You’re about to learn how you can easily be better informed about the threat of radical Islam than the FBI, the U.S. government and most of the media. You’ll learn how you can be six or seven years ahead of them in understanding radical Islam. You’re also about to learn how the FBI used a front for terrorist organizations as a resource for training its agents, as a liaison with the Muslim community, and as an outreach resource in programs for the Muslim community.

To understand this strange phenomenon, by way of background, you should know that the FBI, the U.S. government, many foreign governments, and most of the media, were relying on organizations assumed to be the voice of moderate Muslims when they were in fact fronts for terrorists, genocidists and mass murderers. This column will also document how the FBI, the U.S. government, many foreign governments and most of the media could have discovered the truth six or seven years earlier just by reading books and articles published by experts who understand the threat of radical Islam in the U.S.

There ought to be an investigation at the highest level to figure out how so many could be duped by terrorist-front organizations. These terror-front organizations were involved in outreach programs of the FBI and were involved in training FBI agents. What makes this all the more shocking is that we are talking about the post-9/11 FBI.

Now you know why I can say I have a secret formula that will enable you to stay six or seven years ahead of these entities. I discovered this secret formula years ago simply by reading books on radical Islam.

Recently as a result of a Fox News story dated Jan. 30, I was reminded it is about time the FBI and the others wake up. The headline of the Fox story reads, "FBI Cuts Ties with CAIR Following Terror Financing Trial: The FBI severed its ties with all local branches of the Council on American-Islamic Relations [CAIR], the country’s largest Islamic advocacy group, an FBI official told Fox News."

In a recent trial, FBI Special Agent Lara Burns testified that CAIR was a front group for radical organizations operating in the U.S. Those radical organizations included terrorist groups such as Hamas, dedicated to the slaughter of babies and children, terrorism and genocide. CAIR, in the trial that led to all this, was shown to be participating in planning with the Holy Land Foundation (HLF). Five officials of the HLF were convicted of funneling $12.4 million to Hamas. CAIR’s chairman emeritus and CAIR were unindicted co-conspirators in the criminal case successfully brought against the HLF.

The FBI finally woke up last year and broke off all relations with CAIR. But way back in 2002, about six years before the FBI woke up, Steven Emerson, one of the nation’s leading authorities on terrorism and radical Islam, published his book American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us. Anyone reading that book would quickly understand the nature of CAIR, and you have to wonder if the FBI knows how to read and knows how to seek out reliable experts on terrorism. Mr. Emerson’s book quotes Steve Pomerantz, former chief of the Counterterrorism Section of the FBI, who said, "CAIR has defended individuals involved in terrorist violence including Hamas leader Musa abus Marzook … The modus operandi has been to falsely tar as ‘anti-Muslim’ the U.S. government, counter-terrorist officials, writers, journalists and others who have investigated or exposed the threat of Middle East-based terrorism … Unfortunately, CAIR is but one of the new generation of new groups in the United States that hide under a veneer of ‘civil rights’ or ‘academic’ status but in fact are tethered to a platform that supports terrorists."

Here’s another piece of the evidence so abundantly documented by Mr. Emerson in that 2002 book: "Self Ashmawy, former publisher of the Voice of Peace, wrote: ‘It is a known fact that both the AMC [American Muslim Council] and CAIR have defended, apologized for and rationalized the actions of extremist groups and leaders such as convicted World Trade Center conspirator Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, Egyptian extremists, Hassan al-Turabi, the Sudanese National Islamic Front, and extremist parliamentarians from the Jordanian Islamic Action Front and others who called for the overthrow of the Egyptian government … As a proud American Muslim … I bow to no one on my defense of Muslim civil rights, but CAIR … champion[s] extremists whose views do not represent Islam.’ "

Mr. Emerson also documented CAIR’s connections with Hamas, the terrorist organization. CAIR even refused to condemn the Taliban. It is a terrorist supporting organization disguised as an Islamic civil rights organization.

Mr. Emerson’s more recent book Jihad Incorporated: A Guide to Militant Islam in the U.S. with a copyright date of 2006 has further documentation on CAIR and the Holy Land Foundation.

Mr. Emerson is the executive director of The Investigative Project, which claims to be the largest intelligence and data-gathering center in the world on militant Islamic activities. Perhaps the work of Mr. Emerson and his group suggests that even when it comes to intelligence work, private enterprise can run circles around government.

Another hero in the war against terror and radical Islam is Robert Spencer, whose most recent book is Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America Without Guns or Bombs. He is the author of seven other books on Islam. He is also the director of Jihad Watch, an excellent source on the subject. Jihad Watch is a program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Mr. Spencer is also a columnist for Human Events and FrontPage magazines.

In this latest book, as in his previous work, Mr. Spencer shows that the face of Islamic moderation may be claimed to be CAIR, MPAC [Muslim Public Affairs Council] and other "Moderate Muslim Groups."

He also shows the U.S. government and many others have been conned by accepting such groups as the voice of Muslim moderation.

Mr. Spencer writes: "Unfortunately, the ‘moderate’ groups to which the government turns are hardly the mainstream organizations they claim to be. When we scratch the ‘moderate surface’ of groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), we find links to terrorist organizations and exhortations to Islamic supremacism."

Mr. Spencer also has an interesting section of the book, listing many public officials conned by CAIR and quoting their statements in praise of CAIR. Among those conned were former Sen. John Warner, R-Va., Sen. Paul Sarbanes, D-Md., Rep. Gary Miller, R-Calif., Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and others including two FBI officials and a brigadier general from the United States Central Command.

But then Mr. Spencer makes clear what so many public officials and media people have missed: "The ‘moderate’ public statements of CAIR spokesmen may fool some politicians and a large number of gullible reporters, but the group’s radical nature is constantly being exposed by government prosecutors and terrorism experts. And the evidence compiled from CAIR officials own actions and words indicate beyond any doubt that CAIR is a stealth organization that ultimately seeks the imposition of Islamic law to the United States."

Another hero in the war against terror and radical Islam is Daniel Pipes, director of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum and author of one of the pioneering books warning about the threat of radical Islam. His book bears a 2002 copyright and is titled Militant Islam Reaches America.

He has written extensively on the subject, with articles such as "CAIR: Islamists Fooling the Establishment," published in the Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2006.

There are four other heroes I should name for their work in giving us early warnings and important information about the war against radical Islam:

• Mark Steyn, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.

• Melanie Philipps, Londonistan.

• Bruce Bawer, While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within

• Bat Ye’or, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis.

Ms. Ye’or is strong in putting radical Islam into a broad historical context. In her preface, she makes an observation that shows we are already deep into adverse developments we better start understanding and reacting to:

"This book describes Europe’s evolution from a Judeo-Christian civilization, with important post-Enlightenment secular elements, into a post-Judeo-Christian civilization that is subservient to the ideology of Jihad and the Islamic powers that propagate it. The new European civilization in the making can be called a ‘civilization of dhimmitude.’ The term dhimmitude comes from the Arab word ‘dhimmi.’ It refers to subjugated, non-Muslim individuals or people that accept the restrictive and humiliating subordination to an ascendant Islamic power to avoid enslavement or death.

"The entire Muslim world as we know it today is a product of this 1,300-year-old jihad dynamic, whereby once thriving non-Muslim majority civilizations have been reduced to a state of dysfunctional dhimmitude. Many have been completely Islamized and have disappeared. Others remain as fossilized relics of the past, unable to evolve."

Mr. Steyn in his great book agrees that Europe is already lost to radical Islam. The great issue facing the U.S. is whether we are next in line to fall, or whether the greatest country in the history of the world will get its act together and survive the threat of radical Islam. We don’t have our act together when the U.S. government, the FBI and most of the media don’t have the sense to read the literature on radical Islam to get the kind of facts on which the appropriate action and our very survival depend.

Can we depend on the FBI and other organizations to find out about the secret plots of terrorists when they don’t even seem to be able to read well-known and important books on the American jihad?

Part of the blame for this fiasco can be laid at the feet of the mainstream media. Names like Emerson, Spencer, Pipes, and Ye’or should be household words, because of their importance to the discussion of radical Islam. Yet they are hardly covered by the mainstream media. That is just another example of how the journalistic failures of the mainstream media endanger our very survival.

You can do your part by staying informed on the subject, which means reading the alternative media and some of the books cited in this column. You should also join the boycott of the mainstream media, as they seem to be one of the terrorists’ best friends.

You can start by signing the petition to boycott The New York Times and getting information on its biased journalism at boycottnyt.com. Based on what I’ve observed, we’re in the process of losing the war against the stealth jihad, so unless you want to be subject to sharia (Muslim law), you better get involved.

Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and professor at the Wharton School. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at advocate@thebulletin.us.