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In case you found it a stretch believing our terrorist enemies would seriously attempt to infiltrate our country by simply walking across our porous borders, this alarming story ought to put your doubts to rest once and for all.

WorldNetDaily.com reported earlier this week that Qatar-based television network Al-Jazeera is planning on doing an "exposé" of the U.S.-Mexico border, where most of our illegal immigrants come across.

The network "has contacted Minuteman Civil Defense Corps leader Chris Simcox to try to arrange interviews," WND reported. "Simcox, who rejected the request for cooperation with the TV network, says al-Jazeera, seen by millions throughout the Arab world and elsewhere, is producing an hour-long documentary news special on lack of security at the U.S. southern border."

So what's the big deal about an Arab television network filing a report about our porous southwestern border? Just this. Al-Jazeera has been described by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as a network that aids and abets terrorism. "If anyone here lived in the Middle East and watched a network like Al-Jazeera day after day after day, even if you were an American you would begin to believe that America was bad," he told an Asian defense conference in Singapore earlier this month.

And, as WND points out, the network has also been "criticized by the new Iraqi government and others for its anti-American bias and willingness to carry the messages of terrorist organizations, including al-Qaeda."

Simcox should be credited for denying al Jazeera reporters any interviews, thus denying the network any other information our enemies could find useful. But he says the network will, nonetheless, film his organization's border watch activities over the July 4th weekend near Arivaca, Ariz. And that should be a serious concern for our government.

Minuteman spokeswoman Connie Hair was spot-on in her assessment of the network's plans. "Would we allow Japanese or German television to film the unsecured border during World War II? "These people broadcast to the enemies of America. It's not a news story, it's recon."

The fact is spies posing as reporters and news media correspondents are nothing new. Operatives for the former Soviet Union's spy agencies used to pose as news media.

China too. In 2000, the Washington Times reported that China's state-owned news agency, Xinhua, bought a 7-story complex overlooking the Pentagon. " Spy experts say Xinhua is one cog in China's vast spying machine and could use the direct line of sight to attempt to monitor Pentagon officials," the paper reported.

What makes the al Jazeera story even more compelling and serious is concern expressed by the U.S. intelligence community that Islamo-terrorists will use the sieve-like southwest border corridors to infiltrate our country.

"Concern is growing at the top levels of government about the U.S.-Mexican border becoming a back door for terrorists entering the United States," the Christian Science Monitor reported in March. "While al Qaeda infiltration across the nation's southern border has been a constant concern since 9/11, U.S. officials cite recent intelligence giving the most definitive evidence yet that terrorists are planning to use it as an entry point -- if they haven't already."

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