Tag Archives: Muslim Brotherhood

Benghazi: When America Switched Sides In The War On Terror And Armed Al-Qaida

The Center for Security Policy’s Vice President for Research and Analysis, Clare Lopez, says in this exclusive video interview with The Daily Caller that very few have seemed to care that America switched sides in the global war on terror when President Obama deposed an erstwhile ally in the Middle East and provided weapons to al-Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Focusing on this under-reported, critical shift in American foreign policy, Clare Lopez discusses how an American ambassador and others were killed in Benghazi on the anniversary of 9/11 because the Obama administration decided to promote and defend their narrative that “al-Qaida was on the run,” even as we were outright arming militants affiliated with the terrorist group.

Lopez spent 20 years as an undercover operations officer for the CIA. Believing she can now best serve her country in the policy arena, she has found a natural fit at a non-partisan non-profit that promotes American national security and foreign policy based on the principle of “peace through strength.”

This week, we feature part 1 of 2 of our video interview with Lopez on the topic of the Benghazi attacks. Lopez, who’s also a member of the Citizens Commission on Benghazi, says, “Benghazi is symbolic of more than just a disastrous foreign policy or a disastrous attack on our mission that took the lives of four Americans serving there and injured many more. Benghazi is not just what happened on September 11, 2012 either. Americans really need to care about Benghazi and what happened there because that is the place, and 2011 and 2012 was the time, when America switched sides in the war on terrorism.”

To her, the American decision to overthrow the head of a sovereign government, Muammar al-Gaddafi, and to instead support al-Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood laid the important framework for a resurgence of global jihad.

Lopez says when we supported the local Islamic forces, America flipped in the global war on terror and we, the U.S. government, turned on our erstwhile ally and provided funding, backing, intelligence, our participation in a NATO effort and weapons for rebel forces.

“We facilitated the flow of weapons to the Gaddafi opposition, and we knew the opposition was dominated by al-Qaida. It was led by the Muslim Brotherhood and the fighting militia was dominated by al-Qaida. That’s who we helped,” she explained.

Later in the interview, Lopez discusses the important, unanswered questions on Benghazi before, during and after the 2012 attack. She discusses the weapons transfers happening in Benghazi that were at the heart of the controversial change in American policy, and the significance of the capture and prosecution of Ahmed Abu Khattala.

In addition, Lopez discusses the significance of the Muslim Brotherhood giving a “kill order” to al-Qaida, showing significant “command and control” as the global jihadist forces began a resurgence.

Lopez ends by bringing viewers back to the fall of 2012. When the reality of the Benghazi attack came to light due to Judicial Watch’s “smoking gun email,” we now know the Obama administration scurried to promote a narrative that did not challenge the President’s reelection mantra “Osama bin Laden is dead and al-Qaida is on the run.” Lopez says, “It would not have suited, at all, to be defending against a nonexistent al-Qaida!”

She continues, “To admit that would be to admit a complete failure of American foreign policy, a complete failure and dereliction of duty by the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and the President, Obama and the White House, to defend our mission and our people. And that, they could not allow.”

American Muslim Organizations Pen Letter Against Surveillance of Islamist Groups

Fresh off the successful elimination of the highly respected NYPD intelligence program, the Islamist-left alliance which seeks to utterly neuter American intelligence and law enforcement has set its sights on the last line of defense: your local law enforcement.

Federal Law enforcement has already faced a complete purge of training materials, aiming to eliminate any vestige of information regarding how Jihadi terror groups draw their threat doctrine from Islamic sources. Long established specialists on political Islam, counterterrorism, asymmetrical warfare and counterinsurgency have lost their jobs, been publicly ridiculed, or, if they wish to continue to instruct, suffer through turning over their intellectual work products to a faceless committee to determine what can and cannot be said about America’s enemies. This review committee is so secretive that even Congressional staffers on the relevant committees have been denied information about their identities.

That purge was kicked off by a letter sent by 57 organizations, including multiple organizations with known ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, including the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC).

Now, another letter has been sent featuring 75 organizations, including many of the same Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups. As in the first purge, the letter writers claim to be responding to a news story featuring leaked classified information. In 2012, it was a Wired.com story by Spencer Ackerman. This time around it’s Glenn Greenwald (of Snowden fame)’s piece on the -completely legal- electronic surveillance of several individuals with known Islamic extremism and terror ties.

In the letter, the organizations call for an auditing of all intelligence and law enforcement training materials, and mandatory retraining for any federal, state or local law enforcement official who has ever received the training the group finds objectionable. They also seek to extend the training purge to any federal, state or local law enforcement organization which has receives federal money.

This reeducation program, if enacted by the Obama Administration, will represent a final victory for Islamists seeking to control U.S. policy on dealing with the jihadist threats.

Tellingly, the day prior to the letter’s official unveiling, Mohammed Elibiary, himself instrumental in the first training purge, essentially declared “checkmate” on twitter saying, “With my 22+ yrs in @GOP, friends thru out 100s US security/policing agencies & academia; no future presidency will reverse reforms underway.”

Sadly, Elibiary may be correct. If the pattern from the 2012 purge experience holds, we can expect a rapid response from the Obama administration in support of this letter, and equally rapid implementation of its demands. If so, at the very time respected Middle East analysts like Ali Khedary are saying that the Obama Administration “doesn’t take the threat of transnational jihad seriously,” we may find that no one, from the FBI, CIA and DOD analysts, to the small town sheriff’s deputies, will be so much as permitted to say the word jihad in their training.

IIIT: The Muslim Brotherhood’s Think Tank

Founded in 1981 following a summit by high level Muslim Brotherhood leaders, the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) is the leading Islamist think tank in the world. Despite a federal investigation into its ties to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fundraising, members of IIIT continue to operate among the Washington policy community. This addition to the Center for Security Policy Occasional Paper Series examines the founding of IIIT, its disturbing ideology calling for “the Islamization of knowledge” and “civilizational battle,” and its troubling ties to terrorist organizations.

Read the paper at the link below.

pdf iconKyle Shideler and David Daoud: International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT): The Muslim Brotherhood’s Think Tank | Center for Security Policy Occasional Paper Series | July 28, 2014 (PDF 14 pages, 245kB)

IIIT Backgrounder final 07-28-14

The Terrorist Brotherhood

One of my personal heroes is Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. She is a remarkable person who has served with courage and distinction in her time in the U.S. House of Representatives. I am honored to call her a friend.

Her record has been further burnished by the introduction yesterday of a most important piece of legislation. It calls for the Muslim Brotherhood to be designated a foreign terrorist organization.

The fact that the shariah-promoting Brotherhood hasn’t already been so designated is a scandal. The Obama administration’s legitimating, funding and even arming this jihadist group is malfeasant.

It is high time that the Brotherhood is added to the list of this nation’s enemies and that every effort be bent toward putting them irreversibly out of business, here as well as elsewhere.

“We are Hamas!” Cry Greenwald’s CAIR Buddies

In a July 9 article posted on this site, Misleading Claims by Greenwald and New York Times on NSA/FBI Spying on American Muslims, I discussed a false claim by former London Guardian writer Glenn Greenwald that a recent classified document leaked by Edward Snowden indicates the U.S. government has been targeting the email of innocent American Muslim leaders solely because of their religion.
 
According to Greenwald, among these American Muslims targeted for surveillance by CIA and NSA was Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).   CAIR claims to be “America’s largest Muslim civil rights organization.”  However, a New York Times article on this Snowden leak noted that CAIR has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and in 2007 was an unindicted co-conspirator in its prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation, a Muslim charity later convicted of providing material support for terrorism by funneling money to Hamas. 
 
Moreover, at a 1994 symposium at Barry University in Florida, Nihad Awad said “I am in support of the Hamas movement.”
 
CAIR’s support of the terrorist group Hamas was confirmed this week at a CAIR rally in Florida when protesters cried out, “We are Hamas!”  “We are Jihad!”  “Hamas kicked your ass.”
 
CAIR’s Maryland office this week announced that it collected over 1,000 letters urging Maryland’s senators “to end the killing in Gaza.”   A CAIR-Maryland official claimed “American taxpayers are funding Israel’s use of excessive, inhumane force against Palestinian civilians in Gaza.”
 
Reflecting CAIR’s notorious history of refusing to condemn Islamist terrorism, it has said nothing about Hamas’ rocket attacks against Israel or its “human shields” strategy to generate negative press for Israel by deliberately firing rockets from densely populated civilian areas in Gaza, using hospitals, disability centers, mosques and schools as launching sites.
 
So will Glenn Greenwald take back his false story that the U.S. government monitored the email of CAIR Executive Director Awad solely because he is a Muslim?  Will he concede that CAIR has clear ties to the terrorist organization Hamas and is playing a key role in promoting Hamas’ agenda in the United States?  Will Greenwald condemn CAIR’s one-sided attacks on Israel and its failure to call for an end to Hamas rocket attacks and its human shield strategy that is designed to cause the deaths of Palestinian women and children?
 
Not likely.  It turns out that Greenwald has close ties to CAIR and has been paid thousands of dollars to speak at CAIR fundraising banquets, according to a July 20, 2014 Newbusters article. 
 
Edward Snowden’s credibility has been undermined by assessments by U.S. intelligence experts that he was working for Russian intelligence.  Now there is clear evidence that Glenn Greenwald, Snowden’s principal media collaborator, is a shill for an American offshoot of an Islamist terrorist organization.
 
Hopefully the news media soon start seeing Snowden and Greenwald as the charlatans that they are.  Their 15 minutes of fame cannot end soon enough.

Hamas-Tip of the Muslim Brotherhood Spear

As Israeli forces continue advance into Gaza to combat Hamas- with a particular focus on combating the infiltration tunnels used by Hamas to conduct raids targeting Israeli civilians, it’s worth raising the question, why is it that Hamas, an isolated terrorist organization, feels comfortable repeatedly going head to head with the most powerful regional military in the Middle East?

They have state sponsors, such asIran, Turkey and Qatar, who provide financing, true, but ultimately, Hamas is comfortable operating because they know that behind them stands the entire Global Muslim Brotherhood movement.

This has never been a secret. Hamas’ founding charter (Article 2:) states:

the Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of the Muslim Brothers in Palestine. The Muslim Brotherhood Movement is a world organization, the largest Islamic Movement in the modern era.

Nor has this changed. During the Muslim Brotherhood’s rule over Egypt, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh pointed out that Hamas, “was the Jihadi movement of the Brotherhood, with a Palestinian face.” That’s important to note. Hamas’ supposed interest in the Palestinians is but a face Hamas wears to further their real interest. Jihad.  Indeed, during Brotherhood rule in Egypt, Hamas was formally raised to a position within the Global Muslim Brotherhood.

The global Muslim Brotherhood has been oriented to support jihad on behalf of “Palestine” since Hamas was established. The 1982 “Global Project for Palestine” document acquired by Swiss Law Enforcement during a raid on Muslim Brotherhood financier Yousef Nada after 9/11 indicates the role of the Global Muslim Brotherhood in directing policy for the ”Palestinian Cause”:

THE ELEVENTH POINT OF DEPARTURE

To adopt the Palestinian cause as part of a worldwide Islamic plan, with the policy plan and by means of jihad, since it acts as the keystone of the renaissance of the Arab world today.

a-Elements:

To provide an Islamic view on all areas, problems and solutions relative to the Palestinian question, based on the precepts of Islam.

To prepare the community of believers for jihad for the liberation of Palestine.

[One can lead the Ummah to realize the plans of the Islamic movement above all if victory is ours], if God wills it.

To create a modest nucleus of jihad in Palestine, and to nourish it in order to maintain the flame that will light the road toward the liberation of Palestine, and in order that the Palestinian cause will endure until the moment of liberation.

This global direction was confirmed by documents seized in the home of US Muslim Brotherhood member Ismail Elbarasse, who was arrested by a Maryland law enforcement on a material witness warrant after being caught with his wife videotaping the structural supports for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.  On such document, an internal 1992 memo from the Muslim Brotherhood front the Islamic Association of Palestine notes:

D- Palestine Committees in the countries:

With the growth of the blessed Intifada and the spread of’ the spirit of Jihad amidst the children of Palestine and the nation, it became incumbent upon the remainder of the lkhwan branches to play a role in attributing this Intifada and this Islamic action to Palestine. Therefore, a resolution was issued by the Guidance Office and the Shura Council of the International Movement to form “Palestine Committees” in all the Arab, the Islamic and the Western nations whose job is to make the Palestinian cause victorious and to support it with what it needs of media, money, men and all of that. (Refer to the resolution in the supplement).

Three: a- The Islamic Resistance Movement:

With the increase of the Intifada and the advance of the Islamic action inside and outside Palestine, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), provided through its activities in resisting the Zionist occupation a lot of sacrifices from martyrs, detainees, wounded, injured, fugitives and deportees and it was able to prove that it is an original and an effective movement in leading the Palestinian people. This Movement – which was bred in the bosom of the mother movement, “The Muslim Brotherhood” – restored hope and life to the Muslim nation and the notion that the flare of Jihad has not died out and that the banner of Islamic Jihad is still raised.

As the Israel Defense Forces hunt down Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip, it’s worth reminding ourselves that behind the men with rockets, mortars and AK-47s, lies a global organization prepared to fund them, to manipulate the media on their behalf, and to defend them from world opinion. The Muslim Brotherhood affiliated International Union of the Muslim Scholars called out for, “the Islamic and Arab peoples to rise up in all parts of the world for the sake of Palestine and Jerusalem since it is the central issue of the nation…” Founded by chief Muslim Brotherhood jurist Yusuf Al Qaradawi, IUMS has previously called for the killing of American troops and civilians in Iraq. But that did not stop the Obama White House from meeting with IUMs vice President Abdallah Bin Bayyah last year. Shortly after the IUMS issued their call for a global uprising, the Muslim Brotherhood website Ikhwanweb.com echoed the same call. Not surprisingly, we now see violent riots breaking out in Paris, and elsewhere.

While we can applaud the careful and deliberate counterterrorism operation now being conducted by the IDF, we should remember that to truly defeat Hamas we must uproot the Global Muslim Brotherhood. We should also be wary that when the Muslim Brotherhood does calls for violence, there are those out there like Ismail Elbarasse who have done the reconnaissance, filmed the targets, and spent decades indoctrinating the young men who will answer the call.

Presidential appeasement

Just a few days after memorializing the lives of our lost heroes, President Obama made a shocking announcement that he was releasing five hard-core Taliban terrorist leaders in exchange for the return of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, an Army deserter.

Susan Rice, of Benghazi “talking points” fame, described Sgt. Bergdahl almost as if he were a returning hero and thanked him for his honorable service. What nonsense. Customarily, “no one left behind” only applies to honorable men, but for Team Obama, it didn’t apply to those who fought for their lives on a rooftop in Benghazi. According to numerous reports from his fellow soldiers, not only did Sgt. Bergdahl desert his post, he may have provided valuable information to the Taliban, as attacks on his fellow soldiers significantly increased after his defection. I am sure that none of these fellow soldiers will be lining the streets of his hometown to welcome his return. My own view is that he should be sent to Fort Leavenworth and held in custody until trial by court martial.

Compounding his potential acts of treason, at least six and possibly more good American servicemen lost their lives looking for him. We need to know what the position of the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was on releasing these hard-core terrorists, who most certainly will return to the battlefield to kill more Americans, or worse. After all, they are very senior Taliban.

As Americans, we cannot ignore this senseless act by our president for his own political expedience. It is no wonder the United States is becoming irrelevant in world affairs and is so contemptuously dismissed by the likes of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah and the corrupt Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, who refused to meet with Mr. Obama on his surprise Memorial Day visit to our troops.

With the Middle East in total turmoil plus aggressive action by Russia in Ukraine and China looking to expand its reach in the South China Sea and East China Sea, the continued unilateral disarmament of our military forces makes absolutely no sense. At the same time, Mr. Obama’s announcement that all U.S. forces will be out of Afghanistan by 2016 was welcome news to the Taliban, and certainly to the just released five hard-core terrorists.

In his recent speech at West Point, Mr. Obama, while reiterating his Afghan withdrawal plan, did not mention that our counterinsurgency-style war on terrorism has not worked. Declaring that we will only conduct strikes when there is “near certainty of no civilian casualties” may sound good in the faculty lounge, but it is used by our enemies to our net disadvantage. In that sense, no one should forget the tragic Resolution 17 mission, which cost the lives of 25 elite SEAL Team 6 warriors. Besides not using Special Warfare MH-47 helicopters, the restriction on not allowing suppression fire for fear of civilian casualties cost the largest loss of our special elite warriors in their history. Some experts think we should have been out of Afghanistan in six to nine months. Trying to impose democracy on a tribal society never should have been an objective. History will prove revealing.

To understand Mr. Obama’s release of the five terrorists, you have to go back to when he took office in 2009 and thought he could change the dynamics of the Middle East by engaging our enemies. In his 2009 Cairo outreach speech to the Muslim world, he stated he considered it part of his responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam. He signaled U.S. support for the Islamic uprisings. In effect, he dumped our allies in the global war on terrorism — and nobody even noticed. In Libya, we facilitated the arming of al Qaeda-affiliated militias, leading to the Benghazi tragedy. Our federal laws were violated.

The Obama administration, in implementing its new direction, totally embraced the Muslim Brotherhood even though its code is to destroy the United States from within by our own “miserable hands.” It must be understood that there is no difference between the objectives of the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda. Any distinction lies only in the tactics they use to achieve their objectives: Destroy the United States and replace the Constitution with Shariah law. For years, the Muslim Brotherhood has been able to penetrate our national security agencies, and now it is institutionalized. It is the same type of penetration the communists were able to achieve in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s to influence our policies and operations.

We will never achieve our objectives in the war on terrorism until we accept the fact that it is Shariah law that fosters radical Islam. Such an ideology is totally incompatible with our Constitution and our concept of freedom. However, with his release of five hard-core terrorists, it is clear the president will continue to subvert our Constitution until Congress finds the courage to carry out its constitutional responsibilities.

 

Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?

The International Center for Religion and Diplomacy (ICRD) is a Washington-based non-profit organization that, like many working these portfolios, happens to have worrisome ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. It is, moreover, engaged in a top priority of what the Brotherhood calls “civilization jihad” – namely, interfaith dialogue. The Brothers cynically engage in such “bridge-building” in order to induce individuals and institutions of other creeds to provide them with political cover, thereby enabling subversive Islamist efforts to insinuate into this country the supremacist shariah doctrine – all in the name of religious freedom.

On May 30th, the ICRD will further display its true colors. It will have as its guests of honor at a gala fundraising dinner two preeminent stealth jihadists – Faisal Rauf and his wife, Daisy Khan. The couple gained international notoriety in 2010 when they sought to build a 15-story mosque complex in a building so close to Ground Zero that it was badly damaged in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center.

The only surprise in all of this is the dinner’s keynote speaker: House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI).

Now, I am personally fond of Rep. Rogers. In the land of the blind that is our Congress – which is almost completely bereft of lawmakers who focus on national security, let alone provide leadership in that portfolio – he is the one-eyed man, for sure. He has been willing to tell the truth about the world becoming more dangerous when few in his party, let alone the Democrats in Washington, have done so. A former Army officer and FBI special agent, he has championed a strong defense and sought to stave off the throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater impulses of legislators determined to dismantle the NSA in the wake of the Snowden treachery.

So, I wrote the chairman last week laying out the ties between the ICRD and various American Muslim Brotherhood fronts and leaders. These include: one of the Brotherhood’s preeminent fonts of ideological purity, the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT); the American Muslims for Constructive Engagement (AMCE), whose stated mission is to secure “the deliberate appointment of qualified Muslims to key advisory bodies and policy-relevant positions in government in order to shape U.S. policy choices”; and, through the AMCE, the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). ICNA, ISNA and CAIR were listed as unindicted co-conspirators in the largest terrorism-financing trial in U.S. history: U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation, et.al.

Consequently, I urged Chairman Rogers in my 21 May letter to withdraw from the ICRD fundraiser: “While there is certainly no objection to qualified Americans, of any religion, serving in U.S. policy-making positions, it appears that members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a subversive terrorist organization with intimate ties to terrorism, are using the ICRD as a venue for an ongoing influence operation to manipulate U.S. policy. Your attendance at this event would risk further legitimizing this event to the detriment of U.S. national security.”

Unfortunately, this is not the first time Rep. Rogers has evidenced an inadequate appreciation of the civilization jihad the Muslim Brotherhood is waging inside the United States. (To read the Brotherhood’s secret plan for this jihad, see here.). Notably, in July 2012, he joined Senator John McCain and House Speaker John Boehner in criticizing Rep. Michele Bachmann and four other legislators. They had quite properly written five federal agencies’ inspectors general requesting investigations of the roles being played in shaping U.S. policies by individuals shown to be associated with the Muslim Brotherhood in this country (see: see Part 8 of the free, online course at www.MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com).

This is a particularly bad time for the chairman of the House intelligence oversight committee to have a blind spot with respect to Islamist influence operations. After all, the Obama administration appears determined to admit more Muslim Brothers into this country as they are being rolled up in Egypt. That would be the practical effect of its recent decision to rewrite unilaterally and extra-constitutionally federal immigration statutes by allowing individuals to apply for refugee status if they have only engaged in “limited” material support for terrorism. Last week, a young Egyptian Brotherhood sympathizer, if not member, appears to be the first to have put this opportunity to the test.

In addition, as Adam Kredo observed at the Washington Free Beacon, the Obama State Department is continuing the embrace of Islamists begun while Hillary Clinton was in charge:

The State Department’s Counter Terrorism (CT) Bureau promoted on Friday a controversial Muslim scholar whose organization has reportedly backed Hamas and endorsed a fatwa authorizing the murder of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

The CT bureau on Friday tweeted out a link to the official website of Sheikh Abdallah Bin Bayyah, the vice president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), a controversial organization founded by a Muslim Brotherhood leader “who has called for the death of Jews and Americans and himself is banned from visiting the U.S.,” according to Fox News.

Mike Rogers is right that the world is becoming more dangerous thanks to the rising capabilities and malevolence of global jihadists. The reality, however, is that the threat is growing in no small part because of the success jihadists are having in undermining our situational awareness and subverting our policies. We need Chairman Rogers for the remainder of his tenure in Congress to be part of the solution to that problem, not compounding it with his own case of willful blindness.

Frank Gaffney Letter to Chairman Rogers

What About Huma?

Hillary Clinton is coming under scrutiny for serial fiascoes that occurred while she was Secretary of State. It’s about time.

These are among the decisions that Hillary made, or at least presided over, that are emerging as real liabilities – for the country, as well as for her future presidential prospects:

  • Mrs. Clinton refused to designate Nigeria’s Boko Haram as a terrorist group when various other government agencies urged to do so, long before it grabbed international headlines by kidnapping hundreds of schoolgirls.
  • She personally engineered the opening of formal relations with the Muslim Brotherhood before it came to power in Egypt. The latter was a strategic setback of the first order for U.S. interests, one that was facilitated by the Obama administration’s recognition and empowering of this jihadist group and by its undermining of our ally, Hosni Mubarak.
  • The Clinton State Department insisted that nothing be done to challenge the narrative that everything was going swimmingly in Libya after its “liberation” by jihadists backed by U.S.-enabled NATO air strikes. This folly, in turn, led to State’s refusal at the highest levels to authorize requested security upgrades for our special mission compound and CIA facility in Benghazi.
  • Hillary Clinton co-founded the so-called “Istanbul Process,” a multi-meeting “dialogue” with the European Union and the Islamists’ international front, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). This initiative has been used to advance the OIC’s agenda of curbing free speech in America and elsewhere in the West that might “offend” Muslims – something Mrs. Clinton said she would use “old-fashioned techniques of peer-pressure and shaming” to ensure.
  • Such techniques, and worse, were evident in September 2012 when then-Secretary of State Clinton lied that a video that gave such offense was responsible for the attacks on U.S. missions and personnel in Egypt and Benghazi. She actually achieved her stated goal to have the person who made the almost-entirely-unseen internet film, “Innocence of Muslims,” arrested and prosecuted. In fact, to this day, that filmmaker,Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, is the only individual punished in connection with the Benghazi attacks.

Such policy malpractice – or outright malfeasance – has already cost four Americans their lives, and may lead to the loss of many more.

For that reason, the new House Select Committee on Benghazi must focus on the nature and consequences of Hillary Clinton’s conduct with respect to: the policies that led up to the attacks of September 11, 2012; what transpired that evening; and the cover-up that followed. To really get to the bottom of these matters, however, Chairman Trey Gowdy and his colleagues must also examine with care the role played by a top Clinton lieutenant who has, to date, been almost completely unmentioned in the reporting, leaking and congressional inquiries about Benghazigate: Huma Abedin.

This is all the more curious since Ms. Abedin has extensive family and personal ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. (See: Andy McCarthy’s rigorous analysis of those ties)

The question is: How many of the dubious decisions involving U.S. policy in the Mideast, especially the aforementioned ones – pursuant to which the goals of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists were consistently advanced – were influenced by a woman long associated with the world’s preeminent jihadist organization sworn to our destruction?

A similar question was formally posed nearly two years ago by Reps. Michele Bachmann, Louie Gohmert, Trent Franks, Lynn Westmoreland (a member of the Gowdy select committee) and Tom Rooney in a letter to the Inspector General of the Department of State. They requested that the IG conduct “a formal investigation or evaluation of the extent to which Muslim Brotherhood-tied individuals and entities have helped achieved the adoption of [several enumerated] State Department actions and policies, or are involved in their execution.”

Rep. Bachmann was personally savaged by Senator John McCain and others for having raised such perfectly legitimate questions. And ever since there has been little evident appetite – on Capitol Hill, in the media or elsewhere – to pursue them and where they lead.

But now, the select committee has a mandate to get to the bottom of the Benghazigate scandal. If Rep. Gowdy and Company are to do so, they must examine with care the decisions about “State Department actions and policies” that led inexorably to that murderous attack – and that have the potential to threaten many more of us unless corrected. And doing that will require the select committee to establish precisely who the decisionmakers were, and ensure that they are held accountable, at last.

Intel Brief: helping Egyptians shut down the Muslim Brotherhood

Center for Security Policy Senior Fellow Stephen Coughlin joined a delegation to Egypt for a 20-day fact-finding tour. He met with prominent Egyptian leaders including anti-Muslim Brotherhood figures. He joined Senior Fellow Fred Fleitz to discuss the findings of his trip, and his forthcoming book Catastrophic Failure.

Helping Egyptians shut down the Muslim Brotherhood

For a broader treatment of the trip, including perspective from Coughlin’s colleague Patrick Poole, see the following video from the Center’s National Security Group Lunch on Capitol Hill: