Margaret Fox: Hi I'm Margaret Fox, and I'm an editor here at Stratfor. And joining me today is Fred Burton, our vice president of intelligence, to talk a little bit about a piece we published recently on Rabbi Meir Kahane, a radical right-wing Zionist who actually was killed here in the U.S. over 20 years ago now. So Fred, this piece really was a quite a story, starting from an assassination in 1990 on the streets of New York and then going all the way up to another death in 1995 with the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister [Yitzhak] Rabin. And somehow you managed to be involved in the investigations on both of those cases, is that right?

Fred Burton: Well like many things in my career, I think I was either in the wrong place at the wrong time or at the right place at the right time. But when you look at the 1990 killing of the Rabbi Meir Kahane by the assassin El Sayyid Nosair, when you draw that nexus to his involvement with the World Trade Center, it's really kind of an amazing link that followed, and I think that one of the take-aways of the 1990 assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane was, in my mind, the fact that this was a watershed moment here on U.S. soil. But in many ways we really didn't look at it at the time. It was like we couldn’t see the forest for the trees.

Margaret: Tell me a little bit more about that investigation overall, the Kahane assassination.

Fred: Well the assassin was an Egyptian that gunned down Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York City. And the interesting part is once you start peeling the onion back on the shooter, the assassin, this was an Egyptian that had used, which I always thought was fascinating, a pistol that had been transferred from the U.S. to the Egyptian army.

Margaret: Previously

Fred: Previously, and then somehow made its way back into the United States and was used to gun down Rabbi Meir Kahane. And then as we started to look at Nosair, the shooter, he was tied in to the infamous New York City group that ultimately turned out to be al Qaeda. And that group was led by Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the Blind Sheikh. So you can go back to this 1990 killing of Rabbi Meir Kahane and think about that nexus as he's tied into this World Trade Center group that ultimately attacks the World Trade Center in 1993, as well as Ramzi Yousef, who was also linked in as well.

Margaret: It sounds like there is a lot going on in this case, right? And I think when we were working together on writing the article and putting it together, I think we had a lot of trouble figuring out which direction to go because there are so many different paths we could follow. The connection to al Qaeda here in New York, but also Kahane himself and this idea of Jewish extremism, which I think people are a little bit less familiar with when it comes to religiously motivated violence, right? So could you tell me a little bit more about your experience with the DSS, with Jewish extremists like Kahane?

Fred: I'd be happy to. When you look at the killing of Rabbi Meir Kahane, the aftermath was another watershed moment for us in the protection field because his son Benjamin, Binyamin, became the de facto leader of a group that was called Kahane Chai, which means Kahane Lives in Hebrew. And that organization was tied into lots of protective security problems for us. Whenever we would have visiting either Palestinian or Israeli officials like Perez or Rabin or Sharon, the group would show up and plan a demonstration and follow the protective details around, and at times try to throw things at the protectee at different venues, and so it became a protective intelligence concern for us. And then there was some extreme violence here in the United States as well in that we suspected them of possibly carrying out an attack on the Syrian mission in New York City. And then if you fast-forward to the Rabin assassination, which I also worked on, one of the things we were always fascinated about was whether or not the assassin that shot Rabin had been to the United States and maybe had stalked any other Israeli dignitaries while we were protecting him here.

Margaret: OK, and so that's how you became involved in that second killing is in investigation following, is that right? To help prevent the same kind of thing in the U.S.?

Fred: That's correct, we wanted to make sure that Rabin's killer had not traveled to the United States or any of his associates and tried to conduct surveillance of any protectees with the intention of carrying out an assassination here on U.S. soil.

Margaret: OK. Well we're running a little short on time, as usual. You always have so much more to share than we have time to hear, on any given day. But thank you so much for your time. These are two very important events and it's great to get your inside perspective on it.

Fred: Thank you Margaret.

Margaret: Thank you. And thank you so much for watching. For more on this and other topics, please visit our website at stratfor.com.