Xinhua : Report: Popular gyms monitored by FBI

Report: Popular gyms monitored by FBI

April 29, 2009

LOS ANGELES, April 28 (Xinhua) -- As part of their anti-terrorism efforts, FBI agents monitored popular gyms throughout Orange County near Los Angeles to gather intelligence on members of several local mosques, it was reported on Tuesday.

The FBI used informants to gather intelligence that might aid anti-terrorism investigators, the Los Angeles Times said, quoting a man who claims to have been a key informant in the operation.

The informant, Craig Monteilh, who said he posed as a Moslem convert at the request of the FBI to gather intelligence that might aid anti-terrorism investigators.

Monteilh said he was instructed to lure mosque members to work out with him at local gyms. FBI agents, he said, later would obtain security camera footage from the gyms and ask him to identify the people on the tapes and to provide additional information about them.

The agents then conducted background checks on those people, looking for anything that could be used to pressure them to become informants, according to Monteilh.

Disclosures of the FBI's tactics have angered some leaders in the Moslem community in Orange County, who saw it as a betrayal of their efforts to assist law enforcement after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to the paper.

Last week, a coalition of the nation's largest Moslem organizations, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Moslem Public Affairs Council and the Islamic Society of North America, issued a statement demanding that the Obama administration address FBI actions, the paper said.

Such actions included what they described as the "infiltration of mosques," the use of "agent provocateurs to trap unsuspecting Moslem youth" and the "deliberate vilification" of the council, said the paper.

Hussam Ayloush, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Anaheim, Los Angeles, said he viewed the most recent disclosure as a form of religious profiling that "reflects a deeply rooted mindset that was promoted by the Bush Administration."

"I'm not surprised," he said. "It confirms our worst fears."

Sal Hernandez, director of the FBI's Los Angeles office, declined to comment on the matter. Another law enforcement source, however, confirmed that the surveillance occurred, but emphasized that it was a narrowly focused operation targeting people whom the informant had already implicated in alleged crimes, according to the paper.

Editor: Mu Xuequan

Orange County Register : Court asks FBI for Muslim surveillance files

Court asks FBI for Muslim surveillance files

Muslim organizations are angry over reports of spying in Southern California mosques.

By SEAN EMERY | THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER | April 20, 2009

SANTA ANA – The widening rift between the FBI and the Islamic community has drawn the American Civil Liberties Union into the fray, with the organization's lawyers declaring victory in their efforts to force the release of government surveillance records on Southern California Muslims.

A federal district court judge Monday gave the FBI 30 days to make available for review 48 pages of surveillance memos pertaining to Southern California Muslim organizations that had previously been released only in heavily redacted form, 47 pages of previously withheld memos, and FBI files on the Council of American Islamic Relations and Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the group's Southern Californian Chapter, ACLU staff attorney Jennie Pasquarella said.

Ayloush and Shakeel Syed, the executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, joined Pasquarella in the courtyard of the federal courthouse in Santa Ana minutes after the judge's ruling, declaring the decision a victory for Muslim organizations.

"We are exercising our first amendment rights, and we are running out of patience," Syed said.

FBI representatives forwarded requests for comment to Department of Justice officials, who could not be immediately reached for comment. Federal officials have previously denied charges by several national Islamic organizations that the government has taken part in "fishing expeditions" by sending informants to ensnare Muslims at area Mosques.

A coalition of Islamic organizations known as the American Muslim Taskforce last month threatened to cut ties with the FBI, accusing the agency of using "McCarthy-era tactics."

The announcement came on the heels of Irvine resident Craig Monteilh's public admission that he spent more than a year pretending to embrace Islam at various local mosques as part of an FBI-backed effort to uncover terrorist threats.

Monteilh claimed his work played a key role in the arrest of Ahmadullah Niazi, a Tustin-resident and member of the Islamic Center of Irvine, on several immigration-fraud charges.

But Islamic leaders claim the FBI violated the sanctity of the Islamic religion by sending in Monteilh, a felon who previously served a prison term for conning two women out of more than $150,000.

"While we were led to believe we were partners, we learned we were also under surveillance," Syed said.

The FBI previously declined to comment on the specific allegations brought by the Islamic groups, but pledged to continue outreach efforts with the Muslim community and warned against "limiting honest dialogue, especially when complex issues are on the table."

Muslim leaders say the rift between the FBI and the larger Islamic community has also widened because of the agency's deteriorating relationship with the Council of American Islamic Relations.

In the months following the 911 attacks, the group's officials say they helped the FBI reach out to Muslims and with cultural sensitivity training.

But the group in 2007 came under fire when it was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorist funding case against the Holy Land Foundation.

The FBI recently announced that it has ended its own formal partnership with the council, whose leaders have denied any terrorist links.

Ayloush said he hoped this week's court ruling could spark a "healing phase" between the Muslim community and the FBI.

"We're hoping this will begin the process of undoing this climate of fear," Ayloush said.

Contact the writer: 949-553-2911 or semery@ocregister.com

Orange County News : A Look at Craig Monteilh, Who Says He Spied on the Islamic Center of Irvine for the Feds

A Look at Craig Monteilh, Who Says He Spied on the Islamic Center of Irvine for the Feds

Talkin’ Jihad With Craig Monteilh

Ex-convict, con man, convert—an early conversation with the man who says he spied on the Islamic Center of Irvine on behalf of the feds

By MATT COKER | March 4, 2009

A location scout for a spy movie could not have picked a better location for my late-December meeting with Craig Monteilh: a table outside a restaurant in a bustling Irvine shopping center. A lensman would have appreciated the shadow-erasing clouds hovering overhead on the warm winter morning. And central casting could not have found a better leading man: Monteilh is tall, intense and talkative, with a shaved head and the kind of cut body one would expect from someone who is now a fitness instructor. All that was missing was the story, which Monteilh was just itching to tell.

“I’m looking forward to getting my name back where it should be,” he said.

The gist of the 46-year-old’s tale: that he had taped Afghans, Iraqis and Pakistanis espousing radical ideas and, in some cases, plotting terrorism in Orange County. Not quite trusting the source—for a variety of reasons, which will soon become clear—the Weekly sat on his story.

Then, at dawn on Feb. 20, federal agents arrested 34-year-old Afghan native Ahmad Niazi at his Tustin home. Something about the Los Angeles Times’ coverage of the arrest sounded familiar.

Looking at my Monteilh interview notes with fresh eyes, I saw that I only scribbled down one name as he talked about alleged terror plotters:

Ahmad Niazi.

As I shifted into scramble mode, trying to get back in touch with Monteilh, Niazi was facing five fraud and perjury counts. At his Feb. 24 bail hearing, the eight-year Tustin resident was alleged to have talked in an unnamed informant’s e-mails and recordings of initiating jihad, getting weapons, blowing up buildings, sending money overseas to the Afghan mujahedin and even calling Osama bin Laden “an angel.”

Thomas J. Ropel III, an FBI special agent and Marine-trained counter-terrorism specialist assigned to the Orange County Joint Terrorism Task Force, testified that Niazi was preparing to send the informant to terrorist-training camps in Yemen or Pakistan.

Then Monteilh outed himself. His story appeared first in the Times’ Feb. 26 morning edition, on the Weekly’s Navel Gazing blog that evening and pretty much everywhere else thereafter. Monteilh kept repeating what he told me: He wanted to clear his name. But the whole way he presented his story to me only sowed doubts. Here is how he told it, nearly two months ago:

He was a chaplain for six years with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, where he also dabbled in the intelligence division. Because of his biracial looks and grasp of spy work and religion, he was recruited by the FBI in 2004 and flown to Virginia for counterterrorism training. “The FBI knew there were suspicious activities happening in mosques,” particularly in Southern California, Monteilh said. One famous case was that of 30-year-old Adam Gadahn, the former resident of Santa Ana’s Floral Park neighborhood, onetime member of the Islamic Society of Orange County in Garden Grove and now Al-Qaeda’s jihad-spewing “Azzam the American” in Pakistan. Monteilh said his assignment was to infiltrate mosques in Irvine, Tustin, Anaheim, Culver City, West Covina and San Pedro. His contact on the outside was an “FBI Agent Armstrong.” Monteilh was certain others were sent to infiltrate Southern California mosques as well.

He arrived at the Islamic Center of Irvine in 2006 and befriended members, using the name Farouk Aziz, always wearing robes and, though he has no facial hair now, growing a long beard. But about a year in, an incident he would not describe—other than saying it was unrelated to what he was doing at the mosque—caused people he’d been spying on to wonder about him. To test their suspicions, these young Muslims went to the Islamic Center’s leader, who contacted the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), whose California office is in Anaheim. The advocacy group in turn contacted Irvine police and the FBI to say “Aziz” was spreading “jihad” talk at the mosque, which eventually got a restraining order against him.

In Southern California Muslim news source InFocus’ August 2007 story on the incident (“Is Big Brother At Your Mosque?”), Niazi is identified as one of those who turned in Monteilh. In that and other press reports, the FBI would neither confirm nor deny an investigation was under way.

This exposure, Monteilh said, led to death threats against him from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and someone in Irvine with Taliban ties. “They ruined my reputation,” he said. “I need to be known for what I did. They have me as a terrorist or a potential terrorist. The Islamic community has a restraining order against me because of my ‘jihadist views.’ I was carrying out a direct order.”

He claimed people he was investigating blew his cover to protect themselves. Ropel used that same argument at Niazi’s bail hearing. The agent acknowledged their suspect came forward to turn in a convert who “was scary,” but the bureau believed Niazi figured out the convert was an informant and filed the report to protect himself.

If Monteilh’s tale did not cause the hairs on the back of your neck to stiffen, just Google his name. Like a Christmas tree, the Internet lights up with stories of him being a con man, a gold digger, something of a nut and possibly a government informant. His criminal record extends back to 1987, with charges ranging from forgery to burglary and grand theft. His Orange County rap sheet alone includes charges for 18 separate crimes allegedly committed between January 2006 and November 2007. But here is the strange part: all but two were dismissed on the same day.

Confronted with his online infamy, Monteilh claimed that after he’d been exposed, unnamed government officials spread damning stories about him on the Internet to protect the undercover surveillance program.

So how could he prove he was a government spy? He produced stapled photocopies of what he claimed was a court document that a judge in West Covina would later go on to seal. He said it was the disposition of a grand-theft-auto case in which he was found guilty. He pointed to a section on the last page that stated, beneath the sentencing part, that the Los Angeles County prosecutor asked the judge to cut short Monteilh’s probation because he is an FBI informant who an Agent Armstrong says is doing good undercover work.

Monteilh went on to tell me he tried to get a similar assist after he later got caught up in a crime related to an Irvine drug bust but was hung out to dry amid internal debate within the FBI over the value of the operation to infiltrate mosques. When we spoke, he said he’d just returned from 16 months behind bars. His Orange County rap sheet confirms he served 16 months in state prison on two grand-theft charges.

The dealing soon began. Monteilh said if the Weekly printed an initial story clearing his name, he would share with us his e-mails and recordings. “Uh, let me ask my editor about this,” I sheepishly said. Sensing my lack of excitement, Monteilh talked of taking his story to a larger publication and let it drop he was meeting next with Times Orange County editor Steve Marble.

When I told him it would take some time to check out his story, he suggested I contact Hussam Ayloush, CAIR’s executive director in Anaheim, which I later did. “I have never trusted Monteilh,” Ayloush told me. “He is very suspicious.”

It was getting mighty squishy. Then came Niazi’s arrest. I hastily contacted the FBI about Monteilh’s claims. “The FBI is not commenting,” replied bureau spokeswoman Laura Eimiller.

As for his claim of having been a chaplain, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department had no employee records for a Craig Monteilh. The city jail keeps separate records on chaplains, but badges are retrieved and records are generally purged once the volunteers leave Religious Services.

Before we parted that morning in Irvine, the ex-con conman “convert” motioned toward the parking lot and said, “They’re listening to all this, you know?”

There go those hairs on the back of the neck again.

mcoker@ocweekly.com

Orange County News : The FBI, the Islamic Center of Irvine and Craig Monteilh: Who Was Conning Whom?

The FBI, the Islamic Center of Irvine and Craig Monteilh: Who Was Conning Whom?

Who Was that Mosqued Man?

Craig Monteilh insists he was hot on the trail of terrorist plots at OC mosques. Count the victims of his earlier con games among the skeptics

By NICK SCHOU | April 29, 2009

If there’s a precise moment when the FBI first began to have a sinking feeling about Craig Monteilh, it likely occurred sometime in the spring of 2007, when his handlers read a small detail buried in one of his surveillance reports. Monteilh had been spying on the Islamic Center of Irvine and other mosques for several months. He’d earned the friendship and trust of a small group of Muslims, all of whom, he claims, were actually terrorists bent on carrying out violent attacks in Orange County. Their targets included shopping malls such as Fashion Island, South Coast Plaza and the Irvine Spectrum and, somewhat improbably, abandoned buildings in downtown Los Angeles.

According to his report, Monteilh was walking into a mosque in Tustin with a couple of the terrorists whose cell he’d infiltrated when he noticed a group of young Middle Eastern-looking men unloading several barrels from a van and hauling them into the mosque. At the time, Monteilh insists, he didn’t really think too much about what he saw. He was too busy focusing on the terror plot that he and the terrorists planned to discuss at the mosque that day.

“I looked at them like this, really quick, ‘Salaam aleikum,’” Monteilh recalls two years later in an interview at his house in Irvine, re-enacting the casual sideways glance and standard Islamic greeting—“Peace be unto you”—that he says he uttered that spring day. “I kept walking because we had other business. But I put it in my report that I observed six to eight young Middle Eastern Muslims loading barrels in the back of the mosque.”

But when Monteilh’s FBI handlers read his report, he claims, they began arguing about whether or not he was a liar. “They went, ‘What the hell is this?’” Monteilh recalls. “‘He’s lying.’” The FBI refuses to comment on anything Monteilh says, so assuming any of this happened the way Monteilh says it did, one could easily imagine what went through his handlers’ minds when they read his report: Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to hire a convicted felon and con artist to spy on Orange County’s Muslim community after all.

* * *

Craig Monteilh’s self-declared status as an FBI informant first became public three months ago, shortly after the bureau arrested a 34-year-old Afghan immigrant named Ahmadullah Sais Niazi, charging him with perjury and passport fraud for allegedly lying about previous trips to Pakistan and the fact that his brother-in-law was a high-ranking member of a Taliban faction allied with al-Qaeda. In his sworn affidavit against Niazi, Special Agent Thomas J. Ropel III stated that, in a tape-recorded conversation, Niazi had referred to Osama bin Laden as “an angel.” On Feb. 21, the day after Niazi’s arrest, Monteilh told the LA Times that he was the informant who gave the FBI that tape and that the FBI had paid him to spy on Orange County mosques.

Although the FBI never responded to the latter claim, a week after Niazi’s arrest, Ropel testified in Niazi’s bail hearing that Monteilh had in fact provided the FBI with the tape recording. Ropel’s admission didn’t surprise the leadership of the Islamic Center of Irvine, of which Niazi had been a member. In June 2007, Niazi and another mosque member had reported Monteilh to the FBI, claiming that Monteilh was espousing terrorist rhetoric and trying to draw them into a plot to blow up shopping malls and abandoned buildings. When the FBI refused to investigate, the congregants suspected Monteilh might have been an agent provocateur; the Islamic Center sought and won a restraining order barring Monteilh from entering the mosque. (See Matt Coker’s “Talkin’ Jihad With Craig Monteilh,” March 5.)

Ropel’s admission that the FBI had been working with Monteilh all along led to a firestorm of controversy among Muslims in Orange County and beyond. It flew in the face of a June 2006 promise by J. Stephen Tidwell, an assistant director with the FBI, in a speech before an angry crowd at the Islamic Center of Irvine, that the bureau would never spy on mosques. That promise followed an Orange County Register story that quoted an FBI agent telling a group of Republicans in Newport Beach that the bureau was monitoring “extremists” affiliated with UC Irvine’s Muslim Student Union. (See Derek Olson’s “Against the Wall,” Oct. 19, 2007.)

The only confirmed cases of Orange County residents joining al-Qaeda involve Khalil Deek, a Palestinian exile, and Adam “Yahiye” Gadahn, a Jewish American teenager, both of whom fled to Pakistan before 9/11. Deek spent time in a Jordanian prison for his alleged role in a terrorist plot there but was freed months later. He has since disappeared and is believed to be dead. (See “So I Married a Terrorist . . .” April 20, 2007.) Gadahn, also known as Azzam the American, has appeared in several al-Qaeda videos and is rumored to be hiding out near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Ever since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Muslim groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the American Muslim Task force on Civil Rights and Elections have been working to provide the FBI information about potential terrorist actions on U.S. soil. But after the bureau’s relationship with Monteilh became public, both groups called for Muslim Americans to consider calling off any cooperation with the government. As the outrage spread, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hauled FBI Director Robert Mueller to Capitol Hill to explain his bureau’s policy with regard to spying on mosques.

“We do not focus on institutions; we focus on individuals,” a defensive Mueller responded at the March 25 hearing, adding somewhat optimistically that he fully expected the controversy to blow over. The Muslim community, he insisted, “has been tremendously supportive and worked very closely with [the FBI] in a number of instances around the country.” Meanwhile, despite Monteilh’s claim that he’s a hero who helped thwart advanced-stage terrorist plots in Orange County, the FBI hasn’t arrested anyone except Niazi, who claims that the bureau tried to turn him into an informant, threatening that if he didn’t cooperate, they’d turn his life into a “living hell.”

* * *

Roughly a year before his FBI handlers apparently began to doubt him, someone else was starting to experience a sinking feeling about Craig Monteilh. On the evening of Saturday, Aug. 5, 2006, Danielle—she asked to be identified only by her first name—was working out at a 24 Hour Fitness Center in Irvine when she saw Monteilh pedaling away on an exercise bike. She recalls that he was throwing unsubtle glances her way. “Who is this slimeball?” she thought.

After a few minutes, Monteilh approached her with a friendly smile and inquired why a nice young lady like her was alone at such a late hour. “My first impression was that he was a creep,” Danielle recalls. “He wasn’t attractive to me at all. I like guys who have hair on their head.” Monteilh quickly picked up on the fact that she wasn’t receptive to his efforts at flirtation. Adopting a businesslike tone of voice, he complimented her workout regimen and explained that he was a fitness consultant and could help her achieve her goals. “You don’t need a personal trainer,” he said. “I’ll help you out for free.” When Danielle asked him for a business card, she recalls that his response seemed almost too rehearsed. “My body is my business card,” he said. “My body is my certification.”

Over the next hour, Monteilh explained how he could help Danielle. As a fitness consultant, he had special access to health supplements such as ephedra and human growth hormone, he said, which he provided to famous athletes who paid a handsome price for his services. In fact, Monteilh said, he was doing so much “consulting” that the demand for his talents far exceeded his ability to supply his customers. “All my money is tied up right now,” he said. “If you will front me some money now, I will pay you back with huge returns.” Specifically, if Danielle could write Monteilh a check for $18,100, he would return the cash—and a profit of $12,900—within two weeks.

“I was dumb enough to write him a check,” she says. “When people ask me for help, I’m a sucker. Part of it, I will admit, was greed.”

On the day Danielle was supposed to get her money, Monteilh told her he had some wonderful news: He had another client who needed some ephedra immediately, and if she could give him another $6,000, her total profit would exceed $42,000. The following Monday, when Monteilh promised her the cash, he failed to return her telephone calls. Finally, Monteilh agreed to meet her at the Irvine gym. He explained that the cash was being held up because the “pharmaceutical cartel” he was working with needed a way to make their payment to her look legitimate. If Danielle would simply write another check for $9,000, they’d pay her a total of $53,000 within two hours.

On Sept. 18, 2006, Danielle met Monteilh in the parking lot of a Bank of America branch on Culver Street in Irvine and gave him a $9,000 cashier’s check. He promised to return a few hours later with her money. She waited for him until late that afternoon. At the last minute, he called and, apologizing profusely, invited her to meet him for dinner at Chili’s. While they ate, Monteilh told her that his associates had given him the slip, but he’d secured a promise they’d have her money by the end of the week, he said. Danielle told him that if he failed to deliver this time, she’d file a fraud complaint with the bank.

Even after that, Monteilh managed to coax another $15,000 from Danielle, a good-faith showing on her part that would smooth the way for her to double her rate of return and be paid $91,000 by that weekend. That never happened. Just as before, Monteilh apologized and promised her the money was on its way. Once again, he failed to deliver the cash, and Danielle realized he’d bilked her of $54,256 that she’d never see again. She called the Irvine Police Department, but the detective who took her call told her that she had no more legal standing against Monteilh than a person who gave a drug dealer money but was never delivered the drugs.

Danielle also posted a complaint against Monteilh on the Internet, detailing his fraud and accusing him by name. One person who read the post was “Carla”—which is not her real name—a previous Monteilh victim. She had met Monteilh in February 2006 at Twin Towers Fitness in Irvine. “We actually started dating,” she says. “He was actually the worst lay of my life, not very romantic. If it wasn’t for the money I gave him, I never would have kept dating him. But I was stuck.” Just as Monteilh later did with Danielle, he introduced himself as a fitness consultant who was looking for an investor who wanted to earn massive profits. Between February and August, Carla gave Monteilh a total of just more than $100,000—and never received a single penny in return. She even bought Monteilh a Samsung plasma flat-screen television, which Monteilh said he’d give to the president of the “pharmaceutical cartel” in a bid to ensure she’d receive even more money in return for her investment.

“When I met him, he was driving an old Lexus sedan,” she says. “After I gave him about $20,000, he purchased another car, a new Chrysler 300. After a few months, he was making all these excuses about why I couldn’t get paid. He would always talk about this money being invested in other countries at a high rate of interest and that his phone calls were being monitored. He had me living in fear that if I said anything to anyone, it would interfere with my payout.”

Monteilh told Carla he was involved with Eastern European businessmen who he often had to meet early in the morning, which was why he never spent the night at her apartment. “Obviously, I didn’t know he was married,” she says. (By his own admission, Monteilh was indeed married at that time.) Carla found out about his wife only after she read Danielle’s Internet post and realized she wasn’t the only person Monteilh had conned. Together, she and Danielle hired a private investigator, who told them about Monteilh’s marital status and the fact that he’d served prison time for writing bad checks. “Looking back, I feel stupid, but the man was so good at manipulating,” Carla concludes. “This gentleman is extremely good at what he does and can actually convince you to believe anything he says.”

In January 2007, after hearing each other’s horror stories about Monteilh, both Carla and Danielle walked into the Irvine Police Department’s headquarters, determined to find someone who would listen to them. They met with Sergeant Terry Head and Detective Ronald Carr, who promised to follow up on their accusations. Carr has since retired and could not be located; the police department refused to make either officer available for an interview.

But a September 2007 police report obtained by the Weekly shows that Carr questioned Monteilh about the two women at his house. “The first thing I noticed was a large-screen Samsung plasma television mounted on the wall of the living area,” Carr wrote. When Carr asked Monteilh about Carla, he claimed she had made up lies about him because of their “dating relationship.” Monteilh’s wife was in the room, and when Carr asked her if she knew Monteilh was dating other women, she said she “knew everything about him.” Monteilh denied any wrongdoing, but Carr left the house determined to see him put behind bars for numerous counts of grand theft. “Based on this investigation,” he wrote, “I am requesting an arrest warrant for Craig Frederick Monteilh.”

* * *

By the time Carr’s grand-theft investigation brought him to Monteilh’s house in Irvine, the target of his probe had already received tens of thousands of dollars in payments from the FBI in return for spying on mosques. At least, that’s how much Monteilh conservatively estimates the FBI paid him from early 2006 through late 2007, when Carr’s investigation sent him back to state prison. Monteilh claims his work as an informant actually began with his first stint behind bars in 2002, when he spent a year at Chino State Prison for writing bad checks.

While at the prison, Monteilh claims, he ran with the PEN1 Death Squad, a white-supremacist prison gang. “If you are reasonably intelligent, you can learn their doctrine. ‘We must secure the existence of our race and the future of our white children.’ If you memorize that, along with certain key precepts, you’re pretty much in, and if you memorize all of it, you are leadership. That’s what I did.”

After being released in March 2003, Monteilh says, he was working out at a gym in Costa Mesa when he fell into conversation with a couple of police officers who said they worked for the Regional Narcotics Suppression Program. He told the cops that he’d been an ordained minister with Calvary Chapel in Compton who counseled Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputies at the Twin Towers jail in downtown LA as well as a station in San Dimas before going to prison. (An investigator who looked into Monteilh’s claim for Calvary Chapel says there is not now nor ever has been a Calvary Chapel in that city, and the LA Sheriff’s Department has no record of ever having employed Monteilh.)

The cops invited him to meet some of their colleagues at Sam Yoo’s, a Chinese restaurant in Irvine. “In the course of the conversation, they said, ‘Would you mind sitting down with us and telling us about activities going down in Orange County? You can even be paid doing this,’” Monteilh recalls. “I said sure, and that’s where this started.”

Over the course of the next few years, Monteilh says, he helped the FBI arrest several white-supremacist and Russian-mafia figures.

Monteilh claims his next operation involved “the illegal distribution of HGH [human growth hormone] and anabolic steroids,” but that in the middle of his investigation, the FBI invited him to do “national security work.” Because he wanted to help to defend his country, Monteilh says, he had to abruptly cease his HGH probe. In Monteilh’s telling, Danielle and Carla—the two women he ripped off—were actually targets of his investigation. “There were people we had focused on,” he says. “They gave me money. . . . They were very pissed off that I left. They wanted me to continue providing HGH to them.”

According to Monteilh, an FBI agent met with him at a Starbucks in Costa Mesa and invited him to spy on local mosques in the name of national security. Monteilh claims he then met with two FBI agents, who asked him to name various Middle Eastern current heads of state and every Russian leader since Czar Nicholas. Monteilh rattled off all the names without hesitation. “They looked at each other and said, ‘You’ve already passed,’” he says. “‘We’re going to take what you already know, incorporate it with other things, and make you into a weapon of intel.’ I said, ‘Okay.’”

From there, Monteilh claims, he was taken to a training center, the location of which he refuses to divulge, and was provided with basic Arabic instruction and a refresher course on Islam, which included memorizing the Koran. Monteilh would enter the mosque under his own name but ask to be called Farouk Aziz. He would falsely claim to be of mixed French-Syrian ancestry. “The plan,” he says, “was to enter the ISOI [Islamic Center of Irvine], to begin very slowly, start with Western clothes, Italian suits, and in the process of my studies, shed off all Western [clothes] at the direction of Muslims . . . and to make this transformation as real as possible.”

After converting to Islam—or pretending to—in a public ceremony at the mosque, Monteilh began regularly attending prayers there in August 2006. The mosque’s imam, Sadullah Khan, is a widely respected moderate who grew up in South Africa and was involved in the struggle against apartheid. (He declined an interview request for this story, citing the mosque’s ongoing legal efforts to enforce a restraining order against Monteilh.)

Monteilh also claims he fell in with a group of Egyptians, all of whom were secretly members of the Muslim Brotherhood, and that when the group invited him to visit their houses and attend their meetings, the FBI increased his pay.

In late September 2007, Monteilh claims, one of the Egyptians told him that a Muslim “brother” wanted to meet him and teach him how to make bombs. Monteilh told his handlers. “At the time, we were negotiating my monthly payments,” he says, so the FBI supervisor thought he was lying in order to boost his pay. Monteilh offered to tape-record the Egyptians talking about bombs. A few days later, he accompanied the Egyptians to the It’s a Grind coffee shop on Culver Street. While the rest of the group went inside to buy tea and coffee, Monteilh taped himself thanking the man who’d told him about the bomb instructor. “I am honored that you would trust me in that way,” he said.

“Farouk,” Monteilh claims the man replied. “We’re brothers. I trust you with everything now. I don’t mind telling you about a brother that wants to help you make a bomb.”

Soon thereafter, Monteilh says, he met Ahmadullah Sais Niazi. Over the course of the next few months, Monteilh says, he spent an increasing amount of time with Niazi, discussing jihad. While eating dinner at a Chinese Islamic restaurant in May 2007, they discussed the recent death of an Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Dadullah. According to Monteilh, he secretly recorded Niazi praising Dadullah and Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

“The other one is even greater,” he claims Niazi stated.

“Who’s that?” Monteilh asked.

“The tall skinny one,” Niazi replied.

“Osama bin Laden?” Monteilh asked. “He said, ‘Shhh.’” Then, Monteilh says, Niazi boasted that when bin Laden arrived in Afghanistan from Sudan in 1996, he was there to welcome him. Niazi then offered to provide Monteilh with speeches by bin Laden.

“He is an angel,” Niazi concluded. That quote, Monteilh explains, is the one that FBI agent Ropel later cited in his affidavit against Niazi.

Monteilh didn’t just secretly record Niazi, but he also kept what he claims are copies of all his e-mail communications with him, which he provided to the Weekly. Most of the messages are simply links to various websites and YouTube video clips with subject titles such as “Check this out.” Many of the links no longer work, but the ones that are still valid direct viewers to everything from Arabic instructional websites to clips of such 9/11-conspiracy movies as Loose Change, which posits that the infamous attacks were an inside job. Although many of the e-mails contain essays that are paranoid, distasteful, anti-Semitic and pro-radical-Islam, none of them even comes close to being evidence of any kind of a terrorist plot.

But Monteilh insists that such evidence does exist because he recorded Niazi and other Muslims—none of whom has been arrested nearly two years later—discussing a plot to blow up buildings in Orange County. “We talked about sites, places that were going to be targets: OC malls, Fashion Island, South Coast Plaza, the Spectrum, and the Superior Court and federal court buildings in OC,” he says. “Abandoned buildings in LA and military installations, including recruitment sites.”

It was at about this time that Monteilh typed up the surveillance report in which he claimed to have seen a group of young Middle Eastern-looking men carrying several barrels into the back door of a mosque in Tustin. After his handlers argued over whether he had made up the incident to justify the money they were paying him for three weeks, Monteilh says, the FBI finally sent a radiological team to snoop inside the mosque, using a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant, which allows agents to search homes or buildings without their owners’ permission or knowledge. The results of the radiation tests, he says, were inconclusive. While there’s no evidence other than Monteilh’s word that the barrels ever existed or that the FBI took his claim seriously, the FBI has acknowledged, in response to a 2005 U.S. News & World Report story, that since 9/11, it has conducted radiation tests at mosques in the United States.

* * *

The FBI’s surveillance of Orange County Muslims hit a snag on May 14, 2007, when an agent who was trailing a member of the Muslim Student Union at UCI nearly ran over his target with his car after the student, who realized he was being watched, tried to take the agent’s picture. Monteilh says he learned of the incident through one of his handlers, who called him with the news and warned him that mosque officials would likely become suspicious of any recent converts. “I got a phone call saying they are suspicious of [me] because of what happened,” he says, adding that the agent told him that several mosque officials had discussed him at the Islamic Center. “Our youth are being openly surveilled,” one allegedly fumed. “What about that guy Farouk? How well do you really know him?”

In Monteilh’s telling, the UC Irvine incident led to his cover being blown, thus short-circuiting his spy operation. Assuming that Monteilh isn’t fabricating the conversation he says took place, the only way the FBI would know this dialogue had happened would be if the bureau wiretapped the center. Asked if that were the case, Monteilh nodded. “I don’t know,” he said. Asked if he had bugged the office himself, he nodded again. “You know, I really don’t know.”

But there is another explanation of how Monteilh was exposed. In early June 2007, Niazi and another member of the Irvine mosque told Hussam Ayloush, executive director of CAIR’s Southern California chapter, that they were riding to a mosque in Culver City with Monteilh when he began espousing jihad, saying he wanted to blow up buildings. “At that point, Niazi and the driver of the car realized the guy has gone crazy or is about to do something,” Ayloush says. “They were worried this guy was going to do something and they would be considered accomplices since they knew him.”

Ayloush, who’d been working with the FBI since 9/11, immediately called Tidwell, the official who a year earlier had promised the crowd at the Irvine mosque that the bureau would never spy on mosques. “I am calling to report a possible terrorist,” Ayloush told the assistant director. “He is a white convert in Irvine.” As soon as Ayloush uttered those words, he says Tidwell cut him off. “Okay,” he reportedly replied. “Thanks for letting us know.”

Ayloush offered to provide the FBI with the man’s name and address, but, he says, Tidwell told him to give the information to the Irvine P.D., which he promptly did. “Neither the FBI nor the Irvine P.D. ever bothered to talk to the guy after he was reported,” Ayloush says.

When the Irvine mosque sought and obtained a restraining order against him, Monteilh began sending angry e-mails to Niazi, Ayloush and others, blasting them for being “weak Muslims” and “traitors” for talking to the FBI—a ploy Monteilh says he used to try to maintain his cover.

In June 2008, Ayloush says, Niazi came to CAIR’s office in Anaheim and complained that the FBI had accused him of perjury when he testified for the restraining order against Monteilh and threatened to send him to prison for years if he refused to become an informant. Among other things, he says, the FBI confronted Niazi with their knowledge that his sister was married to Amin Al Haq, an Afghan mujahedin leader who went on to become involved with a militant Taliban faction allied with al-Qaeda, a fact that Niazi had failed to mention in his immigration paperwork. Niazi told Ayloush that he couldn’t pick his in-laws and he did not wish become an informant. “He started crying,” Ayloush recalls. “He said, ‘I don’t want anything to happen to me. I came to America thinking this was a free country and I’d be treated with dignity and humanity.’”

In September 2007, Irvine police finally followed up on Danielle’s and Carla’s complaints, and after working out a plea deal that avoided a jury trial, Monteilh went to jail for conning the two women out of more than $150,000. Although he could have spent more than five years behind bars, prosecutors agreed to lower his sentence to 16 months, of which Monteilh served only eight. The district attorney’s office refused to comment on Monteilh’s claim that he received a reduced sentence after the FBI intervened on his behalf. “We formulated the state prison sentence based upon the amount of theft and the facts and circumstances and proof in the case,” says DA spokeswoman Susan Kang Schroeder. “That’s all we’re going to say about it.”

His victims aren’t being so quiet, especially when it comes to the question of whether the FBI should believe anything Monteilh told them while working as an informant. “When I read about the mosque thing, I couldn’t believe it,” recalls Carla. “His con would be to convert [to Islam], con the Muslims into believing him, and con the FBI out of their money. That’s what he does.”

Danielle agrees. “It would not surprise me if he bullshitted the FBI,” she says. “‘I’m going to prevent another 9/11! Give me your money, and I’ll do that.’ Shame on them for believing him.”

Not surprisingly, in Monteilh’s version of events, he’s both the victim and the hero of this story. He’s preparing a breach-of-contract lawsuit against the FBI. “They allowed Irvine P.D. to arrest me,” he says. “They didn’t live up to the exit strategy. I still have a restraining order against me, and if I violate it, I go back to prison for three months. Does that sound to you like the FBI lived up to its end of the bargain?”

If Monteilh is angry at the FBI, he’s certainly not alone. “The fact that the sanctity of our mosques has been totally violated shows the total disrespect the FBI has toward Muslims,” says CAIR’s Ayloush. “For the past eight years, CAIR and other groups have been engaged in a campaign to build a relationship with the FBI, and at the same time, their instigator was trying to get innocent Muslims to become terrorists. We feel like we were stabbed with a huge dagger in the back.”

Shortly before President George W. Bush left office, the FBI broke off its relationship with CAIR, citing the fact the group was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a case against the Holy Land Foundation, which was convicted in November 2008 of funneling cash to Hamas. The FBI’s decision rankled Tareef Nashashibi, former chairman of the Orange County Arab American Republican Club, which has been active in helping to advise the FBI on its relationship with Muslim Americans. “I wasn’t happy with that,” Nashashibi says. “But what really bugs me is all the trouble coming out of the Orange County office. We saw a threat [Monteilh] and automatically called the police and the FBI, as good citizens should do. And guess what? Our people are getting prosecuted for it. We are doing the best we can to safeguard this country, and we get shot in the foot for it.”

Nobody is less surprised that the FBI supposedly used Monteilh to spy on mosques than Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California. “This has reinforced our suspicions and fears all along that we carried,” he says. In May 2006, just before the FBI’s Tidwell insisted the bureau would never spy on mosques, Syed and several other Muslim leaders, including Imam Sadullah Khan, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the FBI, demanding records of any surveillance operations against them. When the FBI handed over only 50 pages of heavily redacted material, the ACLU filed a lawsuit and ultimately won hundreds of pages—most of them blacked-out—showing that the FBI had indeed been monitoring them. The FBI continues to withhold numerous records on national-security grounds, but on April 20, a federal judge ordered the FBI to hand over those records.

According to Monteilh, Syed’s FOIA request could turn up quite a scandal. Although he refused to elaborate, he claims the FBI wasn’t just spying on mosques. “This is way bigger than that,” he says. “If you think this was racial profiling, you haven’t even heard the beginning.” When asked why the FBI hasn’t arrested anyone other than Niazi if he really thwarted a terrorist plot, Monteilh insists that the FBI is just biding its time for the controversy over his infiltration of the mosques to blow over. “With all that is going on now, maybe it’s best to hold on,” he says. “When they start arresting people, who’s going to be the hero?”

nschou@ocweekly.com

UPI : Informant says he lured Muslims to gyms

Informant says he lured Muslims to gyms

April 29, 2009

LOS ANGELES, April 29 (UPI) -- A convicted criminal and personal trainer says he was recruited by the FBI to pose as a Muslim convert and talk to Muslim men at gyms in Southern California.

Craig Monteilh told the Los Angeles Times he used the name Farouk al-Aziz and went to mosques claiming to be of Syrian-French descent. Agents told him to encourage young men he met to join him for workouts, which were secretly recorded.

Monteilh said he was recruited in 2006 and dropped in 2007. He told the Times the goal of the operation was for the FBI to look for information that could be used to pressure Muslim men into becoming informants.

A law enforcement source told the Times the FBI operation had a narrow focus, investigating men already identified as possible terrorists.

© 2009 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Daily News : FBI agents watched Orange County gyms in anti-terror probes

FBI agents watched Orange County gyms in anti-terror probes

Daily News Wire Services | April 28, 2009

SANTA ANA - FBI agents watched Orange County gyms to gather intelligence on members of several local mosques, a man who claims to have been a key informant in the operation said.

The head of the FBI office in Los Angeles confirmed the surveillance occurred but declined further comment.

Southern California Muslim leaders issued a statement, demanding the Obama administration investigate the tactics, which Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Anaheim-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, said "reflects a deeply rooted mind-set that was promoted by the Bush Administration."

"I'm not surprised," Ayloush said. "It confirms our worst fears."

Craig Monteilh said he posed as a Muslim convert at the request of the FBI to gather intelligence that might aid anti-terrorism investigators. He said he identified several hundred men for agents.

Monteilh, who has a background as a personal trainer, said he was instructed to lure mosque members to work out with him at local gyms.

FBI agents, he said, later would get security camera footage from the gyms and ask him to identify the people on the video and to provide additional information about them. He said he was told FBI agents did background checks on the men, looking for anything that could be used to pressure them to become informants.

While the disclosure upset Muslim leaders, an FBI spokeswoman said it was "absurd to suggest that FBI agents are randomly targeting Middle Eastern men or any other ethnic group for investigation."

Monteilh, 46, is a twice-convicted felon who says he was recruited by the FBI in 2006 to go undercover in the Islamic Center of Irvine, where he said he pretended to be Farouk Al-Aziz, a Syrian-French-American searching for his Islamic roots.

He says he secretly recorded conversations with members of several mosques and provided the recordings to the FBI.

Monteilh said the FBI stopped using him as an informant in 2007 when a supervisor questioned his credibility. He has since filed a legal claim against the bureau, accusing it of reneging on promises to pay him $100,000 and place him in a witness protection program.

LAT : FBI monitored members of O.C. mosques at gyms, alleged informant says

FBI monitored members of O.C. mosques at gyms, alleged informant says

By Scott Glover | April 27, 2009

As part of their anti-terrorism efforts, FBI agents monitored popular gyms throughout Orange County to gather intelligence on members of several local mosques, according to a man who claims to have been a key informant in the operation.

Sal Hernandez, director of the FBI's Los Angeles office, declined comment on the matter Monday. Another law enforcement source, however, confirmed that the surveillance occurred, but emphasized that it was a narrowly focused operation targeting people whom the informant had already implicated in alleged crimes.

The informant is Craig Monteilh, who said he posed as a Muslim convert at the request of the FBI to gather intelligence that might aid anti-terrorism investigators.

Monteilh, a muscular man with a background as a personal trainer, said he was instructed to lure mosque members to work out with him at local gyms. FBI agents, he said, later would obtain security camera footage from the gyms and ask him to identify the people on the tapes and to provide additional information about them. He said he was told that the agents then conducted background checks on the men, looking for anything that could be used to pressure them to become informants.

Disclosures of the FBI's tactics have angered some leaders in the Muslim community in Orange County who saw it as a betrayal of their efforts to assist law enforcement after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The issue has reverberated nationwide.

Last week, a coalition of the nation's largest Muslim organizations, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Islamic Society of North America, issued a statement demanding that the Obama administration address FBI actions, including what they described as the "infiltration of mosques," the use of "agent provocateurs to trap unsuspecting Muslim youth" and the "deliberate vilification" of the council.

Hussam Ayloush, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Anaheim, said he viewed the most recent disclosure as a form of religious profiling that "reflects a deeply rooted mind-set that was promoted by the Bush Administration." "I'm not surprised," he said. "It confirms our worst fears."

FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said, "While the FBI does not comment on investigative techniques, it's absurd to suggest that FBI agents are randomly targeting Middle Eastern men or any other ethnic group for investigation."

Monteilh, 46, is a twice convicted felon who says he was recruited by the FBI in 2006 to go undercover in the Islamic Center of Irvine, where he said he pretended to be Farouk Al-Aziz, a Syrian-French American searching for his Islamic roots. He says he surreptitiously recorded conversations with members of several mosques and provided the recordings to the FBI.

Though FBI officials have declined to discuss Monteilh's alleged role in any investigation, a law enforcement source confirmed that he worked as an informant.

Monteilh (whose name is pronounced Mahn-Tay) said the FBI stopped using him as an informant in 2007 when a supervisor questioned his credibility. He has since filed a legal claim against the bureau, accusing officials of reneging on promises to pay him $100,000 and place him in a witness protection program.

In several recent interviews with The Times, the 6-foot-2, 260-pound Monteilh said he was encouraged to invite members of several mosques to join him for workouts at various fitness centers in Irvine, Tustin, Laguna Niguel and Costa Mesa. Monteilh said he would routinely lead between eight and 15 men in a regimen of weightlifting and cardiovascular exercise. He said a car key operating as an electronic recording device was capturing whatever he and the men talked about.

About a month after the workouts began, Monteilh said one his "handlers" at the FBI started showing him photos that he was told were still shots taken by video surveillance cameras at the gyms. He said the agent would typically show him between 75 and 100 photos per meeting, which he said were usually at various Starbucks in Orange County.

Monteilh identified the agent by name, but his identity is being withheld by The Times at the request of an FBI official who cited his involvement in covert activities unrelated to the case that Monteilh said he was involved in.

Monteilh said the agent would ask him to write down the name of the person in each photo, the mosque they attend, their nationality and the names of their associates. He estimated that he identified several hundred men, the majority of them between the ages of 18 and 50. Many were professionals, including doctors and lawyers, he said. Most were students.

Monteilh said he broached the topic of racial profiling, but was rebuffed.

"White little old ladies aren't blowing up buildings and planes," Monteilh quoted one agent as saying. "We're looking at these people based on the fact that there's a terrorist threat in the Islamic community . . . there's no other way."

He said the project was working so well that his handlers were given clearance to use him to open a gym that would cater to men in the Islamic community. It was supposed to have a prayer room next to the workout area and the entire place was going to be wired for audio and video surveillance, Monteilh said. He said the project was scrapped after his cover was blown.

A spokesman for one of the fitness centers where the activities allegedly occurred said the company had no knowledge of the FBI probe. Representatives from other gyms did not respond to inquiries from The Times.

Gyms have played a role in the formation of terrorist cells, experts said. According to the British government's report on the bombings in London on July 2005, three of four terrorists became connected at gyms. One of the British gyms was dubbed the "Al Qaeda gym" because it was known as a hotbed for extremists, the report stated. The 9/11 terrorists and Madrid bombers also bonded at gyms.

Monteilh's role as a government informant seemed to be supported by the testimony of an FBI agent in February.

The agent, Thomas J. Ropel III, was testifying at a bail hearing in the case of Ahmadullah Sais Niazi, who is charged with perjury, naturalization fraud and making a false statement to a federal agency for, among other things, not disclosing that his brother-in-law is Osama bin Laden's alleged security coordinator.

Ropel told the judge in the case that Niazi had been secretly recorded by an informant as he threatened to blow up abandoned buildings. The agent did not name Monteilh but testified that the informant was the same man Muslims had reported to the FBI as an extremist two years earlier.

Monteilh was reported to the FBI in June 2007 after members of the Islamic Center of Irvine alleged that he was promoting terrorist plots and trying to recruit others to join him.Monteilh denies being a terrorist and said anything he said or did at the mosque was in his capacity as an informant for the FBI. He said he was given permission by authorities to engage in terrorist rhetoric, planning and "pretty much anything short of an actual attack" as part of his assignment.

scott.glover@latimes.com

Times staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report.

Penn Live : Personal Trainer Says FBI Used Him as Muslim-Community Informant

Personal Trainer Says FBI Used Him as Muslim-Community Informant

Los Angeles Times | The Associated Press | April 27, 2009

(AP) — As part of anti-terrorism efforts, FBI agents monitored popular gyms in Orange County, Calif., to gather intelligence about members of several area mosques, according to a man who claims to have been a key informant in the operation.

Sal Hernandez, director of the FBI's Los Angeles office, declined to comment on the matter Monday. Another law-enforcement source confirmed that the surveillance occurred but emphasized that it was a narrowly focused operation targeting people whom the informant already had implicated in alleged crimes.

The informant is Craig Monteilh, who said he posed as a Muslim convert at the request of the FBI to gather intelligence that might aid anti-terrorism investigators.

Monteilh, a muscular man with a background as a personal trainer, said he was instructed to lure mosque members to work out with him at local gyms. FBI agents, he said, later would obtain security-camera footage from the gyms and ask him to identify the people on the tapes and provide additional information about them. He said he was told that the agents then conducted background checks on the men, looking for anything that could be used to pressure them into becoming informants.

Disclosure of the FBI's tactics angered some leaders in the Muslim community in Orange County who saw it as a betrayal of their efforts to assist law enforcement after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The issue has reverberated nationwide.

Last week, a coalition of the nation's largest Muslim organizations, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Islamic Society of North America, issued a statement demanding that the Obama administration address FBI actions, including what they described as the "infiltration of mosques" and the use of "agent provocateurs to trap unsuspecting Muslim youth."

"While the FBI does not comment on investigative techniques, it's absurd to suggest that FBI agents are randomly targeting Middle Eastern men or any other ethnic group for investigation," FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said.

Monteilh, 46, is a twice-convicted felon who says he was recruited by the FBI in 2006 to go undercover in the Islamic Center of Irvine, Calif.. where he said he pretended to be Farouk Al-Aziz, a Syrian-French American searching for his Islamic roots. He says he surreptitiously recorded conversations with members of several mosques and provided the recordings to the FBI.

Although FBI officials have declined to discuss Monteilh's alleged role in any investigation, a law-enforcement source confirmed that he worked as an informant.

Monteilh (pronounced Mahn-Tay) said the FBI stopped using him as an informant in 2007 after a supervisor questioned his credibility. He has since filed a legal claim against the bureau, accusing officials of reneging on promises to pay him $100,000 and place him in a witness-protection program.

In several recent interviews with the Los Angeles Times, the 6-foot-2, 260-pound Monteilh said he was encouraged to invite members of several mosques to join him for workouts at fitness centers in Irvine, Tustin, Laguna Niguel and Costa Mesa, Calif. Monteilh said he routinely led between eight and 15 men in a regimen of weightlifting and cardiovascular exercise. He said a car key operating as an electronic recording device captured whatever he and the men talked about.

About a month after the workouts began, Monteilh said one his "handlers" at the FBI started showing him photos that he was told were still shots taken by video surveillance cameras at the gyms. He said the agent typically showed him between 75 and 100 photos per meeting.

Monteilh identified the agent by name, but his identity is being withheld by the Times at the request of an FBI official who cited his involvement in unrelated covert activities.

Southern California InFocus : Is Big Brother at your mosque?

Is Big Brother at your mosque?

By ABDUSSALAM MOHAMED | Senior Staff Writer | August 7, 2007

LOS ANGELES – On the first Friday of each month, Mohammed Elsisy, an Egyptian-born software engineer, usually drives from his home in Irvine, Calif., to the King Fahad mosque in Culver City, Calif., to deliver the khutba, or sermon.

Elsisy thought the first Friday of this past June would be no different.

But little did he know something totally unexpected was about to happen that would make this particular Friday the most memorable for years to come.

Elsisy had two passengers in his car at the time.

In the back seat sat Ahmed Niazi, 33, a language teacher and a friend, while in the passenger seat sat a man who converted to Islam almost a year ago.

The man was 44-year-old Craig Monteilh, but he went by the name "Farouk Aziz."

"Monteilh started talking about the Iraq war," Niazi said. "He went off on a rant against U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East."

But then, out of the blue, Monteilh said something that sent chills down the spines of his companions.

He asked Elsisy and Niazi if they knew of an "operation" he could be part of.

Pin-drop silence followed. Elsisy’s eyes bounced over to the rearview mirror and traded a horrified glance with Niazi.

"Blood froze up in our veins," Elsisy recalls.

Exactly a year earlier, Monteilh had walked into the Islamic Center of Irvine and declared his intention to embrace Islam.

Issa Edah-Tally, president of the center, said Monteilh, known only as Farouk then, was just another convert among many who took Shahada, or declaration of faith, at the center and became regulars at the mosque.

"We don’t ask people for their real names and don’t keep track of who attends prayer service," Edah-Tally said.

Monteilh started attending regularly and enrolled in the weekly adult Arabic class taught by Niazi.

"Farouk told me his real name was Frederick Jordon," Niazi recalled. Monteilh also told Niazi that he was of French and Moroccan descent.

However, when Monteilh joined the Berlitz Language Institute’s Costa Mesa branch – where Niazi works – to learn Arabic, he filled out a form and wrote his name as Craig Monteilh.

"I don’t know why he lied about his real name," Niazi said. "And I don’t know why he chose to write down his real name knowing I worked at the Berlitz."

A few months after his conversion, Monteilh was able to make several friends at the mosque. Some recalled how he often went on anti-American tirades, blasting U.S. foreign policy and decrying the suffering of Muslims throughout the world.

But then he started talking about something else.

Ashruf Zied, a software engineer from Irvine, Calif., said Monteilh approached him one day claiming to have access to weapons and asking if he wanted to join him in "waging jihad."

Zied was floored. "I was completely taken aback by what he said," Zied said. "I said, hold it there. What are you talking about?"

Zied said he tried to give Monteilh advice, but found him argumentative and set in his ways.

As his call for armed war became more aggressive, some frightened worshippers stopped attending the prayers altogether.

Board members at the center felt compelled to take action.

They contacted the southern California office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, known as CAIR.

Hussam Ayloush, the council’s executive director, recommended they immediately report the incident to the Irvine Police Department (Irvine PD) and to the FBI.

"There was no question about what they were supposed to do next," Ayloush said.

Detective Frough Jahid from the Irvine PD and Special Agent Ellis Kuppferman from the FBI ended up interviewing Edah-Tally, Elsisy, Niazi and Zied, among others.

Elsisy, Niazi and Zied were shocked to find out through Jahid that Monteilh had a criminal record.

Monteilh had told the three he worked as a fitness trainer and was a former pastor.

However, a routine search on the Internet revealed that Monteilh had an extensive criminal record dating as far back as 1987.

The charges included the following: separate charges of grand theft in 1987, 2002 and 2003; burglary in 2002 and forgery in 2003.

There were also several reports against Monteilh on ripoffreport.com, accusing him of scams, fraud and grand theft.

As the fuzzy picture of Monteilh started to come into focus, rumors spread within a community in jitters about agent provocateurs and informants who were infiltrating mosques in order to trick Muslims into false "terror confessions."

A recent case in New Jersey involved a new immigrant from Pakistan named Shahawar Matin Siraj, 24, who was befriended by a fellow Muslim named Osama Eldawoody at a local mosque. Siraj was later talked into a conspiracy to bomb Manhattan’s 34th street subway station.

FBI agents arrested Siraj based on a taped confession he made to Eldawoody that the latter recorded in his car.

A similar incident almost repeated itself inside Elsisy’s car on that fateful Friday as he rode with Monteilh.

Elsisy recalled how Monteilh always touched his Blackberry before he talked. "I thought he was getting calls," Elsisy said. "Now that I think about it, I believe he was recording our conversations."

The Washington Post published an extensive article on May 29 about confessed FBI informant Eldawoody, who was accused by Siraj’s family and supporters of goading his victim into a terror plot Siraj had neither the means nor the know-how to carry out.

The article further said, "The case in New York isn’t the only one. Two informers played a role in the recent case of the young Muslim men accused of plotting to kill soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J. One of the young men was recorded telling the informer he was at his service. Later the informer volunteered to obtain machine guns and heavier arms. In Miami, an FBI informer posing as a member of al-Qaeda gave a group of men military boots and cell phones, promised weapons and suggested their first target be a Miami FBI office. In Lodi, Calif., a federal informer who lied about seeing an al-Qaeda leader in the area helped to convict a 23-year-old of training at a terrorism camp."

Defense lawyers in a number of other terrorism suspect cases accused informants of solely seeking financial boon by creating so-called terrorists that did not exist.

According to court records, Eldawoody was paid $100,000 over a period of 3 years.

Since Siraj’s conviction, Eldawoody has his rent covered and receives a monthly stipend of $3,200.

According to The Washington Post, a police spokesman indicated the direct payments to Eldawoody would likely continue "indefinitely."

With such incentives, critics argue, informants are likely to be created out of thin air to join the "inform-and-cash" industry.

Meanwhile, the Muslim community across the country is feeling the heat of being closely watched.

"This is creating mistrust between our community and law enforcement officials," Ayloush said.

In light of their extensive criminal records, Ayloush added, these individuals would neither qualify as police officers nor as FBI agents, yet they are on the payroll of law enforcement agencies and are allowed to do law enforcement work.

"We all respect hardworking law enforcement agents," Ayloush said. "But mercenary informants? Hardly."

Laura Eimiller, spokeswoman for the FBI Los Angeles office, told InFocus the bureau could not confirm nor deny an investigation.

"However, individuals are encouraged to come forward to report any suspicious activity to law enforcement officials," she said.

But Ayloush argued this case sends mixed messages to the Muslim community.

"On one hand, they are asked to report suspicious activity, but on the other hand, they are left without any protection once the suspected terrorist or informant gets angry and chooses to retaliate against those who reported him," he said. "How is this going to encourage people to do the right thing?"

Niazi said an angry Monteilh visited him at the Berlitz office and verbally threatened him shortly before he was supposed to appear in court to testify against him.

Niazi later received a provocative e-mail from Monteilh, a copy of which was made available to InFocus.

In the e-mail, Monteilh wrote, "…there is a restraining order against me. And now I’m hearing you are a part of this whole thing... The F.B.I. has contacted me. They want to interview me about certain rumors. What’s funny is these rumors cannot be proven. There’s no proof of me doing or saying anything. This is why I’m somewhat laughing. But Ahmad, I have evidence of things we discussed. I have proof. And lots of proof. Now it’s my turn. I’m very sorry it had to come to this."

The incident was reported to law enforcement officials in the first week of June, but the FBI waited three weeks to contact Monteilh.

Moreover, Monteilh was reportedly seen attending evening prayers at the Omar Al Farouk mosque in Anaheim.

"Why did they wait so long to contact him? Why wasn’t he arrested?" some community members asked. "What if this individual acted on his words?"

These were legitimate questions, they said, which were not addressed by any of the law enforcement officials involved.

Human intelligence

A July 25 article on an ABC News blog reported that, following a directive from President Bush in 2004, the FBI was ordered to boost its human intelligence capabilities by recruiting informants.

According to a recent unclassified document, the FBI plans to "overhaul its database system, so it can manage records and verify the accuracy of information from more than 15,000 informants."

The document, which was made available to Congress, goes on to state, "While many of the recruited informants will apparently be U.S. residents, some informants may be overseas, recruited by FBI agents in foreign offices."

The cost to taxpayers is expected to top $22 million, according to the document.

"The question is: Are we genuinely monitoring would-be terrorists to protect the public, or are we in the business of creating terrorists so we can justify use of the funds appropriated to fight domestic terrorism?" Ayloush said.

Many argue the problem is that informants are people who are usually ex-cons and criminals who choose this path to buy their freedom.

As was the case with Eldawoody, they say informants feel forced to create something if necessary to exonerate themselves in the eyes of the law and justify receiving money for information they feel compelled to collect.

Ayloush said these so-called informants are oftentimes rapists, drug dealers or people who have broken the law in different ways.

"How can you put national security in the hands of crooks and criminals who have no respect for the law to begin with?" he said.

Other critics maintain that individuals like Eldawoody and Monteilh are not acting as informants, but rather as agent provocateurs.

They pressure and brainwash people who otherwise would not engage in violence and extremism, and always choose their victims among the most vulnerable, such as disenchanted youth, the unemployed and the angry who exist in every community.

"They are creating terrorists in a way that no actual terrorist recruiter would have been able to," Ayloush said.

Edah-Tally believes all Islamic centers should be vigilant and pay attention to what is going on in their mosques.

"Community members should be encouraged and not be afraid to come forward to report incidents as they occur," he said.

The Friday following the incident, Elsisy gave a sermon in which he made reference to his traumatic experience.

He told his congregation that American Muslims are patriots who love their country and would not hesitate to protect it from anyone who wants to harm it.

"We, as American Muslims, should never hesitate at all to report any kind of suspicious activity," Elsisy said.