Tag Archives: Patrick Poole

Determined disinterest in our own destruction

During the Cold War, America faced an implacable enemy, driven by a supremacist ideology that called for, among other things, the use of an array of covert front groups, stealthy techniques and subversive activities to achieve our destruction.  For many years, our effort to defeat Soviet Communism featured a concerted counter-intelligence (CI) effort aimed at ferreting out and defeating such sedition.

Unfortunately, America now faces once again an implacable enemy, driven by a supremacist ideology that calls for, among other things, the use of an array of covert front groups, stealthy techniques and subversive activities to achieve our destruction.  In the place of the Soviet Union and the influence operations run by its intelligence service, the KGB, and the Communist International (Comintern), we confront the Islamic doctrine known as shariah and the Muslim Brotherhood, which serves as the principal engine for extending its reach.

It seems, however, that we have no counter-intelligence effort comparable to that of the Cold War or remotely commensurate with today’s threat.  Indeed, based on the evidence of successful penetration and influence operations being run by the Muslim Brotherhood these days, one would be tempted to conclude that counter-intelligence has effectively ceased to be part of our toolkit in keeping America safe and free.

Consider just a few of many worrying examples:

When President Obama engaged in his latest "outreach to the Muslim world" at the State Department last month, seated in the front row next to the Secretary of State was Imam Mohammed Magid.  Magid happens to be the president of the largest Muslim Brotherhood organization in the country, the Islamic Society of North America.  As with the White House’s insistence that MB representatives be included in the audience during the President’s Cairo 2009 address, the message could not be any clearer:  Far from perceiving the Brotherhood as what it is – an organization determined to destroy the United States and the rest of the Free World – Team Obama sees them as reliable partners.

That message was being reinforced at this writing when, on Monday, senior U.S. government officials sat down with an assortment of Muslim Brotherhood operatives and groups under the auspices of the Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.  Bin Talal – a major benefactor of Brotherhood causes and enabler of its own and similar Islamist influence operations – endowed his center at Georgetown University with a gift of $20 million.  The investment is paying handsome dividends as it affords the MB a vehicle for using "interfaith dialogue" as a means of legitimating and promoting its personnel and agendas.

In 2009, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) – an organization counter-terror expert Patrick Poole describes as the "political lobbying arm of the U.S. Brotherhood" – boasted that it was "consulted" by Los Angeles Mayor Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa about his choice of police chief.  Such political stroke may have something to do with the MB threat being downplayed by LAPD’s current Deputy Chief Michael Downey, who testified last week before Rep. Pete King’s House Homeland Security Committee about Islamist "radicalization" in the U.S. prison system.

Besides the cyber-sexploits of Rep. Anthony Weiner, the most astonishing revelation to come out of his public meltdown was the fact that his wife, Huma Abedin, a member of a prominent Muslim Brotherhood family in Egypt, happens to be Hillary Clinton’s Deputy Chief of Staff.  (For more on the Abedins, see Arnold Ahlert’s damning report.)  Secretary Clinton told an Egyptian audience last Tuesday that the job held by the Saudi-reared Ms. Abedin’s job was an "important and sensitive position."

Meanwhile, part of the job of performing background checks for U.S. security clearances has been contracted out to companies incentivized to help clean up a serious backlog.  According to employees, they are given quotas of cases to process with one company requiring as many as twenty per day.  Does anyone seriously believe that this is a formula for properly vetting personnel?

Meanwhile, there is an issue requiring serious vetting whose problems date back to the bad old Cold War days.  The United States Senate is poised to confirm as the next Secretary of Defense a man who, back during Angleton’s days, would have been considered a security threat.

Thanks to intrepid reporting by Cliff Kincaid and Trevor Loudon, we now know that during his days as a California Congressman, Leon Panetta, had close personal ties to Communist agents and spies.  At no point has he disavowed such relationships or expressed remorse for any help he may have provided them.  Neither has any senator indicated concern about the problematic judgment or security risks that might be associated with such a Pentagon chief.

The question occurs:  Can we possibly hope to survive our time’s ideologically-driven subversion – let alone prevail over it – if we systematically disregard the threat its adherents pose here at home?  We need to reconstitute the sort of serious counter-intelligence capability and practice that we have employed to greateffect in the past.  Continuing to do otherwise is to invite, if not assure, our destruction.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy, 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.

Something rotten in Denmark (and here)

Surprisingly, on net, last week was not a good one for the Free World.  Despite the signal accomplishment of liquidating Osama bin Laden, Western civilization suffered serious reverses on several fronts.

What these reverses all have in common is a deference to the doctrine our enemies’ call "shariah," in a manner they perceive to be acts of "submission." Such behavior is exceedingly dangerous, as it invites our foes to redouble their efforts to make us, in the words of the Koran, "feel subdued."

For instance, consider the aftermath of SEAL Team 6’s extraordinary take-down of bin Laden.  What ensued was nothing less than a debacle as President Obama’s political appointees kept changing their accounts of what had happened.  As one wag put it, "Osama bin Laden died and we got 72 versions." 

The subtext was of an administration effort desperately trying not to give offense to our adversaries.  Yet, they and our friends could only have felt reaffirmed in their already dim view of what passes for American leadership under Mr. Obama.

Then, there was the unctuous effort to dispose of bin Laden’s body in strict "conformance to Islamic practice."  The fastidious cleansing and wrapping of the body, the 40-minute ceremony and the burial at sea conjure up images of an America treating one of its most psychopathic enemies as a legitimate, even revered figure. Islam scholar Andrew Bostom raises the question whether such rites actually included shariah-conforming denunciations of Christians and Jews?  Either way, this exercise was a pathetic act of appeasement.

Next, the President announced that he had decided not to release the dead jihadist’s photo.  As with the handling of bin Laden’s burial, the justification given was concern that the picture’s dissemination would only inspire more violence against us and our forces overseas.  The truth of the matter is that the more we signal our fear of the violence of shariah-adherent Muslims, the more certain it is to be visited upon us.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday an appeals court in Denmark convicted one of Western civilization’s most courageous defenders – Lars Hedegaard, president of the International Free Press Society.  His crime?  He gave offense to Muslims.  Yes, that’s right, a Danish judicial panel effectively enforced shariah blasphemy law.  In the process, the court violated one of the most cardinal pillars of freedom: the right to free speech. 

If allowed to stand, the ruling in the Hedegaard case will be used to abridge fundamental civil rights throughout Europe, and possibly far beyond. Yet, there has been remarkably little outcry about the defendant’s plight – most especially from journalists who have as much to lose as anybody. 

In this instance, as in the foregoing ones, the West is acting out of fear, lest our conduct become grounds for fresh violence.  This is an enduring legacy of, among other things, the manufactured outrage and mayhem over the Danish cartoons a few years back.  It gives ominous new meaning to the expression "Something is rotten in Denmark."

Unfortunately, our own judicial processes seem increasingly susceptible to Islamist intimidation, as well.  Recently, counter-terrorism expert Patrick Poole published at Pajamas Media excerpts from an interview with an anonymous source high in the Obama Justice Department.  These included an allegation that political appointees in that department had "quashed" a request by prosecutors to pursue individuals and organizations listed as unindicted co-conspirators in the nation’s largest terrorism financing trial: United States v. the Holy Land Foundation.

According to Poole’s insider, the problem was that the administration stood to be embarrassed if this prosecution went forward.  After all, the defendants associated with Muslim Brotherhood fronts like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) would assuredly have tried to use their close ties with government officials and agencies to avoid the convictions and punishments meted out to the first five Holy Land conspirators. 

The plot thickened last week.  Shortly before Attorney General Eric Holder was scheduled to testify on Capitol Hill, the prosecutor in the Holy Land case, U.S. Attorney Jim Jacks, told the Dallas Morning News that there was no political interference from "the Attorney General or the White House" leading to a decision not to prosecute CAIR.  This directly contradicts not only Patrick Poole’s source but also House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King (R-NY), who insisted that both prosecutors and FBI agents involved in the case had told him they had "vehement objections" to the "declination to prosecute" memo that came out of Washington.

Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX), himself a former judge and chief justice in the Texas court system, pointedly challenged the Attorney General during the latter’s appearance before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.  Rep. Gohmert noted that it is a matter of record that Mr. Jacks had filed compelling briefs at both the federal district and appellate levels – and was upheld by both courts – in his position that there were sufficient grounds to treat CAIR and others as co-conspirators with the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.  The AG claimed unconvincingly to be unfamiliar with the particulars.

We need to stand up against shariah, not submit to it – at home or abroad.  We must demonstrate that we are, to use bin Laden’s term, the "stronger horse," by touting our victories and power, and not convey the opposite impression by obscuring or apologizing for them.  And we must see the paperwork that precipitated the declination to prosecute CAIR and its Muslim Brotherhood friends – and then get on with putting them out of business.

 

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy, 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.

Enabling the Muslim Brotherhood in America

The Muslim Brotherhood’s mask is slipping in Egypt.  Small "d" democrats there and elsewhere are alarmed by top Brotherhood officials who now aver openly what has been utterly predictable:  Once in power they will impose shariah – the totalitarian, supremacist politico-military-legal program practiced in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Somalia, Sudan and increasingly elsewhere.

The prospect that the most populous Arab nation – one that sits astride the strategic Suez Canal and has a vast American-supplied arsenal – is heading in such an ominous direction is made all the more remarkable since evidence continues to accumulate that the Obama administration has been enabling the rise of the Ikhwan (as the Muslim Brotherhood, or MB, is known in Arabic).  Consider a few data points:

  • In May 2009, President Obama insisted that MB representatives be prominently in attendance when he addressed "the Muslim world" at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University.  As former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy has observed,  the message of American legitimization of the Brotherhood was unmistakable.
  • Wikileaked cables make clear that the U.S. government was working with Muslim Brotherhood and other opposition parties to bring down the Mubarak government long before the so-called "Arab Spring" of 2011.
  • Within days of demonstrations erupting in Tahrir Square and elsewhere in Egypt, President Obama was calling for his Egyptian counterpart’s immediate removal from power – the sort of statement he has studiously refrained from making in Iran or Syria where demonstrations have gone on longer, and been far more bloodily repressed.

The cumulative effect of such actions has been to encourage events and a vacuum of power that predictably would redound primarily to the benefit of the most organized, disciplined and ruthless faction.  In Egypt – as in much of the Muslim world – that is the Muslim Brotherhood.

It seems that Team Obama’s enthusiasm for the Ikhwan in Egypt is neither an isolated event nor an accident.  As the Center for Security Policy’s recently released Shariah: The Threat to America illuminates, the Brotherhood has since 1963 operated a growing number of front organizations tasked with mounting highly effective influence operations in the United States. According to the MB’s own strategic plan, their mission here is "a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within." 

In the past week, we have been given chilling insights into the success of such operations by Justice Department officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to one of Shariah: The Threat‘s co-authors, counter-terrorism expert Patrick Poole.  In two different articles published at Pajamas Media, we learn how U.S. government "outreach" to the Muslim-American community has become a vehicle for empowering and protecting enemies of this country – and affording them opportunities they systematically exploit with the goal of "destroying [us] from within."

Of particular concern is Poole’s revelation that political appointees in the Obama-Holder Justice Department have been responsible for "quashing" the prosecution of some of the Brotherhood’s operatives and organizations.  According to one DoJ source, the reason the U.S. Attorney in Dallas was not allowed to pursue the planned indictment of MB individuals and entities previously listed as Unindicted Co-Conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation trial was "a political decision from the get-go."  The source added: "The administration would look like absolute fools. It’s kind of hard to prosecute someone on material support for terrorism when you have pictures of them getting handed awards from DoJ and FBI leaders for their supposed counter-terror efforts."

This act of what appears, at best, to be obstruction of justice may not be an isolated incident.  In his April 16 column at National Review Online, Andy McCarthy surmises that the suppression of the Holy Land 2.0 prosecution and the absence subsequently of any similar efforts to stop material support for terrorism could have their roots in the President’s 2009 paean to Islamists and other Muslims in Cairo.

On that occasion, Mr. Obama promised to ease U.S. "rules on charitable giving [that] have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation" of zakat (or tithing).  Yet, McCarthy rightly notes the only "rules" that might fit that description are ones prohibiting funding of terrorism – a "charitable" contribution shariah requires its adherents to make – and it appears that Team Obama no longer will enforce them.

If there is any good news, it is that Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC) last week became the latest congressional leader to launch a series of hearings aimed at examining the Muslim Brotherhood, abroad and here. In an interview on Secure Freedom Radio Monday, she made clear her intention to have the Terrorism Subcommittee of the House Intelligence Committee clarify the true nature of the Ikhwan and to explore, if necessary in classified sessions, its successes in penetrating and influencing our government. Chairman Myrick said, "I am very concerned how this is all playing out internally….This something that most people don’t have a clue…it’s not on their radar screen….This will undermine our way of life if we don’t get a handle on it."

It is indeed time to "get a handle" on the Muslim Brotherhood and the threat it poses to "our way of life."  The place to start is with rigorous congressional investigations of the Ikhwan‘s myriad front organizations and the effectiveness of their influence operations in warping our understanding of the threat they pose and in thwarting our efforts to defeat it.

 

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy, 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.

 

Misprision of Treason: Top DOJ officials abandon CAIR terror finance prosecutions

It is a felony offense to know or have reason to know that seditious activity is underway and do nothing about it.  The term used in the U.S. Code for such a crime is “misprision of treason.”  Counterterrorism expert Patrick Poole reveals today that political appointees in the Obama-Holder Justice Department would appear, at a minimum, to be candidates for prosecution for obstruction of justice and perhaps guilty of violating this statute.

In a Pajamas Media article headlined “Did Obama and Holder Scuttle Terror Finance Prosecutions?”, Poole reports that two Justice Department sources confirm that the decision not to prosecute unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) trial was taken “at the top” of the department, not by the federal prosecutors in Dallas who had secured convictions of five HLF officials and had planned next to put away their helpmates.

As a result, one of the most prominent and problematic of those listed by the prosecution – the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas front known as the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) – has not only been allowed to continue to run its  influence operations in Washington and elsewhere across the country.   It has been free to enjoy what is, if anything, even greater access to and influence over the Obama administration than it enjoyed during previous presidencies.

A book published late last year by Patrick Poole and eighteen other national security professionals, Shariah: The Threat to America, documents how such access advances the Muslim Brotherhood’s mission in this country of waging a kind of “grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.”  As it happens, just yesterday, Chairwoman Sue Myrick (R-NC) convened the first of what she says will be a series of House Intelligence subcommittee hearings aimed at investigating the Brotherhood and its operations, here and abroad.

One of the most chilling passages of Poole’s article is a quote from a DoJ official who, on condition of anonymity, came forward with confirmation of this scandal:

This is a national security issue. We know that these Muslim leaders and groups are continuing to raise money for Hamas and other terrorist organizations. Ten years ago we shut down the Holy Land Foundation. It was the right thing to do. Then the money started going to KindHearts. We shut them down too. Now the money is going through groups like Islamic Relief and Viva Palestina. Until we act decisively to cut off the financial pipeline to these terrorist groups by putting more of these people in prison, they are going to continue to raise money that will go into the hands of killers. And until Congress starts grilling the people inside DOJ and the FBI who are giving these groups cover, that is not going to change. My biggest fear is that Americans are going to die and it will be the very Muslim leaders we are working with who will be directly or indirectly responsible.

It is high time Congress starts “grilling the people inside DOJ and the FBI who are giving these groups cover.”  If the facts warrant impeachment and prosecution on misprision of treason or other grounds, so be it.

 

Friend of Shariah

Like ordinary folks, presidents of the United States are known by the company they keep.  It is a test of their character.  Often it shapes their policies.  And, in the case of Barack Obama, it may blight his legacy and our nation’s security interests.
 
Until now, one of the most egregious examples of the problem were the “Friends of Bill” who played prominent roles in William Jefferson Clinton’s presidency.  Those folks included a mix of unsavory political operatives, Chinese agents and convicted felons.  [Their overnight stays in the Lincoln bedroom, legally challenged fundraising and eleventh-hour pardons raised serious questions not just about President Clinton’s ethics, but his judgment.]
 
President Obama’s trusted circle has been, if anything, even more problematic.  For example, Mr. Obama has consorted with people who are revolutionaries, communists, liberation theologians and Islamists.  Some have even been appointed “czars” in his administration.
 
At the moment, though, we must be concerned not only with who Barack Obama considers his friends, but with those who deem him to be one of theirs:  The record suggests he must be seen as a “Friend of Shariah.”
 
How else can we explain the seeming inconsistency between, on the one hand, the president’s indifference to demonstrations in Iran last year that were vastly larger and more sustained than those to date in Egypt, and, on the other, his insistence after a week’s worth of protests in the latter that there be nothing less than complete “regime change,” starting immediately?
 
The only obvious common denominator is that, in both cases, Mr. Obama is pursuing policies favored by those who adhere to the repressive, supremacist and virulently anti-American Islamic political-military-legal program its adherents call  shariah.  In Iran, shariah is already the law of the land, ruthlessly enforced by the Shiite theocrats of Tehran.  In Egypt, the Mubarak regime’s failure faithfully to enforce shariah is one of the principal impetuses behind the Iranian mullahs’ Sunni wannabe counterparts, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB or, in Arabic, Ikhwan).
 
Alas, President Obama’s seeming affinity for shariah has not been confined to his ever-more-evident support for the Ikhwan taking power in a nation the United States has long seen (rightly or wrongly) as an indispensable and reliable regional ally. For instance:
 
In September 2009, the Obama administration co-sponsored a resolution introduced in the UN Human Rights Council by Egypt on behalf of a Muslim multinational entity known as the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).  The measure advanced the OIC’s longstanding purpose, pursued in the name of the seemingly unobjectionable goal of preventing “defamation of religion,” to impose worldwide what amount to shariah blasphemy laws.
 
Last August, President Obama used the occasion of a White House dinner breaking the Ramadan fast to endorse the construction of a controversial mosque close by the site of the former Twin Towers in Manhattan.  This initiative became notorious as the American people learned that it is not merely a matter of “insensitivity” to put an “Islamic community center” on hallowed ground. Such a step fits a distinct pattern under shariah of symbolically using the construction of triumphalist mosques on the holiest sites of conquered peoples to make the latter, as the Koran puts it, “feel themselves subdued.”
 
Mr. Obama nonetheless expressed his support for the Ground Zero mosque.  He did so to the delight of those in his audience like Ingrid Mattson. At the time, she was the figurehead leader of the largest Muslim Brotherhood front organization in the United States, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).  
 
Yes, that would be the same Muslim Brotherhood Mr. Obama is helping come to power in Egypt.  And yes, ISNA was an unindicted co-conspirator in the biggest terrorism financing trial in U.S. history.   Under the Obama administration, though, ISNA remains the vehicle of choice for official “outreach” to the Muslim-American community and the parent organization responsible for certifying chaplains for the U.S. military and prison system.
 
Then, there is the latest symptom of submissive behavior on the part of Mr. Obama and what appear to be other “friends of shariah” in his administration.  As my colleagues, Patrick Poole and Christine Brim, have illuminated at BigPeace.com, we now have the Virginia Military Institute preparing to “celebrate” the 1300th anniversary of “Tariq ibn Ziyad’s crossing of the Straits of Gibraltar” ushering in some 800 years of Moorish conquest and occupation of Spain and, in VMI’s words, “setting into motion the fusion between two worlds.”
 
It turns out that this new act of submission to Islamist triumphalism is a by-product of a transnationalist program funded by the Defense Department and known as “Project GO,” in which GO stands for “Global Officers.”  It is administered for the Pentagon by the Institute for International Education which is, in turn, advised by “dedicated internationalists” from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and, as it happens, the Chinese Communist Politburo.  It is obscene that such propagandizing is taking place at what has long been one of America’s preeminent military academies.  But it is, as the Politburo’s Li Yuanchao might say, “no accident, comrade.”
 
The foregoing are but a few of the manifestations of a deeply worrying trend involving acquiescence to and, in some cases it appears, outright embrace of the dictates of shariah under the Obama administration.  The question occurs, with friends of shariah like Barack Obama, who needs enemies?

 
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.

10 Failures of the US Government on the Domestic Islamist Threat

Albert Einstein once defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.” At the heart of the Team B II project is the belief that the Team A approach of our government to the Islamist threat, i.e. the received wisdom of the political, law enforcement, military and intelligence establishment, has proved to be a serial failure. In fact, we would be hard-pressed to find many instances in which the government Team A actually got it right. Rather than attempt to get it right, the establishment seems content to double-down on failure.

What follows are the most egregious and glaring failures of our national security agencies’ approach. This whitepaper compiles a representative sample of ten cases, but easily a hundred or more cases could be presented. These examples range chronologically from incidents that occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s, to events that have happened within the past few weeks prior to the publication of this paper. From the first Bush 41 Administration to the current Obama Administration, the degree of failure is non-partisan. These cases also cover the gamut of federal agencies and departments, along with a few examples on the state and local level, showing that no segment of our government holds a monopoly on failure on this issue. The problem is universal.

Each of these cases is rooted in a fundamental failure by those government officials responsible to identify the nature of the threat. At their root these examples demonstrate what Team B II author and former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy has called “willful blindness.” For government officials who have sworn an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, however, their “willful blindness” is a breach of their professional duty to know, to understand and to respond.

It should also be noted that each of these cases has been brought to the public and elected officials’ attention before. In most cases, no action was taken despite public outcry. We hope that the winners of last week’s election will finally take responsibility for the nation’s security and take action against this threat of Shariah and Islamic terrorism.

Sources are provided so anyone– media, public, and policymaker– can understand the extent of the problem and investigate how our political, civic and religious leadership have allowed this threat to advance so far.

 

Read 10 Failures… (Web)

Read 10 Failures…(PDF)

 

Patrick Poole discusses ’10 Failures’ at a Team B II briefing in New York City.

10 Failures of the U.S. Government on the Domestic Islamist Threat

Albert Einstein once defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.” At the heart of the Team B II project is the belief that the Team A approach of our government to the Islamist threat, i.e. the received wisdom of the political, law enforcement, military and intelligence establishment, has proved to  be  a  serial  failure.  In fact, we would  be  hard-pressed to find many instances in which the government Team A actually got it right. Rather than attempt to get it right, the establishment seems content to double-down on failure.

What follows are the most egregious and glaring failures of our national security agencies’ approach. This whitepaper compiles a representative sample of ten cases, but easily a hundred or more cases could be presented. These examples range chronologically from  incidents that occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s, to events that have happened within the past few weeks prior to the publication of this paper. From the first Bush 41 Administration to the current Obama Administration, the degree of failure is non-partisan. These cases also cover the gamut of federal agencies and departments, along with a few examples on the state and local level, showing that no segment of our government holds a monopoly on failure on this issue. The problem is universal.

Each of these cases is rooted in a fundamental failure by those government officials responsible to identify the nature of the threat. At their root these examples demonstrate what Team B II author and former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy has called “willful blindness.” For government officials who have sworn an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, however, their “willful blindness” is a breach of their professional duty to know, to understand and to respond.

It should also be noted that each of these cases has been brought to the public and elected officials’ attention before.   In most cases, no action was taken despite public outcry.  We hope that the winners of last week’s election will finally take responsibility for the nation’s security and take action against this threat of Shariah and Islamic terrorism.

Sources are provided so anyone—media, public, and policymaker—can understand the extent of the problem and investigate how our political, civic and religious leadership have allowed this threat to advance so far.

Watch Patrick Poole discuss ’10 Failures’ at a Team B II briefing in New York City.
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Team B II to Congress: Investigate Islamist shariah influence on US security policies

WASHINGTON, DC: In a press briefing announcing the publication of the 370-page Team B II Report, Shariah: The Threat to America, four members of the Team will discuss the book’s ground-breaking findings about the totalitarian politico-military-legal program mainstream Islam calls “shariah.”  They will illuminate the role shariah is playing in both animating the violent attacks being mounted against this country and in insinuating– through stealthy, “pre-violent” means– this unconstitutional legal program into the United States.

In the latter regard, the briefing will present case studies of Muslim Brotherhood influence operations that have been mounted against the U.S. government.  According to Team B II founder Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, “The authors will demonstrate that such activities are succeeding in what the Brotherhood calls “civilization jihad” by blinding and silencing American policymakers with respect to the threats posed by shariah.  In light of these and other revelations in the new report, Team B II will urge the newly elected 112th Congress to hold urgent hearings to assess the damage entailed by such operations and their repercussions for America’s national security.”

Copies of the Team B II report are being distributed in coming days to the winners of the 2010 elections and other members of the U.S. Congress, the governors and state attorneys general of all fifty states, major city police chiefs, mayors and other key leaders.

Gaffney stated:

The authors will discuss the upcoming Team B II campaign to educate policymakers about the inherent conflict between shariah law and the Constitution, and the urgent need for Congress and federal and state agencies to recognize the peril posed by the “civilization jihad” being waged by the Muslim Brotherhood and its associated U.S.-based organizations.

Patrick Poole’s whitepaper detailing the case studies of Muslim Brotherhood operations in the United States and copies of Shariah: The Threat to America will be available at the press briefing.  Journalists, homeland security and local law enforcement professionals are invited to attend.

The Team B II Report Shariah: The Threat to America can be purchased online at Amazon.com.

 

WHAT: New York Press Briefing and Panel Discussion, Team B II Report, Shariah: The Threat To America

WHO:  Center for Security Policy and Team B II authors:

Andrew C. McCarthy, former Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney and best-selling author of Willful Blindness and The Grand Jihad

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., President, Center for Security Policy

David Yerushalmi, Shariah expert and lawyer specializing in national security policy

Patrick Poole, counterterrorism consultant for the military and law enforcement

WHERE: New York Women’s National Republican Club, Solarium Room
3 West 51st Street, New York, NY 10019

WHEN: November 9, 2010 from 2:30 pm-4:00 pm, EST

MEDIA RSVP: mhamilton@hamiltonstrategies.com or (610) 584-1096 or (215) 519-4838

NON-MEDIA RSVP: Center for Security Policy 202-835-9077

 

 

Homeland insecurity adviser

With the recent departures of OMB Director Peter Orszag, Economic Policy Advisor Lawrence Summers and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, the next senior Obama administration official expected to quit is the National Security Advisor to the President, James Jones.  All other things being equal, his successor seems likely to be the President’s Homeland Security Advisor, John Brennan (who also serves as General Jones’ deputy).  

Such a promotion for Mr. Brennan would not only be unwarranted and ill-advised.  To the extent it would affirm and further institutionalize John Brennan’s willful blindness, or worse, towards the most serious threat of our time – the supremacist totalitarian politico-military-legal program authorities of Islam call shariah – it could prove catastrophic. 

A pathbreaking new "Team B II" study sponsored by the Center for Security Policy and entitled Shariah: The Threat to America documents the publicly available evidence of Brennan’s dereliction of duty.  These include: his systematic failure to recognize what animates our enemy; his insistence on characterizations of our foes that interferes with, if not utterly precludes, effective countermeasures – especially against shariah-adherents’ use of stealthy techniques to achieve our submission; and the "outreach" he engages in and encourages to Muslim Brotherhood operatives.

Without access to classified information, and in the absence of the sort of congressional oversight and forensic investigation we can only hope will be forthcoming after November’s elections, it is impossible to say with certainty how bad is the cumulative effect of John Brennan’s tenure in a position largely cloaked in secrecy with respect to government deliberations and policy-making.

Still, recent events provide a chilling sense of the impact of what Team B member Admiral James "Ace" Lyons has called Brennan’s "see-no-evil, speak-no-evil" approach – one that is utterly athwart the time-validated prescription of the great Chinese strategist, Sun Tsu, that victory in war depends on knowing one’s enemy.  Consider three examples:

  • Team B Member Patrick Poole revealed last week at BigPeace.com that, in adherence to the Brennan outreach mantra, the FBI provided a six-week training – and intelligence-collection opportunity – to a known Hamas operative named Sheikh Kefah Mustapha.  When challenged, a Bureau spokesman insisted that there was no problem with doing so because Mustapha "had never been convicted of any crime."  Never mind that he was an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism financing trial in U.S. history or fired from a volunteer chaplain post with the Illinois State Police when his terrorist ties were exposed.

 

  • We also learned last week that a man brought into the White House in April for a high-level Muslim outreach effort designed "to update members of the Arab-American community on issues of their concern, Hatem Abudayyeh, had his home raided by the FBI on suspicion of ties to terrorism in the Middle East and Latin America.  As Andy McCarthy makes plain in an important essay National Review Online, Abuddayyeh’s ties to unsavory individuals like friend-of-Obama Rashid Khalidi should be a concern on multiple levels.
  • The Pentagon recently released its final after-action report concerning the Fort Hood massacre allegedly committed by a self-described "Soldier of Allah" named Maj. Nidal Malik Hassan.  This document became the latest in a series of strategy papers, policy documents and guidelines issued by law enforcement, intelligence, military and homeland security agencies that fail to use words like "Islam," "Muslim," "shariah," "Muslim Brotherhood," or "jihad." In fact, John Brennan has expressly forbidden the use of the term "jihad" as he considers it to be a "legitimate tenet of Islam" whose correct translation is personal struggle, not holy war.

The practical effect of such direction is to leave the United States exceptionally vulnerable to the kind of warfare our shariah-adherent jihadist enemies have operationalized here in the United States – namely, the stealthy kind practiced by the Muslim Brotherhood which calls it "civilization jihad." Brennan evidently neither understands nor is working to counter this threat.

To the contrary, to the extent that he is engaging in willfully blind behavior that is perceived by our shariah-adherent foes as submission (the literal meaning of the word "Islam"), he is setting the stage for our enemies to abandon the sub rosa civilization jihad in favor of the kind Mohammed principally practiced: the terrifyingly violent version of holy war.

Fortunately, one upside of the Ground Zero mosque controversy is that it has prompted lots of Americans to start asking hard questions, reflecting a growing awareness of shariah.  They want to know, for example, about the conflicting peaceful and warlike passages of the Koran, the horrible treatment of "infidels," apostates, women and those who besmirch Islam and its followers’ "honor" or sensibilities.  Some of these were featured in two, hour-long specials broadcast over the weekend by ABC News.

Regrettably, the "20/20" and "This Week with Christiane Amanpour" programs largely failed to answer these questions – most especially with respect to the stealth jihad.   But there is no question that a serious debate has begun and that there is a growing appreciation that the U.S. government’s stewardship with respect to this most urgent of national security imperatives is seriously deficient.

For there to be real change in policy, however, there needs to be real change in policymakers.  John Brennan should be encouraged to join the exodus from Team Obama’s senior ranks, not promoted to a position in which he can do vastly more harm.
 

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy, a columnist for the Washington Times and host of the syndicated program, Secure Freedom Radio, heard in Washington weeknights at 9:00 p.m. on WTNT 570 AM.

Andrew Breitbart & Frank Gaffney: Big Peace, Hamas and the FBI

Andrew Breitbart filled in for Michael Savage on the Savage Nation and spoke with Frank Gaffney about Shariah, the Team B II Report, and the shocking story of known Hamas/Holy Land Foundation unindicted co-conspirator Kifah Mustapha being led around the FBI’s National Counter-Terrorism Headquarters. For more information, see Patrick Poole’s articles at Big Peace, FBI Escorts Known Hamas Operative Through Top-Secret National Counterterrorism Center as “Outreach” to Muslim Community — and the follow-up, ‘Plugs had to be pulled on our system’ to clear Hamas operative to tour Top-Secret NCTC, ‘The NCTC has Kifah Mustapha on the highest watch list we have.’