The U.S. Spied on Muslims Long Before 9/11

Name: The U.S. Spied on Muslims Long Before 9/11
Uploaded: 2026-09-01T16:27:13.000Z
Duration: 1 min 50 s

9 claims checked · Published September 2026 · Checked September 2026

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Claim 1
Accurate96% confidence▶ 0:01

“Islamophobia has been around well before Trump and well before 9/11.”
Islamophobia in the United States predates both Donald Trump and the September 11 attacks.
Reliable accounts describe surveillance and anti-Muslim or anti-Arab discrimination in the United States decades before September 11, 2001, and before Donald Trump's political prominence.
- US elections and domestic politics
Sources
- 1Q&A: Filmmaker on FBI surveillance of her neighborhood and the fight for the records that prove it
  SupportsWhat is it like to be a Muslim journalist in America now, particularly as you are pursuing a story about how two decades ago—before 9/11, before Donald Trump—the government was engaged in an operation to determine the loyalties of you, your family, and your neighbors?
- 2The FBI’s ‘Vulgar Betrayal’ of Muslim Americans
  Supportsthe surveillance of Arab and Muslim Americans, which predates September 11 by decades.
Claim 2
False91% confidence▶ 0:08

“a Syrian-American civil rights lawyer”
Abdeen Jabara was a Syrian-American civil-rights lawyer.
Sources identify Jabara as a Michigan-born American lawyer and specifically describe his parents as Lebanese immigrants. His Arab-American civil-rights work is well documented, but the Syrian-American identification is inaccurate on the available biographical evidence.
- Iran and the Middle East
Sources
- 1Defending Sirhan Sirhan
  RefutesJabara was raised in the small, northwest Michigan town of Mancelona to Lebanese immigrant parents.
- 2Abdeen Jabara - Arab America
  RefutesHe was born to immigrant Lebanese parents in Mancelona, Michigan, and received his B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1962, and a law degree from Wayne State University Law School in1965.
Claim 3
Unverifiable50% confidence▶ 0:12

“organizing Arab-Americans to fight against um home demolitions in Dearborn.”
Jabara organized Arab Americans in Dearborn to oppose an urban-renewal project that threatened the Arab neighborhood.
The sources establish that Jabara was surveilled because of his Arab political activism and that he led legal opposition to Dearborn’s demolition and urban-renewal campaign. They do not establish the specific causal claim that the surveillance was undertaken for that particular anti-demolition organizing role.
Checked twice, independently: the first pass returned Accurate and the second Unverifiable. Recorded as Unverifiable.
Sources
- 1Abdeen M. Jabara, Plaintiff-appellee, v. William H. Webster, et al.
  SupportsJabara (Jabara), a Detroit lawyer of Arab extraction, has over the years been interested and active in Arab causes.
- 2Southend Struggles: Converging Narratives Of An Arab/Muslim American Enclave
  SupportsIn 1973, after 350 homes and several important public buildings had been demolished, community activists finally halted the mayor’s bulldozers in a courtroom action led by a young Lebanese-American attorney named Abdeen Jabara.
Claim 4
Accurate50% confidence▶ 0:21

“He later learned that the surveillance began in 1967,”
Government surveillance of Jabara began in 1967.
Historical reporting and later accounts both place the beginning of the FBI's surveillance records on Jabara in 1967.
- Technology and privacy
Sources
- 1FBI Reveals NSA Tapping Of Sirhan Lawyer's Calls
  SupportsFBI records of surveillance on Jabara date as far back as 1967, when he spoke at an antiwar rally at Wayne State University in Detroit.
- 2A Political Awakening in Arab America
  SupportsEven more chilling, Abdeen learned that the government had been keeping tabs on him since 1967—triggered, he guessed, by his political activism after the war—and had received information on him from a domestic Zionist organization.
Claim 5
Accurate94% confidence▶ 0:25

“the year of the Six-Day War and Israel's attack uh on its neighbors and American support for Israel.”
The year 1967 included the Six-Day War, in which Israel fought Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, while the United States had supported Israel politically and militarily before the war.
The State Department records that Israel defeated Egypt, Jordan, and Syria in the June 1967 war. It also documents U.S. arms sales to Israel in 1965–1966 and broader U.S. support for Israel, although the United States did not provide military assistance during the fighting itself.
- Iran and the Middle East
- Israel and Palestine
Sources
- 1Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations: The 1967 Arab-Israeli War
  SupportsThus, in 1965, Johnson agreed to sell Israel M48A3 tanks, followed by A–4 Skyhawk aircraft in 1966.
- 2Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations: The 1967 Arab-Israeli War
  SupportsBetween June 5 and June 10, Israel defeated Egypt, Jordan, and Syria and occupied the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.
- 3Historical Documents: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XIX
  BackgroundAlthough Johnson and his advisers shared the sympathy toward Israel felt by most Americans during the war, the United States gave Israel no military assistance during the fighting and cut off military shipments to both sides.
Claim 6
Accurate97% confidence▶ 0:31

“it was the first time the NSA admitted it had intercepted the communications of an American citizen.”
The Jabara case was the first time the NSA admitted intercepting an American citizen's communications.
Contemporary reporting and later historical accounts describe the Jabara case as the first public admission by the NSA that it had intercepted the communications of an American citizen.
Sources
- 1A Political Awakening in Arab America
  SupportsFor a few weeks, this disclosure, and Abdeen’s name, was splashed across national headlines: it was the first time the N.S.A. admitted to intercepting the communications of an American citizen.
- 2FBI Reveals NSA Tapping Of Sirhan Lawyer's Calls
  SupportsJabara's American Civil Liberties Union attorney, John Shattuck, director of the ACLU's Washington office, said today that the Jabara case is the first in which the NSA has been forced to reveal the name of a subject of its electronic cavesdropping.
Claim 7
Accurate50% confidence▶ 1:08

“the US government had actually surveilled them quite a bit”
The U.S. government surveilled Assia Boundaoui's family extensively.
Accounts of Operation Vulgar Betrayal document FBI visits, questioning, and surveillance involving Boundaoui's family and the wider Bridgeview Muslim community. The exact intensity is informal, but the underlying assertion of substantial surveillance is supported.
Sources
- 1Q&A: Filmmaker on FBI surveillance of her neighborhood and the fight for the records that prove it
  SupportsOur parents were always warning us kids about the strange cars parked around the mosque, and twice in my memory we got a knock on our front door from federal agents who questioned my parents about their friends in the community, about donations they had made to charities, and recorded everything.
- 2How one filmmaker is using artificial intelligence to uncover surveillance of her Muslim community in Chicago
  SupportsSince she was a kid, Assia Boundaoui knew that she, her family and her neighbors were being watched.
Claim 8
Unverifiable50% confidence▶ 1:13

“had amassed hundreds of pages on this one family.”
The government had amassed hundreds of pages specifically on Boundaoui's family.
Sources confirm that more than 30,000 pages concerned Operation Vulgar Betrayal and Boundaoui's community, but the available evidence does not establish how many pages concerned this particular family. The exact 'hundreds of pages' figure for one family therefore cannot be confirmed or refuted.
Sources
- 1Q&A: Filmmaker on FBI surveillance of her neighborhood and the fight for the records that prove it
  BackgroundThe DOJ declined, telling Boundaoui that it would need three years to provide her with the requested documents, which totaled more than 30,000 pages.
- 2Boundaoui v. Federal Bureau of Investigation et al.
  Backgroundthe Government properly withheld sealed records.” The court also holds that “Plaintiff’s identification of minor inconsistencies does not warrant ordering the Government to re-review approximately 33,120 pages worth of documents.”
Claim 9
Unverifiable84% confidence▶ 1:19

“around the country where thousands and thousands of Muslims were being surveilled by FBI agents, by undercover informants, by police departments.”
Thousands and thousands of Muslims were surveilled across the United States before September 11, 2001 by FBI agents, informants, and police departments.
The record clearly documents nationwide surveillance of Muslim and Arab-American communities before 9/11, including FBI and local-law-enforcement operations. However, the available reliable sources do not establish the transcript's specific estimate of 'thousands and thousands' of Muslims surveilled by all three categories of actors.
Sources
- 1Create a national federal database to collect information on American Muslims
  SupportsThe FBI and local law enforcement have conducted sweeping surveillance and monitoring of American Muslim communities, including deploying undercover employees and informants to infiltrate mosques and community centers in the absence of particularized suspicion of wrongdoing.
- 2The Feeling of Being Watched
  SupportsThe Feeling of Being Watched offers insight into FBI surveillance of a Muslim community in the suburb of Bridgeview, Illinois pre-9/11, and filmmaker Assia Boundaoui’s effort to expose the targeting of her community.
- 3How one filmmaker is using artificial intelligence to uncover surveillance of her Muslim community in Chicago
  BackgroundFilmmaker Assia Boundaoui obtained more than 33,000 pages of government records from Operation Vulgar Betrayal, one of the largest pre-9/11 domestic counter-terrorism probes that affected her Muslim and Arab community in Bridgeview, Illinois.

Who said what, and about what

Every claim, checked

Islamophobia in the United States predates both Donald Trump and the September 11 attacks.

Sources

Abdeen Jabara was a Syrian-American civil-rights lawyer.

Sources

Jabara organized Arab Americans in Dearborn to oppose an urban-renewal project that threatened the Arab neighborhood.

Sources

Government surveillance of Jabara began in 1967.

Sources

The year 1967 included the Six-Day War, in which Israel fought Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, while the United States had supported Israel politically and militarily before the war.

Sources

The Jabara case was the first time the NSA admitted intercepting an American citizen's communications.

Sources

The U.S. government surveilled Assia Boundaoui's family extensively.

Sources

The government had amassed hundreds of pages specifically on Boundaoui's family.

Sources

Thousands and thousands of Muslims were surveilled across the United States before September 11, 2001 by FBI agents, informants, and police departments.

Sources