Tag Archives: Osama Bin Laden

Will Obama Free the Blind Sheik?

Are senior Obama administration officials considering transferring to Egypt a poisonously influential Islamist cleric serving a life term in federal prison for trying to unleash a war of urban terrorism in the United States? That’s the impression several officials have given over the past three months, apparently out of fear that if the cleric dies in U.S. custody, American outposts in the Middle East could be overrun by vengeful mobs.

Omar Abdel Rahman, the so-called Blind Sheik, is one of the world’s leading theologians of terrorism. Abdel Rahman, who has diabetes and is in his mid-70s, is confined at the U.S. Bureau of Prisons medical facility in Butner, N.C. He served as spiritual adviser to El Sayid Nosair (in connection with the 1990 assassination in Manhattan of Meir Kahane, a right-wing Israeli politician) and to the band of terrorists who carried out the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center that killed six and wounded numerous others (an operation undertaken in part to free Nosair from jail).

Abdel Rahman was convicted in 1995 of participating in a seditious conspiracy that included the Kahane murder, the 1993 WTC bombing, and a plot to blow up other landmarks in New York and to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak when he visited the United Nations. I presided over the trial as a U.S. district judge; upon his conviction, I sentenced Abdel Rahman to life in prison.

In 1997, members of Abdel Rahman’s organization (Gama al Islamiyah, or the Islamic Group, which is designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization) murdered more than 60 tourists at Luxor, Egypt, and inserted notes in the body cavities of several victims demanding the Blind Sheik’s release. Also in the mid-1990s, Abdel Rahman contrived from jail to issue the fatwa that Osama bin Laden cited as authorization to carry out the 9/11 attacks. The sheik’s confinement was on bin Laden’s list of grievances meant to justify that atrocity.

Blind since youth, Abdel Rahman reputedly memorized the Quran in his teens. He later lectured at the prestigious Al Azhar University (where President Obama would deliver his speech of outreach to the Muslim world in 2009). Abdel Rahman has been a totemic figure to Islamists since 1981, when his pronouncements gave a group of Egyptian army officers the spiritual justification for assassinating President Anwar Sadat. The officers were hanged, but Abdel Rahman successfully defended himself at trial by arguing that he had simply been opining on issues of Islamic law and should not face censure for that in a Muslim country.

The evidence that the U.S. government is seriously considering transferring him to Egypt is circumstantial. However, as Henry David Thoreau pointed out when dairy customers were suspicious that local farmers had diluted the milk they were selling, “some circumstantial evidence can be very convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk.”

The first hint of something fishy came in June, when Hani Nour Eldin, a member of the terrorist group that carried out the Luxor slaughter and who had himself spent 11 years in Egyptian jail on terrorism charges, was granted a visa to come to the United States, where he visited the White House and urged that Abdel Rahman be transferred to Egypt. Members of Congress immediately raised questions about how such allowances were made for a member of a designated terrorist organization.

The assistant secretary of homeland security for legislative affairs, Nelson Peacock, responded in a July letter. It suggested that no warning flags had been raised during the processing of the Eldin visa, but the letter acknowledged that, as a member of a designated terrorist organization, Hani Nour Eldin would have needed a waiver from someone in authority to get a visa.

Rep. Peter King (R., N.Y.) then demanded that the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general investigate how that waiver was secured and explain what role the department would play in any transfer of Abdel Rahman. Acting Inspector General Charles K. Edwards answered on Sept. 10 with a letter promising that the department would conduct the requested review “and add it to our FY 2013 workplan” (for which no deadline is announced).

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled to Egypt in July to meet with President Mohammed Morsi, an avowed Islamist and leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and invite him to the U.S. He will be in New York this week for the opening session of the U.N. General Assembly. Mrs. Clinton’s visit came two weeks after Mr. Morsi’s inaugural speech in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, in which he promised to seek the release of the Blind Sheik. This month, when Mr. Morsi dispersed protesters outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo (following a telephone scolding from President Obama), he left in place those protesting the Blind Sheik’s continued confinement.

Transferring Abdel Rahman to an Egypt already under the control of the Muslim Brotherhood and presided over by Mohammed Morsi would be pouring gasoline on a bonfire.

A congressional staffer I spoke with last week recently called the Egyptian Embassy in Washington and asked to speak with the official in charge of the request to release Abdel Rahman. This call elicited not a denial but rather the disclosure that the matter was within the portfolio of the deputy chief of mission, for whom the caller was invited to leave a message.

Then there are the statements of U.S. officials on the subject, which all have sounded excruciatingly lawyered. Asked before Congress in July whether there is an intention “at any time to release the Blind Sheikh,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano responded: “Well, let me just say this. I know of no such intention.”

The State Department’s spokesperson last week, after the ceremonial “let me be clear,” said that there had been no approach on this topic “recently” from any “senior” official of the Egyptian government-an elucidation laden with ambiguity and certain to send chills up the spine of anyone familiar with Abdel Rahman’s record and President Morsi’s inclinations.

All of this plays out in the context of an Obama administration that hasn’t hesitated to employ executive orders to get around Congress, led by a president who was caught on a “hot mike” assuring Russia’s leaders that if he wins re-election he will have more “flexibility” to accommodate Russian demands that the U.S. curtail missile defense in Europe.

It appears that the only course open now is for Congress to demand an unequivocal statement from the State Department and the White House that the U.S. will not transfer or release Abdel Rahman under any circumstances. Absent such assurance, it may be time for Congress to make clear that such a transfer or release could be considered the kind of gross betrayal of public trust that would justify removal from high office.

Mr. Mukasey served as U.S. attorney general from 2007-09, and as a U.S. district judge from 1988 to 2006.

This article was originally posted in the Wall Street Journal. 

 

The world’s not better off

Eleven years after 9/11, President Obama would have us believe that, at least with respect to our national security, we are better off than we were when he came to office. Specifically, he now claims that al Qaeda – the terrorist organization that killed nearly 3,000 Americans on that terrible day – is “on the path to defeat.”

That contention is, of course, predicated in part on the laudable fact that al Qaeda’s founder, Osama bin Laden, is dead, as are a number of the organization’s other senior leaders. The President deserves credit for achieving such successes.

But they do not mean even that the group that perpetrated the 9/11 attacks are nearly defeated. In fact, its franchises are going – and growing – concerns in places like Libya, Yemen, Syria, Nigeria, Somalia, Mali and Pakistan, to say nothing of the theaters We have abandoned (Iraq), or are in the process of abandoning (Afghanistan).

More importantly, even if it were true that al Qaeda is being defeated, a net assessment would clearly show that, on Mr. Obama’s watch, the world has become much more hospitable to its ideology and goals, and much less safe for America and our interests.

That is the case in no small measure because of the help Team Obama has given to the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that fully shares al Qaeda’s ambitions to impose its totalitarian, supremacist Islamic doctrine known as shariah on the rest of the world under the rule of a Caliph. As the Center for Security Policy has documented in a free online video-based curriculum entitled The Muslim Brotherhood in America: the Enemy Within, that help has taken myriad forms including: recognizing and engaging the Brotherhood in Egypt; helping it come to power there; and providing $1.5 billion in aid after the Brotherhood’s political party dominated Egyptian parliamentary elections and on the eve of the election of its candidate, Mohamed Morsi, to the presidency.

The Obama administration is preparing to do still more for the Brothers in Egypt now that they have established effectively complete control in one of the Middle East’s most strategic nations. It is engineering another $1 billion in debt relief at U.S. taxpayer expense and over $4 billion in assistance from international financial organizations (a substantial chunk of which will come out of our hides, too).

It is also warning Israel not to object to Egypt’s remilitarization of the Sinai, in blatant violation of the peace treaty between the two nations signed at Camp David in 1979. And it is preparing to roll out the red carpet for Brother Morsi in New York and the White House later this month.

Are such steps a problem – especially collectively? After all, the Muslim Brothers are, according to Mr. Obama’s administration, the sort of benign Islamists with whom we can safely deal since they have, in the words of the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, “eschewed violence.”

In point of fact, the Brothers have no more eschewed violence towards infidels and even Muslims who stand in the way of their geopolitical ambitions than they are, in another unforgettable example of Gen. Clapper’s cluelessness, “a largely secular organization.” These rabid and avowed Islamists are perfectly prepared to use violence – think Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian franchise – when they believe it will conduce to success.

Until that time, shariah requires its adherents to pursue the same goals through means that are best described as pre-violent, rather than non-violent. And it is the steady progress that the prime practitioners of this approach – which the Brotherhood calls “civilization jihad” – have made unnoticed, or at least un-countered, by President Obama and his subordinates that has actually made the world vastly more dangerous than it was when they came to office.

Just how dangerous may be on display when President Obama hosts Mohamed Morsi. It will be interesting to see whether he emboldens that Islamist, as he has others, by bowing to him. But what will be far more important than such symbolic gestures is what further concessions Mr. Obama offer, concessions that – according to the doctrine of shariah – are interpreted as tangible signs of our submission?

One that will be at the top of Mr. Morsi’s agenda is his demand that the United States release one of the most world’s most dangerous jihadists, Omar Abdul Rahman. Better known as the “Blind Sheikh,” this terrorist was convicted of leading, among other conspiracies, the first, lethal attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. Presumably, President Obama would not dare pardon or transfer Abdul Rahman to Egypt before his “last election,” but he may feel free to do so afterwards – when he has, in his words, “more flexibility.”

Either way, the Morsi visit will be a “teachable moment” for every American. All other things being equal, it will demonstrate tangibly that eleven years after 9/11 – notwithstanding the tactical successes achieved by our courageous servicemen and women, lethal drones and intelligence and homeland security professionals, we are losing, not winning, the war against those who are driven by shariah to wage jihad, of either the violent or stealthy kind, against us. We better pray it will prompt the American
people to insist on a fundamental course correction two months from now.

The Biggest DC Spy Scandal You Haven’t Heard About

Two years ago, the executive director of the Kashmiri American Council (KAC), Ghulam Nabi Fai, was riding high in Washington, D.C. circles. In March 2010, he hosted a pricey fundraiser in his own home for Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN), the powerful chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe and Eurasia and co-chairman of the Congressional Pakistan Caucus.

In 2004, Fai testified before Burton’s subcommittee. Internal KAC documents show that in just 2007 alone, he had 33 meetings with members of Congress, congressional staff, the Bush administration’s National Security Council, and the State Department. He led congressional delegations to the disputed Kashmir region, and over the years nearly three dozen different members of Congress of both parties attended or spoke at Fai’s annual Kashmir Peace Conference held on Capitol Hill. KAC’s events were even broadcast live on C-SPAN.

One thing that bought Fai so much access was that Fai and the KAC board of directors generously spread campaign contributions all over Capitol Hill to members of both political parties. However, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, the bulk of contributions by Fai, KAC’s board, and Fai’s associates went to Burton and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

That all changed on July 19, 2011, when Fai was arrested by the FBI not far from his Fairfax, Virginia home, where he had held the fundraiser for Burton sixteen months earlier. And just last month, a year after his arrest, Fai reported to federal prison.

According to an affidavit by FBI Special Agent Sarah Webb Linden that was the basis for the criminal complaint, an extensive investigation into Fai’s activities showed that all of Fai’s efforts over the past 20 years had been illegally financed and directed by Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI.

The FBI affidavit stated that Fai was in constant contact with his Pakistani ISI handlers: since June 2008, Fai and his handlers exchanged more than 4,000 messages.

The FBI also found that Fai and KAC had received more than $4 million from the ISI since KAC’s founding in 1990 through the use of U.S.-based Pakistani-American straw donors who would donate to KAC and receive tax deductions, and then be reimbursed in Pakistan by the ISI. This was arranged through Fai’s conspirator Fazeer Ahmad, a U.S. citizen who lived in Pakistan and was charged along with Fai in the case.

These straw-donor transactions concealed that KAC was not an independent public relations effort by U.S. citizens to advocate on behalf of the Kashmiri people, but rather an influence operation run by the intelligence agency of a hostile foreign power, one intended to influence members of Congress to shape U.S. foreign policy in Pakistan’s favor. The stated targets for much of KAC’s operations were the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

KAC’s activities didn’t have to be illegal. All Fai had to do was register his organization with the attorney general under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Doing so would have exposed the Pakistani ISI’s role in the operation, however, and would have closed most doors in Washington, D.C., to Fai and KAC.

The FBI gave Fai sufficient opportunity to come clean about his operation and its ties to Pakistani intelligence. In March 2007, the FBI interviewed Fai, who claimed he had never met anyone affiliated with the government of Pakistan.

In March 2010, the Justice Department sent Fai a letter stating that press reports in India had identified him as an agent of Pakistan, and that if true, he was required to file as a foreign agent with the attorney general’s office under FARA. In an email reply, Fai stated that KAC “has never engaged in activities on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan or any other foreign entity.”

What undoubtedly prompted that Justice Department letter was a meeting that Fai had with two of his Pakistani ISI handlers in Geneva just days before. In that March 2010 strategy meeting, according to notes of the meeting obtained by U.S. Customs officials when Fai reentered the U.S., Fai briefed his handlers on KAC’s 2010 goals and the targets of his efforts. Most notably: “E.B. [Executive Branch], State, DoD, WH [White House]; Media, Think tank; Congress; U.N.”

According to the FBI, the two ISI handlers Fai met with in that March 2010 Geneva strategy meeting were Sohail Mahmood and Major General Mumtaz Ahmad Bajwa, the then-head of the ISI’s Security Directorate, which oversees operations of several Kashmiri terrorist groups.

Bajwa had also attended Fai’s Tenth International Kashmir Peace Conference on Capitol Hill in July 2009. Also at the event was Fai’s then-ISI handler, Lt. Col. Touqeer Mehmood Butt, whose visa application noted his employer as “Pakistani Ministry of Defence, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Islamabad, Pakistan.” Among the speakers at that conference were Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA), Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY), and the ubiquitous Rep. Dan Burton, as seen in the video below:

The event was even covered by the Hindi-language section of Voice of America:

The day after the 2009 KAC conference ended, Bajwa and Butt met with Fai in KAC’s Washington, D.C. office and had a conversation that was wiretapped by the FBI.

According to Agent Linden’s affidavit, the wiretap transcript shows that Fai gave his Pakistani ISI handlers a review of his efforts (p. 24):

His comments included the history of the establishment of KAC; KAC’s primary lobbying targets within the U.S. (to wit, White House, State Department, Pentagon, Congress, and the United Nations); KAC’s prior encounters with U.S. and Pakistani politicians; and Fai’s relationship with the Pakistani Embassy in Washington.

Agent Linden’s affidavit (p. 20) also notes a plan of action submitted by Fai to his handlers in December 2008 for the incoming Obama administration in 2009, outlining his strategy:

[S]ecure Congressional support to encourage the Executive Branch to support self determination in Kashmire, build new alliances in the State Department, the National Security Council, the Congress, and the Pentagon, and to expand KAC’s media efforts.

Fai’s budget for KAC for 2009 was $738,000, which included $100,000 intended for campaign contributions for members of Congress. After his ISI handlers balked, Fai reduced his budget to $638,000, most of which would be passed from the ISI to KAC through the U.S.-based straw donors.

The proposed activities for KAC in 2010 approved by the Pakistani ISI listed 61 events that Fai had planned for the year, including 10 briefings/events for members of Congress and their staff. In 2011, Fai was ordered by his handler to cultivate relationships with eleven identified members of the media and six intellectuals from D.C. think-tanks.

Under normal circumstances, you might think it would be front-page news that Pakistani intelligence had successfully penetrated the inner recesses of Capitol Hill and the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations; Pakistani intelligence had conducted a 20-year influence operation; and Pakistani intelligence made campaign contributions primarily to Republican members of Congress (including Burton — one of the most vocal critics of President Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal) and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. You would expect the establishment media to subject the issue to investigation rivaling the Jack Abramoff scandal during the Bush administration.

You would be wrong.

While Fai’s arrest was noted by many press outlets and a smattering of articles appeared in the subsequent days, within a week the story virtually vanished from the establishment media.

The New York Times reported on Fai’s arrest, and the following day published an article announcing denials by Burton and his congressional colleagues that they had any knowledge of Fai’s ties to Pakistani intelligence. The last mention in the newspaper of the matter was less than a week later, when they reported that the FBI had attempted to arrest Fai several times, only to be stymied by the State Department and the CIA, who wanted to avoid heightening tensions with Pakistan. And except for a two-sentence mention on the New York Times India blog, the matter then disappeared from their pages entirely.

The Fai arrest got the same treatment from the Washington Post, which ran two stories and a short blog post in the days following Fai’s arrest, and later made short mention of his guilty plea. The paper has published nothing since.

The only full-scale treatment of the Fai matter and his influence on Capitol Hill was an October 2011 investigative piece by ProPublica researchers published by The Atlantic that outlined Fai’s background and lobbying efforts, as well as the extensive evidence compiled by the FBI in the case.

One might have at least expected a flurry of reporting when Fai pled guilty and was later sentenced to two years in prison, Alas, no. Nor was there any discussion of the 26-page Statement of Facts signed by Fai where he admitted in detail to his crimes outlined in FBI Agent Linden’s July 2011 affidavit.

The ambivalence about one of the biggest foreign intelligence influence operations on Capitol Hill in our lifetimes extended to Capitol Hill itself. No handwringing, no committee hearings or investigations, no press conferences by members of Congress explaining exactly how they had been duped for 20 years.

The Hill also made short work of the Fai affair, merely noting his arrest, guilty plea, and sentencing. No in-depth reporting, no stonewalling by congressional spokesmen, and certainly no chasing down members of Congress in the halls asking for comment.

About the only response from Congress was a two-paragraph press release from Rep. Burton’s office claiming he knew nothing, and promising to turn over the amount received by Fai to the Boy Scouts. In a brief interview with Rep. Joe Pitts by Lancaster (PA) Online, Pitts said in response to Fai’s arrest: “It never appeared to me that Dr. Fai was a lobbyist for Pakistan.” With respect to Fai’s attempt to influence him, “it didn’t work”.

In recent months I’ve conducted briefings for congressional staff and members of Congress on the Fai matter, and without exception have been met with blank faces and surprised stares.

So was the 20-year illegal lobbying effort by Ghulam Nabi Fai on behalf of Pakistan’s intelligence service really much ado about nothing? Was Rep. Pitts right that Pakistan’s influence operation on Capitol Hill “didn’t work”?

Or might there be something larger at work? Could it be that there’s more to the story of Ghulam Nabi Fai and the Kashmiri American Council than what you read in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Hill?

The story of Pakistan’s two-decade influence operation in the heart of Congress, the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon is the biggest Capitol Hill spy scandal you’ve never heard about.

In Part Two, I’ll tell you the reason why.

 

In Part One, I explored the court documents in the case of Ghulam Nabi Fai, the executive director of the Kashmiri American Center (KAC) who admitted in a 26-page Statement of Facts at the time of his plea deal last December that he was an influence agent working for the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI. He penetrated the halls of Congress and successive administrations over a 20-year period to help shape U.S. foreign policy in Pakistan’s favor.

As noted in the affidavit by FBI Special Agent Sarah Webb Linden that was the basis for the criminal charges filed in federal court against Fai, he was in constant communication with his ISI handlers, exchanging more than 4,000 emails between June 2008 and his arrest in July 2011. According to the FBI, the ISI spent more than $4 million funding Fai’s operation, funneling money to straw donors in the Pakistani-American community. The operation was coordinated by Zaheer Ahmad, a U.S. citizen living in Pakistan who was charged along with Fai in the case.

As I noted in Part One, while the establishment media reported on Fai’s arrest, the story virtually disappeared from all of the leading news outlets. But while the U.S. media was ignoring the scandal entirely, the matter was the subject of considerable media scrutiny in Indian and Pakistani media.

One curious episode that received no attention from the U.S. media was the strange death of Fai’s conspirator, Zaheer Ahmad.

Several months after Fai’s arrest, an extensive investigative piece (the only one ever published on the topic) by ProPublica noted Ahmad’s ties to Pakistani nuclear scientist Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood. Mahmood had met with Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri prior to 9/11, wanting to help al-Qaeda obtain nuclear weapons. Ahmad told the ProPublica researchers:

In a phone conversation, Ahmad said he was free and working at Shifa. “Until this case is finished, I can’t discuss this,” Ahmad told a ProPublica reporter. “And it could be dangerous for you, too.”

Two days after the ProPublica exposé appeared, a bombshell report from the Hindustan Times placed Ahmad (Fai’s conspirator) at the meeting with Mahmood, Bin Laden, and Zawahiri just weeks prior to the 9/11 attacks.

Two days after that Hindustan Times article appeared tying him to the meeting with al-Qaeda leaders, Ahmad, who was living in Pakistan, dropped dead from a “cerebral hemorrhage”.

So within one week the following happened: ProPublica published an exposé examining Fai’s efforts on Capitol Hill on behalf of Pakistani intelligence; another report tied Fai’s charged conspirator in the case with meeting with Osama bin Laden just weeks prior to the 9/11 attacks; and the conspirator dropped dead.

Yet that was not sufficient to stoke the curiosity of the American media.

Why did this story get buried?

The official response to that question will be that Fai’s arrest was part of the diplomatic game between the U.S., India, and Pakistan, which is entirely true. In fact, as the New York Times reported, the FBI’s efforts to arrest Fai in 2011 were repeatedly opposed by the State Department and the CIA.

And considering the tensions between the U.S. and Pakistan after the raid that killed bin Laden in May 2011 and the subsequent closing of U.S. supply routes through Pakistan into Afghanistan, that certainly explains the reason why the U.S. government was so willing to cut a plea deal with Fai (which it did).

But it doesn’t explain the hands-off policy of the story by the U.S. media.

One possible reason: Fai’s operation had seen considerable success under the Clinton and Bush administrations, and documents obtained by the FBI in the raid of KAC showed that Fai anticipated his efforts would flourish in the new Obama administration. Was the media merely protecting Obama?

According to the FBI, a “plan of action” for 2009 submitted to his ISI handlers showed Fai’s plan to expand his operations by building new alliances with the State Department, the National Security Council, and the Pentagon under the incoming Obama administration. In 2010, his list of proposed activities included 61 key events planned for the year, including 10 briefings for members of Congress and their staff. In 2011, Fai was directed by the Pakistan Embassy in D.C. to expand his outreach even further by contacting and building relationships with 11 members of the media and six think-tank personnel.

It’s doubtful anyone in the establishment media was eager to investigate whom at the State Department, White House/National Security Council, and the Pentagon Fai had been meeting with.

Another possible reason for the media’s lack of attention to the Fai scandal can be seen in Fai’s own biography:

His articles appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Plain Dealer, Baltimore Sun, and many other foreign policy journals in the United States and around the world.

Not only did he have the political establishment fooled for 20 years, he had the media establishment snookered as well.

However, while the diplomatic sensitivities of the Fai case, the protection of the Obama administration, and self-interest were all possible contributing factors to the media’s sitting on the biggest spy scandal on Capitol Hill in recent memory, there is a more evident motive as to why the media took a pass.

Ghulam Nabi Fai was not only active in leadership roles in many of the largest Islamic groups in the U.S. — particularly those leading the U.S. government’s Islamic “outreach” efforts. These groups also actively aided in his operations.

The ProPublica exposé noted some of these ties:

The late Ismail Raji al-Faruqi was a professor specializing in Islam at Temple and would soon help found the International Institute of Islamic Thought. (The institute later came under investigation in a federal probe into terrorism funding, although no charges were filed.) Another professor, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a respected Islamic scholar, was trying to “Islamicize” the social sciences, Fai said.

At Temple, Fai became president of the Muslim Students Association of the U.S. & Canada, an organization started in part by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had spread from Egypt through the Middle East. Some branches of the Brotherhood were hardline; others, more moderate.

Fai also started working for the ISI in about 1985 while at Temple, according to correspondence cited by the FBI, although the affidavit does not make clear what he was doing.

After earning his doctorate in 1988, Fai joined the advisory council for the Islamic Society of North America, an umbrella group started by the Muslim Students Association that also received Saudi funding. [PP – as federal prosecutors noted, Fai falsely claimed to have received his doctorate and presented himself as “Doctor”, but in fact he never obtained the degree.]

But that’s not all:

Incorporation documents filed in Maryland in April 1990 show Fai was one of three people who established the Kashmir center. A second founder was Rafia Syeed, the wife of Sayyid Syeed, one of the organizers of ISNA. The third founder’s father, who retired from the Pakistani military, also held a key post in a charity run by Fai’s alleged accomplice, Zaheer Ahmad. The Syeeds did not reply to requests for comment. The third founder, Mohammad Bilal Yousaf, denied knowing Fai. “I have never heard of Dr. Fai before, only what’s been reported in the media,” he said.

IRS filings show the group got startup funds from two board members and a $20,000 loan from the North American Islamic Trust, an ISNA-linked group that holds titles to about 300 U.S. mosques, Islamic centers and schools.

To summarize what we know of Ghulam Nabi Fai:

  • He came to the U.S. to study under one of the top Muslim Brotherhood leaders, Ismail Faruqi, who founded the International Institute for Islamic Thought, which was identified by U.S. Customs as the hub of terrorism financing in the U.S.
  • Fai later served as national president of the Muslim Students Association (MSA), during which time, according to an email cited in the FBI affidavit, he began serving on behalf of his Pakistani ISI masters.
  • He then served on the Shura Council for the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).
  • The wife of ISNA’s longtime Secretary General and present Director of Interfaith Outreach Sayyid Syeed was one of the original incorporators of KAC. Syeed had preceded Fai as national president of the MSA.
  • According to IRS filings, KAC’s Pakistani intelligence influence operation was launched with a $20,000 loan from the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), which owns the property to hundreds of mosques around the country.

No doubt these organizations would say that their associations with Fai are ancient history and that they had no knowledge that Fai was operating on behalf of Pakistani intelligence.

But Fai’s involvement with these organizations continues to this day.

In fact, just two weeks before his arrest, Fai was speaking at ISNA’s annual conference, as seen in this video:

After his arrest, many of these Islamic groups — again, which are closely tied to the U.S. government — issued a statement in support of Fai under the rubric of the “American Muslim Taskforce” (AMT). This is how the AMT describes itself:

AMT is an umbrella organization that includes American Muslim Alliance (AMA), American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA), Muslim American Society-Freedom (MAS-F), Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA), Muslim Ummah of North America (MUNA), National Association of Imams (NAIF) and United Muslims of America (UMA).

After that August 2, 2011 AMT press release, media mentions of Fai’s case, save for his plea deal and sentencing, virtually disappear.

Even after Fai entered into a plea deal and signed a 26-page Statement of Facts admitting his work on Capitol Hill on behalf of Pakistani intelligence, these same Islamic groups continue to support Fai.

In fact, after Fai’s sentencing and before he reported to federal prison, many of these U.S. Islamic groups hosted fundraising dinners across the country in support of Fai and his legal expenses, hailing him as a hero.

One of these events was held in Newark, California, on June 21, and was promoted by the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) and co-sponsored by such prominent groups as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim American Society (MAS), and ISNA.

Here’s a flyer for the event:

The audio of the event speakers in support of Fai can be found here.

ICNA president Zahid Bukhari sent a letter in support of Fai to the federal judge, urging a lenient sentence:

Dr. Fai was himself a victim of the Indian Government’s inhumane polices in the occupied Kashmir. He was not able to visit his parents and family living in Kashmir since his departure from that part of world several decades ago. In America, he became the globally recognized face of the plight of Kashmiri people.

He presented the Kashmiri case in 17 sessions of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva from 2006 until June 2011. He participated in all summits of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) since 1991, and met with over 50 Heads of State over the last 20 years. He addressed the preliminary session at the Centennial Conference of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, held in Chicago in August 1993. Dr. Fai also organized ten International Kashmir Peace Conferences at the Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C.

Federal prosecutors told the court in a sentencing memo that Fai’s cooperation with the FBI was lacking following his plea deal, particularly noting his lack of cooperation regarding “his involvement with the Muslim Brotherhood, and Pakistani terrorist groups.” (p. 9, fn. 3)

The story of the Pakistani ISI’s 20-year penetration into the heart of Congress, the State Department, the National Security Council, and the Pentagon should have been big news, especially since the U.S. government has identified the ISI as a terrorist organization in military tribunal documents.

But it wasn’t.

The media savaged Rep. Michele Bachmann and her congressional colleagues for daring to request an investigation into organizations that the U.S. government has gone into federal court and identified as front groups for the international Muslim Brotherhood yet somehow still considers helpful outreach partners. The story of how these same Islamic groups and leaders rushed to the support of Ghulam Nabi Fai and hailed Pakistan intelligence’s influence man on Capitol Hill as a hero even after admitting his crimes should be equally major news.

But it’s even worse than that. Fai was not only supported by these Islamic organizations, he served in senior leadership of these very organizations, which the U.S. government continues to consult with to help shape our domestic and foreign policy. These very same organizations are welcomed into the halls of Congress, the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon to this day.

That’s the reason I believe the story of Ghulam Nabi Fai, the Kashmiri American Council, and the Pakistani ISI is the biggest D.C. spy scandal you’ve never heard about.

The staggering implications of what federal prosecutors presented in court about this matter under any other circumstances would have shaken Washington, D.C., to its core. Instead, the political and media establishment closes their eyes in self-imposed blindness.

And in the end, it will be the American people who reap the consequences.

 

The Atlantic Whitewashes Islamist Groups in Abedin Controversy

After a week of evidence coming to light about the connections of Hillary Clinton’s Deputy Chief-of-Staff Huma Abedin to Islamist groups, the Muslim Brotherhood and internationally-designated terrorist enities, the response from the left is ridicule, misrepresentation, caricature and—on the most damning evidence—utter silence. 

A cartoonish chart prepared by The Atlantic’s Serena Dai includes jaw-dropping distortions of Islamist groups—several being officially-designated terrorist groups—to make Abedin’s family and personal connections with them seem benign. 

The blue dots populating “Alleged Connection between Huma Abedin, Muslim Brotherhood, and other things that are bad” are laughably incomplete. In her effort to paint these multiple and serious affiliations as a comical six degrees of separation  to the Muslim Brotherhood (and provide talking points to that effect to others in the left media), Dai whitewashes the fact that most of the organizations listed can reasonably be considered Brotherhood fronts, or, at minimum, heavily populated by Muslim Brothers or ideological Islamist fellow travelers. 

The controversy surrounding Huma Abedin—and, importantly, the extent to which her connections to Islamist groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, alarmingly seemed not to factor into a background check—arise from letters to Inspector Generals of five departments written by a group of Congressmen Newt Gingrich recently dubbed the “National Security Five.” Examining these connections are crucial in light of the advice the Deputy Chief-of-Staff is giving to her boss, the Secretary of State, at a time when Islamist groups openly declaring jihad against America are being rewarded by the Obama administration with legitimacy in the political process. 

Most egregiously, Dai’s chart omits the closest connection Abedin has to Islamist groups and individuals: she was, herself, an assistant editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs for seven years along with terrorism financier Abdullah Omar Naseef. The Journal and the Institute for which her father also worked, was the brainchild of Naseef, who found time to found the Rabita Trust (banned by US Treasury just after 9/11) and serve as secretary general to the Muslim World League (MWL), a group founded by the trusted deputy and son-in-law of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood and, reportedly, one of al Qaeda’s prime sources of funding. When looking for a head of the Rabita Trust, Naseef turned to Wael Hamza Jalidan, who had, by then, been an associate of Osama Bin Laden in al Qaeda. 

In other words, many of the people and groups with whom a man like Naseef surrounds himself (at minimum) tend to be what you’d call “problematic,” and a locus of these links should (again, at the very minimum) give a background investigator pause—or, more sensibly, ring the alarm bells—if he finds not one but several links to Naseef or people like him. 

For example, Huma Abedin is linked to Naseef in several ways: (1) herself, through her employment at an organization Naseef founded and chaired, the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs; (2) through her mother, who was also employed by Naseef’s IMMA; (3) through her late father, who served with Naseef as part of the Muslim World League; and finally (4) through her brother, a fellow at the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies, a group which includes Naseef as a board member. That’s a cluster of associations with merely one man, and that one man is a terror funder. 

But let’s pause for a moment. These links are not “guilt by association”—a term the left has wrung of any meaning, transformed into an all-purpose self-satisfied comeback. As Andy McCarthy explains:

A person is not required to have done anything wrong to be denied a high-ranking government position, or more immediately, the security clearance allowing access to classified information that is necessary to function in such a job. There simply need be associations, allegiances, or interests that establish a potential conflict of interest… Government jobs and access to the nation’s secrets are privileges, not rights. That is why the potential conflict needn’t stem from one’s own associations with hostile foreign countries, organizations, or persons. Vicarious associations, such as one’s parents’ connections to troublesome persons and organizations, are sufficient to create a potential conflict.

In an effort to caricature the exhaustive research done by Walid Shoebat, Andy McCarthy, the Center for Security Policy, and others, the Atlantic proceeds to whitewash and downplay as uncontroversial the individuals and groups that the Abedin family is deeply connected with. A sampling:

Dai’s description for the group Abedin’s mother founded, the International Islamic Committee for Woman and Child (IICWC), is cynically deceptive: “Its website states a goal of defending women’s rights.” In Arabic, its website also recommends repeal of laws forbidding female genital mutilation, child marriage, and marital rape. For justification of these barbaric positions clearly in conflict with the mandate of “protecting women’s rights,” IICWC turns to Yusuf al-Qaradawi—the infamous Hitler-praising cleric who is considered to be the Muslim Brotherhood’s chief jurist. Oh, and according to the IICWC’s own website (again, in Arabic), Qaradawi was also the author of the group’s charter.

In addition, the Atlantic omits references to Women in Islam, the book Saleha Abedin and her IICWC published, translated into English and distributed through the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs (IMMA), the organization with which Huma Abedin herself was employed. Excerpts of the book were published by the Center for Security Policy, including a chapter arguing for women’s participation in armed jihad, stoning or lashing for adultery, curtailing free expression based on what would benefit Islam, and more. To establish these positions—again, as far from a western notion of human rights as you can get—the book relies on extensive citations from opinions of Muslim Brotherhood figures like Qaradawi and Sayiid Qutb, the ideological inspiration for nearly every modern jihadist group, including al Qaeda.

Moving on, there’s the International Islamic Council for Da’wah and Relief (IICDR), which Dai refers to as a group that merely “connects various Islamic organizations.” You could say that. You could also say it was banned in Israel for funding Hamas as part of a scheme by the very same Qaradawi and his Union For Good. Saleha Abedin attended IICDR’s board meetings, and their own websites and publications acknowledge the linkage. 

On to the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), which Dia euphemistically says, “helps the social development of Muslim youth.” As Andrew McCarthy—who has published invaluable information on Abedin’s connections and putting them into context, recounts: 

Its principal role is the indoctrination of young Muslims in supremacist ideology. As outlined in one of its pamphlets, Islamic Views, it aims to “teach our children to love taking revenge on the Jews and the oppressors, and teach them that our youngsters will liberate Palestine and al-Quds [i.e., Jerusalem] when they go back to Islam and make Jihad for the sake of Allah.” As Matthew Levitt extensively details in Hamas: Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad, WAMY has been a financial supporter of Hamas and al-Qaeda.

“An Islamic organization aiming to further the religion” is how Dai gingerly describes WAMY’s parent organization, the aforementioned World Muslim League (WML). Ian Johnson’s bestselling investigative book on the Muslim Brotherhood in the west, Mosque in Munich, details the development of the WML as an innovation of the Brotherhood at the highest levels, led by Said Ramadan. 

And on and on. 

This episode illustrates the extent to which the left is determined to downplay the explicit danger of well-funded Islamist groups and individuals, ranging from the ideological incubators of shariah and jihad to actual government-designated terrorist sponsors. Rather than being the hyper-partisan defense of Huma Abedin that the writer intends, this piece—and the accompanying chart—willfully contributes to a lack of understanding of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood that threaten our way of life, our freedoms, and our national security.

Even more, the hyperventilation on this issue by the likes of CNN’s Anderson Cooper, the evening lineup of MSNBC, John McCain, and Keith Ellison (who’s got his own Muslim Brotherhood ties) has the effect of legitimizing the Muslim Brotherhood and similar radical groups, effectively delivering the American Muslim community into its hands. If any criticism of the Brotherhood or its court-established front groups is tantamount to Islamophobia and is off limits, then our national security is in a perilous place. And, like their efforts to destroy anti-communists during the Cold War, we’ve got the left to blame.

Genocide in Sudan: Call for Action, Cry for Change

This month marks the one-year anniversary of South Sudan’s birth as a country, yet there is little to celebrate.  The Bashir regime of the northern Republic of Sudan is perpetuating conflict over resources in the wake of South Sudan’s 2011 succession. Aggressive bombings and genocidal violence are an attempt to win this civil war by essentially wiping out inhabitants in the border regions of South Sudan. Thousands of innocent civilians in Abyei, Blue Nile, and the Nuba Mountains are targeted by the Sudan Air Force. They are left with a grim choice: either die of starvation while fleeing for their lives, or face the violent attacks of northern air force.

On June 30, 2012, South Sudanese activists around the world joined the Sudanese people and rallied in several major cities, including Washington D.C.

Despite the 100-degree heat, a group of individuals representing the many regions affected by this conflict gathered in front of the Sudanese embassy promoting a clear message: down with Al-Bashir; end the genocide immediately.  This rally focused on supporting recent student anti-government protests in the capital city of Khartoum that began in June.

The resolve of previous administrations led to the diplomatic success of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005 which led to the creation of South Sudan by referendum.  Over the past few years, however, Sudanese activists have seen the current administration lend diplomatic credibility to Islamist totalitarians like Al-Bashir in Iran as well as lending military support, money, and aid to Islamists of the same ideological stripes as Al Qaeda in Libya and Egypt. These messages are confusing. 

The Bashir regime has been a long-time partner and supporter of Hezbollah and even hosted Osama bin Laden until it was pressured by the U.S. to deny him safe haven.  Despite Bashir’s unchecked aggression, President Obama telephoned the South Sudanese President Salva Kiir three times this spring asking him not to engage in defense of the Nuba people without significantly challenging the Khartoum regime to any effect.  

The Center for Security Policy captured the hopes and frustrations of those giving a voice to the victims of Khartoum, past, present, and future.

 

For more information and background on the current situation in Sudan:

 

 

Obama’s Spectacular Failure

Two weeks ago, in an unofficial inauguration ceremony at Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt’s new Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Mursi took off his mask of moderation. Before a crowd of scores of thousands, Mursi pledged to work for the release from US federal prison of Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman.
According to The New York Times’ account of his speech, Mursi said, "I see signs [being held by members of the crowd] for Omar Abdel-Rahman and detainees’ pictures. It is my duty and I will make all efforts to have them free, including Omar Abdel-Rahman."
Otherwise known as the blind sheikh, Abdel Rahman was the mastermind of the jihadist cell in New Jersey that perpetrated the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. His cell also murdered Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York in 1990. They plotted the assassination of then-president Hosni Mubarak. They intended to bomb New York landmarks including the Lincoln and Holland tunnels and the UN headquarters.
Rahman was the leader of Gama’a al-Islamia – the Islamic Group, responsible, among other things for the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. A renowned Sunni religious authority, Rahman wrote the fatwa, or Islamic ruling, permitting Sadat’s murder in retribution for his signing the peace treaty with Israel. The Islamic group is listed by the State Department as a specially designated terrorist organization.
After his conviction in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Abdel-Rahman issued another fatwa calling for jihad against the US. After the September 11, 2001, attacks, Osama bin Laden cited Abdel-Rahman’s fatwa as the religious justification for them.
By calling for Abdel-Rahman’s release, Mursi has aligned himself and his government with the US’s worst enemies. By calling for Abdel-Rahman’s release during his unofficial inauguration ceremony, Mursi signaled that he cares more about winning the acclaim of the most violent, America-hating jihadists in the world than with cultivating good relations with America.
And in response to Mursi’s supreme act of unfriendliness, US President Barack Obama invited Mursi to visit him at the White House.
Mursi is not the only Abdel Rahman supporter to enjoy the warm hospitality of the White House.
His personal terror organization has also been the recipient of administration largesse. Despite the fact that federal law makes it a felony to assist members of specially designated terrorist organizations, last month the State Department invited group member Hani Nour Eldin, a newly elected member of the Islamist-dominated Egyptian parliament, to visit the US and meet with senior US officials at the White House and the State Department, as part of a delegation of Egyptian parliamentarians.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland refused to provide any explanation for the administration’s decision to break federal law in order to host Eldin in Washington. Nuland simply claimed, "We have an interest in engaging a broad cross-section of Egyptians who are seeking to peacefully shape Egypt’s future. The goal of this delegation… was to have consultations both with think tanks but also with government folks, with a broad spectrum representing all the colors of Egyptian politics."
MURSI IS not the only Arab leader who embraces terrorists only to be embraced by the US government. In a seemingly unrelated matter, this week it was reported that in an attempt to satisfy the Obama administration’s urgent desire to renew negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel, and to satisfy the Palestinians’ insatiable desire to celebrate terrorists, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu offered to release 124 Palestinian terrorist murderers from Israeli prisons in exchange for a meeting with Palestinian Authority Chairman and Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas.
Alas, Abbas refused. He didn’t think Netanyahu’s offer was generous enough.
And how did the Obama administration respond to Abbas’s demand for the mass release of terrorists and his continued refusal to resume negotiations with Israel? 
By attacking Israel.
The proximate cause of the Obama administration’s most recent assault on Israel is the publication of the legal opinion of a panel of expert Israeli jurists regarding the legality of Israeli communities beyond the 1949 armistice lines. Netanyahu commissioned the panel, led by retired Supreme Court justice Edmond Levy, to investigate the international legal status of these towns and villages and to provide the government with guidance relating to future construction of Israeli communities beyond the armistice lines.
The committee’s findings, published this week, concluded that under international law, these communities are completely legal.
There is nothing remotely revolutionary about this finding. This has been Israel’s position since 1967, and arguably since 1922.
The international legal basis for the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948 was the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. That document gave the Jewish people the legal right to sovereignty over Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, as well as all the land Israel took control over during the 1948- 49 War of Independence.
Not only did the Mandate give the Jewish people the legal right to the areas, it enjoined the British Mandatory authorities to "facilitate… close settlement by Jews on the land, including state lands and waste lands not required for public purposes."
So not only was Jewish settlement not prohibited. It was required.
Although this has been Israel’s position all along, Netanyahu apparently felt the need to have its legitimacy renewed in light of the all-out assault against Israel’s legal rights led by the Palestinians, and joined enthusiastically by the Obama administration.
In a previous attempt to appease Obama’s rapacious appetite for Israeli concessions, Netanyahu temporarily abrogated Israel’s legal rights by banning Jews from exercising their property rights in Judea and Samaria for 10 months in 2010. All the legal opinion published this week does is restate what Israel’s position has always been.
Whereas the Obama administration opted to embrace Mursi even as he embraces Abdel-Rahman, the Obama administration vociferously condemned Israel for having the nerve to ask a panel of senior jurists to opine about its rights. In a press briefing, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell banged the rhetorical hammer.
As he put it, "The US position on settlements is clear. Obviously, we’ve seen the reports that an Israeli government-appointed panel has recommended legalizing dozens of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, but we do not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity, and we oppose any effort to legalize settlement outposts."
In short then, for the Obama administration, it is all well and fine for the newly elected president of what was until two years ago the US’s most important Arab ally to embrace a terror mastermind indirectly responsible for the murder of nearly 3,000 Americans. It is okay to invite members of jihadist terror groups to come to Washington and meet with senior US officials in a US taxpayer- funded trip. It is even okay for the head of a would-be-state that the US is trying to create to embrace every single Palestinian terrorist, including those who have murdered Americans. But for Israel’s elected government to ask an expert panel to determine whether Israel is acting in accordance with international law in permitting Jews to live on land the Palestinians insist must be Jew-free is an affront.
THE DISPARITY between the administration’s treatment of the Mursi government on the one hand and the Netanyahu government on the other places the nature of its Middle East policy in stark relief.
Obama came into office with a theory on which he based his Middle East policy. His theory was that jihadists hate America because the US supports Israel. By placing what Obama referred to as "daylight" between the US and Israel, he believed he would convince the jihadists to put aside their hatred of America.
Obama has implemented this policy for three and a half years. And its record of spectacular failure is unbroken.
Obama’s failure is exposed in all its dangerous consequence by a simple fact. Since he entered office, the Americans have dispensed with far fewer jihadists than they have empowered.
Since January 2009, the Muslim world has become vastly more radicalized. No Islamist government in power in 2009 has been overthrown. But several key states – first and foremost Egypt – that were led by pro-Western, US-allied governments when Obama entered office are now ruled by Islamists.
It is true that the election results in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and elsewhere are not Obama’s fault. But they still expose the wrongness of his policy. Obama’s policy of putting daylight between the US and Israel, and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood against US allies like Mubarak, involves being bad to America’s friends and good to America’s enemies. This policy cannot help but strengthen your enemies against yourself and your friends.
Rather than contend with the bitter consequences of his policy, Obama and his surrogates have opted to simply deny the dangerous reality he has engendered through his actions. Even worse they have come up with explanations for maintaining this policy despite its flagrant failure.
Nowhere was this effort more obvious than in a made-to-order New York Times analysis this week titled, "As Islamists gain influence, Washington reassesses who its friends are."
The analysis embraces the notion that it is possible and reasonable to appease the likes of Mursi and his America-hating jihadist supporters and coalition partners. It quotes Michele Dunne from the Atlantic Council who claimed that on the one hand, if the Muslim Brotherhood and its radical comrades are allowed to take over Egypt, their entry into mainstream politics should reduce the terrorism threat. On the other hand, she warned, "If Islamist groups like the Brotherhood lose faith in democracy, that’s when there could be dire consequences."
In other words, the analysis argues that the US should respond to the ascent of its enemies by pretending its enemies are its friends.
Aside from its jaw-dropping irresponsibility, this bit of intellectual sophistry requires a complete denial of reality. The Taliban were in power in Afghanistan in 2001. Their political power didn’t stop them from cooperating with al-Qaida. Hamas has been in charge of Gaza since 2007. That hasn’t stopped it from carrying out terrorism against Israel. The mullahs have been in charge of Iran from 33 years. That hasn’t stopped them from serving as the largest terrorism sponsors in the world. Hezbollah has been involved in mainstream politics in Lebanon since 2000 and it has remained one of the most active terrorist organizations in the world.
And so on and so forth.
Back in the 1980s, the Reagan administration happily cooperated with the precursors of al-Qaida in America’s covert war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. It never occurred to the Americans then that the same people working with them to overthrow the Soviets would one day follow the lead of the blind sheikh and attack America.
Unlike the mujahadin in Afghanistan, the Muslim Brotherhood has never fought a common foe with the Americans. The US is supporting it for nothing – while seeking to win its support by turning on America’s most stable allies.
Can there be any doubt that this policy will end badly? 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Wanted: A Competent Commander-In-Chief

So, it turns out, Team Obama suddenly wants the 2012 presidential campaign to be about foreign policy, rather than the economy. Such a pivot might not be surprising given that, by President Obama’s own test, he has not cut unemployment to the point where he deserves to be reelected.

The Democrats have – if anything – a weaker case for reelecting this president on national security grounds. The campaign ad they unveiled on Friday, timed to take credit for the liquidation of Osama bin Laden on the first anniversary of that achievement, is a case in point.

The video used former President Bill Clinton to extol his successor’s role in the mission – and selectively quoted Republican nominee Mitt Romney to suggest he would not have done the same.

It is an act of desperation and contempt for the American people that, of all people, Mr. Clinton would be used in such a role. Let’s recall, during his presidency, he repeatedly declined to take out bin Laden. (So sensitive is the former president about this sorry record that his operatives insisted in 2006 that ABC excise from "Path to 9/11" – an outstanding made-for-TV film by Cyrus Nowrasteh – a dramatized version of one such episode. Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asw8fhpz0wA.)

More telling still is an issue inadvertently showcased by this controversy. While the Clinton-Obama-Biden spot tries to make Gov. Romney sound as though he wouldn’t have had the courage, or at least the vision, the President exhibited in a risky bid to take out bin Laden, what the presumptive Republican nominee actually said in 2007 in context illustrates a far better grasp than President Obama has of the enemy we confront:

"I wouldn’t want to over-concentrate on Bin Laden. He’s one of many, many people who are involved in this global Jihadist effort. He’s by no means the only leader. It’s a very diverse group – Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood and of course different names throughout the world. It’s not worth moving heaven and earth and spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person. It is worth fashioning and executing an effective strategy to defeat global, violent Jihad and I have a plan for doing that."

Mr. Obama, by contrast, would have us believe that the problem in notonly just al Qaeda but that that threat is pretty much a thing of the past,thanks to bin Laden’s elimination and the decimation primarily by drone strikes of others among its leadership and rank and file. An unnamed senior State Department official told the NationalJournal last week, "The War on Terror is over" as Muslims embrace "legitimate Islamism."

Unfortunately, as Seth Jones observed in the Wall Street Journal on April 30, 2012, "Al Qaeda is far from dead. Acting as if it were will not make it so."

Even if al Qaeda actually had been defeated, however, we are – as Mitt Romney said five years ago – confronting a host of other jihadist enemies who seek the same goals as bin Laden’s al Qaeda and its franchises: the triumph of the totalitarian, supremacist Islamic doctrine of shariah and a global government, known as a caliphate, to govern according to it.

Unfortunately, as demonstrated conclusively in a free, web-based video course entitled "Muslim Brotherhood in America: the Enemy Within" released last week by the Center for Security Policy (www.MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com), far from understanding the danger posed by the rest of the jihadist enterprise, the Obama administration is actually making it stronger.

The evidence presented in this course suggests that could be due, at least in part, to the six Muslim Brotherhood-associated individuals the Center has identified who are either on the government’s payroll, advising it and/or being used for outreach to the American Muslim community. (See Part 8 for the details on the Obama Six.)

Whatever the motivation, consider how Team Obama has managed the three other groups Gov. Romney mentioned. The administration made no effort to impede the take-over of Lebanon by the Iranian foreign legion, the designated terrorist organization known as Hezbollah. It has actively helped bring to power, recognized and effectively turned over $1.5 billion to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Worse yet, it has, as noted above, embraced its operatives and front groups here. And President Obama personally directed last week that $170 million in U.S. foreign aid be given to a Palestinian Authority "unity government" which includes another designated terrorist organization, Hamas – incredibly on the grounds tthat "U.S. national security interests" required it.

Unfortunately for the Obama administration, fundamentally misconstruing the nature of the enemy is just part of this president’s ominous legacy with respect to his Commander-in-Chief portfolio. The wrecking operation he is engaged in with respect to our military’s capability to project power, its unilateral cuts to the U.S. nuclear deterrent and weakening our missile defenses may not be fully evident between now and the election. But the impact will be felt for generations to come. That will be true in spades of the war on the culture of the armed forces being waged inpursuit the radical left’s efforts to make-over American social norms and mores, starting with its most esteemed institution: the United States military.

Getting bin Laden isn’t the issue. The issue is whether President Obama is getting right the rest of his job as Commander-in-Chief. And, regrettably, he is not.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy (www.SecureFreedom.org), a columnist for the Washington Times and host of the nationally syndicated program, Secure Freedom Radio, heard in Washington weeknights at 9:00 p.m. on WRC 1260 AM.

Political Compromise of Our Security

                   A troubling pattern of putting U.S. and allied security interests second to the Obama administration’s political priorities is now well-established.  If allowed to continue, it will not only make the world more dangerous.  It is going to get people killed – probably in large numbers and some of them may be Americans.

A prime example of the phenomenon was the disclosure of minute details of the 2011 raid by SEAL Team 6 withinhours of its successful liquidation of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.  The revelation of special operations tradecraft horrified those in and out of the U.S. military who appreciate that safeguarding the secrecy of such techniques is essential toensuring their future utility, and the safety of those who employ them.

The really galling thing, though, was that such secrets were compromised for the transparent purpose of touting Mr. Obama’s decisiveness and competency as Commander-in-Chief.  Regrettably, such qualities have not been much in evidence, either prior to or after that raid.  For that matter, notwithstanding Vice President Joe Biden’s characteristically preposterous description of the operation as “the most audacious plan in 500 years,” it is not entirely clear what his boss’ role was in the execution, let alone the conception.

Still, given the importance now being attached to this narrative of vision and courage in the Obama reelection campaign, it is clear that the serial disclosure ofstate secrets by, most notably, the President’s counter-terrorism guru, Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan, was in the service of a political cause.  Call it the ends justifying the means.

More recently, “four senior diplomats and military intelligence officers” reportedly fed Foreign Policy Magazine contributor Mark Perry a salacious story about Israel enlisting Azerbaijan in its plans for staging aircraft in an attack on Iran.  Perry claims that “a senior administration official told [him] in early February that ‘The Israelis have bought an airfield, and the airfield is called Azerbaijan.’”

If true, such a disclosure would fit the pattern of deliberate, concerted and damaging leaks of exceedingly sensitive information in order to advance Team Obama’s political agenda.  In this instance, that agenda would be to prevent any strike on Iranian nuclear and perhaps other targets by the Jewish State before the November elections. 

True or not, the revelation has had the desired effect:  It put the Azeri government of President Ilham Aliyev on the spot and forced it to disavow any such collaboration with Israel.  While some have questioned the integrity of the author and the logic of his thesis, the trouble is, it certainly sounds like the Obama administration to see such a stunt as a highly desirable two-fer: an opportunity to undermine Israel’s security, while effectively protecting Iran.

It seems that a similar calculation moved the Obama administration to divulge what appeared on the front page of theWashington Post’s Sunday editions:  An article citing unnamed White House and intelligence sources – including “a senior U.S. official involved in high-level discussions about Iran policy” – that revealed details about the intelligence operations and capabilities the United States is said to have brought to bear lately against Iran.  

The ostensible purpose of these initiatives has been the monitoring and disabling of the Iranian nuclear weapons program.  Among the insights: the CIA has stood up and greatly expanded a unitdubbed “Persia House” for the purpose of monitoring and running covert actions against Iran.  

In the article, much was made of the growth of this organization, its use of stealthy unmanned drones to collect signals and other intelligence deep in Iran and U.S. involvement in computer worms, assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists and explosions in certain sensitive facilities involved in Iran’s weapons program.

The point of these leaks of exceedingly sensitive activities – at least some of which could constitute acts of war, however, seemed once again to be cynically manipulative:  It appears designed to show the American people that everything is under control.  Team Obama is working the problem, skillfully employing intelligence assets to prevent Iran’s nuclear ambitions from being realized without using military force.

The Post story also served as a vehicle for reiterating the administration’s party line:  The mullahs have not decided to acquire an actual weapon and are at least a year away from getting one.  And, what’s more, we will know should that decision be taken in plenty of time to do something about it.

We would all wish these assurances to be accurate.  Unfortunately, the problem with the Obama administration’s practice of playing fast-and-loose with information that is secret for a reason – it might be called “political compromise,” but that would be the only sense of the term this president seems to favor – is that it almost certainly will jeopardize our security, and that of other freedom-loving people.

Political Compromise… of Our Security

A troubling pattern of putting U.S. and allied security interests second to the Obama administration’s political priorities is now well-established.  If allowed to continue, it will not only make the world more dangerous.  It is going to get people killed – probably in large numbers and some of them may be Americans.

A prime example of the phenomenon was the disclosure of minute details of the 2011 raid by SEAL Team 6 within hours of its successful liquidation of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.  The revelation of special operations tradecraft horrified those in and out of the U.S. military who appreciate that safeguarding the secrecy of such techniques is essential to ensuring their future utility, and the safety of those who employ them.

The really galling thing, though, was that such secrets were compromised for the transparent purpose of touting Mr. Obama’s decisiveness and competency as Commander-in-Chief.  Regrettably, such qualities have not been much in evidence, either prior to or after that raid.  For that matter, notwithstanding Vice President Joe Biden’s characteristically preposterous description of the operation as “the most audacious plan in 500 years,” it is not entirely clear what his boss’ role was in the execution, let alone the conception.

Still, given the importance now being attached to this narrative of vision and courage in the Obama reelection campaign, it is clear that the serial disclosure ofstate secrets by, most notably, the President’s counter-terrorism guru, Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan, was in the service of a political cause.  Call it the ends justifying the means.

More recently, “four senior diplomats and military intelligence officers” reportedly fed Foreign Policy Magazine contributor Mark Perry a salacious story about Israel enlisting Azerbaijan in its plans for staging aircraft in an attack on Iran.  Perry claims that “a senior administration official told [him] in early February that ‘The Israelis have bought an airfield, and the airfield is called Azerbaijan.’”

If true, such a disclosure would fit the pattern of deliberate, concerted and damaging leaks of exceedingly sensitive information in order to advance Team Obama’s political agenda.  In this instance, that agenda would be to prevent any strike on Iranian nuclear and perhaps other targets by the Jewish State before the November elections.

True or not, the revelation has had the desired effect:  It put the Azeri government of President Ilham Aliyev on the spot and forced it to disavow any such collaboration with Israel.  While some have questioned the integrity of the author and the logic of his thesis, the trouble is, it certainly sounds like the Obama administration to see such a stunt as a highly desirable two-fer: an opportunity to undermine Israel’s security, while effectively protecting Iran.

It seems that a similar calculation moved the Obama administration to divulge what appeared on the front page of the Washington Post’s Sunday editions:  An article citing unnamed White House and intelligence sources – including “a senior U.S. official involved in high-level discussions about Iran policy” – that revealed details about the intelligence operations and capabilities the United States is said to have brought to bear lately against Iran.

The ostensible purpose of these initiatives has been the monitoring and disabling of the Iranian nuclear weapons program.  Among the insights: the CIA has stood up and greatly expanded a unit dubbed “Persia House” for the purpose of monitoring and running covert actions against Iran.

In the article, much was made of the growth of this organization, its use of stealthy unmanned drones to collect signals and other intelligence deep in Iran and U.S. involvement in computer worms, assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists and explosions in certain sensitive facilities involved in Iran’s weapons program.

The point of these leaks of exceedingly sensitive activities – at least some of which could constitute acts of war, however, seemed once again to be cynically manipulative:  It appears designed to show the American people that everything is under control.  Team Obama is working the problem, skillfully employing intelligence assets to prevent Iran’s nuclear ambitions from being realized without using military force.

The Post story also served as a vehicle for reiterating the administration’s party line:  The mullahs have not decided to acquire an actual weapon and are at least a year away from getting one.  And, what’s more, we will know should that decision be taken in plenty of time to do something about it.

We would all wish these assurances to be accurate.  Unfortunately, the problem with the Obama administration’s practice of playing fast-and-loose with information that is secret for a reason – it might be called “political compromise,” but that would be the only sense of the term this president seems to favor – is that it almost certainly will jeopardize our security, and that of other freedom-loving people.

On Obama’s watch

On February 5th, President Obama provided his own Super Sunday show.  In some respects, it was almost as bizarre as Madonna’s performance at half time.

In particular, in his interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer, Mr. Obama responded oddly to concerns raised last week by leaders of the U.S. intelligence community.  They testified on Capitol Hill that the Iranian mullahs appear to be planning attacks on the United States.  Yet, the President told Lauer that, "We don’t see any evidence that they have those intentions or capabilities right now."

Now, anyone with an IQ above room temperature has noticed lately plenty of evidence of both hostile Iranian intentions and the capabilities to act on them.  Consider a few examples:

Last fall, the Obama administration announced that it had intercepted an Iranian plot to blow up a popular eatery in Washington’s Georgetown section in order to kill the Saudi ambassador who frequents it.  They did so with the knowledge that more 150 Americans would be murdered in the process. Just last week, Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein used the occasion of a rare open hearing to vouch strongly for the quality of the evidence implicating the regime in Tehran, despite the seemingly unprofessional nature of the assassination plan.

The Iranians have also established a formidable foreign legion in their terrorist proxy, Hezbollah.  This Lebanese "Party of God" has already killed Americans elsewhere.  And we know that they have established a presence in Latin America, notably under the protection of Iran’s ally in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez.  There are increasing indications that Hezbollah is also now embedding itself in Mexico, doing business and making common cause with narco-trafficking drug cartels there.  Such ties facilitate these jihadists’ ability to penetrate the southern U.S. border that Team Obama seems determined not to secure.

What is more, we know that Hezbollah already has active cells in place in the United States.  They have been involved here in illicit cigarette trafficking, money laundering and fundraising for the mother ship.  It would be dangerously naïve to think that Hezbollah’s operatives inside this country are not also preparing for acts of terror.  The same goes for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ al Quds paramilitary units the Obama Pentagon has warned are operating with Hezbollah in our hemisphere.
Even U.S. intelligence is now coming around to another ominous reality: Iran cooperates with al Qaeda.

The evidence is indisputable that Shiites and Sunnis can, when in pursuit of a common foe, overlook differences about particulars of their respective practices of Islam and the bitter enmity that has flowed from them for centuries.

A federal judge recently found that the mullahocracy in Tehran assisted Osama bin Laden’s operatives in planning and executing the murderous attacks of 9/11.  And Iran’s "house arrest" of his family members and top al Qaeda operatives since then is now increasingly recognized as tantamount to providing safe haven, not imposing involuntary incarceration.

That being the case, one must add the capabilities of al Qaeda and its proliferating franchises to the ayatollahs’ potential strike packages against this country.  Never mind those official assurances that "al Qaeda core" has been diminished by years of drone strikes and Special Forces missions against their leadership.  Iranian state-sponsorship ensures that we will face a continuing and growing danger from those terrorists and others committed to imposing worldwide the Islamist doctrine of shariah.

(Interestingly, in his congressional testimony last week, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper actually called this pan-Islamic front the "global jihad movement."  This would appear to be a violation of clear Obama administration guidance that no association can be made between "violent extremism" and the Islamic impetuses behind nearly all of it.  It also marks a considerable improvement over Clapper’s preposterous declaration a year ago that the Muslim Brotherhood is a "largely secular organization" that has "eschewed violence.")

What about the reported agreement between Iran and Venezuela to base some of the former’s ballistic missiles on the latter’s territory?  The timing of this deployment and the speed with which it metastasizes into a new Cuban Missile Crisis cannot be determined at this point.  Still, the intent to threaten the United States certainly is evident, even if this particular capability to act on that intention thankfully has yet to be achieved.

Finally, Iran appears to have developed all but one of the ingredients needed to mount what has been described as a "catastrophic" attack on the United States: a strategic strike unleashing a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse.  All that is lacking is a working nuclear weapon that can be launched aboard even a short-range missile from a ship off our coast.

Successive government and independent studies have established that such an attack would disrupt for a protracted time, and possibly destroy, our electrical grid and all the infrastructures that rely upon it.

Without them, our society and population simply cannot be sustained – giving rise to the distinct possibility of achieving Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s stated goal of "a world without America."

President Obama’s statement that "we don’t see any evidence" of Iran’s intentions and capabilities to attack us is either witless or deceptive.  Either way, it is as strong an argument as any for his defeat in November – assuming the mullahs have not acted in the meantime on their well-documented desire to eliminate us and our friends in Israel.