Well, Isn't THAT Special....
Posted on 07/01/2007 5:01:59 PM PDT by RaceBannon
Islamisation of David Keene, American Conservative Union June 27, 2007
David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union (ACU), has been moving, along with several other paleo-conservatives like Dinesh D’Souza, towards a partnership with Saudi-funded, pro-Hamas institutions. A forewarning was the appointment of Grover Norquist to the ACU board.
A second forewarning was the appointment of Suhail Khan to the ACU board.
Then Tuesday, David Keene joined United for Peace and Justice, the ACLU, the Communist Party-USA, as a speaker in the “Day of Action to Restore Law and Justice” to
“…call on Congress to restore habeas corpus, fix the Military Commissions Act, end torture and rendition and restore our constitutional rights. Activists from all fifty states will gather at Upper Senate Park on June 26, 2007 and deliver tens of thousands of signatures to Congress, urging the restoration of our rights.”
In addition to the ACU’s new imam David Keene at the rally, representing the American Conservative Union (by name, as an organization), other rally sponsors included:
Alliance for Justice
American Friends Service Committee National
Criminal Justice Program
American Humanist Association
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
Americans for Democratic Action
Arab American Institute
Asian American Justice Center
Bill of Rights Defense Committee
Campaign for America’s Future
Center for American Progress Action Fund
Center for Constitutional Rights
CODEPINK
Education for Peace in Iraq Center
Episcopal Church
Equal Justice Society
Friends Committee on National Legislation
Global Rights
Hip Hop Caucus
Human Rights First
Human Rights Watch
Immigration Equality
Institute for Policy Studies
Islamic Society of North America
JALSA - the Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action
Japanese American Citizens League
League of Women Voters US
LULAC
MoveOn.org
NAACP
National Association of Social Workers
National Organization for Women
NETWORK
No2Torture
Peace Action
People For the American Way
Physicians for Human Rights
Progressive Democrats of America
Public Citizen
Religious Action Center
Rural Organizing Project
Stop Torture Permanently
TASSC International
The Shalom Center
TrueMajority.org
United for Peace and Justice
United States Student Association
US Action
Veterans for Peace
Working Assets Wireless
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
Young Democrats of America
Velvet Revolution
And regional groups:
Amnesty International USA - Greater
Philadelphia Area
Amnesty International USA - Puget Sound
Arab American Community Coalition (WA)
Asian Bar Association of Washington
Brandywine Peace Community
CASA Latina (WA)
CAUSA, Oregon’s Immigrant Rights Coalition
Community Alliance of Lane County (Oregon)
Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) - PA
Hate Free Zone of Washington
Japanese American Citizens Leage - Seattle Chapter
King County Asian Pacific Islander Coalition
Lancaster Coalition for Peace and Justice
League of Women Voters - PA
Liberty Center for Survivors of Torture
National Organization for Women - New York State
Northwest Immigrant Rights Project
October 22 Coalition
Oregon Peace Works
Peace Action of Central NY
Peace Action WI
Pittsburgh/Western PA Irish American Unity Conference
Philadelphia Physicians for Social Responsibility
Sound Nonviolent Opponents of War
Syracuse Peace Council
Thomas Merton Center
Washington Peace Center
Western Washington Fellowship of Reconciliation
In his day job, Keene is also a managing associate at the Carmen Group, Washington, DC lobbying firm. He is on the lobbying teams representing special interests (corporations, states and associations) in International, Homeland [security], Procurement Solutions, Postal, and Education areas.
And in that day job, David Keene (really productive guy BTW, kudos for his work ethic) represents among other clients, Algeria:
Washington Post: Carmen’s Africa Team Has Its Keystone
July 6, 2006
By Judy Sarasohn
The Carmen Group, which in the past year has made a play for business in Africa and hired strategically to make that happen, has scored a substantial lobbying client — the government of Algeria.
While it might not be in the Indian casino range, the fee is a healthy $25,000 a month, for a total of $300,000 for the one-year term of the contract, according to the Carmen Group’s Foreign Agents Registration Act filing with the Justice Department. The shop also filed a lobby registration with Congress.
And for these fees, the Carmen Group says it will work to strengthen relations between the Algerian and U.S. governments and expand trade, through government relations and “strategic advice.” The Carmen team will brief U.S. policymakers, “project an up-to-date image of Algeria” and promote congressional, public and media support for “Algeria’s legitimate interests and policy goals,” according to the FARA report. The shop will also promote contacts with U.S. business interests.
In a recent interview, David Carmen said there was “no single issue” at this time to lobby on for Algeria, but the shop will be “brand-building” in Washington and working to get more businesses to invest in that nation. Algeria as a client was in the works when the company started to work on building an Africa practice, he said.
David Keene, a managing associate at Carmen and chairman of the American Conservative Union, is responsible for managing the firm’s services for Algeria, according to the contract with Algeria. But also on the team: the aforementioned David Carmen, Gerald Carmen, John Ladd, Constance Berry Newman, William Outhier, Paul Marisa and Charles Williams.
Newman, a former assistant secretary of state for African affairs, was one of those strategic hires earlier this year, as was Williams, former chief of staff to Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) and former president of the US-Nigeria Development Institute in Abuja, Nigeria.
And last month, Michael Lempres, former vice president of the Overseas Private Investment Corp., returned after a hiatus of several years to be managing director of Carmen’s international practice and direct the Africa practice. Earlier, he was director of international affairs for the Justice Department in the administration of George H.W. Bush.
BUT WAIT! There’s more - Imam Keene, presumably representing his new Algerian clients in their PR outreach (and other clients To Be Determined) is tackling that real problem in the US of concern to American Conservative Union members natonwide - Islamophobia!
Received in yesterday’s email:
CONSERVATIVE LEADER TO SPEAK ON ‘ISLAMOPHOBIA’ PANEL - TOP
(WASHINGTON, D.C., 6/26/07) - On Tuesday, July 17, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) will host a panel discussion at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., entitled “Attacking Islam: Implications for Social Cohesion and U.S. Relations with the Muslim World.”
The panel will address the increasing anti-Muslim rhetoric within the conservative movement in the United States, focusing on the negative impact of such views on religious tolerance in America and on relations with the Muslim world.
Presenters:
* David Keene, President, American Conservative Union * Parvez Ahmed, Chairman, Council on American-Islamic Relations
WHEN: Tuesday, July 17, 2007, 9:30 a.m. - 11 p.m. WHERE: Holeman Lounge, National Press Club, Washington, D.C.
Refreshments will be served. Admission is free but seating is limited and reservations are required. Please RSVP via e-mail to events@cair.com or call .
CAIR, America’s largest Islamic civil liberties group, has 33 offices and chapters nationwide and in Canada. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.
CONTACT: CONTACT: CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, or, E-Mail: ihooper@cair.com; CAIR Communications Coordinator Rabiah Ahmed, or, E-Mail: rahmed@cair.com; CAIR Communications Coordinator Amina Rubin,, E-Mail: arubin@cair.com
So here’s the multiple choice question: When David Keene, chairman of the ACU, makes a national effort to accuse the American public of Islamophobia and silence all criticism of Muslim Brotherhood front organizations in the U.S., whom does he represent?
a. Imam David Keene b. The American Conservative Union members, who probably haven’t a clue this is going on c. Algeria
d. The Muslim Brotherhood
e. CAIR
f. The new special envoy of the White House to the Organization of Islamic Conferences
g. Hmm, maybe other wealthy countries in the middle east known to have given CAIR $50 million for public relations…
h. All of the above
Other than the title (which you wrote), the keywords (which you wrote) and your comment (which you wrote), where is the NRA mentioned in this article? Did you make that part up?
Interview With Dr. Tawfik Hamid
June 30, 2007 by alwaysonwatch | 910 Group, USA | 11:27:06 | Comments [0] |
On Friday, June 29, 2007, I attended a lecture given by Dr. Tawfik Hamid at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (www.eppc.org). The lecture was entitled “Radicalization of Young Muslims.” Following the lecture, I got up my nerve and asked Dr. Hamid if he would be willing to be interviewed on The Gathering Storm Radio Show. He graciously agreed! The interview is HERE.
I also managed to get another interview for that same broadcast: Clare M. Lopez of The Intelligence Summit. Recently, Ms. Lopez, along with Ambassador Richard Carlson and Colonel Bill Cowan, taped a radio segment called “Danger Zone” for Washington, D.C.’s WMAL (630 AM). The show will air on Sunday, July 1, 2007, and should be available on line after it airs.
I will be posting a review of Dr. Hamid’s lecture in a few days. His strategy to curb the violent practice of Islam centers around using a concept called “the relativity of Koranic verses.”
Bush Administration & Muslim Brotherhood, Together At Last - Bush’s True Legacy to the USA
June 28, 2007 by Christine | 910 Group | 17:44:45 | Comments [2] |
So, the next phase of The Project has started. At last we have bi-partisanship, as the State Department, CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, and of course the White House, combine forces with Pelosi, Reid and Leahy to bring the Muslim Brotherhood into the USA in full force.
Our government is now officially pro-Islamist and will oppose those of us who oppose the Muslim Brotherhood. The goal of the Muslim Brotherhood is to restore the caliphate and impose sharia law worldwide. Apparently our State Department, CIA, DIA and the White House have accepted this as an inevitable situation. No doubt the individuals involved in this decision figure they, at least, will come out on top.
And that too is described in the Islamist plan.
Will any of the Republican candidates be willing to stand up against this administration’s plan to introduce into all fifty states, our political and civic institutions, our schools and our military, an organization that founded Hamas and that is dedicated to our destruction?
From World Tribune.com, dated June 28, 2007:
U.S. approves contacts with Muslim Brotherhood: ‘Region is going Islam’
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration has been quietly engaging the Muslim Brotherhood movement.Officials said the State Department has approved a policy that would enable U.S. diplomats to meet and coordinate with Brotherhood leaders in Egypt, Iraq, Syria and other Arab states. They said the program would first be restricted to elected officials from the Brotherhood and eventually be extended to their political chiefs.”The region is going Islam,” an official said. “We see this in nearly every country in the Middle East. We either understand it and engage with it or find ourselves completely out of the picture.”
The Brotherhood has been regarded as the inspiration for Muslim movements throughout the Arab world. The organization, founded in Egypt, spread through Saudi financing and has served as the inspiration for Al Qaida.Many Arab countries have banned the Brotherhood. But in Egypt, a party composed of Brotherhood members has won 20 percent of the seats in the National Assembly and plays a major role in domestic policy.In 2007, officials said, the State Department was quietly fostering ties with the Brotherhood. U.S. embassy staffers in Cairo have attended sessions led by parliamentarians from the Brotherhood and invited the Islamists to official receptions.”We respect the laws of this country,” U.S. ambassador to Egypt Francis Ricciardone said. “But, at the same time, we’re ready to establish relations and hold meetings with all the legal political elements in the country.Officials said a U.S. approach toward the Brotherhood was vital in wake of the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in late June. They said the policy could encourage what officials have identified as a pro-Western wing of the Palestinian Islamic movement.
The administration policy has been supported by the Democratic-controlled Congress. On April 7, House leaders, including Democratic whip Rep. Steny Hoyer, attended a reception by the U.S. embassy in Cairo that included Brotherhood deputies. The reception took place at the ambassador’s residence.
The State Department has been discussing the new policy with the U.S. intelligence community. On June 20, the department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research convened a meeting with members of the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency to expand dialogue with the Brotherhood.
The proposal was based on a study by Robert Leiken, a researcher at the Nixon Center. The study, commissioned by the National Intelligence Council, urged the United States to open a formal channel to the Islamic movement.
Such a channel would include formal meetings with Brotherhood leaders throughout the Arab and Islamic world and invite members to study or work in the United States. Officials said the law enforcement community, particularly the FBI, opposes the proposal, concerned that this would facilitate Al Qaida plots to attack the United States.
At the State Department forum, Leiken was opposed by Hillel Fradin, an Islamic expert from the Hudson Institute. Fradkin was said to have argued that engaging the rigidly ideological Brotherhood would dash any hope for reform within political Islam.
“You make them partners,” Zeyno Baran, Fradkin’s colleague at Hudson, told the New York Sun. “They might Islamize the Muslims, but it’s okay because they can think or do what they want as long as they are not violent. That is the misunderstanding and mistake.”
> the NRA is going to be led by someone who is a HAMAS
> supporter??
If so, I will cancel my lifetime membership and not send them a penny henceforth.
“along with several other paleo-conservatives like Dinesh D’Souza, towards a partnership with Saudi-funded, pro-Hamas institutions.”
You’ll have to show me where Dinesh supports Hamas.
Keene and Norquist are the leadership in the NRA
Where’s the NRA in this story?
Ditto.. but like everything - buy the rumor, sell the truth...
Folks:
> This is truly menacing. I’ve been researching the Norquist-Keene relationship for some time. Keene appointed Suhail Khan to the ACU (most likely to appease Norquist). In return, Norquist, a member of the NRA’s board of directors and member of the NRA’s 2007 nominating committee, supported Keene’s recent election to Second VP – meaning that David Keene will be President of the NRA within a few short years. All attempts to convince the NRA to investigate these matters were either ignored or derailed. Now Keene is showing his true colors by participating as a keynote speaker at a CAIR event. Take a close look at the expansive list of rally sponsors. The same
If you can't show where the NRA is mentioned in this article, it doesn't make you look good...
Full Disclosure: Are you a fan of the 1960's era or the "new" Jonny Quest?
Cheers!
This is truly menacing. I’ve been researching the Norquist-Keene relationship for some time. Keene appointed Suhail Khan to the ACU (most likely to appease Norquist). In return, Norquist, a member of the NRA’s board of directors and member of the NRA’s 2007 nominating committee, supported Keene’s recent election to Second VP – meaning that David Keene will be President of the NRA within a few short years. All attempts to convince the NRA to investigate these matters were either ignored or derailed. Now Keene is showing his true colors by participating as a keynote speaker at a CAIR event. Take a close look at the expansive list of rally sponsors. The same
Please check the updates
And, is it obvious? :)
That’s your support for slamming the NRA? An email from your friend, which was not posted as part of the article?
For the Admin Moderator to delete something from MegaFreeper RaceBannon it must really have been something! I wish I had seen it. There are some folks here who should never have anything they say deleted without their permission and Race is one of them.
ML/NJ
If this is too much for you to understand, try going back and reading it slowly.
Okay? I forgot to add the personal note from the person, my friend, who is a frequent 700 club guest, a radio guest right now on terrorism and the middle east, who told me of the leadership of the NRA being supporters of Islamic terror groups and left wing causes.
If me, adding it after the original article offends you, just copy and paste the article onto a WORD document, and then copy and paste the notes at the header. That will make it okay, okay?
Maybe then you’ll read it?
Good Grief.
What was deleted?
It was my added comment to the title of the article: NRA TO SUPPORT HAMAS??
something like that. I had forgotten to include the personal notes so those reading about this for the first time would get the connection without lookng up the names.
But, there it is: Norquist and Keene are cozying up to Islamist groups and some have surmized that Norquist is now a Muslim himself.
Wish I knew. But it says:
Comment #1 Removed by ModeratorML/NJ
We are deeply honored to be able to present to you this study by a patriot, Warren Bonesteel.
|
Well, Isn't THAT Special....
Keene is on the board of directors of the NRA.
Apparently that is the only connection to this “article”.
If I remember correctly, the 1st comment was me explaining how I received this from a friend several weeks ago who warned me this information was going to be released
He is an anti-terrorism speaker, he is a leader who holds symposiums on terror across the United States, is a frequent guest on the 700 Club, and me and him pigged out on some great fish at a marina he knows about after we Freeped he moonbats at the Coast Guard.
I was trying to tell the story withut having to blow his horn, but some here don’t seem to understand when I post additions to the thread and even explain that I forgot to add his notes...
whatever.
I just hope more people read this stuff, we are being sold out, bought off, and I am afraid it is too late to change it peacefully.
you secretly watch, too....
Torture is a fine old American custom and it's a darned shame they pretty much abolished it (what with the Great Die Off of 1648 that broke the back of the Iriquois as a dominant military force).
Events like this simply prove how far out of touch the leftards in this country are, and how successful the Islamofascists have been in subverting American institutions.
So I'm an idiot because you posted a slam on the NRA with no support?
If me, adding it after the original article offends you, just copy and paste the article onto a WORD document, and then copy and paste the notes at the header. That will make it okay, okay?
Who said anything about being offended? If you're going to go after the NRA, just make sure you support your statements. If your accusations are true, they're quite possibly a real problem. But don't get all huffy because others expect you to back them up.
Chicks can mess with your head, for sure.
No, you are an idiot because I was still posting information faster than you could read.
Why We Are Publishing This Article by David Horowitz
The article you are about to read is the most disturbing that we at frontpagemag.com have ever published. As an Internet magazine, with a wide circulation, we have been in the forefront of the effort to expose the radical Fifth Column in this country, whose agendas are at odds with the nation’s security, and whose purposes are hostile to its own. In his first address to Congress after 9/11, the President noted that we are facing the same totalitarian enemies we faced in the preceding century. It is not surprising that their domestic supporters in the American Left should have continued their efforts to weaken this nation and tarnish its image. Just as there was a prominent internal Fifth Column during the Cold War, so there has been a prominent Fifth Column during the war on terror.
By no means do all the opponents of America’s war policies (or even a majority) fit this category. Disagreement among citizens is a core feature of any democracy and respect for that disagreement is a foundational value of our political system. The self-declared enemies of the nation are distinguished by the intemperate nature of their attacks on America and its President – referring to the one as Adolf Hitler, for example, or the other as the world’s “greatest terrorist state.” They are known as well by their political choices and associations. Many leaders of the movement opposing the war in Iraq have worked for half a century with the agents of America’s communist enemies and with totalitarian states like Cuba and the former USSR.
We have had no compunction about identifying these individuals and groups. America is no longer protected by geographical barriers or by its unsurpassed military technologies. Today terrorists who can penetrate our borders with the help of Fifth Column networks will have access to weapons of mass destruction that can cause hundreds of thousands of American deaths. One slip in our security defenses can result in a catastrophe undreamed of before.
What is particularly disturbing, about the information in this article by former Reagan Defense official, Frank Gaffney, is that it concerns an individual who loves this country and would be the last person to wish it harm, and the first one would expect to defend it. I have known Grover Norquist for almost twenty years as a political ally. Long before I myself was cognizant of the Communist threat – indeed when I was part of one of those Fifth Column networks – Grover Norquist was mobilizing his countrymen to combat it. In the early 1980s, Grover was in the forefront of conservative efforts to get the Reagan Administration to support the liberation struggles of anti-Communists in Central America, Africa and Afghanistan.
It is with a heavy heart therefore, that I am posting this article, which is the most complete documentation extant of Grover Norquist’s activities in behalf of the Islamist Fifth Column. I have confronted Grover about these issues and have talked to others who have done likewise. But it has been left to Frank Gaffney and a few others, including Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson, to make the case and to suffer the inevitable recriminations that have followed earlier disclosures of some aspects of this story.
Up to now, the controversy over these charges has been dismissed or swept under the rug, as a clash of personalities or the product of one of those intra-bureaucratic feuds so familiar to the Washington scene. Unfortunately, this is wishful thinking. The reality is much more serious. No one reading this document to its bitter end will confuse its claims and confirming evidence with those of a political cat fight. On the basis of the evidence assembled here, it seems beyond dispute that Grover Norquist has formed alliances with prominent Islamic radicals who have ties to the Saudis and to Libya and to Palestine Islamic Jihad, and who are now under indictment by U.S. authorities. Equally troubling is that the arrests of these individuals and their exposure as agents of terrorism have not resulted in noticeable second thoughts on Grover’s part or any meaningful effort to dissociate himself from his unsavory friends.
As Frank Gaffney’s article recounts, Grover’s own Islamic Institute was initially financed by one of the most notorious of these operatives, Abdurahman Alamoudi, a supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah who told the Annual Convention of the Islamic Association of Palestine in 1996, “If we are outside this country we can say ‘Oh, Allah destroy America.’ But once we are here, our mission in this country is to change it.” Grover appointed Alamoudi’s deputy, Khaled Saffuri to head his own organization. Together they gained access to the White House for Alamoudi and Sami al-Arian and others with similar agendas who used their cachet to spread Islamist influence to the American military and the prison system and the universities and the political arena with untold consequences for the nation.
Parts of this story have been published before, but never in such detail and never with the full picture of Islamist influence in view. No doubt, that is partly because of Grover Norquist’s large (and therefore intimidating) presence in the Washington community. Many have been quite simply afraid to raise these issues and thus have allowed Grover to make them seem a matter of individual personality differences. This suits his agendas well, as it does those of his Islamist allies. If matters in dispute reflect personal animosity or “racial” prejudice, as Grover insists, then the true gravity of these charges is obscured. The fact remains that while Grover has denied the charges or sought to dismiss them with such arguments on many occasions, he has never answered them. If he wishes to do so now, the pages of frontpagemag.com are open to him.
Many have been reluctant to support these charges or to make them public because they involve a prominent conservative. I am familiar with these attitudes from my years on the Left. Loyalty is an important political value, but there comes a point where loyalty to friends or to parties comes into conflict with loyalty to fundamental principles and ultimately to one’s country. Grover’s activities have reached that point. E.M. Forster, a weak-spirited liberal, once said that if he had to choose between betraying his country and his friends, he “hoped [he] would have the guts” to betray his country.
No such sentiment motivates this journal. In our war with the Islamo-fascists we are all engaged in a battle with evil on a scale that affects the lives and freedoms of hundreds of millions people outside this nation as well as within it. America is on the front line of this battle and there is no replacement waiting in the wings if it fails, or if its will to fight is sapped from within. This makes our individual battles to keep our country vigilant and strong the most important responsibilities we have. That is why we could not in good conscience do otherwise, than to bring this story to light.
A Troubling Influence by Frank J. Gaffney Jr. At a black-tie dinner on November 5th, nearly 300 conservative activists and politicians gathered at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel to recognize a prominent fixture in their community: tax-advocate and conservative coalition-builder Grover Norquist. The talk that evening was of the honoree’s tireless efforts to advance his libertarian objective of down-sizing federal, state and local governments by reducing their revenues. He was toasted for organizing nationwide initiatives to memorialize Ronald Reagan, notably with the renaming of the capital’s National Airport after the former President. Most in the audience were surely unaware that the effect of their tribute – if not its organizers’ intended purpose – was to provide urgently needed political cover for a man who has been active on another, far less laudable and, in fact, deeply problematic front: Enabling a political influence operation to advance the causes of radical Islamists, and targeted most particularly at the Bush Administration. The growing influence of this operation – and the larger Islamist enterprise principally funded by Saudia Arabia – has created a strategic vulnerability for the nation, and a political liability for its President. The association between Grover Norquist and Islamists appears to have started about five years ago, in 1998, when he became the founding chairman of an organization called the Islamic Free Market Institute, better known as the Islamic Institute.1 The Institute’s stated purpose was to cultivate Muslim-Americans and Arab-Americans whose attachment to conservative family values and capitalism made them potential allies for the Republican Party in advance of the 2000 presidential election. If successful, such an outreach effort could theoretically produce a windfall in votes and campaign contributions. Consequently, it enjoyed the early support of Karl Rove, when he was then-Governor Bush’s political advisor, and who knew Norquist from their days in the College Republicans. Unfortunately, some associated with the Islamic Institute evidently had another agenda. Abdurahman Alamoudi, for one, a self-described “supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah,”2 the prime-mover behind the American Muslim Council (AMC) and a number of other U.S.-based Islamist-sympathizing/supporting organizations, saw in the Islamic Institute a golden opportunity to hedge his bets. For years, Alamoudi had cultivated ties with the Democratic Party and its partisans, and contributed significant amounts to its candidates. These donations had given Alamoudi access to the Clinton White House and enabled him and his associates to secure the right to select, train and certify Muslim chaplains for the U.S. military.3 By the end of the 1990s, an AMC spin-off called the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council and a like-minded organization, the Islamic Society of North America, were responsible for selecting all U.S. Muslim chaplains. 4 One of these appointees – Army Captain Yousef Yee – has lately been in the news. Yee has been removed from his duties ministering to Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees at Guantanamo pending military judicial proceedings for, among other alleged misconduct, mishandling classified material. For an Islamist-sympathizer like Alamoudi, the opportunity to determine who would minister to Muslims in the U.S. military was an important strategic prize. It built upon a Saudi-sponsored initiative dating back to the time of Operation Desert Storm to convert members of the American armed forces to Wahhabi Sunnism,5 the religious doctrine of the Islamic radicals. It has been reported that Saudi Arabia provided more than 100 such service personnel6 – including Captain Yee7 – with free trips to Mecca to make the hajj. (The nature and implications of these Islamist initiatives are under investigation by the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Terrorism Subcommittee, chaired by Senator Jon Kyl, R-AZ, and by the Defense Department’s Inspector General.) In the mid-1990s, Alamoudi also had a hand in the recruitment and placement of another 75-100 so-called “Islamic lay leaders” for the U.S. military. According to the Wall Street Journal, he arranged for “an arm of the Saudi government” called the Institute of Islamic and Arabic Sciences to train “soldiers and civilians to provide spiritual guidance when paid Muslim chaplains aren’t available.” The Journal also reports that there are signs that “the school…disseminates the intolerant and anti-Western strain of Islam espoused by the [Saudi] kingdom’s religious establishment.” 8 The right to select military chaplains not only offered Alamoudi and his colleagues the chance to recruit still more Islamists with specialized and highly useful skill-sets. It also was an invaluable legitimating credential to be wielded against those who might otherwise regard the American Muslim Council and its leader with suspicion, or worse. It would, therefore, have been important to retain this role even if the Democratic presidential candidate, Al Gore, were to lose and Republicans come to power. Hence, Abdurahman Alamoudi took an interest in one of the GOP’s most assiduous and influential networkers, Grover Norquist. It seems unlikely that even in Alamoudi’s wildest dreams he could have imagined the extent of the access, influence and legitimacy the American Muslim Council and allied Islamist organizations would be able to secure in Republican circles, thanks to the investment they began in 1998 in a relationship with Norquist. Alamoudi and Norquist The investment began when Alamoudi wrote two personal checks (a $10,000 loan and what appears to be a $10,000 gift) to help found Norquist’s Islamic Institute.9 In addition, Alamoudi made payments in 2000 and 2001 totaling $50,000 to Janus-Merritt Strategies, a lobbying firm with which Norquist was associated at the time.10 Questions about the original source of this seed money would seem to be in order. In particular, it would be instructive to know whether it came from Saudi Arabia or a pedigreed terrorist state like Libya. Last month, Alamoudi was arrested and charged with engaging in illegal financial transactions with the Libyan government. According to an affidavit filed at the time, he admitted to trying to take $340,000 in sequentially numbered $100 bills to Syria, en route to Saudi bank accounts.11 When apprehended, Alamoudi declared that the funds had been delivered to him after extensive interactions with officials of Muammar Qadhafi’s government by a man “with a Libyan accent.” Its source is alleged to be a charity used by Qadhafi to finance terrorist operations. According to the affidavit, Alamoudi told authorities in Britain that once the Libyan funds were in Saudi banks, he would then draw upon them in roughly $10,000 increments to defray the expenses of organizations with which he was associated in the United States. He admitted to having undertaken “other, similar transactions involving amounts in the range of $10,000 to $20,000.” He also acknowledged that he had first approached representatives of the Libyan government in 1997 – the year before Norquist’s Islamic Institute was founded. It is unclear exactly how much money Alamoudi received from Libya and precisely when, or who were the beneficiaries. What is known, however, according to published tax returns and foundation records, is that the overwhelming majority of the Norquist Institute’s funds from its inception have come from Persian Gulf states and their U.S. funding mechanisms, a number of which have been raided by federal anti-terrorism task forces.12 Whatever the provenance of Alamoudi’s seed money for the Islamic Institute, an even more significant contribution to its future course came in the form of the placement of his deputy, Khaled Saffuri, as the founding director of Norquist’s new organization. This placement is consistent with a practice long employed by Islamist-associated groups in the United States and, for that matter, other tightly controlled and non-transparent enterprises (e.g., the Soviet KGB’s operations overseas and Mafia business empires). This disciplined approach has guided the Saudi-funded global Islamist network starting back in the 1960s. At that time, the Saudi Ministry of Religious Affairs established the Muslim World League (MWL) – headed by the minister himself – to promote radical Islamist agendas around the globe. Of particular concern has been the MWL’s effort in America where four layers of front organizations have been spawned to recruit, indoctrinate, train and employ new adherents in furtherance of the Islamists’ overarching objectives: dominating the Muslim world and, in due course, forcing the non-Muslim world as well to submit to Islamic law.13 A surprisingly small number of trusted individuals run and financially control the roughly 40 groups that make up this radical Islamic front. For years, Abdurahman Alamoudi has been the most prominent leader of this front in America, and is involved in no fewer than 16 Islamist organizations. As in the case of Grover Norquist’s Islamic Institute, control of the operations of these front organizations is usually given to a protégé of one of the godfathers or another trusted cadre member. Funds then flow from the same network. Hence, in addition to the seed money from Alamoudi, the Islamic Institute has also received funding from organizations described by the Washington Post as a “secretive group of tightly connected Muslim charities, think tanks and businesses based in Northern Virginia [and] used to funnel millions of dollars to terrorists and launder millions more” – a number of whom are currently part of the “largest federal investigation of terrorism financing in the world.”14 The founding director of Grover Norquist’s Islamic Institute, Khaled Saffuri, is a Muslim Palestinian by birth. Prior to joining Alamoudi’s group (where he served for almost three years15), Saffuri was active in Muslim-support operations in Bosnia,16 a hot-bed for Islamic radicals from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere anxious to establish a beachhead on the continent of Europe. In recent years, he has acknowledged personally supporting the families of suicide bombers – even though, in public settings, he strenuously denies having done so.17 He denounced President Bush for shutting down the Holy Land Foundation, a Saudi charity that the U.S. government determined was funneling American Muslims’ donations to terrorist organizations overseas.18 I first had occasion to observe Saffuri in the late 1990s, when I became a regular attendee of Grover Norquist’s “Wednesday Group” meetings, weekly gatherings of conservative movement activists and libertarians. Troubled that many of the participants rarely, if ever, addressed national security matters – certainly before 9/11 and, arguably, even afterwards – I viewed these conclaves as an opportunity to promote awareness of and renewed support for robust foreign and defense policies. With a view to doing that on a routine basis, I accepted Norquist’s invitation to move my Center for Security Policy into new office space he had acquired. In the summer of 1999, I relocated to the space which was also occupied by his primary organization, Americans for Tax Reform, which also housed the Wednesday Group meetings and the Saffuri-headed Islamic Institute. Since the Institute was located inside the ATR suite next to ours, we wound up sharing a large conference room, Xerox room, bathrooms, elevator bank and hallway. Consequently, I had a ring-side seat as Saffuri and his colleagues became ever more prominent fixtures at the Wednesday Group meetings, usually underscoring their close relationship with the host by sitting next to Norquist (or near him) in the center of the room. From time to time, one or another of the Islamic Institute’s associates would make a presentation to the generally standing-room-only crowds of influential Washington conservatives, would-be politicians, think-tank denizens, journalists, and an increasing number of lobbyists. Over the years, topics they addressed included: the plight of Palestinians under Israeli occupation; the much-maligned and badly misunderstood Islamist government of Sudan (in fact, a designated state-sponsor of terrorism); the innocent nature of the process whereby Muslim chaplains have been selected for the armed forces; the honored status of women in the Muslim world; and efforts to promote Islamic causes and candidates in Republican circles. Whenever possible, I tried to interject or make presentations to counter what I considered to be an ill-concealed and ominous influence operation. On one occasion, which occurred a few weeks after 9/11, I made an intervention to decry the fact that Alamoudi’s American Muslim Council was among the groups invited to the White House. I observed that on the same day its representatives were meeting with the President and his senior subordinates to talk about how Muslims could help with the war on terror, the AMC’s website featured a box headlined “Know Your Rights.” A click on the proferred hyperlink took you to a joint statement urging Muslims not to talk to the FBI. The statement was issued in the name of an organization of which the AMC was a member: the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom (NCPPF) – a virtual legal aid office for terrorists. At the time, a South Florida University professor named Sami al-Arian was the NCPPF’s president. As will be discussed below, he was also Secretary of the worldwide governing council of a terrorist organization called Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), responsible for 99 suicide-bombing victims. I suggested to the Wednesday Group that the White House would surely have been astonished to discover that it was dignifying so-called Muslim leaders who were urging their co-religionists not to cooperate with law enforcement. I also pointedly observed – without mentioning names – that those responsible for facilitating the President’s Muslim outreach, who profess to support him and wish him success, should take pains to avoid including such groups in the future. I circulated a column I had written making similar points and that had been published the day before in the Washington Times.19 No sooner had I finished speaking than Norquist left his seat to consult with Saffuri’s deputy and successor as director of the Islamic Institute, Abdulwahab Alkebsi (another former Deputy Director of Alamoudi’s AMC).20 After the consultation, Norquist came over to me and whispered that he had checked and that there was no such box on the AMC website. I, in turn, consulted with one of my colleagues, who produced a copy of the webpage in question and sequential images as it was removed from the site in the wake of my column’s publication. (This was not an isolated phenomenon; in fact, in the post-9/11 period, webmasters for a number of pro-Islamist organizations evidently were directed to sanitize their internet sites.) I reported this to Grover and showed him the original item. Shortly thereafter, I had to leave the meeting. Only later did I discover that he had taken advantage of my absence to disinform the group by announcing that what I had told them about the AMC website was wrong and that it featured no such encouragement to obstruct justice. Penetrating The Bush Campaign In 2000, thanks to Grover Norquist’s influence with the White House political operation, Khaled Saffuri was named the George W. Bush presidential campaign’s National Advisor on Arab and Muslim Affairs.21 Holding out the promise of votes and donations in key battleground states with significant Muslim populations (notably, Michigan, Florida and New Jersey), Saffuri and Norquist were able to persuade the Bush campaign’s chief strategist, Karl Rove, essentially to contract-out to them responsibility for identifying the groups and individuals upon whom the Governor should rely to elicit such support. Insight Magazine reported in February 2001: [In September 2000], on [Karl Rove’s] way to the airport to catch his flight back to Texas, Khaled Saffuri, executive director of the Islamic Institute, joined Rove in his car. Saffuri explained to him that the vote of the Arab-American community, which includes both Muslims and Christians, still was up for grabs. The community is prosperous and could be the source of considerable campaign contributions. If Bush would mention in public just a few of the issues that concern Arab-Americans, Saffuri told Rove, he would win their hearts, their minds and their support.22 While the thrust of this report sounds right, the evidence suggests Saffuri’s car ride with Rove was by no means the first time such a proposition had been discussed with the Bush campaign. Indeed, the lure of such political dividends induced Governor Bush to hold a meeting in his mansion in Austin on May 1, 2000, not only with Alamoudi and Saffuri, but with other, immoderate Muslims, as well. As the National Journal reported: It was the summer of 2000, and for George W. Bush, the meeting held the promise of an unusual but important endorsement for his presidential bid. Conservative activist Grover Norquist had persuaded the Republican nominee to sit down with leaders of the Muslim American Political Coordinating Committee, a confederation of four Muslim community groups.23 In addition to Alamoudi’s American Muslim Council, the group included the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR’s executive director, Nihad Awad is another self-professed Hamas-supporter and, as will be discussed further below, its radical agenda and ties have recently been the focus of sharp, bipartisan criticism in Sen. Kyl’s Judiciary subcommittee. Saffuri had also arranged for the Bush campaign to enlist Sami al-Arian, a well-known Florida-based activist – despite the fact that the professor made little secret of his radical Islamist sympathies – to help engender Muslim support in his state.24 A photograph of Mr. Bush taken with al-Arian in March 2000 subsequently received considerable attention after the professor was arrested last February on 40 terrorism-related counts. Of particular concern are those alleging his functional direction over the past 19 years of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, one of the most murderous terrorist organizations in the Middle East.25 Al-Arian’s arrest was made possible by the USA-PATRIOT Act. With this legislation’s enactment after 9/11, it became possible for the first time in decades, for U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies to share sensitive information – such as the voluminous wiretaps of Sami al-Arian coordinating Palestinian Islamic Jihad operations from his professor’s office in Tampa. Not surprisingly, the Islamist front recognizes the threat this and other provisions of the PATRIOT Act represent to their operations in America. They are determined to rescind it and, if possible, remove its principal architect and most effective defender, Attorney General John Ashcroft. Accordingly, they have become an integral part of the left-wing coalition, which includes the ACLU, the pro-Castro National Lawyers Guild and many Islamic “solidarity” groups, in waging a national campaign against the PATRIOT Act. It seems hardly coincidental that the preeminent conservative figure to join the campaign and lead the recruitment of other conservatives is Grover Norquist. In fact, Norquist was also a prime-mover behind efforts to secure one of the Islamists’ top pre-9/11 agenda items: the abolition of a section of the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act that permits authorities to use what critics call “secret evidence.” This is a rarely employed practice whereby prosecutors can withhold classified information from foreign suspects. To do so, however, the authorities must have reason to believe the disclosure of such information could compromise – and, thereby, eliminate – the sensitive intelligence “sources and methods” by which it was obtained. As it happens, one reason why banning secret evidence was an Islamist priority was that undisclosed classified information linking Sami al-Arian’s brother-in-law, Mazen al-Najjar, to terrorist activities was used to detain the latter from 1997 to 2000. Ultimately, that same information was used to deport him. Thus, secret evidence was a personal priority for one of the Bush campaign’s Muslim-outreach operatives – and corrective action became a price of his and other Islamists’ support. In the second presidential debate with Al Gore, Governor Bush responded to the demand that, as Saffuri put it, he “mention in public just a few of the issues that concern Arab-Americans.” The Republican candidate formally pledged that, if elected, he would prohibit the use of secret evidence.26 In recognition of this stunning exercise in political influence and his instrumental role in achieving it, Grover Norquist was an honoree at an event held by Sami Al-Arian’s National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom in July 2001, two months before 9/11. The award was for being a “champion of the abolishment movement against secret evidence.” Such recognition was certainly deserved. But for the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that followed, Norquist’s efforts would by now almost certainly have denied law enforcement this important anti-terrorism tool. Ironically, pro-Islamist groups had been scheduled to meet with President Bush on the morning of September 11 to hear what he planned to do to deliver on his secret evidence campaign pledge.27 But that day, the executive mansion complex was shut down, for fear that a fourth hijacked aircraft was headed its way. I watched bemused as Grover Norquist and the White House official responsible for Muslim outreach, Suhail Khan, escorted the displaced Islamists into the conference room we share. (Al-Arian had arranged to participate in the presidential meeting via phone. According to his website, his teaching schedule at the University of South Florida would not allow him to be there in person.)28 Penetrating the White House Suhail Khan was one of at least three Muslim outreach gatekeepers at the White House with whom Norquist has been associated over the years. I became aware of the intensity of the attachment when Norquist verbally assaulted me one day in the hallway outside our offices with the accusation that I had been calling Khan a terrorist. I assured him that I had done no such thing. Evidently, somebody else, though, had stumbled onto the fact that Khan’s late father, Mahboob Khan, was a prominent figure in the Islamist enterprise in America. It turns out that, among other things, he was the founder of a large Wahhabi center, mosque and school in Orange County, California.29 The New York Times revealed on October 23, 2001, that, in that capacity, Khan Sr. had hosted Ayman al-Zawahiri, reportedly Osama bin Laden’s right-hand-man in the al-Qaeda organization – not once, but twice in the 1990s.30 The first time, Zawahiri came under his own name, the second time he used an alias. In the course of his trips, the terrorist chief reportedly not only raised funds for al-Qaeda’s operations at Khan’s mosque but also purchased satellite communications equipment while in the United States.31 After Khan’s family ties to terror became a focus of press attention, Suhail left the White House staff to go to work at the Department of Transportation. Grover Norquist closed a Wednesday Group meeting by tearfully apologizing to Suhail Khan for the injury caused him by “racists and bigots” and, by example, encouraging the assembled company to join him in a standing ovation to Khan. Most hadn’t a clue what he was talking about but went along. Mindful that Norquist had me in mind, I sat it out. If White House security procedures had worked across the board as they were supposed to, it seems unlikely that President Bush and his senior subordinates would ever have met with some of those sponsored by Norquist and Saffuri. Sami al-Arian and Abdurahman Alamoudi, for example, would probably never have gotten inside the White House compound. What happened at the Wednesday Group meeting after Khan’s move to Transportation was unfortunately not an isolated incident, but part of an already established pattern. In July 2001, the Secret Service evicted Sami al-Arian’s son, Abdullah, from a meeting in the White House. The President had affably dubbed Abdullah “Big Dude” after first meeting him and his family on the campaign trail in Florida in March 2000.32 Evidently, the Service acted on the basis of the law enforcement community’s longstanding suspicion of the father’s ties to international terror. Norquist’s friends immediately raised a ruckus. Other participants in the meeting walked out in solidarity. It became a cause celebre, trumpeted as an egregious example of the racial profiling about which the Islamists and their leftwing allies incessantly complained. In short order, the Deputy Director of the Secret Service was obliged to issue a written apology to “Big Dude” al-Arian. And the President himself personally called the evictee’s mother to express regret and to assure her that no such thing would be allowed to happen again. Notice had been served on the Secret Service and other security-vetters: Their job was to provide for the President’s physical security – the threat of would-be assassins – not to protect him from the political embarrassment (or worse) that might result from meetings with terrorist-apologists, or possibly terrorists themselves. If unarmed Islamists were able to secure access to Mr. Bush and his subordinates (e.g., the Secretaries of the Treasury, State and Energy, the Attorney General, the directors of Homeland Security and the FBI), law enforcement and intelligence professionals got the message that they were not to interfere. Consequently, over the years, and particularly as the Bush Administration’s Muslim outreach effort ramped up in the aftermath of 9/11, Grover Norquist was able to gain extraordinarily high-level access for a number of troubling individuals and groups. An undated White House memo, evidently prepared by Suhail Khan in early 2001 and intended to coordinate Muslim and Arab-American public liaison events, shows that Norquist’s Islamic Institute was instrumental in establishing Islamist connections with the Bush administration. The Islamic Institute provided the White House with a list of Muslim invitees, with the name, date of birth and Social SecurThe Islamist Connection: Abdurahman Alamoudi
Point Man: Khaled Saffuri
Obstructing Justice
Access to the White House