The American liberal media continues to pander to the American Islamists’ narrative. Too frequently positions are naturally assumed: that America discriminates and investigates all Muslim Americans, favoring the Islamists’ portrayal of a ‘Muslim America under siege’; that criticism of Muslims is tantamount to defamation of religion, and that challenging the actions of extremist Muslims and their interpretations of their ‘Islam’ is bigoted, rather than objective and serious analysis, even when proffered by observant Muslims like me.
This seduction of our media – which has been subdued largely by intimidation and the fear of accusations of Islamophobia -is the Islamists’ greatest coup, one as a Muslim, I must challenge and one which I am relieved to see The Blaze has decided to address.
Expressing concern, executive editor Chris Fields of The Blaze recent wrote “American journalists bend over backward to treat Muslims in a positive way, even to ludicrous extremes. As a result, terrorists are often called “militants”—even when they are on U.S. government terror watch lists. And any open criticism of radical Islam has typically been treated as “Islamophobia.”
He later draws a contrast with the much more critical portrayal of Christians in the media. His argument is long overdue, though most members of the press are too uncomfortable to consider engaging in this debate.
A new and important documentary reveals what liberal media willingly obscures: the sophistication of Islamist operatives exploiting America’s civil rights privileges. The Investigative Project on Terrorism’s “The Grand Deception” is based on primary source materials gathered at assemblies of some Muslim American Islamist groups, exposing the Muslim Brotherhood in particular.
Problematically for me, an observant Muslim, Islamist groups self-identify as ‘Muslim’ and primarily ‘religious’, while their actions speak to not Islam but religionized Islamofacism, an explicitly totalitarian political Islamism.
“The Grand Deception” exposes radical Islamist in their own words, shattering to any Muslim in America- and is exactly why our communities invite unwanted scrutiny. In their own voices, American Islamists demand violent jihad against the United States.
The Qu’ran calls such individuals the Munafiquun – the hypocrites and emphasizes the need for Muslims to recognize and repudiate them. The documentary captures such hypocrisy, unveiling not only preachers recognized as ‘spiritual leaders’ but also mainstream groups branded as American ‘Muslim advocacy’ groups while remaining unindicted coconspirators in Federal Investigations.
Declassified Muslim Brotherhood memoranda examined in the movie claim Muslims’ “work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands … so that … God’s religion [Islam] is made victorious over all other religion” supposedly while also enjoying all the civil rights protections and privileges America affords a ‘religious minority’ on American soil.
Muslim Student Associations members are documented in their own voices expressing loyalty to Osama Bin Laden. “I don’t know this guy,” Amir Mertaban, recorded in 2007 when President of MSA West, “I don’t know what he did. I don’t know what he said. I don’t know what happened. But we defend Muslim brothers, and we defend our Muslim sisters to the end. Is that clear?”
The film examines Nidal Malik Hassan, a Muslim US Army Medical Corp psychiatrist-turned-mass killer who shot 13 and wounded 29 fellow soldiers at Fort Hood Texas, the worst shooting ever at an American military base. Authorities cowered by an official lexicon ‘sanitized’ by President Obama’s administration refused to call Hassan’s actions ‘radical Islamist terrorism’ instead calling it ‘workplace violence’. This is precisely the reticence Fields refers to by way of a ‘media jihad”.
Radicalism within US armed forces was examined in the 2012 King Investigative Hearings on the Radicalization of Muslim Americans, showing neither Hassan’s ideology hardly an exception.
In June 2012, testifying in the fifth of these hearings I became privy to the sum findings, which paint a comprehensive view of America’s Islamists. This data is not the result of indiscriminate, slipshod and unlawful profiling but of devoted, painstaking police work and hard-won intelligence. While calls for transparency of law enforcement surveillance rise, calls to pursue the rich findings of these hearings are yet to be heard.
Congress is reluctant to confront reality. One Homeland Security Committee member objected to my testimony supporting investigation of some Muslim Americans and advising against the dangers of sanitizing the lexicon. I was firmly warned that my words were inviting another ‘Internment’ akin to the Japanese internment during World War Two.
Such hysteria, at the highest levels of our society, vilifies both Muslims willing to enter this debate and any agency gathering meaningful data within the bounds of the law.
Muslims in America are diverse, rendering political Islamists difficult to identify and the need for vigilance ever greater. Muslims in America come from over 68 different countries of origin. We belong to over 70 distinct sects. A 2011 Pew survey shows Muslim Americans’ religiosity to be heterogeneous – more than half do not attend weekly services. Even so, the overwhelming majority of Americas Muslims state quality of life for Muslims in the U.S. is better than in most Muslim countries upending the Islamist narrative of an entire community under siege from civil rights violations but again these arguments go unheard.
The battle for America’s Muslim narrative is here even if the liberal media has failed to identify this. Like it or not, some Muslim Americans are American political Islamists no matter how reluctant we are to accept this assertion. If only the media paid the same scrutiny to such data as to that gathered by the IPT in The Grand Deception, or accrued during the King Investigative Hearings as is to the actions or language of our enforcement agencies, we would greatly advance the public debate. It’s time to emerge from our torpor. Refusing to debate these issues, however uncomfortable or intimidating, is a grand deception indeed, one which we accomplish at our own hand and our own peril.
Well the Syrian rebel factions have settled down to decide on who should be their interim Prime Minister, and shockingly the winner is a Texan (but not Rick Perry.) No, it’s Ghassan Hitto, an information technology specialist from Texas, and former CAIR employee (h/t Jihad Watch):
Mr. Hitto and his wife, Suzanne, an American schoolteacher, have four children, all born in the United States, where Mr. Hitto advocated for Muslim Americans after 9/11 as a representative of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Nor of course is Hitto alone within the Syrian rebels. Louay Safi, formerly of the Muslim Brotherhood front group, the International institute of Islamic Thought (among others) and a former advisor to the Pentagon, currently heads up the Syrian National Council’s political office. The SNC has long been understood to be one of the Muslim Brotherhood’s principle organs in Syria.
Add to that the fact that Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi was recruited into the Muslim Brotherhood while attending the University of Southern California, and it looks like the United States is by far the biggest incubator for future Islamist Heads of State.
One might also be tempted to ask how it is that individuals of little renown outside of being members of North American Muslim Brotherhood fronts so easily transition to leadership roles of Muslim Brotherhood organizations in other countries? After all, we are repeatedly (falsely) assured that there is no “Global Muslim Brotherhood”, with an international viewpoint and plan, only a disparate group of organizations under that banner, each with their on national view points and focuses.
An ominous pattern has been developing, particularly of late: The Obama administration seems determined to subordinate public safety to political expediency. If a course-correction is not effected promptly, the result is predictable. Americans will be needlessly harmed, and perhaps killed.
The most recent and obvious example was the release last week of hundreds of reportedly dangerous illegal aliens from federal detention. The rationale given was that the sequestration-dictated budget cuts made their incarceration unaffordable. The White House has disavowed any involvement in this reckless decision. But it was certainly in keeping with the President’s erstwhile mantra that extremely dire repercussions – including the disruption of critical public services – would flow from a fiscal train-wreck that he has refused either to acknowledge devising or to stave off.
Even more worrying is the erosion of public safety inherent in the administration’s “fundamental transformation” of our national security. Mr. Obama’s own civilian and military leaders have warned that the effect of the $500 billion cut over ten years impelled by sequestration, coming on top of the nearly $800 billion in reductions in Pentagon spending that have been previously ordered, will be to “hollow out” the military. History teaches that when we disarm in this fashion, others respond aggressively – at the expense of our vital interests and at huge costs, both in fiscal terms and in a much more precious currency: lives.
Then, there are the reductions Mr. Obama seems determined to make, unilaterally if necessary, in our nuclear deterrent forces. The President fancies that he is “leading from in front” in this instance, but not one other nuclear power is following him towards a “world without nuclear weapons.” In fact, in the absence of a safe, reliable and credible American “nuclear umbrella,” it is inevitable that global proliferation and instability will increase. That will scarcely enhance our public safety.
The poster child for putting political considerations ahead of prudent security practice is John Brennan, the President’s homeland security and counter-terrorism advisor whom he hopes the Senate will shortly approve as the next Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Nothing could be more ill-advised.
The case against Brennan’s nomination has numerous elements. Members of the Senate’s Intelligence Committee have been rightly concerned about his apparent involvement in myriad leaks of highly classified information. These include the compromise of a most sensitive joint UK-Saudi intelligence operation that prevented a sophisticated terrorist attack and the sharing with Hollywood filmmakers of sensitive details concerning the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
Brennan also seems to have been party to lying to legislators, for whom he has ill-concealed contempt. Notably, it seems he was involved with an interagency “Deputies Committee” that, in the immediate aftermath of the murderous September 11th terrorist attack in Benghazi, reworked after-action briefers’ “talking points” – resulting in the unfounded claim that it was precipitated by an offensive video, not the attackers’ lust for jihad.
Speaking of jihad, John Brennan’s failure to comprehend this term is emblematic of the most important reason for the Senate to regard the prospect of him leading the CIA as a prescription for still further endangering of public safety. In a May 2010 address, Brennan declared that: “Jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community.”
In fact, Muslims who adhere to the orthodox and totalitarian Islamic doctrine they call shariah know jihad to be a legitimate tenet of their belief system, alright, but that it means holy war against the unbelievers. They understand “purification” to be about ensuring the triumph of shariah, both locally and globally.
Further egregious strategic errors flow from this fundamental, and potentially fatal, misjudgment by John Brennan and the administration he serves: The avowedly jihadist and shariah-imposing Muslim Brotherhood has been legitimated, empowered, funded, armed and emboldened. On Brennan’s watch, training materials and trainers that make clear such Islamists are unalterably our enemies have been purged government-wide. And Muslim Brothers have effectively been made the arbiters of who and what shall be used in future training to “counter violent extremism” underwritten by federal funds. The peril to public safety posed by such decisions is obvious.
John Brennan is, at best, willfully blind about the most immediate national security threat of our time. At worst, he has spent the past four years enabling its ascendancy abroad and its growth andinfluence operations here at home.
The Brennan nomination has engendered bipartisan opposition on other counts. The Left opposes his past involvement in so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” and his current role in the lethal use of drones. With respect to the former, the Intelligence Committee should carefully consider the CIA’s impending response to a controversial $40 million study commissioned by that panel’s majority before bringing Brennan’s confirmation to a vote. And with respect to the latter, Republicansupport for such drone strikes should not obscure – or be allowed to minimize – the unacceptability of the nominee’s myriad other defects.
President Obama’s record of putting his partisan political interests ahead of the best interests and even the safety of the American people is unconscionable. The Senate must not condone this practice, let alone contribute to it, by confirming one of its prime-movers, John Brennan, as the next CIA Director.
Washington, D.C.: With the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence scheduled to vote tomorrow on John Brennan’s nomination to become the next Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, it has become clear that Senators simply do not have all the information necessary for an informed decision on so sensitive an appointment. In an effort to illuminate the nominee’s shortcomings that demand – but have yet to receive – close scrutiny, the Center for Security Policy convened a virtual press conference featuring video-taped comments by six of the country’s preeminent experts on, among other things, the threat of Islamism and Brennan’s blindness to it.
The video includes powerful statements by Steve Emerson, Executive Director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism; Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy; Chris Farrell, Vice President for Investigations and Research for Judicial Watch; Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, USA Ret., former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; Andrew C. McCarthy, former federal prosecutor and author of The Grand Jihad and Spring Fever; and Stephen Coughlin, Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Policy and author of the forthcoming book, Catastrophic Failure.
The video, National Security Experts Warn: Reject Brennan, compliments the Center’s other effortsto educate the public, media and policymakers about the dangers of a possible Brennan tenure at the CIA, including a collection of Brennan-related resources and several investigative pieces.
Andrew McCarthy–who successfully prosecuted the Blind Sheikh who, twenty years ago yesterday, conspired to blow up the World Trade Center–said:
Making John Brennan the director of the Central Intelligence Agency is the most monumental mismatch of man and mission that I can imagine. The point of having our intelligence agencies is to make sure that we have a coherent, accurate idea of the threats that confront the United States. Unfortunately, Mr. Brennan’s career, and certainly the signature that he has put on the national security component of the Obama administration has been to blind the United States to the threats against us.
Steve Emerson, one of the country’s preeminent counter-terrorism experts added:
John Brennan, CIA director nominee, is uniquely unqualified to be the CIA director as evidenced by him being the architect of the outreach program to the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States as well as in the Middle East. In the course of the investigation conducted by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, we discovered that there were at least four hundred visits in the three years between 2009 and 2012 to the White House of radical Islamic groups, some of whom were unindicted co-conspirators in terrorism trials, but all of whom had been involved in establishing radical Islamic rhetoric, including support for Hamas, Hezbollah, denigrating the US, calling this a war against Islam by the United States.
Zuhdi Jasser, a leader of anti-Islamist Muslims in America, warned that:
…The reports put out from [John Brennan’s] counter-terrorism office at the White House…did not recognize the [Islamist] ideology. They noted a “radical ideology,” but didn’t name what it was — even though the word ‘ideology’ was mentioned twenty times. Our American-Islamic Leadership Coalition, that includes over 20 different reform-based organizations that are anti-Islamist, were not consulted. And, you can see from the report, that it seems to be very similar to things put out by groups like the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Islamic Society of North America. Unfortunately, John Brennan has had a very cozy relationship to these groups and has often used their talking points when speaking out about Islam, Islamism, jihad, and the threat…. In every position Brennan has been it, he has been more a facilitator of Islamist groups rather than a counterweight to them, in order to oppose them and confront them.
The Center today also released a letter signed by fifteen conservative leaders – many of whom have extensive experience with national security policymaking and practice – calling on congressional leaders to launch a bicameral select committee to investigate the Benghazigate scandal. John Brennan’s involvement in the run-up to the murderous attack on September 11, 2012, his conduct during that seven-hour engagement and his role in the subsequent cover-up must be addressed before he is allowed, as Rep. Trent Franks recently put it “anywhere near the CIA, let alone running it.”
Transcript: National Security Experts Warn: Reject Brennan
Frank Gaffney Center for Security Policy
I’m Frank Gaffney with the Center for Security Policy. We’ve brought together several of the country’s leading experts on national security, intelligence, and related matters to discuss in a kind of virtual press conference what is at stake in the nomination of John Brennan to become the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency. And what, if anything, are the implications of the Benghazi-gate scandal for the Brennan nomination on the one hand and the national security, more generally. I hope you’ll enjoy the comments of our colleagues and the thought-provoking recommendations they’re making.
Steven Emerson
Investigative Project on Terrorism
John Brennan, CIA director nominee, is uniquely unqualified to be the CIA director as evidenced by him being the architect of the outreach program to the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States as well as in the Middle East. In the course of the investigation conducted by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, we discovered that there were at least four hundred visits in the three years between 2009 and 2012 to the White House of radical Islamic groups, some of whom were unindicted co-conspirators in terrorism trials, but all of whom had been involved in establishing radical Islamic rhetoric, including support for Hamas, Hezbollah, denigrating the US, calling this a war against Islam by the United States. Urging its adherents not to talk to the FBI, claiming the FBI invented and fabricated charges of terrorism against terrorism suspects, of course Muslim. And John Brennan was the man who oversaw the invitation to all of these groups by these lieutenants.
Number two, Mr. Brennan was the man who opened the dialogue with radical Islamic groups as evidenced by his speeches to groups at NYU, including the Muslim Students Association, the NYU Muslim Student, law student group. And answering questions in which he responded to, by saying there was no such thing as holy war in Islam. That jihad meant peace and love. And that there was no such thing as a jihadi. He absolutely went beyond that when he praised groups like Islamic Relief which has demonstrable ties to terrorism and is under investigation by the Treasury for years for its ties to actual Hamas terrorism. He was the architect also of the purge policy at the FBI under FBI director Mueller, embarked on a campaign to purge the FBI and all of its bureaus around the country as well as its Quantico library, any book, pamphlet, paper, power point, picture, of anything that was considered to be, quote, anti-Islam. And who made the criteria? Radical Islamic groups. That was an order handed down initially from Brennan to Holder to Mueller in this. In pursuit of that order, there was literally a literal book burning, the likes of which hasn’t been seen since 1933. In addition to which, Mr. Brennan openly agreed with Muslim Advocates, a radical Islamist front group that believes that the United States has no right to prosecute Islamic terrorists because they’re all innocent.
He wrote a letter back to a leader of that group, Farhana Khera, claiming that she was right in her critique of US counter-terrorism policy, that the Patriot Act was in violation of civil rights. That there was abuse of – by the FBI agents of the rights of Muslims when there wasn’t any. That there was excessive surveillance and that in fact Islamic terrorist charities should not have been shut down. This was a disgrace. The letter was released by us to Breitbart News which they published. It was never meant for public consumption. And that was the beginning of the purge policy.
In addition to which [Brennan] has overseen the policies of outreach and embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Mr. Morsi, who is nothing but a terrorist thug, has been the darling of Mr. Brennan’s policy. Mr. Brennan openly advocated that in the White House the sale of the F-16s and the two hundred tanks to a regime that is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.
So all together, considering his open embrace of radical Islam, his embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood, his policy of appeasing these groups by eviscerating the national security of the United States, not only makes him disqualified to be the CIA director, it disqualifies him from the position he currently occupies on the National Security Council as counter-terrorism director. I think his nomination and any subsequent approval by the Senate would put our national security in shambles and make us a disgrace in the world, at least in the eyes of moderate Muslims who depend upon the United States for their support. Unfortunately, who have not gotten it, as evidenced by the absence of support to the Green Revolution in the first two years of the Iranian underground revolution during Obama’s term. And now we see the absence of support to the democratic liberal oppositions in Morsi. A policy again designed by Brennan.
So when we look at his policies about the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist groups in the United States, that are against the US, that deny US interests, that promote terrorism, and how he’s embraced them and how he’s embraced the larger Muslim Brotherhood groups in the Middle East, I can only tell you as someone who is not partisan, someone who would be willing to criticize any party for putting up such a nominee, this appointment should be adamantly and unanimously opposed first by the Senate intelligence committee and by the Senate itself. Thank you. I’m Steve Emerson from the Investigative Project on Terrorism.
Zuhdi Jasser
American-Islamic Forum for Democracy
My name is Zuhdi Jasser. I’m the president and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. And I’m joining my colleagues in speaking out against the nomination of John Brennan to head the Central Intelligence Agency.
I’ll tell you, as somebody who’s dedicated my life to countering political Islam and exposing the link between Islamism or political Islam and the threat, the security threat globally, I can’t think of a more important position in countering that threat than the head of the Central Intelligence Agency. And in fact, that CIA has had a center for the strategic analysis of political Islam and has really, with that center been one of the only government agencies in the United States that has recognized the importance of political Islam or Islamism in driving the radicalization of Muslims around the world. And the supremacism of the concept of the Islamic state and the ascendancy of Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and their ability to feed into groups all over the world and create al-Qaeda, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Jamaat al-Islamiyya and all the other hundreds of permutations of radicalism.
Unfortunately, the choice of John Brennan is clearly inappropriate. He has, in his position at the White House, has demonstrated the inability to make that decision, and I’ve been actually disappointed that he’s not been confronted on his position on that. And he’s demonstrated an inability to make that connection with a number of aspects. Number one, he – in the reports put out from the counter-terrorism office at the White House, for example, last summer they put out a report on their strategy and they did not even recognize what the ideology is. They noted a radical ideology, but they didn’t name what it was, even though the word ideology was mentioned twenty times. Our American Islamic leadership coalition that includes over twenty different reform based organizations that are anti-Islamist were not consulted and in fact you can see from the report that it seems to be very similar to things put out by groups like the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Islamic Society of North America. And unfortunately, John Brennan seems to have a very cozy relationship with these groups. And has often used their talking points about, when speaking out about Islam, Islamism, jihad and the threat, and he’s made comments about jihad that I would find very concerning, in many ways apologizing for it and not confronting the ideology that we’re faced with domestically and globally.
Secondly, the facilitation of these organizations by his position at the White House has demonstrated that he not only doesn’t get the ideology, but works with the wrong groups. And if the future head of the CIA is unable to pick which groups to work with, and without – I am very concerned that we will thus be facilitating the growth further of groups that are very anti-American, antisemitic, and look to progress ideas such as the ascension of the Islamic state in Egypt with the Muslim Brotherhood or in Saudi Arabic with Wahaabis and others. And in every position John Brennan has been in, it has almost been as if he has been more of a facilitator of Islamist movements rather than a counterweight to them in order to oppose then and confront them. And if there is anyone I think that will be ill suited and has demonstrated an inability to confront the ideology and the threat before us, it’s John Brennan. So I’d ask those who are looking to vote for or against him, to vote against this nomination and find an appropriate head that would keep our country safe abroad against the real threat of Islamism and all of its permutations around the world.
Chris Farrell
Judicial Watch
My name is Chris Farrell. I’m the director of investigations and research for Judicial Watch.
When it comes to the appointment of Mr. Brennan as CIA director, Judicial Watch has several concerns. Many of them focused around the Benghazi attack of September 11th, 2012. In that regard, we’ve focused very carefully, very heavily, on Benghazi, on the attack. On the State Department and the national security apparatus and what they were doing or not doing concerning the safety and security of the special mission consulate at Benghazi and the safety, of course, of Ambassador Stevens and his crew, the three other folks who died with him at the embassy. Or at the consulate.
In that regard, we have reason to believe that Mr. Brennan not only had active participation and knowledge of what was going on as Benghazi began to unfold, but perhaps was even instrumental in the administration’s initial cover story. That somehow the attack was related to this fictitious, now proven to be ridiculous story that there was an internet video that somehow went viral and inflamed the populace in Benghazi. Something the administration repeated endlessly. And so there’s substantial reason to believe Mr. Brennan not only had knowledge of that, but perhaps participated in crafting that phony cover story. In pursuing that and not just the cover story and Ambassador Rice’s appearances on five different shows to repeat that lie over and over again, to include the president repeating that lie at the United Nations, we have sued the office of the director of national intelligence to obtain the original talking points that Ambassador Rice supposedly relied upon. And again, the reason we mention this is because it’s our belief that Brennan either had knowledge of or participation in that story. It would be hard to explain how he wouldn’t know about it. So exactly what his role is, what he did or didn’t know, how that policy or how that story came to be crafted, we think it’s very important to get his understanding, his knowledge, his role in exactly what was going on in Benghazi – the ground truth of what was occurring on the ground at Benghazi as well as whatever stories were crafted by the administration to get around that to try to cover that or explain it away, a lie that they were clearly caught in.
So we’ve engaged in Freedom of Information Act requests, FOIA requests. We have a number of them pending with the State Department. I just told you we have sued the director of national intelligence to get the talking points. We’ve also asked for both still and video recordings of what was going on in Benghazi during the attack. We have asked for the security assessments of the compound there. Again, these are all things that would have come under Mr. Brennan’s review, either at the time of the attack or shortly thereafter. And it all plays into his knowledge, his participation, and being honest and forthcoming, not just with other government officials, but of course to the American public who he would be accountable to ultimately.
Along those lines, also, we have created a special report. It’s called The Benghazi Attack of September 11th, 2012. This special report that we’ve produced isn’t just some academic articulation of unknown points or questionable policies by these virtues. It’s not a product of the faculty lounge. It’s a report that is authored by a defense – excuse me, a diplomatic security service special agent and RSO, a regional security officer, someone who served in embassies as the chief security officer in places like Afghanistan and Israel among others. And a very experienced, very seasoned state security service specialist with thirty-plus years of service. So our expert, our analyst, produced this report, came to us and gave us his analysis based on thirty years of experience on the ground and asked some very important, very penetrating questions, many of which, frankly, should be asked of Mr. Brennan because there’s no way to reasonably assume he wouldn’t know the issues and the topics discussed in our special report.
So Mr. Brennan has a – to call it, to be generous, a somewhat checkered professional lead up to the point where he is now being recommended as the CIA director. There are more unanswered questions than there are answered questions. And unlike Hillary Clinton, who blustered at the senators and said, what difference does it make, why does it matter, which frankly shocked me because the senators were cowed by her outburst of temper. Someone should have spun it around and said, well, exactly. It does make quite a big difference. Answer the question. But in this case, Mr. Brennan really is subject to the same line of questioning. And hopefully, he will not bluster and cow the senators into submission by losing his temper.
There are legitimate questions and they need to be answered. We’ve spent an awful long time looking at Benghazi and trying to unravel that. And he certainly should have knowledge of it and be able to explain not just his role and his position in it and his knowledgeability, but also the broader question of what was going on in the administration as this unfolded. And it is directly on point, it is directly – it goes directly to his position that he’s vying for, to be CIA director. Because of course there is a large operational base co-located with the consulate in Benghazi. So it’s relevant, it’s timely, it is literally a matter of life and death and it touches on a subject that Mr. Brennan owes the American public an answer on.
Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, US Army (Ret.)
Family Research Council, former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence
My name is Jerry Boykin. I spent thirty-six years in the US Army and I want to say that I’m very concerned about the nomination of John Brennan as the next CIA director.
This post at CIA is so critical to the security of our nation. The CIA director has to be an individual that is not only experienced in intelligence, but clearly understands the threats against America. My concern is that John Brennan is not a man who has demonstrated that he truly understands the full magnitude of the threats against this nation today. His unwillingness to recognize the Muslim Brotherhood is operating in America and poses an existential threat to our Constitution and consequently to our freedoms and liberty I think disqualifies him.
It was John Brennan who forced the purging of some very accurate information in the FBI’s curriculum that talked about what the Koran and the hadiths say about the basic tenets of the Islamic religion, but more importantly the aspects of Islam that deal with their geopolitical system, their determination to perform jihad, their financial system, their legal system called shariah. John Brennan is one who has not publicly recognized that that’s a problem for Americans, for our Constitution. I’m also very concerned about the fact that John Brennan has yet to recognize that Israel is one of our very strong and closest allies. Brennan still calls Jerusalem al Quds, which is the terminology of the jihadists, the people who want to destroy Israel. He has also called Israel Palestine. That further reflects his sentiments towards the nation of Israel and I believe the Jewish people as well.
This nomination I think portends a weakness in American intelligence if he is confirmed. The fact that we would have a man who does not recognize the enemies of America, a man who has been very active in trying to downplay the role of the authoritarian Islamic theology with regards to what’s happening in our nation, and the successes that the Muslim Brotherhood is having in our nation I think is really a bad thing and something that Americans need to pay attention to.
This man is not the right man to be the CIA director. And I hope that Republicans and Democrats will recognize that this is not good for America. In fact, it will increase the threats to America if John Brennan is in fact confirmed.
Andrew McCarthy
Former federal prosecutor, author of Willful Blindness, the Grand Jihad and Spring Fever
Making John Brennan the director of the Central Intelligence Agency is the most monumental mismatch of man and mission that I can imagine. The point of having our intelligence agencies is to make sure that we have a coherent, accurate idea of the threats that confront the United States.
Unfortunately, Mr. Brennan’s career, and certainly the signature that he has put on the national security component of the Obama administration has been to blind the United States to the threats against us. I think the most important of the missteps that he has made in his tenure is to participate in what I call the purge of intelligence materials that are used to give instruction to our agents, whether they’re law enforcement, military, or intelligence agents–the components of government that we rely on to protect the national security of the United States.
There has been an extraction from those teaching materials of information about Islamist ideology on the grounds that it is unflattering to Muslims in the view of leaders of Islamic organizations, some of which were shown in a Justice Department prosecution just a few years ago, the Holy Land Foundation, some of those organizations found to be very hostile to the United States, part of a Muslim Brotherhood movement that, by its own terms, aims to eliminate and destroy Western Civilization from within by sabotage. Mr. Brennan’s participation in this effort has not only been to – as I understand it – order the extraction of materials, but that extraction was done in consultation with leaders of Islamist organizations. Some of which may have Muslim Brotherhood ties. I have to qualify that by saying may have because unbelievably we haven’t been able to find out exactly who it is that the administration has been consulting with in arriving at what should be in the training packages that are given to our agents. They’ve refused to give that information, Brennan has refused to give that information, and unfortunately, Congress has not effectively pressed for that information.
So we not only have a situation where our intelligence agencies and our intelligence agent trainees are being blinded in terms of their understanding of Islamist ideology, which is something it’s vital for them to know if we’re going to go and continue to protect the country, but we also don’t get a read on exactly who it is that has been invited into the councils of government to make the determination about what the agent we rely on to protect us should know about the threat and the many threats that are arrayed against the United States.
Brennan has been involved in this purge effort. He has been very explicit in – in an interpretation of Islamist ideology that is designed to make our enemies appear to be harmless to us. So, for example, he has claimed publicly that jihad – which is a challenge that the United States has been dealing with on our homeland, now, for twenty years – is not actually a military threat against the United States, but is instead an internal struggle among Muslims, the Muslim person or the Muslim community, to become a better person. To purify oneself or to purify one’s community. Authoritative Muslim teaching, including a manual of shariah law called Reliance of the Traveler, completely and directly refutes Brennan’s interpretation of jihad. It says explicitly that jihad is a holy war against non-believers in Islam. But even on its own – face of Brennan’s interpretation, he’s wrong. Because there is no consensus about what the good is between Western Civilization and Islamic civilization. So when Muslim theorists talk about purifying oneself or purifying one’s community, they’re not talking about making it better in the sense that we would all understand better means. To become a more purified individual Muslim means to become a better, more shariah compliant Muslim. To purify one’s community doesn’t mean to, you know, drive out the drug dealers and the criminal elements. What it actually means is to drive out non-Islamic influences from one’s community. It’s a very, very different idea than the one that Brennan has suggested. And it may be perfectly fine for – in some component of government to have someone who is something of a cheerleader for elements that are hostile to the United States. But the one place we can’t afford to have that is at the top level of our premier intelligence service.
The intelligence community is what we rely on to protect the United States. And in order to fulfill its mission, the intelligence community has to be completely removed from political correctness, has to be removed from ideology, and has to be able to scrutinize both sides or multiple sides of any questions in order to know precisely what the threats against the United States are. To have Mr. Brennan, who refused to acknowledge a jihadist threat that even Secretary Clinton in one of her last appearances before Congress acknowledged was one of the most profound challenges against the United States, would just be very, very counter-productive for our national security.
Stephen Coughlin Center for Security Policy, former DOD counterterror analyst and author of the forthcoming book, Catastrophic Failure
Hello, my name is Stephen Coughlin. I’m here to discuss my concerns about the approval of Mr. John Brennan for the director of central intelligence.
My concern stems from the fact that it seems that with his tenure, the intelligence collection effort, collection of facts that could paint a better and more valid picture of the nature of the threat in the war on terror have been subordinated to a politically correct policy and has had the net effect of leaving us unaware at a time where I think we face great peril from enemies and threats that we confront in the world. Among those – among the activities that I find has been greatly concerning is back in October 19th, 2011, a series of members from the Muslim – from Muslim Brotherhood front groups wrote a letter to Mr. Brennan at the White House and they made certain demands. Now these are groups like MPAC, Muslim Public Affairs Council, CAIR, Council on American/Islamic Relations, ISNA, Islamic Society of North America, ICNA, Islamic Circle of North America, and AMANA. Well, these groups are – many of these groups were identified in a 1991 document called the explanatory memorandum as Muslim Brotherhood front groups. Now this explanatory memorandum was admitted into evidence in a court of law to state that it reflected the strategy of these groups and was used to convict those parties. And this explanatory memorandum flat out said that their goal in America is a grand jihad to eliminate America through a subversion process that required them to get our senior leaders to subvert our way of life for them.
Now, I was one of the people named in this document. Some statements were made or purported to be said about what I said at some briefings that are just simply not true. And I was never given a chance, no due process to affirm what I said. What is very concerning about that memo that was sent to Mr. Brennan back in October, 2011, is that it called for a purge of all government training material and basically individuals, the implementation of retraining, reviews, personal reviews to be conducted against people, quality control measures that ended up being measures that were basically under the direction of these same Muslim Brotherhood front groups. Directly or indirectly.
We have an affirmative duty to take in the facts. And those facts have to take us where they go. If we were going after the Ku Klux Klan and they hid behind a religious facade, we would get past that religious facade. In fact, we have done that many times. But the fact of the matter is, is the people we’re confronting in this war say they fight jihad according to Islamic law. And even if it is true that they are incorrect about their understanding of Islam, it is still true that is why they fight. And we need to get a factual, professional handle on that. This is something that we’re not able to do right now. Because since that letter was written a purge has been implemented where the FBI, DHS, the Department of Defense have gone after people.
In fact, we can take a look at a June 20th, 2012 Reuters article where they talked – titled, Military Instructor Suspended Over Islam Course. Where a military instructor at the joint forces staff college was removed, relieved of his duties, on the allegation that he was briefings things that actually was not true. And in fact we know that that was not true. It called – the article made it clear that they were looking for disciplinary action, retraining, and counseling. So what we’re looking at right now, we’re looking at it in bold, bold form, is the fact that there’s a witch hunt going on. Where there’s no due process. People are not being asked, given the chance to defend their work product. They’re not being able to – they’re not even being told who these people are who are getting word of their – or purging their documents and making judgments. Where is the due process? Mr. Brennan, this is not the Soviet Union. This is the United States.
And I must say if you’re banning materials or you’re overseeing the banning of materials that could show a factual nexus to be made, this causes a grave compromise of our national security. And it doesn’t matter whose religious views that might – that might make uncomfortable.
Our job is the defense of the Constitution and against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And we follow the evidence where it goes. So my objection against the approval of Mr. Brennan is it seems that he is willing to compromise the collection efforts of our intelligence systems for non-professional reasons. And thereby hurt our understanding of the nature of the threat in the war on terror.
Frank Gaffney Center for Security Policy
Clearly, there is considerable information that has yet to come to light in the course of these Senate deliberations about John Brennan’s confirmation to become the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency. We believe those questions are of sufficient magnitude, especially as they relate to Islamism and the Benghazi-gate scandal to justify a much more serious drill-down by the Senate committees. Specifically the Senate select committee on intelligence needs to have outside witnesses like those you’ve just heard to illuminate the problems with this nomination and the necessity for a course correction. Not the confirmation of John Brennan. And in addition, a number of prominent conservative leaders have come together to call on the Congress on a bicameral basis to convene a select committee with full subpoena and deposition powers to explore what really went on in the run up to, during, and after the attack on our facilities in Benghazi on September 11th, 2012. Congress needs to get to the bottom of this. And so do we.
Middle East analyst Walid Phares sends along the translation of an Arabic aricle in el Watan, in which Egyptian scholar Ahmad Abed Rabbo has some provocative comments:
An el Watan article reported that US ambassador to Egypt Ann Paterson is meeting all political parties in Egypt to convince them to accept the coming legislative elections rushed by the Muslim Brotherhood. Ahmad Abed Rabbo, an Egyptian scholar said the US wants the Brotherhood to win the coming elections. They want to consolidate the Ikhwan’s rule
ومن جانبه، اعتبر أستاذ العلوم السياسية الدكتور أحمد عبدربه، أن اللقاءات التي تجريها السفيرة الأمريكية نوعا من جمع المعلومات من ناحية ومن ناحية أخرى فهم كافة الأطراف السياسية. وأضاف أنه من صالح الولايات المتحدة إجراء الانتخابات البرلمانية وعدم المقاطعة لأنها تراهن على دعم نظام الإخوان لأخرة قطرة ونجاحه في العملية الديمقراطية.
An observer in Washington DC said “the Obama Administration is pressuring the seculars in Egypt to accept the early elections as devised by Morsi, so that the Brotherhood would win them. The Administration is now meddling in Egyptian politics on the side of the Islamists, using its political influence, its foriegn aid and the fact that there is no one in Washington opposing the Administration in its pro-Ikhwan stance, so far.”
The Obama administration’s view of the Middle East can certainly be considered pro-Muslim Brotherhood– and it hasn’t been the first time Egyptians themselves have noticed. Maybe the New York Times will, once again, blame Frank Gaffney for anti-Obama sentiment by Copts and moderate Muslims in Egypt.
Barry Rubin this week wrote the must-read piece on how their view of the region (and of potential ‘moderation’ of Islamist forces more generally) couldn’t be more disastrously wrong. He points out that, in order to arrive at the conclusion that Islamist groups will moderate once they’ve taken hold of the levers of power, the administration– from the president to highly influential advisers like John Brennan– have had to ignore the most crucial facts about these groups:
Here is an important principle in studying the politics of this contemporary era: violence (including terrorism) is not the main measure of radicalism. Instead, the way to judge the extremism of a group is the organization’s ideology, goals, and seriousness in seeking total victory. Strategic and tactical flexibility should be taken into account, but do not mitigate the threat posed by the objective toward which any political force is striving.
Throughout the world, the terms “sukuk,” “Islamic bond,” and “Shariah-Compliant Bond” are used interchangeably to describe a derivative security created by the Shariah Finance industry to expand Islamic participation in the credit markets.
But in Egypt, which is now ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood, the parliament is playing word games in its quest for a law mandating sukuk market in the country.
The Muslim Brotherhood party is making cosmetic changes to a proposed law to establish the sukuk, which amount to removing the word “Islamic” and merely using the word “sukuk.”
This no doubt will fool all too many in the West but informed observers know that there is only one meaning for the word sukuk and adjusting a label changes nothing–nothing at all:
The new Sukuk law will be approved on Wednesday by the cabinet before being referred to the Shura Council on the same day, said Ahmed El-Najjar, member of the economic committee at the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) and advisor to the minister of finance.
“The new law is entirely different from the previous one,” he said. “It will not be called an ‘Islamic sovereign sukuk law’; just ‘sukuk law’.”
“This doesn’t mean that it doesn’t respect Islamic legislation,” he continued. “On the contrary, the first article of the law mentions that it is fully Sharia-compliant, and it will have a special [Sharia] committee to oversee its implementation.”
“It will be a comprehensive law that covers all the issuances, governmental and private,” continued El-Najjar, adding that all the recommendations of the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority (EFSA), political parties, the Central Bank, governmental entities and the economic committee of the Shura council, who have all discussed the law recently, were taken into consideration.
Two key national security nominations by President Obama are up for confirmation following Congress‘ recess this week: former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel to be secretary of defense, and John O. Brennan, the president’s key counterterrorism adviser, to be the director of the CIA. Both candidates have had to address issues based on their past and current activities and associations. Troublingly, a number of questions still remain unanswered.
One explosive issue is a report by John Guandolo that broke last week on Tom Trento’s “TrentoVision Show” and also was carried by Glenn Beck on Feb. 11. The report stated that Mr. Brennan was converted to Islam while CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia from 1996 to ‘99. Let’s be clear: In America, a man’s religion can never be a condition to his holding a government position. It is protected by both the First Amendment and Article 6 of the Constitution. Therefore, even if it is true that he converted, Mr. Brennan’s religion should not be an issue.
However, according to Mr. Guandolo — a former SWAT team leader at the FBI, counterterrorism and Muslim Brotherhood specialist and Marine platoon commander — what should be an issue was the Saudis’ targeted recruitment of Mr. Brennan to the ideology of Islam while he was serving as the CIA station chief in Riyadh. This was not just a conversion but a political act by a foreign intelligence service.
If verified, this would indicate Mr. Brennan’s susceptibility, whether witting or unwitting, to manipulation by a foreign intelligence entity. It’s interesting that no counterintelligence alarm was triggered at the time that this alleged conversion was occurring. Most likely, that’s because at that time the sophisticated Islamic objectives driving the global jihad movement by the Muslim Brotherhood were not understood by those who witnessed his “conversion.”
As Clare Lopez, from the Center for Security Policy, has pointed out, our counterintelligence defense system is broken. The Muslim Brotherhood’s core threat doctrine — the ideology of Islamic jihad and Shariah law — is seen as benign. Mr. Brennan’s activities as the president’s top counterterrorism adviser have been at the forefront in the Muslim Brotherhood effort in the United States. The Brotherhood has succeeded in convincing the U.S. government to remove from official documents and training curricula all references to Islamic doctrine, Shariah law and scriptures that relate them to terrorism. Further, scheduled lectures on the true threat from Islam have been canceled, and instructors have been barred from future presentations.
Mr. Brennan’s track record of empowering the Muslim Brotherhood both domestically and abroad allowed the jihadist enemy access to the highest level of government under the stealth guise of “nonviolent outreach partners.” For example, terrorists like Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations who has been linked to Hamas; and leaders from the Islamic Society of North America, unindicted co-conspirators from the Holy Land Foundation trial in 2008, work with national security staff providing input to U.S. counterterrorism strategies. That is hardly comforting.
It cannot be denied that U.S. policy on Islam, Shariah law and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular has undergone a sea change during the time Mr. Brennan has had influence on our national security. Certainly, Mr. Brennan cannot be confirmed until a full vetting has taken place.
With regard to Mr. Hagel’s confirmation as secretary of defense, clearly full disclosure about his past and current financial arrangements must be provided. His position on our defense budget and his appearance on Al-Jazeera where he characterized the United States as a bully in world affairs is more than troubling. As an aside, Al-Jazeera is owned by the government of Qatar, which has now been revealed as a major contributor to the Atlantic Council when Mr. Hagel was the chairman, according to Cliff Kincaid, the director of the Center for Investigative Journalism.
Mr. Hagel’s position on the defense budget, as well as his likely support for U.S. nuclear reductions beyond the latest level of 1,500 weapons, also should raise serious concern. This is particularly true in light of North Korea’s recent nuclear test explosion and Iran’s continued drive to achieve nuclear weapons capability. Moreover, Gen. Vicktor Esin, former chief of staff of Russia’s Strategic Rocket Forces, stated in a Wall Street Journal interview on Feb. 11 that Russia estimates China has 1,600 to 1,800 warheads, not the 300 to 400 that our intelligence community attributes to them. Mr. Hagel’s stated position on direct negotiations with Iran with no preconditions is also of concern, as is his position on our only true ally in the Middle East — Israel.
These and other matters must be fully vetted before either nomination for these critical positions can be confirmed.
PRESS RELEASE: Federal Judge Blasts CAIR’s “Inability to Efficiently Manage their Discovery” and Denies Motion to Extend Discovery in “Muslim Mafia” Case
Federal Judge Blasts CAIR’s “Inability to Efficiently Manage their Discovery” and Denies Motion to Extend Discovery in “Muslim Mafia” Case
Washington, D.C. (February 12, 2013) — Last Friday, Federal Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, sitting in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, denied the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) motion to extend discovery in the American Freedom Law Center’s defense of the Center for Security Policy (CSP) and several of its employees, who were sued by CAIR for conducting an undercover documentary designed to expose the Islamic organization’s corrupt activities.
Following the reasoning argued by AFLC Co-Founder and Senior Counsel David Yerushalmi in an opposition brief that was filed on behalf of all defendants, Judge Kollar-Kotelly denied CAIR’s request to depose two non-party witnesses in the case, ruling that the request was untimely, without cause, and would “not only disrupt the Court’s management of its docket, but would also prejudice Defendants by necessarily stinting mediation efforts and delaying the potential resolution of this matter through dispositive motions.”
The Court, however, went even further and scolded CAIR and its in-house legal counsel for their “inability to efficiently manage their discovery in this matter and to comply with the Court’s Scheduling and Procedures Order.” As the Court pointed out, even CAIR’s motion seeking more time for discovery was itself untimely and substantively deficient.
Yerushalmi, who is the lead counsel for all defendants, commented: “Not only did CAIR’s substantively deficient motion violate the Court’s orders in several pertinent respects; it was a blatant and patently false presentation of the discovery record in this case. Indeed, this misrepresentation is just a part of CAIR’s pattern of taking a troubling and seemingly abusive approach to civil litigation. Accordingly, Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s ruling demonstrates that the Court is aware of CAIR’s unprofessional tactics, which in turn speaks to the failure of CAIR to meet its burden of proof and provide any probative evidence of wrongdoing by any of the defendants.”
In 2008, Dave Gaubatz, an experienced federal investigator, was hired as an independent contractor to assist with a field research documentary. As part of this research, Dave Gaubatz trained his son, Chris Gaubatz, to work undercover as an intern with CAIR, which required Chris to wear an audio-video recorder on his clothing to obtain recordings of the routine activities of a CAIR intern. During this internship, it became clear that both a major fraud occurred within the organization and that CAIR officials were attempting to cover it up.
Subsequently, Dave Gaubatz published a book entitled, Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that’s Conspiring to Islamize America, which was an exposé on CAIR. Shortly after the book was published, CAIR filed a lawsuit in federal court in Washington, D.C., against Dave and Chris Gaubatz. CAIR then amended its lawsuit to add CSP and several of its employees, who were involved in the production of the documentary. CAIR’s lawsuit alleges violations of various federal wiretap and hacking statutes as well as several common law torts, such as breach of fiduciary duty and trespass, among others.
In its motion to extend the discovery period, which had been ongoing for over thirteen months, CAIR requested to depose Mr. Paul Sperry, David Gaubatz’s co-author of the book, and World Net Daily, which published the book.
Yerushalmi commented: “This litigation has been ongoing since October 2009. As such, there is nothing to be gained and much to be lost by re-opening and extending discovery. This case is ripe for summary judgment.”
The Court agreed with AFLC’s brief, denied CAIR’s motion, and will soon set a schedule for motions that could bring this case to a close by ruling in favor of Defendants and exposing CAIR as the center of a Muslim Brotherhood, mafia-like organization.
CAIR, a self-described Muslim public interest law firm, was previously named as a Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas front group by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the federal criminal trial and conviction of a terrorist funding cell organized around one of the largest Muslim charities, the Holy Land Foundation (HLF). HLF raised funds for violent jihad on behalf of Hamas, and top CAIR officials were part of the conspiracy. In addition, several of CAIR’s top executives have been convicted of terror-related crimes. As a result, the FBI publicly announced that it has terminated any outreach activities with the national organization, which bills itself as “America’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization.”
The American Freedom Law Center is a Judeo-Christian law firm that fights for faith and freedom. It accomplishes its mission through litigation, public policy initiatives, and related activities. It does not charge for its services. The Law Center is supported by contributions from individuals, corporations, and foundations, and is recognized by the IRS as a section 501(c)(3) organization. Visit us at www.americanfreedomlawcenter.org<http://www.americanfreedomlawcenter.org>.
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American Freedom Law Center
Contact: David Yerushalmi, Esq.
Phone: (646) 262-0500
Email: dyerushalmi@americanfreedomlawcenter.org
Website: www.americanfreedomlawcenter.org
(Washington, D.C.): Two of the leaders in the House of Representatives whom Newt Gingrich has properly called “the National Security Five” weighed in today against the nomination of John Brennan as the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Representatives Trent Franks of Arizona and Louie Gohmert of Texas, warned that Mr. Brennan has gotten wrong the central menace of our time – what outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton two weeks ago called “a global jihadist threat.”
The Congressmen spoke on the House floor on the eve of confirmation hearings on the Brennan nomination that promise to make those Chuck Hagel underwent last week look like a love-fest. On the one hand, some Democrats are furious over the nominee’s past involvement with enhanced interrogation techniques and his present role in the use of drones to neutralize American jihadists seeking to attack the United States. On the other, Republicans have been outraged by the Brennan record on not only prohibiting the use of the term “jihad” in U.S. enemy threat analysis but his serial contempt of congressional overseers, lies and leaks that have damaged national security.
Center for Security Policy President Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. commended Messrs. Franks and Gohmert, who are, respectively, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Constitution Subcommittee and the Vice Chairman of that Committee’s Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security and Investigations Subcommittee:
Trent Franks and Louie Gohmert have distinguished themselves as true and courageous leaders within the Congress by dint of their grasp of the nature of our enemy and the repressive, anti-constitutional doctrine they seek to impose on all of us – Muslim and non-Muslim, alike: shariah. They are absolutely right to warn against entrusting the CIA to a man who is, at best, witless and at worst mendacious about the true nature of jihad, of both the violent and the stealthy, pre-violent kind. We strongly urge their colleagues on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to arrive at the same conclusion and vote to reject this nomination.
Rep. Franks’s remarks included the following observations:
“I believe the success of the [Muslim Brotherhood’s] ‘stealth jihad’ has been significantly enhanced by remarks and public statements made by John Brennan over the past four years. He should, therefore, not be allowed anywhere near– let alone be given the responsibility for running– America’s premier intelligence agency.”
Rep. Gohmert’s remarks included the following observations:
It is time we took a real objective look at people who say their goal is civilization jihad and the elimination of our freedom to choose as we please and to choose our public servants…We have got to have someone directing intelligence who understands the threat against us and will insure that we are protected and understands the Global Jihadist threat. It would be a great mistake for our Senate to confirm John Brennan as the chief architect that he has been for the failure to understand and comprehend the “Global Jihadist Threat,” as Secretary Clinton has noted going out.
To cut to the chase, a country that was serious about its national security would never put John Brennan in charge of its premier intelligence service.
Of course, it is by no means clear that the United States is any longer a serious country in this regard. Serious countries do not fund, arm and “partner with” hostile regimes. They do not recruit enemy sympathizers to fill key governmental policy positions. They do not erect barriers impeding their intelligence services from understanding an enemy’s threat doctrine – in conscious indifference to Sun Tzu’s maxim that defending oneself requires knowing one’s enemies. All of these malfeasances have become staples of Obama policy, under the guidance of Brennan, the president’s counterterrorism guru.
Still, the installation of a Beltway operator whose métier is misinformation as director of central intelligence would be an epic mismatch of man and mission. It would expand unseriousness to new frontiers of self-inflicted peril.
The reason is as elementary as it gets: The purpose of intelligence is to see what your enemy is trying to hide, to grasp how your enemy thinks, and how he cleverly camouflages what he thinks. That, to be certain, is the only security against stealthy foes who specialize in sabotage, in exploiting the liberties that make free societies as vulnerable as they are worth defending.
Mr. Brennan, to the contrary, is the incarnation of willful blindness. His tenure as Obama’s top national security advisor has been about helping our enemies throw sand in our eyes and thus enabling the sabotage.
As I detail in The Grand Jihad, which recounts the Muslim Brotherhood’s history, ideology, and self-proclaimed “civilization jihad” against the West, sabotage is the Brotherhood’s defining practice. Indeed, “sabotage” is the word the Brothers themselves use to describe their work. It appears in an internal memorandum, which elaborates that the organization sees its mission in the United States as “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within.” Besides that long-term goal, the Brotherhood’s network of American affiliates have pursued the more immediate aim of materially supporting Hamas, a formally designated terrorist organization to which the provision of material support is a felony under federal law.
None of that is new. It was not merely well known but had been proved in court by the Justice Department a year before Obama took office. I refer to the Justice Department’s 2008 Hamas financing prosecution, the Holy Land Foundation case. Yet, counterterrorism czar Brennan remains undeterred, a driving force of the Obama administration’s “Islamic outreach” – a campaign to give Islamist organizations influence over U.S. policy. That several of those organizations were proved in the HLF case to be members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s American network is clearly of no moment.
Two such organizations are the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). They were among a slew of Islamist groups who wrote to Brennan in October 2011 to demand a purge of information about Islamist ideology that was being used to train U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agents. Much of that information was developed in federal investigations that have led to the convictions of violent jihadists. Nevertheless, the Obama administration has slavishly complied (see, e.g., here and here).
Understand: CAIR and ISNA, though never indicted, were proved to be conspirators in the Brotherhood’s Holy Land Foundation scheme to promote and finance Hamas. In fact, the FBI formally cut ties with CAIR as a result of the HLF case (although why they had ties with CAIR in the first place remains baffling). The training materials the Islamist groups insisted be removed include documentation of the fact that terrorism committed by Muslims is driven by an ideology rooted in Islamic scripture.
That this irrefutable fact makes us uncomfortable renders it no less a fact. Maybe the State Department and the White House press office have the luxury of trading in convenient fictions in order to reduce international tensions. Not intelligence agencies. The point of intelligence – a bedrock of national security – is to see the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.
Here is how it is: Islamic supremacism, the sharia-based ideology of Islamists, is an interpretation of Muslim doctrine that is entirely mainstream among the world’s Muslims. That is why Islamists are winning elections in the Middle East even as they are found aligning with violent jihadists. Islamic supremacism is, in fact, widely promoted by the Brotherhood, and by such tentacles of its American network as CAIR and ISNA, when they are not otherwise deceptively disavowing its existence.
This Islamist ideology is incorrigibly anti-Western and anti-Semitic. It is deeply hostile to principles of equality and individual liberty (free speech, freedom of conscience, privacy, economic freedom, etc.) that undergird our Constitution, the American conception of civil rights, and the West’s conception of human rights. Understand Islamist ideology and you will readily understand the ferocity of Islamic resistance to American efforts to promote democracy in the Middle East – not merely jihadist resistance but broad Islamic resistance.
Yet, in a propaganda campaign reminiscent of those waged by the Nazis and the Soviets, Islamists and their fellow travelers (Brennan-types who might be thought of as “anti-anti-Islamists”) purport to be champions of human rights. When it suits them, they even feign reverence for individual liberties (particularly when it comes to the rights of Muslim in America … but don’t you dare ask them how non-Muslims fare in, say, Saudi Arabia).
The counter to such a propaganda campaign is a job for intelligence agencies. The point of having a sprawling intelligence community on which American taxpayers annually lavish $55 billion per year – far more than the vast majority of countries spend on national defense – is precisely to see through the deceptions of those who mean us harm, to perceive the threats against us for what they are. That the competent performance of this essential function may be fraught with political complications is supposed to be a challenge for our politicians, not our intelligence agents. The latter’s mission of unearthing hidden and often excruciating truths is hard enough.
Brennan’s agenda is the antithesis of the intelligence mission. His goal has been to portray our enemies as a small, unthreatening fringe of charlatan “violent extremists,” who kill wantonly and are unconnected to any “legitimate” Islam. Thus, he maintains for example that the only “legitimate” interpretation of the “tenet of Islam” known as jihad is: a “holy struggle … to purify oneself or one’s community.”
Even taken at face value, Brennan’s assertion is absurd. There is between Islam and the West no common understanding of the good, and thus no consensus about “purity.” In Islam, to “purify” something means to make it more compliant with sharia, Islam’s legal code and societal framework. Sharia is anti-freedom and anti-equality, so to purify oneself in an Islamic sense would necessarily mean something very different from what we in the West would think of as struggling to become a better person.
But there is an even more fundamental reason not to take Brennan’s remarks at face value: they run afoul of what mainstream Islam itself says about jihad. Have a look at Reliance of the Traveller, the popular sharia manual (it is available on Amazon). It is quite straightforward on the matter: “Jihad means to war against non-Muslims.” Reliance, you should know, has been expressly endorsed by al-Azhar University in Egypt (Islam’s center of learning since the tenth century) and the International Institute of Islamic Thought (the Brotherhood’s America-based Islamist think-tank). It is a lot more authoritative than John Brennan’s wishful meanderings. Maybe the president actually thinks Brennan knows more about Islam than do these scholars who have spent their lives steeped in Islamic doctrine and jurisprudence. I have my doubts … and, judging from the profound influence of these scholars, so do many millions of Muslims.
In Brennan’s world we’re to believe that holy war is not much different from the struggle to remember to brush after every meal. In Brennan’s world, there is also no need to fret over anti-American terrorists who return to the jihad with alarming regularity once they are released from Guantanamo Bay. After all, Brennan observes, common criminals have high recidivism rates, too. Mass-murderers, pick-pockets … as they say in the administration, “What difference does it make?”
And then there’s the skill of offending our friends while enabling our enemies. Brennan refers to Jerusalem, the Israeli capital, as “al-Quds.” That is the name used by Islamists who reject the Jewish state’s right to exist, who claim Jerusalem and the rest of Israel as their own. In fact, as Brennan undoubtedly knows, it was Ayatollah Khomeini who denominated Iran’s annual ritual of anti-Israeli protest as “al-Quds Day.” Moreover, the Islamic Republic, which has repeatedly vowed to wipe Israel off the map, calls its most lethal terrorist operatives the “al-Quds” forces.
Brennan’s sense of outrage, unnoticeable in response to slights against a faithful U.S. ally, is instead reserved for the “ignorant feelings” of Americans riled by jihadist attacks against our country. For Brennan, Americans’ anger at Islamists, our perception that the ideology that breeds terrorists is just as much a problem as the terrorists themselves, is “Islamophobia” – a smear cleverly concocted by Islamists to deflect examination. Brennan claims to have seen Islamophobia rear its racist head in the public reaction to the Fort Hood attack – the worst jihadist mass-murder in America since 9/11, but one the Obama administration prefers to think of as “workplace violence.”
Brennan claims that Hezbollah, Iran’s Lebanese terror militia, is a “very interesting organization,” whose “moderate elements” have evolved it from “purely a terrorist organization” into a political party whose members now serve in the Lebanese government. This, again, is rose-tinted nonsense, bespeaking breathtaking ignorance about the history and operations of jihadists who, until 9/11, had killed more Americans than any other terror network. Hezbollah has never been “purely a terrorist organization.” Like the Muslim Brotherhood, which the Brennan-influenced Obama administration similarly sees as “moderate” (even “largely secular”), Hezbollah has always seen terrorism as one item in a varied menu. For three decades, it has also specialized in media campaigns, social welfare work, lawfare, infiltration of academe, and political activism. Its objective – again, like the Brotherhood’s – is to advance the Islamic revolution at the expense of non-Muslims by any method that shows promise under the circumstances.
Hezbollah is part of the Islamist vanguard waging a global campaign against liberty. But with their Brennan blinders on, the Obama administration chooses not to see it. They see “moderates” committed to participating in a “political process.” This same thinking has led the administration to issue a visa to an admitted member of the Blind Sheikh’s terrorist organization (the Islamic Group) so he could come to the White House with other newly minted Egyptian “parliamentarians” to discuss U.S. policy in the Middle East. This mindset also explains why the administration negotiates with the Taliban, just as it negotiated with the terrorists who murdered American troops in Karbala – ultimately releasing the ringleader, Ali Mussa Daqduq.
There may be a place in government, even in the intelligence community, for discrediting our enemies – for conducting operations that highlight their excesses and making them appear illegitimate in the eyes of those whose allegiance they seek to win. There is no place, however, for deceiving the American people by politicizing intelligence. That Brennan specialty, an exhaustive effort to miniaturize the threats against our nation and appease the president’s Islamist allies, is the antithesis of what we have a CIA for.
To be sure, I have no illusions that senate Republicans will do the right thing by the country and block Brennan’s nomination to run the CIA. This is not Ronald Reagan’s Republican party. That was a party that looked at America’s enemies and said, “We win, you lose”; a party that was unafraid to wage ideological battle against enemy ideologies, regardless of the inevitable caterwauling of the enemies’ sympathizers. Today’s very different Republicans vote to arm and fund the Muslim Brotherhood; they endorse sharia constitutions as “democracy”; and they get exercised not over the infiltration of pro-Islamists in our government but over the temerity of a bare handful of conservatives to raise concerns about that infiltration.
Chuck Hagel’s confirmation hearing last week only bolstered concerns that he is utterly unfit to serve as secretary of defense. Yet, some Republicans have announced that they will vote for him anyway, and some others who purport to oppose him have signaled that they have no intention of mounting a filibuster, the only procedure that could derail him. Consequently, they’ve ensured that he will be confirmed. So let’s not kid ourselves: senate Republicans who will let Hagel take control of the defense department, and who just joined Democrats in a 94-3 landslide confirmation of John Kerry – a devotee of Obama’s Muslim Brotherhood empowerment strategy – are not going to put up a fight over Brennan.
But that will not alter reality any more than Brennan’s whitewashed Islam alters the reality of Islamic supremacism. The fact will remain: If intelligence is to be politicized so that we let our guard down, then the United States would be better off with no CIA than with a CIA headed by John Brennan.
