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August 29, 2003/Elul 1 5763, Vol. 55, No. 53
Undercover in the world of terror
AARON LIEBEL
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
She's had some frightening moments during the past several years. As an undercover investigator, Rita Katz attended pro-Palestinian rallies and fund-raising events disguised as a Muslim woman in order to expose the links of American Islamic groups to foreign terrorist groups.
At one conference, the Potomac resident relates in her recently published book, she was seated on the right side of the room, with the other women and children as is the custom at such events, when suddenly someone from the left side of the room screams, "You are not a Brother! Get out!"
"I hear raised voices again," Katz writes. "Someone shouts, 'The insolence! Who do they think they are? The next one we find we'll tear apart! No recording in this hall, everyone! We mean that!'
"My heart is beating fast, and I am sweating. ... Putting myself in danger is one thing, but risking my baby (she is pregnant) there's too much at stake. If I'm discovered, I'll never be able to do this again."
"It was scary, especially in small meetings," Katz, author of "Terrorist Hunter: The Extraordinary Story of a Woman Who Went Undercover to Infiltrate the Radical Islamic Groups Operating in America" (HarperCollins), says in an interview. "I tried not to think about it.
One fear for Katz, who spent much of her childhood and years as a young adult living in Israel and often spoke a mixture of Hebrew and Arabic, was that she might blurt out some word in Hebrew.
She considered giving up this dangerous work. "I wanted to be a normal woman," says the author, who is the mother of four children. "But I thought 'If I don't do this, no one else will do.' "
In May, Katz told her story on the CBS news magazine, 60 Minutes, but in disguise. She also wrote her book under the name "Anonymous" to protect herself and her family from retaliation from groups, whose hidden links to al-Qaeda, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah she has exposed.
However, last month, two of the groups she discussed in her book and on TV - the Heritage Education Trust and the Safa Trust - sued her and revealed her name and the identity of SITE (The Search for International Terrorist Entities) Institute that she heads.
Because the lawsuit is pending, Katz is reluctant to talk about the case. But she does say "this attempt to silence her" will not prevent her from continuing her work.
Katz was born in 1963 in southern Iraq's Basra into a wealthy Jewish family. She remembers a happy childhood amid a tight-knit Jewish community.
Her world fell apart when her father was accused of spying for Israel and arrested shortly after the Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party seized power in 1968.
The family, all of whose property was confiscated by the state, moved to Baghdad to be near her father. He was publicly hanged in 1969.
Two years later, her mother, fearing for her life, organized an escape for the whole family through northern Iraq into Iran. From there, the family made its way to Israel, where Katz grew up.
After earning a degree in Middle Eastern studies from Tel Aviv University, Katz joined her mother in a business venture, manufacturing and selling clothes to the fervently Orthodox.
Katz says she resisted coming to live in the United States because of her Zionist views ("I believed that Jews belong in Israel"), despite her physician-husband's opportunity to advance in his field by working here. But after Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli in 1995, she and her husband decided "to try a different life (in the U.S.)," she says.
Five years ago, Katz answered an ad and was hired by a Middle Eastern research institute. (Because of her lawsuit, she doesn't want to reveal the institute's name.)
She started reading documents in English and Arabic about the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.
"I saw differences in the translations," Katz recalls. "The Arabic list was longer, and I recognized that some organizations mentioned in Arabic and not in English were Hamas front organizations."
That realization propelled her to start doing research on that group, collecting Arabic documents and eventually going undercover.
Her work, through her SITE Institute, has led to closures of organizations, deportations and ongoing investigations. She also has provided the media with information.
In 2000, Katz learned through a Holy Land Foundation newsletter that HLF had been approved to receive federal aid. A call to the White House put an end to a situation in which "the U.S. government could have been (indirectly) funding Hamas."
"I wrote the book because Islamic fundamentalism doesn't only exist in Pakistan and Afghanistan," she says. "It is here and if we don't understand it, we can't fight it.''
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