Good article, Dave. The fact that Mayfield and his wife have clear ties to Al Qaeda makes me think of the Rosenburgs.

I am going to go out on a paranoid limb here: Could he have purposely led authorities to suspect and arrest him for the purpose of attacking the Patriot Act?

Bugger that Dave ... the fact he's got clear ties to al-Qaeda - assuming he really does - then getting arrested, wiretapped and hassled probably goes with the turf.

And if it's true, then he's chosen the turf.

Patriot Act aside, I wonder what the average American taxpayer thinks about giving the bloke 2 huge?

Good grief... I'd gladly spend two weeks in jail as a "material witness" for two million bucks. What's he complaining about? He didn't even lose his "good reputation," since the government is apologizing and now he's semi-famous as a $2 million "victim" of the PATRIOT act.

Isn't he point that while he's a terrorist sympathizer his connections to terrorist groups are more social and political than functional, and last I heard we still weren't prosecuting thought crimes or guilt by association.

...last I heard we still weren't prosecuting thought crimes or guilt by association.

Well, from the article, it's obvious we're not; we're rewarding them...

Limpy - read up on the Rosenburgs and see how social contacts can lead to treason and death.

What is the best part is the guy has never been to Spain. All the Feds had was half a fingerprint match and he looked at a travel site about a vaction to Spain. Better yet is his terror ties...there are none..he had a book...on Al Queada if that makes you a suspect than all librians are guilty of terrorism.

Ted, there was a hell of a lot more circumstantial evidence than just a book. You should check out the links in the article.

Hhis wife had donated money to an Al Qaeda funding organization which has since been shut down by the feds, and he had represented a genuine terror suspect in court. Plus his phone records showed calls to the leader of a known terrorist funding group. In addition there were multiple social contacts with Al Qaeda connected people through his mosque and business activities.

Like I said, NONE of this makes him a terrorist, and the same might be said of a lot of prominent US moslems, but added all together it creates a picture which can only be seen as suspicious and troubling, and the kind of thing which would make law enforcement look at him twice. The problem is that they did more than look and came awfully close to trying to frame him for a crime. That's why he gets $2 million and they got off light.

And let me say right up front, that members of my own family likely have all the same circumstantial links in their background - probably far more, in fact. And I guarantee they aren't terrorists.

Dave

Dave, your 'evidence' link points to the blog of Daniel Pipes, not necessarily the most objective of sources. He's a smart guy, but he has in fact also been called an anti-Islam extremist and a propagandist of hate. I'm not saying that's true, but he doesn't seem to be the most fair presenter of evidence and proof.

It reminds me uncomfortably of your dropping hints that "there's a lot more to the Barney Frank story" [the sex scandal for which he was censured], and then primarily sourcing The Washington Times...again, not everyone's first choice among reliable investigative sources, especially of prominent liberals.

Handy, I provided links to two different sources which report essentially the same thing. Only one of them was Pipes. And from what I can see he got his info straight from normal media sources. If you look you can find numerous other links which talk about Mayfield's other activities. This is all stuff that the FBI brought up in explaining why they were suspicious of him beyond just the fingerprint. Like I said, none of them make him a terrorist, they just make him look a bit dodgy, and it's all circumstantial. From what I've been able to tell going through old media archives the primary source for a lot of the facts I reference in the article is the government documents which requested FISA wiretaps on Mayfield, citing the various terrorist connections in question.

And BTW, the fact that something is in a right-leaning source makes it no less true if it's factual and verifiable. And in cases like this where most of the media plays down the details it's only the right-wing sources which will actually give you the whole story. The same may be true on some other issues for the left.

Dave