Mafia-al Qaeda Fears

The FBI is starting to worry about a Mafia-al Qaeda connection born not out of political solidarity but the way al Qaeda money can pull those greedy Mafia heartstrings.

Though there is no direct evidence yet of organized crime collaborating with terrorists, the first hints of a connection surfaced in a recent undercover FBI operation. Agents stopped a man with alleged mob ties from selling missiles to an informant posing as a terrorist middleman.

"We are continuing to look for a nexus," said Joseph Billy Jr., the FBI's top counterterrorism official. "We are looking at this very aggressively." (AP)

The AP article focuses on the Italian, Chinese and Russian mobs, even though the man being questioned in an Armenian. That's four mafias to think about; here's one more, which I wrote about some time ago, but AP doesn't mention: The Albanian mafia. There's a pivotal difference between the Albanians and the other crime families: Albania is 70% Muslim, according to the CIA Factbook.

Not only that, but Albanians are well-entrenched in the New York longshoreman world, with open access to the docks.

Yeah, yeah, I know that not all Muslims are terrorists, but port security is one place where suspicion and investigation must come first and political correctness second. It's just too easy to smuggle in a shoulder-held missile, or worse.

Related Tags: Terrorism, as Qaeda