David Marshall tapped his fingers nervously on the steering wheel. He had a long drive to Washington from the Shenendoah Valley and a lot of time to think about what he was about to do.
What was he worried about? He had done the necessary prep work to appear Shariah-observant and as orthodox as possible. He’d taken the Shahada—the Muslim profession of faith—at a mosque where the Council on American-Islamic Relations maintained a booth. He’d altered his appearance to follow the example of the Muslim prophet Muhammad by growing a fistful-sized beard—sans mustache—and removing his gold jewelry, including his watch. (And if he needed a digital watch, he’d wear it on his right wrist to show he did everything opposite the Jews and Christians.)
As Interstate 66 stretched on ahead of him, Marshall practiced his Arabic greetings and phrases, rehearsing in his mind how he would respond in the office to various situations. He didn’t want to say the wrong thing.
If you’re introduced to a female employee, don’t try to shake her hand, he reminded himself. Just say “Assalamu alaikum, sister,” and put your hand over your heart.
If you say you plan to do something, no matter how minor the act, make sure you always preface it by saying “insha’Allah”—if Allah wills it. It’s never your will but Allah’s.
And if something good happens, be sure to praise Allah: “humdillah”—all thanks go to him.
He had to make a good first impression, gain their trust. This was his chance to secure an internship and penetrate the heart of the Hamas terrorist front group known as the Council on American-Islamic Relations. He was on his way to CAIR’s “First Annual Leadership and Empowerment Conference.” Another field researcher, acting as his scout while she volunteered at CAIR, had vouched for him, and he was registered to attend. Some of CAIR’s top executives would be there, and he hoped to get in their good graces.
He’d say he was a college student enrolled at Ferrum College in Virginia (though twenty-nine, he looked young enough to pass for one). He picked Ferrum because it was relatively unknown and wouldn’t draw much attention, and he was familiar with the town of Ferrum, having lived nearby—which made it easier to sound convincing. The first rule in conducting undercover operations is to stick as close to what you know in your cover story as possible. You don’t want to stray too far from what you’re familiar with in case you forget details about your assumed identity.
He’d also pretend to be a new convert to Islam—or a “revert” as his devout interlocutors would say, since they believe every human being is born free of sin and with a belief in Allah until their parents teach them otherwise.
But no sooner had he convinced himself he had a solid cover story than his plans nearly went awry.
While sitting among some thirty-five CAIR employees at the conference, the tiny button-cam he’d concealed in his shirt to spy on them popped off.
“It was the first day, and I was wearing that camera, and I had taped it up too much underneath my shirt. And when I stood up, the button popped off,” due to a lack of slack in the wires, Marshall recalls. “And there was the camera dangling out.”
He coughed, covered his chest, and calmly left the room as if to get some water. Instead, he made a beeline for the parking lot to remove the camera. He returned to his seat missing a button, but luckily no one noticed except for the other undercover field researcher.
There would be other close calls, but eventually, Marshall gained the trust of even CAIR’s then-director of operations, Khalid Iqbal, a militant Islamist, and earned a spot as an intern at CAIR’s office in Herndon, Virginia. He would even pray during the day with Iqbal at a radical Islamic think tank across the street from their office on Grove Street, site of a massive raid by federal agents after the 9/11 attacks.
Within two months of beginning working there, he got his big break—a transfer to CAIR’s national headquarters—thanks to the good word Iqbal put in for him.
His first day at the national office was in June of 2008, the start of a full-blown summer internship. It was a relatively short commute from his Dupont Circle flat to CAIR’s headquarters on New Jersey Avenue, almost in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol. And that was a precious good thing, because the less time he had to think about it, the better. He was anxious, and didn’t want to lose his nerve, didn’t want to blow it. CAIR is the locus of political power for the secret Muslim Brotherhood in America—the parent of Hamas, al-Qaida, and other terrorist groups—and he had a chance to expose its secrets from the inside.
He parked his 1993 Toyota Tercel, walked up to the security intercom at the entrance to CAIR’s three-story brick building, and announced himself as “Dawud,” the Arabic name for David. They were expecting him and buzzed him in, and he got right to work. So far, so good. He was officially inside the belly of the beast, inside the political command center for Hamas and the Muslim mafia in America.
Later that morning he found himself in the basement storage room tasked with organizing supplies. He looked around and found a treasure trove of boxes loaded with files. One was labeled “Nihad Awad,” the name of the executive director of CAIR. It contained various files and meeting notes. There also were several letters addressed to Awad from Saudi Arabia. Marshall tried to thumb through the files but was interrupted several times by people coming into the storage room. So he decided to wait another day to study the material in the boxes and evaluate their significance.
THE SHREDDER
He could hardly believe his luck when one day the office manager asked interns to destroy whole boxes of documents in the basement with the commercial shredder. Other interns groaned, as it was a mundane task, and few elected to do it. That left Marshall virtually alone in the basement if he stepped up.
“Nobody wanted to shred—it was boring, you know, nobody liked to do it—so I was, like, ‘Ahh, I’ll do it,’” Marshall says. “And I would sometimes spend hours going through the boxes and putting together one box that was good stuff, and shredding the rest. And then at the end of the day I would just walk down there [to the basement], pick the good box up, and walk out of the building with it.”
Before long, he was routinely loading the trunk of his car with boxes of sensitive documents and delivering them into the custody of investigative project leader Dave Gaubatz who in turn stockpiled them at his offices in Richmond, Virginia.
CAIR’s leadership wasn’t the wiser. “There were a couple of times when people saw me walking out there with the box,” Marshall explains. “But they didn’t think anything of it because I had to set up tables for CAIR at the masjids (mosques) on Fridays,” part of his outreach duties. That required loading up and transporting a box full of brochures and pamphlets for the tables.
The hirsute “Dawud” blended in well at CAIR and drew little suspicion. He observed the afternoon prayers, bowing prostrate on the rugs CAIR laid out toward Mecca in the designated prayer room. He even went into the restroom beforehand and pretended to perform wudu, the elaborate Islamic ritual for washing before prayer, which includes snuffing water up the nostrils. (Muhammad believed the devil spends the night in the interior of the nose, and must be washed out each day.)
He made sure to abide by Islamic diet restrictions and eat only halal foods. He swore off cheeseburgers for lunch and always ate with his right hand, never his left, which the sacred texts say Muhammad reserved for toilet duties.
He also tried to stay out of political discussions, in spite of the historic presidential election. Whenever he was drawn into them, however, he was sure to always take a pro-Palestinian stance, criticizing the Republican administration for not formally recognizing Hamas as a legitimate government. At the same time, he counseled caution against Barack Obama, despite Obama’s overtures toward Muslims, noting Obama’s plans to send more troops to Afghanistan. Playing the role of the Salafi purist—the true believer—shored up his bona fides with the CAIR leadership and engendered greater trust.
Marshall’s nonthreatening persona also helped lower the guard of his counterintelligence targets. His countenance is kind, and he wears a calm, almost mellow demeanor that belies his imposing size. He is a thick-boned man with a fair complexion and large, round blue eyes framed by prominent zygomatic arches. His nature is so nonthreatening, in fact, that he appears at times guileless to those who don’t know better. Always helpful and respectful, he is the perfect candidate for undercover work, a natural-born spy.
As the weeks turned into months, he gained greater and greater access to CAIR’s inner circle. And some situations were so intimate they seemed surreal. For example, he found himself asked to share a hotel room with CAIR’s legislative director, Corey Saylor, during the Islamic Society of North America’s annual convention in Columbus, Ohio. He manned CAIR’s booth there with CAIR’s communications director, Ibrahim Hooper.
Hooper, in fact, grew so fond of Marshall that he volunteered to arrange a marriage for him.
“Ibrahim kept asking me about getting married. He said, ‘You know, Brother, you’re at that age. And when you’re ready, you need to talk to me. You know, I know people through the mosque,’” Marshall says. “And he was going to be my representative in marriage, because I was the only Muslim in my family.”
Marriage is a rigid affair in orthodox or Shariah Islam. There is no dating for the faithful and betrothals are decided for young couples and arranged through the mosque. Offering to help arrange a marriage for a brother or sister, as Hooper did, is among the highest compliments.
Back in Washington, Marshall posed for casual photographs with CAIR executives including Awad. He was a security guard at CAIR’s fundraising banquet. He even found himself praying elbow-to-elbow with U.S. Representative Keith Ellison—the nation’s first Muslim member of Congress and a de facto member of CAIR—during one Friday prayer attended by CAIR inside the U.S. Capitol.
MOSQUE OUTREACH
CAIR sent Marshall out each Friday with another intern to conduct outreach at Washington-area mosques. They passed out literature to worshipers and answered questions about CAIR. Marshall remained steadfastly Shariah-compliant, even rolling up his pant legs above the ankle before entering the mosques he visited.
Interestingly, CAIR was not welcome at the Islamic Center of Washington, located on Embassy Row, which receives official delegations including the president. “They won’t let CAIR do outreach there,” Marshall says. “They won’t let them set up a table.”
While working at another DC mosque, Marshall was approached by a follower of a radical Muslim cleric who declares Islam will dominate the world including the United States by the year 2050. Imam Abdul Alim Musa, his truculent protégé said, doesn’t whitewash over the call to violent jihad like other clerics, and considers it the “sixth pillar of Islam.” Indeed, Musa, who runs the Masjid Al-Islam on A Street, has praised suicide bombers as heroes while calling for the overthrow of the U.S. government. His follower added, defiantly, that Musa “doesn’t care if the FBI follows him.”
Across the Potomac is another radical Muslim Brotherhood mosque under FBI surveillance. Dar al-Hijrah of Falls Church, Virginia, is where some of the 9/11 hijackers received aid and comfort, and where Marshall took his Shahada. One of the congregants who witnessed his profession of faith—Umar Lee—reminded Marshall that doing the kind of undercover work he does is never safe.
Lee roomed with Ismail Royer when Royer worked for CAIR as a civil rights coordinator and before he was sent to federal prison on terrorism-related charges in the investigation of the Virginia Jihad Network. Lee now writes a popular jihadist blog. One of his recent entries glorifies Muslim bloodlust: “The Prophet (SAS) was a warrior and many of the Sahabah that he loved were straight-up killers.” (SAS is an Arabic notation of respect which literally translates, “Allah prayed over him and gave him peace,” while the Sahabah refers to the companions of Muhammad.)
Lee also brags that “Islam spread through jihad and was sustained by the sword of very masculine men,” who took “young girls” as sex slaves from the ranks of the kaffir, or infidels. Judging from the sympathetic pings his blog gets, there is no shortage of young Muslim men living in the nation’s capital—near the White House, Congress, and the Pentagon—who sympathize with his belligerent and misogynistic rants. One fellow Islamic supremacist posted this lovely sentiment: “The kaffir are to live under us, and their filthy status is below ours. Period.”
Such views made Marshall’s blood run cold. But to stay in their confidence, he had to keep walking their walk, talking their talk, even praying their prayers in their hate-filled mosques, where he was known as “Dawud.”
Only his name isn’t really Dawud or even David Marshall. That was the nom de guerre he used. His real name is Chris Gaubatz—the son of counterterrorism investigator Paul David Gaubatz. Chris works as his chief field investigator, along with assistants Stephanie Creswell and Charety Zhe, both of whom had covered their heads with hijabs to appear Shariah-compliant during the operation. Like the proverbial canaries in the coal mine, they determined the coast was clear for the younger Gaubatz to infiltrate.
His true identity should come as an even bigger shock to CAIR’s leadership.
“The funniest thing that happened was at the ISNA convention, when I was spending a lot of time with Hooper and he was talking to Saylor about this ‘Dave Gaubatz guy,’ who they’d heard did undercover work in the Muslim community,” Gaubatz says. “Hooper said, ‘He’s dangerous and knows too much. I was reading somewhere that his son works with him sometimes. So we’ve got to look out for his son, too.’
“And I was like, ‘Do you know what he looks like or anything, so I can help?’” Gaubatz recalls with a chuckle. “And Saylor said, ‘Nah, nobody has any pictures of him.’”
That he was able to puncture through CAIR’s defensive screen and sneak behind enemy lines without getting caught or breaking cover is remarkable. The insular CAIR is paranoid of outside threats and had increased security only a year before Gaubatz came aboard, adding a magnetic card reader and buzz-in system at its headquarters. CAIR is also paranoid about inside information leaking to the press. In fact, it thought former chairman Parvez Ahmed was the source of some recent leaks.
CAIR’s legal counsel Nadhira al-Khalili didn’t even trust Arab TV crews. When one came through headquarters to film CAIR’s bustling operations, she remarked in the break room that she didn’t like them in the office, because they could be “spies.”
Gaubatz thought she was kidding and began to laugh. “No, I’m serious,” al-Khalili corrected him. “I wouldn’t put it past anybody to send people in here like that.”
To her chagrin, the spy was right there in front of her the whole time. This hated kaffir penetrated CAIR’s inner circle. In fact, no one aside from Gaubatz has ever worked side-by-side undercover with CAIR’s top executives, including Hooper, Saylor, and Awad, whose office was guarded like a “bulldog” by his secretary. He got to know their mindset and operational and strategic methods. And he captured hours of candid conversations with them on his hidden recording devices.
Is such spying bad or unethical? Not when the target is the enemy, and particularly not when the enemy spies on us. It’s counterspying, and it’s perfectly legal, especially when, as in this instance, incriminating evidence is unearthed. (It should be noted that Gaubatz never took any money from CAIR and even refused to cash a $300 stipend for mileage.) And make no mistake, CAIR is the enemy and the enemy is CAIR, something recently declassified FBI documents make crystal clear. They reveal CAIR is part of the pro-jihad, anti-USA Muslim Brotherhood, which directs its terror-supporting fronts to infiltrate government agencies, collect intelligence for the enemy, and undermine the government from within.
So gathering intelligence against CAIR is necessary to protect the nation. And this counterintelligence operation is unprecedented not only in its scope and size, but because it broke taboo and the spell of political correctness that has handcuffed street agents from doing similar operations.
These bad guys have been alarmingly successful at infiltrating our PC-addled system, but we have not been successful at infiltrating their system—until now.
Last September, Raabia Wazir presented “David Marshall” with a certificate of completion “in recognition of his valuable contribution to the Council on American-Islamic Relations.” It’s signed by CAIR chief Awad. Gaubatz was hailed as a model intern and recommended for a full-time job doing chapter development. He turned it down only because it would have required a more stringent background check revealing his true identity.
MAJOR REVELATIONS
Gaubatz left, but not before uncovering not only the inner secrets of the dangerous Muslim mafia, but also the inner workings of the anti-Israel lobby and the entire left-wing anti-American conspiracy that includes the ACLU, Congressional Black Caucus, and others.
What follows is a bullet-by-bullet description of the major revelations unearthed from the boxes of CAIR files Gaubatz intercepted on their way to the shredder, including many documents marked “Not for Distribution—For Board Members Only.”
Ironically, the voluminous paper trail created by this notoriously litigious group may just be its undoing. Among the explosive revelations detailed in the chapters that follow:
But that’s not all.
Early in the undercover operation, Gaubatz was given permission one day to work on a certain project in his boss’s office at the Herndon chapter, which CAIR was abruptly closing. The atmosphere was tense.
“I just knew there was something going on,” he says. “Nobody was saying anything about why the office was closing.”
His boss at the time, Iqbal, was out and Gaubatz found himself alone in Iqbal’s office. He spied on the desk in front of him a folder that looked suspicious.
“I just started looking at it,” he recalls, “and then I saw some of the handwritten notes where they’d said this guy is threatening to sue, this guy is threatening to go to the media.