Fox commentator Bill O’Reilly jumped into the fray. He dedicated three segments of The O’Reilly Factor to Gamal. At one point, he had Vincent and his lawyer on as guests. O’Reilly let them speak without challenge, framing the segment in a way that suggested the FBI harbored a mole. “Listen,” O’Reilly said. “We know the truth. The truth is I believe your two agents here. The guy wouldn’t tape other Muslims. That’s the truth, and he wasn’t disciplined. But he should have been disciplined, and he wasn’t. And now Mueller is trying to keep us from finding out what the big picture is, but we’re going to find it. Believe me, we will find it.”
In another segment, O’Reilly reduced the controversy to a simple question, partly because neither Gamal nor an FBI spokesperson would appear on his show. “Did Agent Hafiz refuse to secretly tape other Muslims involved in terrorism investigations? Yes or no. If the government will not answer that simple question, we are all in big trouble.”
Around the same time, Gamal’s ex-wife came forward to accuse him of filing a false insurance claim a decade earlier on a home burglary. The claim had led to a lawsuit. The FBI suspended Gamal in February 2003 on grounds that he hadn’t informed the bureau of the lawsuit on his agent application. Because this was a personnel matter, the bureau wouldn’t offer a public explanation. This only supported the notion that Gamal was as rotten as his detractors claimed.The story buzzed through the Internet and mainstream media well into 2003. Gamal was a traitor. Gamal was a mole. Gamal should be deported. And the FBI wouldn’t let Gamal explain himself.
Mohamed Elmougy, a Dallas hotelier and the man whom Gamal defended 20 years earlier before the autocratic college professor, drove to DFW Airport to pick up Gamal after his suspension. Gamal looked frail and disheveled. Elmougy refused to believe what the news accounts said of his old friend. But no one else in the Muslim community wanted anything to do with him. For a long time, Gamal was too embarrassed to leave his own house, even for prayers.
“He was angry,” Elmougy says. “I can tell you Gamal doesn’t have a poker face.”
O’Reilly called Gamal’s home in October 2003, asking him to come on the show. Gamal recorded the conversation. “It was extended to me that we weren’t fair with you the first time around,” O’Reilly said. “That is not the way we operate here.” If Gamal came on, O’Reilly said, “You will get a full hearing.”
Gamal returned the call, still hurt. “You destroyed me and my family,” he said.
He decided against appearing on O’Reilly’s show. Why bother? At the time, Gamal couldn’t even find work with private security outfits.
•••
In January 2004, Gamal filed a defamation lawsuit against ABC News, its Primetime reporter Brian Ross, agents Vincent and Wright, and others. When Gamal could still talk to the media, he said, “I don’t care if it takes me until I am dead of old age. I don’t care what it costs. I am going to make sure that those individuals and institutions that are responsible for what has happened to me pay.”
What happened next surprised Gamal and the few friends he had left. In February 2004, Gamal received a single-page letter from the FBI. The bureau’s appeals panel had thrown out the insurance fraud findings. It couldn’t corroborate the claims of Gamal’s ex-wife. Gamal was reinstated.
But life was not the same. The FBI stuck Gamal in mortgage fraud. And so a month into his new job, dissatisfied, Gamal decided to file another suit, this one against O’Reilly and Fox News, also for defamation. All told, Gamal is seeking about $8 million in damages.
The suit also contains the deposition of Dallas agent Jay Melton, who says Wright and Vincent spread the rumor throughout the bureau that Gamal was a mole well before they went public with the accusation. They worked to relieve Gamal of his duties. They also made racist comments, at one point in the 1999 dispute referring to Gamal as a “camel jockey,” Defenbaugh said in his deposition. In an interview with me, in 2003, for CBS Channel 11, Vincent said Gamal should not work terrorism. “The most important thing in a Muslim’s life is his religion,” he said. “The second-most important thing is his religion. And the third-most important thing is his religion.”
Vincent may find interesting what Gamal told O’Reilly’s lawyer in a deposition last year. Charles Babcock questioned Gamal about one of the two instances for which he had refused a wire. It was 1998, during the Tampa field office’s investigation of university professor Sami Al-Arian. Al-Arian allegedly supported Hamas. Almost every news report said Gamal had refused direct orders to covertly record Al-Arian, who had contacted Gamal for advice about part of the investigation. It was another instance in which the cloak of secrecy had kept Gamal and the FBI from offering an explanation.
But when Babcock asked, Gamal said he had, in fact, secretly recorded Al-Arian. The FBI’s lawyer moved to stop Gamal from elaborating. But the truth was out. I have since learned from FBI sources that Gamal covertly recorded other Muslims on at least three occasions.
In 1998 a New York-based FBI task force, “I-49,” zeroed in on the Center Arlington mosque to investigate Wadih El Hage, an Al Qaeda sympathizer who lived for a time in Arlington and was believed to have been involved with two embassy bombings in Africa. Jack Cloonan, a former agent of I-49, says, “We never required [Gamal] to wear a wire. We did ask him to get some information for us about locations of certain things in the mosque. That information was critical to get electronic coverage of certain areas of the mosque. We never had any problems [with Gamal]. I think all this other stuff had no basis.”
In 1999, Gamal wore a wire to a Denny’s in Carrollton and talked there with a Palestinian named Ghassan Dahduli, also linked to Al Qaeda, and an associate of suspected Hamas leaders in Dallas. Dahduli faced deportation, and as FBI agents listened from surveillance trucks outside, Gamal presented Dahduli an offer: Dahduli could stay if he became an informant for the FBI. He refused. Dahduli was later deported to Jordan.
In 2002, during Gamal’s Lackawanna Six investigation, the pivotal interview, the one that led to a full confession of all the Lackawanna Six members, was secretly videotaped. This happened two months before ABC aired its story.
•••
Today, Gamal is once more working counter-terrorism. He oversees a group of intelligence analysts, examining streams of classified information. He decides which criminal cases should be pursued and who should be investigated. It’s a position that requires the trust and confidence of his supervisors. But other field offices don’t call as often as they once did. Nor is Gamal summoned by top brass when help is needed abroad.
Gamal still keeps a low profile in the Arab community. Some Muslims are happy he got what they consider his comeuppance for working against them. Others are wary of associating with Gamal, a possible traitor, lest that association bring undue FBI attention to them. Lately, Gamal has been seen making connections here and there for the FBI. But nothing like before.
His lawsuits continue to churn through the Tarrant County courts. The FBI is watching the cases nervously. There are some who know Gamal who believe nothing—not even winning the suits—will allow him to regain the status he once held. And never again will he be fully accepted by either the FBI or the Muslim community.
“In the bureau, culturally speaking, he’ll never survive,” says one former agent who asked not to be identified. “He won’t be trusted. He’ll be isolated. I hope, for himself, he finds peace. But really, he’s a man without a country.”
