Betty Castor wants my vote in the Florida Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate. She will never get it. I am the citizen who did what Betty Castor neglected to do: I investigated Sami Al Arian, assembled overwhelming evidence of his terrorist connections, and filed a civil lawsuit against him. Predictably, my family and I endured quite a bit of criticism for daring to suggest that this mild mannered USF professor was actually a world terrorist leader. At least the ensuing public furor from my lawsuit helped to reopen the Federal investigation. Al Arian is currently in jail awaiting criminal trial. (I still have my civil law suit pending in case Al Arian ever gets released on a technicality).

Investigating Sami Al Arian was not my job. It was President Castor's. She had the full resources of the University to help her. She chose to avoid her duty as a public officer. In an act of moral cowardice, she wrote her staff "I am deeply concerned by implications that the University should 'investigate' entities or people and be the arbiter of what political, social or religious ideology is 'good' or 'evil.'" Her Vice President agreed that Al Arian's organization was an "important cultural group" that was "part of the USF diversity commitment."

Some cultural group. The only diversity commitment Islamic Jihad has is to killing both Americans and Jews. Mass murder is its only business. Islamic Jihad does not have a cultural or charitable wing, just a pension fund in case one of its terrorists gets caught. I have a collection of Sami Al Arian's home movies of his terrorist speeches on my website. (WWW.John-Loftus.com). One does not have to be a lawyer to conclude that Professor Al Arian's academic freedom does not extend to blowing up school busses.

Betty Castor refused to determine whether Sami Al Arian's group was good or evil. Yet, in each year since the 1995 FBI raid on Al Arian's home and offices, both President Clinton and President Bush have used their statutory authority to designate Al Arian's Palestinian Islamic Jihad as a continuing threat to peace in the Middle East and as an "extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States." This is not a freedom of speech issue.

From her own internal memos, it is clear that Betty Castor chose to hide her head in the sand. Her so-called investigation was a farce. She never called Steve Emerson to ask for his voluminous evidence (which Mr. Emerson generously shared with me and many other journalists). Ms. Castor never even interviewed Al Arian before putting him back on the University payroll where he promptly resumed his terrorist operations at the taxpayer's expense.

Ms. Castor cannot plead ignorance as a defense. Nor can she claim that the FBI withheld necessary information. A month before her investigation was concluded, her attorneys received an FBI Affidavit which confirmed that Al Arian's own letters proved that he was fund raising for Islamic Jihad, and it "has been declared an international terrorist organization by the Department of State." The only logical conclusion is that Betty Castor wanted to avoid the controversy and dump the Al Arian problem on her successor.

Ms. Castor says that she does not want to think about the "What If's". Here's one that I am going to remember on election day. Professor Al Arian's friend and fellow board member personally went to Afghanistan to deliver a satellite phone to Usama Bin Laden. But then, under Ms. Castor's standards, she probably would not have fired him either.

(John Loftus is a former federal prosecutor and consultant on terrorism .)