State Department’s Jihadist Exchange Program

State Department diplomats are taking full advantage of their new rules prohibiting the use of “jihad,” “jihadist,” and “mujahedeen” to describe Islamic extremists and terrorists, which they apparently have taken to mean that there are no jihadists in light of the exchange programs they have recently sponsored for the International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT) — an organization currently under active federal grand jury investigation for terrorist support activities. [HT: Global MB Daily Report]

The IIIT exchange programs have been conducted under the State Department’s International Visitor’s Program. According to reports published on IIIT’s website, the State Department sponsored a March 7 visit to IIIT by a group of Chinese scholars and, more recently, an April 17-18 session with a large delegation of Islamic scholars from the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia.

The State Department has sponsored these IIIT activities at the very same time that a federal grand jury continues to look into IIIT’s multiple ties to terrorism as part of the Department of Justice’s ongoing Operation Green Quest investigation. A March 24 article in the New York Sun, “A Court Sheds New Light on Terror Probe,” identifies IIIT as the “group at the center of the probe.”

"The State Department has sponsored these IIIT activities at the very same time that a federal grand jury
continues to look into IIIT’s multiple ties to terrorism as part of the Department of Justice’s ongoing Operation Green Quest investigation."

This probably fits in quite well with their too-long-ignored selling of US nuclear secrets and endless streams of weapons to US enemies.

Treason at the State Department: A Whistleblower's Story

"The UK’s Sunday Times recently broke the story of an FBI whistleblower kept
from speaking publicly about a State Department official suspected of selling nuclear secrets.
Annie Jacobsen digs a bit deeper into this shadowy tale and wonders why
American media outlets have greeted the revelations with stunning silence.

Two weeks ago, the London Sunday Times broke an exclusive story about
FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds.
For five years, the U.S. government has prevented Edmonds from speaking publicly
on what she knows, claiming State Secrets Privilege. The Times got the exclusive
on the story, eerily titled “For Sale: West’s Deadly Nuclear Secrets,”
by talking to a number of Edmonds’ close associates who were not under a gag order,
and by filling in pieces of the puzzle from Sibel Edmonds herself.

According the Times article, the U.S. government sought to gag Edmonds
from revealing that corrupt government officials — specifically,
State Department official Marc Grossman — were directly involved in the stealing and selling
of nuclear secrets to foreign agents. In her role as translator, Edmonds listened in on,
or translated, hundreds of secretly intercepted conversations
between State Department officials and foreign nationals from 1996 to 2002."

(Marc) Grossman played a peripheral role in the Plame Affair, at least in terms of what is currently known.

On 10 June 2003, an analyst at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) sent a memo to Ambassador Grossman outlining Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s trip to Niger and mentioning that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA. Reportedly, Grossman wanted the memo as background to use at a White House meeting on criticism of President Bush for using the Niger claim in his State of the Union speech.

According to the Washington Post, Grossman has refused to answer questions about the memo. The Post says it is not clear if Grossman actually talked about the memo or mentioned Mrs. Wilson at the meeting.[1]

On 6 July 2003, Richard Armitage asked the head of INR, Carl Ford, to send a copy of the memo to Colin Powell aboard Air Force One.

In Patrick Fitzgerald’s indictment of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby on October 28, 2005, Grossman is the Under Secretary of State mentioned as giving information about Plame to Libby.

It has been suggested by Libby’s legal defense that Grossman is biased because, according to Theodore Wells, Libby’s defense lawyer, Grossman and Wilson went to college and came up through the ranks of the State Department together.[2]

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