat got the money but doubted he made it working as a civil servant within the U.S. or Jordanian governments.
Abdallat travelled to D.C. at least 13 times in 2009 and 2010. Each time he submitted travel vouchers that allegedly contained fictitious charges not supported by any receipts or fake receipts created by Rollerson on her home computer. Each time, ICE paid.
More serious, however, were his trips to Jordan. Federal prosecutors charged him with eight counts of misusing a diplomatic passport he was not supposed to have to fly to Jordan.
During a search warrant of Abdallat’s home in El Paso, the FBI reported pulling out 29 boxes of evidence, including two Jordanian passports he denied having during background checks in 2000, 2005 and 2010. He also denied having foreign bank accounts, though the FBI found several written in Arabic after serving their search warrant.
As a life-long intelligence officer with clearance to secret and classified papers on terrorism, narcotics and human smuggling along the Southwest border, Abdallat’s file should have received priority review. Instead, he maintained close personal and financial ties to Jordan, apparently without suspicion.
Again, this is the Department of Homeland Security. If they won’t watch out for this kind of stuff within their own agency–especially at the top ranks of intelligence and high-level security clearances, they definitely aren’t watching out for America.
Good luck, America.
Oh, and by the way, FOX News quotes a whining, do-nothing Michigan Republican Congresswoman Candice Miller about this. But this fraud, Miller, has never done a thing in her life to secure our borders. She’s too busy eating (she’s morbidly obese and disgusting) and pandering to the Muslims back in Michigan, as she’s done in her entire career as politician and office-holder (she’s never done anything in real life for a living).
Again, good luck, America.
Tags: Adil Abdallat, Adil Ahmed Abdallat, ICE, Immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, James M. Woosley, James Woosley
Great article, Debbie. Thanks again for staying on top and reporting of nauseating stories like this.
DS_ROCKS! on May 1, 2012 at 5:06 pm