Al-Arian hosted Ramadan Abdullah Shallah at the university until 1995, when Shallah went to Damascus and took over command of the PIJ after its leader Fathi Shikaki was killed in Malta. According to Anonymous, in 1995 - just as the task force was poised to indict al-Arian for his terrorist activities - the FBI took over and set the investigation back seven years. Rather than indicting al- Arian, the FBI opened an investigation of the customs official who had been heading the investigation - and of the author, who had been providing the customs official with information. Al-Arian was only indicted and placed under arrest early this year.

While [Steven Emerson] placed himself in the background, [Rita Katz] placed herself in the foreground; her personal story takes up the entire first two chapters. And her biography is compelling. She was born to a well-to-do Jewish family in Iraq. After the Six Day War, Katz's father was arrested along with eight other Jews on charges of spying for Israel. The nine were tortured for a year before they were hanged in the central square of Baghdad to the roaring applause of more than half a million Iraqis. Katz's young mother launched a daring escape to Israel with her three small children and five young siblings, walking for three weeks until they crossed the border to Iran, where they were met by Israeli authorities.

In taking on the terrorist cells in America, Katz has clearly dedicated her life to such a cause, and for this she is to be applauded. But in placing her personal story ahead of that cause, she seems to place the success of her book, rather than her noble cause, at the center of her writing. Hopefully most readers will enjoy her easy style and come away with a wealth of knowledge about the danger that Islamic terror poses to America. But to ensure that such would be the case, Katz should have taken up [Victor Frankl]'s book before setting out on her writing journey.