By: Paul Monschino
What’s going on with hiring at CUNY?
That’s what a lot of people are asking now that a
New Jersey man has been accused of aiding Hezbollah in plotting several terror attacks on New York City and Boston landmarks. The man is an ex-Baruch College lecturer.
Alexei Saab, 42, who hails from Morristown, NJ, reportedly graduated seven years ago with a master’s degree in business administration. He also got his master of science information systems from the college two years later, and took a position as adjunct lecturer at Baruch’s Zicklin School of Business, where he taught graduate courses in IT strategy, computer information systems and business data modeling.
“When Saab wasn’t shaping young minds, federal prosecutors say, he spent his time surveying dozens of sites in New York City on behalf of Lebanese extremists,” reported the New York Post. “Originally from Lebanon, Saab was inducted into the gang in 1996 as a spy and later received “extensive” training in weapons and explosives, according to the criminal complaint. After he moved to the US in 2000, Saab began scouting locations, some around the corner from Baruch’s Midtown campus.”
The web site heavy.com published what it says are some interesting facts about Saab. “According to his LinkedIn page, Saab was director of IT for a waste management company in Morristown called Covanta, a position he held for more than two years. Before that, he held a variety of positions in IT and as a software engineer, including for Microsoft. His page says he worked there for seven months. That entry on his page reads: “Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS): Managed a team of 20+ developers for the development and delivery of new releases of NYPD’s Domain Awareness System (DAS), including integration with external systems and migration of legacy systems and databases. Responsibilities included, design and technical oversight, managing development activities, risk mitigation, client coordination, UAT & deployment planning, resource management, forecast, budgeting, and process improvement.”
“Intelligence and law enforcement officials have been long been concerned about the presence of Hezbollah operatives and associates in the U.S. and have tracked or investigated their activities,” said John D. Cohen, a national security expert now with The Security Studies Program and Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University,” according to nj.com. “He said the general consensus was always that the group was in the U.S. to raise money, but it was well understood that if international conditions evolved and in particular if tensions with Iran escalated “then these same operatives could be used to support attacks in the U.S.”
