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I listened last night to syndicated talk-radio host Mark Levin report the breaking news that an Iraqi-American had been indicted as a spy. In addition, he stands accused of secretly funding the October 2002 pre-invasion trip to Iraq of three antiwar House Democrats, Congressmen Jim McDermott (D-WA), Mike Thompson (D-CA), and David E. Bonior (D-MI, now retired). I first posted a clip of that audio on MarkLevinFan.com and then I followed the money.

Last night, the New York Times reported:

The Justice Department said Wednesday that Saddam Hussein’s principal foreign intelligence agency and an Iraqi-American man had organized and paid for a 2002 visit to Iraq by three House Democrats whose trip was harshly criticized by colleagues at the time. The arrangements for the trip were described in the indictment of an Iraq-born former employee of a Detroit-area charity group who was charged Wednesday with accepting millions of dollars’ worth of Iraqi oil contracts in exchange for assisting the Iraqi spy agency in projects in the United States. The indictment did not claim any wrongdoing by the three lawmakers, whose five-day trip to Iraq occurred in October 2002, five months before the American invasion. … Mr. McDermott said through a spokesman that he had been invited on the trip by church groups in his home state and that he assumed that the trip had been paid for by legitimate charitable organizations [All emphasis added in this post is mine]. … The indictment, which was dated Feb. 13 and unsealed Monday in Michigan, said the trip had cost at least $34,000 … The indicted Michigan man, Muthanna al-Hanooti, was identified in court papers as a naturalized American citizen who worked for much of the 1990s and again in 2001 and 2002 as public relations coordinator for Life for Relief and Development, a Michigan-based charity. He pleaded not guilty on Wednesday.

Yet any or all of the Congressmen could have easily learned, prior to their trip to Baghdad, the man funding them had a direct tie to Saddam Hussein’s regime. Shakir al-Khafaji was their contact at Life for Relief and Development and, in the 05/05/2003 edition of The Weekly Standard, Stephen F. Hayes wrote:

In Dearborn, Michigan, one radio station has for years broadcast a weekly, two-hour pro-Saddam program. According to Iraqi Americans who monitored the broadcasts, each program began with the Baath party anthem. Ismail Mansour, a Pentagon-trained Iraqi American working with coalition forces in Iraq, says the regime’s money reached well inside the United States, going to journalists and others. “In America, Saddam friends give money and they make protest,” he says. “In the Arab world, it’s the same thing. They pay money to do that.” One of those “Saddam friends” is Shakir al-Khafaji, an Iraqi-American businessman from Detroit. Since 1992, al-Khafaji has served as president of the regime-backed Expatriate Conferences, held in Baghdad every other year. The government provided subsidized travel for Iraqis living outside of the country.