If Michael Chertoff is confirmed as Department of Homeland Security chief, he'll have his hands full reconciling conflicting positions within the administration regarding reported gang-terrorist activity.

By now, many of us have heard of the reported link between El Salvadoran-based gang Mara Salvatrucha — MS-13 for short — and Islamic terrorists. (Michelle Malkin has good background here)

In this morning's 9am ET hour of Fox New Live, reporterette Alyson Camerota said an FBI source told the network it was implausible that radical muslims would align themselves with a predominantly Catholic criminal gang.

Are we to believe that MS-13 gangsters — criminals accused of raping handicapped girls and chopping off fingers with machetes — would never team up with Islamic terrorists for religious reasons?

Camerota later ran a bite from Homeland Security official John Torres saying his agency had no evidence of a MS-13-al-Qaeda connection.

Thinking for sure that I had misunderstood the report, I watched it again in the 10am ET hour. The story stayed the same. Camerota's sources in the FBI and the DHS are refusing to connect the violent activities of MS-13 with the terrorist motivations of al-Qaeda.

A Boston Herald article echoes the FBI's curious position regarding reported activites between the two groups:

"FBI officials steadfastly deny any connection between MS-13 - a brutal, international criminal organization that has thousands of members across the country - and the terrorist al-Qaeda network.

``The FBI has not established a link between MS-13 and al-Qaeda,'' said Joe Parris, supervisory special agent in the FBI national press office. ``There is no link established.''

Even so,

"Attorney General John Ashcroft has publicly said a high-ranking al-Qaeda leader, Adnan El-Shukrijumah, has offered top dollar to infiltrate the United States via the Mexican border."

Administration apologists would say the apparent contradictions regarding reported linkages between MS-13 and the al-Qaeda network could be an elaborate misinformation campaign aimed at baiting terrorists: Pretend you're turning off the heat, then pounce on them. The skeptic in me refuses to believe that.

This post first appeared on Reporterette.com