Farris Hassan -- Maybe He Belongs In the CIA

Found at Michelle Malkin.

I didn't have anything good to say about his adventures in Baghdad (previous post here).

Now it looks like there was more going on than some clueless teenager going on an idealistic jaunt.

More information here.

Despite the improbability of Hassan's story, the media by and large bought it. Although an AP article on the subject does say this:

"Most of Hassan's wild tale could not be corroborated, but his larger story arc was in line with details provided by friends and family members back home.

How trustworthy those friends and family members are is unknown."

The case would seem to be closed, but now we find that Hassan just happened to visit the local office of the terrorist group Hezbollah while in Beirut, again with the assistance of his ever-helpful family members. According to a New York Daily News article:

"For the two-hour meeting with the militant group’s head of media relations - arranged by family friends Farris stayed with in Beirut - the teen says he posed as an American student writing a sympathetic article about Hezbollah, a group known to support Palestinian suicide bombers."

In part one of a an interview with MSNBC's Rita Cosby that aired on January 9th and that the New York Daily News article quotes, Hassan described his little adventure in more detail:

"'I had to travel through alleyways and I finally walked - this was in the southern Shiite section of Beirut, the poorest section. So walking through alleyways, going up crooked staircases with bullet holes in the walls. And there was no sign saying, this is the Hezbollah office, of course not.'"

Here he tells of his conversation with the Hezbollah leader:

"'I actually sort of nailed him on one point. He told me that Palestine belongs to the Palestinians because they've been there for centuries and all the Jews there should go back to Europe. And I told him, well, the Christians have been in Lebanon long before the Muslims, and 50 years ago, they were indisputably the majority. Under your same premise, shouldn't the Shiite newcomers return to their homelands? And he, in fact, was stumped by that. We both knew I had got him, and for and I'm not exaggerating. For the next 30 seconds, we both started cracking up and laughing.'"

While Hassan's words were all well and good, had he himself been a Christian or a Jew, he certainly wouldn't have come out of that meeting alive, let alone yucking it up with a terrorist. Hassan told the AP that he doesn’t have "any religious affiliation," but Islamists aren’t too fond of secularists either.

And more information here.

A lengthy January 12 report by Bob Norman in The Broward-Palm Beach New Times contains essentially the same troubling elements brought up in the NIN post. Norman also notes an MSNBC interview Farris Hassan gave, in which, per Norman, "he basically admitted that his father knew about his travel plans and offered that, while in Lebanon, he’d visited the offices of the Islamist group Hezbollah, which has carried out countless terrorist acts."

Indeed, in that MSNBC interview, Farris told Rita Cosby that "My dad did not have complete knowledge of all the specific of my plannings, but he knew a bit more than my mother." He also noted that he met with Hezbollah officials for at least two hours.

Still more information here.

[Published Jan 12, 2006] The media pined for Baghdad Boy last Tuesday night. Six satellite television trucks jammed the teen's usually quiet street near Las Olas on the Intracoastal. About 40 reporters and crew members mulled about the front yard of his mother's mansion with the TV lights on and the microphones ready.

What would he say? How would Farris Hassan, the 16-year-old Pine Crest student who had made a dangerous sojourn to Iraq over the holidays, explain himself? He'd already made headlines from Pascagoula to Pakistan. Would this be Baghdad Boy's first news conference?

Burly, and momentarily surly, CNN correspondent John Zarrella didn't seem to expect much. He muttered to no one in particular, "I'm standing here for nothing."

That was after he'd been waiting more than an hour. Farris had already stood them up the night before, saying he needed to study for a calculus test. Another hour went by with nothing. And the idle time led to a lot of idle speculation. Peering at the ten-foot-high wooden doors leading into the stately home, one NBC crewman remarked that the $4 million digs reminded him of other gaudy buildings he'd seen.

"This place looks like one of Saddam Hussein's palaces," he said. "When he opens the door, we're going to see the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the background. The kid should come out in camos and one of those berets."

Behind him, neighbors gathered. One said she'd heard from a friend of a friend of a friend that big news was soon going to break about Farris.

"This story doesn't make sense," she said. "Someone very close to the family said his father had gotten into all kinds of trouble over terrorism in New Orleans and the kid was really going over there to join al Qaeda."

Al Qaeda? Terrorism? It couldn't be true. After all, the headlines across the globe showed that Farris' hazardous trip was a "quest for knowledge" and that he went to Iraq to "promote democracy."

....

Unfortunately, nothing is ever that simple when it comes to the Iraq War and the Middle East. Although an al Qaeda mission doesn't seem realistic, there are some disturbing questions about Farris Hassan's journey that have been left happily unanswered by the swarming, yelping media seals. And most of them center on his father, Dr. Redha Hassan, a 57-year-old anesthesiologist who does indeed have a rather shady past that we'll explore a bit later.

First, though, it seems to me that Dr. Hassan, who didn't respond to my requests for an interview, should be charged with child endangerment. The man admitted that he arranged for his son's flight into Baghdad through "political connections" even though he knew foreigners like Farris were targeted for kidnappings and, potentially, beheadings.

His excuse for facilitating his son's trip into a war zone was that if he didn't let him go, it would have left an emotional scar. What a sensitive father, willing to risk his son's being cut ear to ear just to save him from disappointment.

We all know now that Farris is a spoiled rich kid, but that excuse is ridiculous. And it gets even more unbelievable when you consider that Dr. Hassan was suspected by the federal government of conspiring to commit terrorism 20 years ago. Didn't hear about that one? Probably because it hasn't been reported, at least not in all its weird glory. You see, the FBI arrested Dr. Hassan back in 1985 after he tried to manufacture thousands of false Iraqi passports and military identification cards. The doctor's capture happened in Fort Lauderdale, but the covert web of Hassan's cohorts stretched across the world. Also arrested were two of Hassan's brothers, Nouri and Ali, and a "pro-Khomeini" activist named Salah Jawad Schubber.

At the time, the ayatollah's country was at war with Saddam Hussein, whom Hassan apparently had good reason to hate. He has claimed that a brother was murdered by the imprisoned dictator and that he was involved in a resistance movement against Saddam when he was Farris' age.

In other words, the good doctor was radicalized, which makes his alliance with pro-Iranian Shiite Muslims understandable. The problem is that, at the time, the United States was in cahoots with Saddam and considered Iran one of its bitterest foes. And that may be one reason why the FBI took Dr. Hassan's covert and apparently illegal activities very seriously.

Still more here.

Even the most basic research found that Farris Hassan was NOT enrolled in any journalism class at Pine Crest, which should automatically cast doubt on the true nature of his journey. Lourdes Cowgill, president of the Pine Crest School, said that Hassan was never given an "immersion journalism" assignment and added that there is, in fact, no journalism class at the school. Also, the school confirmed that the boy's father, Dr. Redha Hassan not only knew of his son's intended travels, but authorized his absence, which is inconsistent with his initial public statements.

Further, investigation found a number of other inconsistencies in the public statements made by Dr. Redha Hassan. Although it was initially reported that neither parent knew of the young boy’s intended travels, it was ultimately revealed that Dr. Hassan actually assisted his son. He admitted that he arranged for his son's flight into Baghdad through his political connections, even though he knew the grave risks to "foreigners" wandering the streets of Baghdad. [According to a January 2, 2005 CNN news story, Hassan's father said that he had helped his son get a visa into Iraq from Beirut. The elder Hassan said he was leaving Iraq himself when the teen called, unable to get into the country from Kuwait. He told him to go to Lebanon and said he spoke with him almost daily].

More at each of the links. Haven't seen anything about this in the MSM, have you?

Naive student, he is not. Manipulator, certainly. Not a master manipulator yet, maybe -- that title belongs to his father.

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