IPT: Ex-Presidential Candidate Advocates Stalking Prosecutor

WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Mike Gravel, the recent
Democratic presidential candidate and two-term Alaska senator urged an
audience to stalk and harass a federal prosecutor during a speech in support
of Sami Al-Arian, exclusive audio tape obtained by the Investigative Project
on Terrorism (IPT) shows.

The audio and a complete story by the IPT can be found at
http://www.investigativeproject.org.

Gravel spoke at a forum with Al-Arian's wife and two eldest children in
Washington, D.C. on Friday, Aug. 1. Al-Arian, who pled guilty to conspiring to
provide goods and services to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in 2006, faces
trial for two counts of criminal contempt Aug. 13. Despite repeated court
orders, he has refused to testify before a federal grand jury investigating
possible terror financing by a Northern Virginia think tank called the
International Institute of Islamic Thought.

During the forum, Gravel asked for the name Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon
Kromberg and told the audience at Busboys and Poets to "Find out where he
lives. Find out where his office is. If you've got some chutzpah -- which is
a word that you don't hear often -- if you've really got it, find out where he
lives, find out where his kids go to school, find out where his office is;
picket him all the time. Call him a racist in signs if you see him. Call him
an injustice. Call him whatever you want to call him, but in his face all the
time. They can't take the heat; deliver it to them. We have to stop laying
down to these injustices."

According to the IPT report, Kromberg has been the subject of an intensifying
campaign by radical Islamist groups and defense counsel to discredit him and
prevent him from carrying out his counter-terror investigations.

The IIIT investigation he leads now is one of the largest ongoing
counterterrorism investigations in the U.S. Declassified FBI files obtained by
the IPT show IIIT leaders were directly affiliated with the Muslim
Brotherhood.

Federal law prohibits the use of violence or intimidation in an attempt to
prevent a federal official from discharging his or her duties. But law
enforcement sources have much more practical concerns about Gravel's remarks.

"I get extremely concerned for an agent or a prosecutor when someone says,
'Find out where he lives. Find out where his family goes to school.' At that
point you've crossed the line."

With dozens of people in the audience, it's impossible to know if any are so
emotionally charged by the issue that they might act. "There's no telling what
they might do with that kind of encouragement," Lormel said.

"Stuff like that can turn violent in a nanosecond," said Bob Blitzer, a former
head of domestic terrorism and counterterrorism for the FBI. "People get
heated up. It is certainly a veiled threat."

The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) is a non-profit research group
founded by Steven Emerson in 1995. It is recognized as the world's most
comprehensive data center on radical Islamic terrorist groups.

SOURCE Investigative Project on Terrorism

Michael Fechter of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, +1-813-391-3349,
stopterror@aol.com