Author Slams 'Clueless' American Trainers, Says Washington Arming, Funding Jihadists

U.S. Army officers e-mailing Terrorists

American security officers, including U.S. Army instructors, are so "clueless" about the nature of the Palestinian militias the U.S. regularly trains, that the officers have exchanged friendly e-mails with former students who also are known terrorists, including one of the most notorious terror leaders, according to the author of a recently released book.

WND's Jerusalem bureau chief Aaron Klein, author of "Schmoozing with Terrorists," says he discovered officers of U.S. teams that train Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah security forces have kept in touch with some of their former students who also are members of a major Palestinian terror group, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, perhaps unaware they were chatting with terrorists.

In one example, Klein was made aware of a series of pleasant e-mail exchanges between a U.S. Army officer and his former student, one of the most infamous Brigades terror chiefs. The chief received U.S. training from the Army officer in the late 1990s in the West Bank as a member of Fatah's security forces.

The officer also exchanged Christmas greetings last year with his former student, who was a terror chief in the West Bank city of Bethlehem where in 2002 he holed up for 34 days in the Church of the Nativity, the believed birthplace of Jesus. The chief's group was accused of desecrating the holy Christian site.

Another U.S. trainer exchanged e-mails with a former student, a Fatah security officer who doubles as a Brigades terrorist whose cell was accused of orchestrating a series of suicide bombings inside Israel in 2005 and 2006.

In his book, Klein details how the U.S. has been arming, training, funding and coordinating security with members of Fatah's Force 17 and the Preventative Security Services, who openly serve in Fatah's declared "military wing," the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

The Brigades took credit along with the Islamic Jihad terror group for every suicide bombing in Israel the past three years. It is responsible for more terrorism from the West Bank than any other Palestinian Arab organization, carrying out thousands of shootings and grenade attacks.

"It's scandalous that in the midst of the war on terror, our tax dollars are used to fund, train and arm the most active Palestinian West Bank jihad group," said Klein.

... "All the methods and techniques that we studied in these trainings, we applied them against the Israelis," he said.

"We sniped at Israeli settlers and soldiers," he said. "We broke into settlements and Israeli army bases and posts. We collected information on the movements of soldiers and settlers. We collected information about the best timing to infiltrate our bombers inside Israel. We used weapons and we produced explosives, and, of course, the trainings we received from the Americans and the Europeans were a great help to the resistance." ...