Where My Road Converges With Philip Haney’s

Written by John D. Guandolo

Since the death of American hero and fearless warrior Philip Haney, I have read many stories about Phil that capture his personality, grit, patriotism, faith, and determination to crush America’s enemies.

Several colleagues sent me the Townhall.com article by Judicial Watch’s Bill Marshall which references a few of us who experienced many of the same hardships and conflicts as Phil Haney over the years.

Encouraged to share some of these experiences by friends and colleagues, this article attempts to elaborate upon my time inside the FBI, and my work to share the threat of the Muslim Brotherhood and the broader Islamic Movement in the United States with those who could make a difference. Through the telling of this story, I also hope to share my personal friendship and professional journey with Philip Haney to highlight what an amazing man he was.

So here goes…

Not long after 9/11/01, I was assigned to the Counter-Terrorism Division at the FBI’s Washington Field Office (WFO), having served five (5) years in the Criminal Division.

WFO created two new aggressive Counter-Terrorism squads, and I was asked to be on one of them. The squad initiated a number of high profile cases, including one which involved U.S. military and civilian linguists engaged in counterintelligence operations against the United States. One of the subjects of the case was a muslim chaplain.

I was one of the two co-case agents for this investigation, and I began asking some basic questions, including: “How does someone get certified to be a muslim chaplain in the Department of Defense?”

The answer to this question was disturbing.

It turned out the two certifying agencies for muslim chaplains in the Department of Defense – the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences (GSISS) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) – are both Muslim Brotherhood organizations.

It also turned out that the man who created the “Muslim Chaplain Program” for the Department of Defense was a financier for Al Qaeda named Abdurahman Alamoudi, who is currently in federal prison.

Author’s note: I was the last person to interview Alamoudi before his sentencing in the fall of 2004, and sat behind him with an Assistant U.S. Attorney friend of mine during Alamoudi’s sentencing. Those are stories for another time.

When I discovered the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s ISNA also certified muslim chaplains for the Bureau of Prisons (BOP), and that FBI Headquarters, including the Director’s Office, was working with these and other Muslim Brotherhood organizations, I realized there was a serious problem inside the federal government.

As the investigation into the linguists expanded, I contacted other FBI field offices to discuss the status of a number of investigations involving Muslim Brotherhood leaders.

I discovered FBI offices around the country were shutting down investigations of senior Muslim Brotherhood leaders because – as I was told – the SAC’s (Special Agents in Charge) and/or the ASAC’s (Assistant Special Agents in Charge) of those FBI field offices were having lunch with the Muslim Brotherhood leaders – subjects of ongoing investigations – on a weekly basis and ordered the investigations closed.

When I provided the case agents information about these jihadi (Muslim Brotherhood) leaders and encouraged them to re-open the investigations, I was often rewarded with a call to visit the Special Agent in Charge of the WFO Counter-Terrorism Division who would inevitably tell me the SAC of the other field office was livid and wanted to know who the hell I thought I was by asking for investigations to be reopened in their office.

As our investigations at WFO progressed, facts and evidence revealed the most prominent Islamic organizations in the United States are part of a significant hostile Islamic Movement, primarily led by the Muslim Brotherhood, whose objectives are identical to the objectives of Al Qaeda – to overthrow all un-Islamic governments and replace them with Islamic governments ruled by “Allah’s divine law”/sharia (Islamic Law).

FBI agents and analysts around the nation were unaware of this threat, so I did what I thought was the logical and right thing to do. With the permission of WFO leadership, I created and ran one to two day training programs to teach FBI agents, analysts, Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) officers, attorneys and others about this threat.

As the threat grew, the need for much more impactful training became evident, so I asked permission from WFO leadership to go to FBI Headquarters (HQ) and present them with several long-term training programs I developed. I was granted permission, went to FBIHQ, and the director for CT training indicated she thought the programs were important, and told me she would bring me up to headquarters to implement the programs and oversee them. Over time, however, it became apparent I was being paid lip service, and no amount of energy and effort on my part was going to move the ball forward.

So I did what any good Marine officer would do and I found another way.

During this time – late 2005 – I switched over to a new squad with a new supervisor, but was allowed to continue planning this training program.

Through a great contact of mine in the intel world – a former U.S. Army Ranger – I went to a counter-intelligence facility in the greater Washington, D.C. area and met with its Director. I explained to him I wanted to run a four (4) week training program for 50 people from all over the country to detail the threat of the Muslim Brotherhood and the broader Islamic Movement in the United States, and I wanted him to host it. I explained we would have a number of guest instructors, including two Brits (one of whom was a former SAS – Special Air Service – operator).

He asked me if the FBI knew I was at his facility meeting with him. When I told him “No,” he told me he definitely wanted to support and host this program because of my boldness.

We had to crunch the program down to two (2) weeks, but we did it, and in August of 2006, I launched and moderated the first training program in the U.S. government detailing the Muslim Brotherhood’s (MB) network in the United States, MB history and modus operandi, the broader Islamic Movement in the U.S., Islamic doctrine (sharia), violent jihadi organizations, and investigative actions and techniques to bring this network down.

It was called the Counter-Terrorism Pilot Training Program.

Of the 50 attendees, many 3-letter agencies were represented, as well as ten (10) pairs of FBI agents and task force officers from ten (10) FBI field offices, analysts from the Department of Justice, an Assistant U.S. Attorney, and sworn officers from a number of other organizations.

The After Action Reports completed by the students in this program – which I still have today – recommend this training be given to every police officer and federal agent across the country.

However, when the dust settled and I returned to my squad, I was told I was being punished because a number of administrative requirements for my case files and source reporting were tardy.

Immediately following the Counter-Terrorism Pilot Training Program, I was alerted by two of the attendees, that leaders of the terrorist group Hamas, doing business as the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), were involved in upcoming “Unity Walk” events around the September 11th anniversary in Washington, D.C. and New York (2006).

Specifically, the current leader of Hamas/CAIR and the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, Nihad Awad, was scheduled to participate in this Unity Walk, as was senior Muslim Brotherhood jurist Imam Yahya Hendi of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Fiqh Council of North America.

On the Thursday before Labor Day weekend 2006, I contacted the Unity Walk director, Daniel Tutt, to inform him Hamas officials were going to be infiltrating this 9/11 memorial event, and gave him background information on CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood.

As a matter of background, I was on scene in Nairobi, Kenya scrapping parts of human beings off the walls of the U.S. Embassy after jihadis from Al Qaeda attacked the embassy with a car bomb in 1998. On September 11, 2001, I was at the Pentagon, again recovering human remains and other evidence from yet another Islamic jihadi attack.

I found it disgusting and outrageous to think jihadis like Nihad Awad and Yahya Hendi would be able to participate in any 9/11 memorial event, including this Unity Walk.

What I did not know was that Daniel Tutt is a front-man for Hamas/CAIR, and as soon as I hung up the phone with him, he called Nihad Awad and alerted him.

Between that moment and Tuesday morning after the Labor Day weekend, CAIR contacted the FBI’s Assistant Director for Counter-Terrorism at FBIHQ, who then called the FBI Assistant Director of the Washington Field Office (WFO), who then called the Special Agent in Charge of WFO’s Counter-Terrorism (CT) Division, who called the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of CT, who called my Supervisor.

When I showed up to work Tuesday morning, I was vigorously chewed out for offending CAIR and its leadership. This is what the Muslim Brotherhood calls “Civilization Jihad by OUR hands.”

Years later, when I first shared this story with Philip Haney, we laughed about it in a way that only we could. The truth of the matter was and is, the leaders of the federal agencies charged with protecting America against such enemies, catastrophically failed, and both of us were in the middle of it all, and targets of our own organizations.

We had to laugh because we knew crying was not going to help us win the war.

The following month – October 2006 – the FBI’s Assistant Director for Public Affairs, John Miller – who is now the Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence & Counterterrorism of the NYPD – hosted a suit-wearing jihadi named Irfan Shahid at the Bonaparte Auditorium at FBI Headquarters.

During the presentation, John Miller and Irfan Shahid sat on stage discussing “terrorism” and how to deal with it. Shahid – whose name means “one who dies in jihad” – told the audience suicide bombings are justified, muslims who blow themselves up are “righteous,” and Al Qaeda rightly defends Islam.

Needless to say, I grabbed the microphone being passed around and got the last question in before they could shut me down. You can listen to what I am describing at UTT’s YouTube channel HERE.

Here is what I asked: “What I hear is: fairly overwhelming support for Al Qaeda in the Middle East, that we must withdraw our policies, and Al Qaeda is a “religious organization,” that Wahhabism is not aggressive, and, in response to Mr. Mason’s question about suicide bombers, that U.S. foreign policy is to blame. That’s what I’m hearing. Can you maybe clarify that, because it seems that possibly decades of indoctrination in the Middle East on the TV, on the radio, elementary school/junior high texts, in text books teaching this ideology may also be to blame.”

Answer from Irfan Shahid: “Well, Al Qaeda is a religious organization, but it feels helpless except to do things this way.”

At the end of this presentation, this jihadi – who worked at Georgetown University at the time – was given the “Jefferson Cup” by the FBI’s Assistant Director for Counter-Terrorism Joe Billy.

Immediately after the presentation I obtained a DVD of the event – which I still have – and sent Assistant Director John Miller an email asking him why he would invite a jihadi like Irfan Shahid to FBI Headquarters to train FBI employees. His answers were, in my opinion, weak and incoherent, so I challenged him further asking why FBIHQ and his office were supporting interaction by FBI leadership with hostile Muslim Brotherhood jihadi organizations like CAIR, ISNA, MPAC, ICNA, and others.

His response was to initiate an internal investigation on me for insubordination. That investigation ended up getting dropped because Miller was not in my chain of command.

When I shared this beauty of a story with Phil Haney, he would tease me saying he had nine (9) internal investigations to my few, so I needed to work harder.

About six months after John Miller’s fiasco at FBIHQ – for which the FBI Agents Association formally complained to FBI leadership – I was again reprimanded because numerous agencies were asking FBIHQ to allow me to train/teach them on the jihadi threat.

Let me say that again: I was reprimanded because outside agencies recognized by ability to accurately identify the threat and explain it, and asked FBI headquarters to allow me to train their personnel.

I was told by FBI leaders at WFO that I was not allowed to use my phone nor my computer to discuss, in any way, the Islamic/Muslim Brotherhood threat under threat of another internal investigation. I was moved out of the Counter-Terrorism Division over to a surveillance unit.

In the fall of 2008, I called someone who previously told me I had a home inside the Department of Defense if I was ever stonewalled in the FBI. I was not sure the offer was real, but I found out quickly it was. I was offered significantly higher pay and, most importantly, freedom to speak truth about the Islamic threat if I went over to the Department of Defense.

On December 1, 2008, I out-processed from the FBI’s Washington Field Office, and drove over to my new office a few miles away. I worked until 1 AM that night.

Over the next couple years, I briefed many 3-4 star generals/admirals, former FBI/CIA/DIA Directors, a former National Security Advisor and U.S. Attorney General, the Chairmen of the U.S. House Intelligence, Homeland Security, and Judiciary Committees, numerous Members of Congress, and many other officials about the Muslim Brotherhood and the broader Islamic Movement in the United States.

Not one person I and my colleague – Stephen Coughlin – briefed had any knowledge of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s network, influence, modus operandi, doctrine (sharia), or how effective this hostile Movement is inside the United States.

Along the way I met Philip Haney. We discovered we each had similar experiences inside our respective agencies, and we shared many stories of our years doing this work. There were many heartaches and a few of victories.

Philip and I were able to see where our work overlapped, and we joyfully recalled investigations that led to successful ends.

Phil ended up attending one of our two-week Train the Trainer programs. Amazingly, he learned a lot from it. But, he also contributed a great deal to it.

Over the years, Phil and I leaned on each other because we shared things that few others in the Counter-Jihad Movement did. We were both federal investigators working against the jihadi network in the United States. We were both hammered by the organizations we swore our lives to, and we were both threatened by the jihadis we were investigating.

We were also both dedicated to the ideals which make America the greatest nation in the history of mankind.

Where we probably depart is that Phil Haney did everything he did with humility, grace, patience, and a calmness that I often lacked. I was okay with that because Phil – who often called himself “nerdy” – used to joke that together he and I made one “normal guy.”

Phil and I also both believed, as I still do, that to be in the Counter-Jihad for the long haul requires an outlet to keep our hearts calm and in balance. One big outlet for us was/is music and songwriting. Phil and I wrote a couple songs together, one of which is entitled “Troubadour Warriors” about our lives on the road speaking truth and battling jihadis. [I only have a rough cut of this song, but I hope to clean it up and release it in Phil’s honor soon.]

There is even a video going around of Phil singing a song he wrote for his beloved Francesca in which he is playing my 1970 Gibson acoustic – my refurbished first guitar.

The point of sharing these stories with you is simply this: if you love this Great American Experiment, if you love our American Republic, you must ask yourself, “What am I willing to sacrifice?”

Please join me during this Lenten season in committing our lives to the cause of liberty.

Let the cry again be “Liberty” and, in remembrance of the great patriot Philip Haney, let us be willing to sacrifice everything for it.