08/11/04  Indicted City of Dallas Engineer Worked on Major Projects Without License

INTERIM CITY MANAGER: 'WE MADE A MISTAKE'

Aug 11, 2004 5:05 pm US/Central
By Todd Bensman and Robert Riggs - The Investigators
CBS-11 News

A City of Dallas engineer federally indicted this month along with six other men for allegedly funneling money to the terror group Hamas has worked without a required state license on major transportation projects for the last three years.

The federal government this month indicted Abdulqadar because of his extracurricular work for the Richardson-based Holy Land Foundation, which President Bush declared a clandestine Hamas fundraising arm and closed in November 2001. Abdulqadar also has been under close FBI surveillance - on and off the job - because his half-brother is a top Syria-based leader of the terrorist group Hamas, CBS-11 News has reported.

Among the projects on which Abdulqadar actively worked without proper licensing is the Pegasus Project, a $760 million, 7-year plan to reconstruct the "mixmaster" freeway complex encircling downtown Dallas. It could not be determined Wednesday how Abdulqadar's failure to have a license might impact the work he has performed on Pegasus.

A Texas Board of Professional Engineers investigation is underway into whether Abdulqadar improperly worked during those years without a license, agency officials confirmed. City officials were not alerted until June, when the investigation resulted in a phone call from Austin to Dallas City Hall.

Interim City Manager Mary Suhm said officials quietly demoted Abdulqadar to "project coordinator," removed him from engineering work and cut his pay by 8 percent. A few weeks later, he was arrested by the FBI on the unrelated terrorism charges.

"We made a mistake in not checking up on his license," she told CBS-11 Wednesday.

Suhm acknowledged that Abdulqader worked on the Pegasus Project but did not "sign off" on any of it as an engineer.

Suhm said as a result of the disclosure, all city engineers were recently required to provide proof that they are licensed. Only Abdulqader was found to not have proper licensing, she said.

Don Willhouse, director of licensing for the Texas Board of Professional Engineers, said Abdulqader's engineering license expired in March 2001 and that he did not apply for a new one until May of this year.

Willhouse said the city has yet to inform him of whether Abdulqader worked as an engineer without a license.

If Abdulqader is found to have performed engineering work without the license, he could face state sanctions ranging from probation and a $200 fine to permanent license revocation and a $3,000 fine.

Abdulqader worked for city hall in relative obscurity until his high-profile arrest on a 42-count indictment that he and seven others helped operate The Holy Land Foundation as an illicit fundraising arm of Hamas. The foundation is accused of using donations to encourage and comfort suicide bombers by pledging financial support their families after attacks.

According to the indictment, Abdulqader performed skits and songs at fundraising events which advocated the destruction of Israel and glorified the killing of Jewish people.

All seven defendants, including Abdulqader, have vigorously denied the charges. Abdulqader could not be reached for comment this week about his license.

The U.S.-designated terror group Hamas, dedicated to the elimination of Israel, has threatened lately to add American targets to its traditional Israeli civilian targets.

Because of those threats, sources tell CBS-11, FBI agents were particularly concerned in recent years that Abdulqader might try to pass sensitive information about the city's infrastructure to Hamas militants in the U.S. as possible targets. Those targets might include power grid, transportation and water systems, emergency communications and other critical utilities that engineers deal with.

"The city engineer is going to have the keys to the kingdom," said Danny Defenbaugh, who retired as head of the Dallas FBI office in 2002. "They are going to have of the blueprints and plans for the entire infrastructure for that municpality."

Agents at times entered Abdulqader's offices after hours to search his desk and files and kept him under wiretap surveillance, CBS-11 has learned.

Despite those precautions, the sources tell CBS-11 that no evidence has surfaced that Abdulqader used his city access for nefarious purposes.

Still, questions remain as to how city officials could have overlooked Abdulqader's lack of valid credentials after the FBI first alerted top leaders about their suspicions two years ago.

Ted Benavides, who was City Manager at the time, said the FBI told him and other officials not to do anything that might alert Abdulqadar that he was the target of a terrorism investigation. But it is clear that the city's oversight on the licensing issue was not part of that hands-off approach.

Benavides, who recently announced his retirement but still technically works for the city, said he did not know about Abdulqader's licensing problem until a CBS-11 Investigative Producer Todd Bensman told him Wednesday.

Suhm said the city was no more vigilant with Abdulqader than any other engineer.

"Am I confident that he did not pose a threat to the city while he was employed here? Yes I am," she said.

The fact that city officials did not know Abdulqader had allowed his license to lapse raised other questions among former FBI counterterrorism officials. Especially in light of this week's high profile detention of a Pakistani man who had in his possession what government officials suspect was a surveillance videotape of targets in U.S. cities, including Dallas.

"How closely was he being monitored?" said Tino Perez, a retired supervisor of the Dallas FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force. "How much oversight does the city provide not only to this individual, but other individuals within the city's infrastructure?"