Replies

That's not a "niggling" issue. That's what started the whole mess.

Had Gaffney made similar allegations against me, with comparable evidence to support it, I would have demanded a public retraction. The staffers did so--and Mr. Gaffney told them to go take an airborne fornication at a rolling doughnut.

That, apparently, pissed off Mr. Norquist.

That's not a "niggling" issue. That's what started the whole mess.
Had Gaffney made similar allegations against me, with comparable evidence to support it, I would have demanded a public retraction. The staffers did so--and Mr. Gaffney told them to go take an airborne fornication at a rolling doughnut.

That, apparently, pissed off Mr. Norquist.

No, what started this mess is the indefensible access Grover Norquist has provided to candidate and President Bush on the behalf terrorist sympathizers, supporters, and possibly co-conspirators, for years.
What's pissing off Norquist is that Gaffney is publicly calling him on it.
Notice that Norquist attacks the messenger and never addresses the heart of the charge, a sure indication that it's on the mark.

More details:

In a letter sent yesterday to Mr. Gaffney, Mr. Norquist accused him of impugning the loyalty of Ali Tulbah, an American Muslim and an associate director of Cabinet affairs in the White House.
"There is no place in the conservative movement for racial prejudice, religious bigotry or ethnic hatred," Mr. Norquist wrote. "This is the second time that a Muslim working for President George W. Bush has been subjected to an attack by you because of his faith. You have made similarly dishonest allegations against [public liaison official] Suhail Khan while he worked inside the White House."
Washington Times LINK - February 6th, 2003
The AMC press release made a point of commending Ali Tulbah, an associate director of the White House's Office of Cabinet Affairs, for including their representatives (notably, executive director Eric Erfan Vickers) in the meeting. Mr. Tulbah similarly admitted another highly controversial organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), in this meeting. There appear to have been at least nine other meetings that these groups have attended with the White House and senior administration officials since September 2001, some at the invitation of a predecessor of Mr. Tulbah in the role of gatekeeper for the administration's Muslim "outreach" efforts, Suhail Khan.
Frank Gaffney Column LINK - February 11th, 2003
AMC Attends White House Briefing on Controversial INS Policy
WASHINGTON, DC, Jan. 17, 2003:
Yesterday AMC Executive Director Eric Erfan Vickers and Board Secretary Dr. Nedzib Sacirbey attended, along with other Muslim and Arab American leaders, a White House briefing on the controversial INS policy that has caused to many tremendous personal hardships, and which has created mounting consternation in the Muslim and Arab American community.
The briefing was arranged by Ali H. Tulbah, the Associate Director of Cabinet Affairs, and AMC commends him for initiating this substantive dialogue with key officials in the White House Administration.
American Muslim Council LINK

So, doesn't the American Muslim Council press release specifically confirm Gaffney's allegations about Ali H. Tulbah?

As for Suhail Khan...

One day after Bush's inauguration, (Norquist) and Saffuri arranged for Muslim leaders to meet Newt Gingrich and Congressman Tom Davis, head of the National Republican Congressional Committee. Soon Saffuri began regularly appearing at the White House, accompanying imams and heads of Islamic organizations to discuss the faith-based initiative and concerns about law enforcement persecution of Muslims. Suhail Khan, an administration adviser who helps plan Muslim outreach, once served on the Islamic Institute's board. And at one of his regular Wednesday meetings, according to two witnesses, Norquist announced that he had lobbied to get Khan his White House post.
New Republic LINK
Why are Muslim and Arab "civil rights" groups the only ones protesting new FBI rules to fight terrorism?
Why aren't mainstream Christian and Jewish groups protesting the new guidelines handed down by Attorney General John Ashcroft and his Justice Department? Or Hispanic groups?
Maybe because Muslim, mostly Arab, terrorists — including at least two 9/11 hijackers — deliberately used U.S. mosques to fundraise for and plan terrorist attacks. Maybe because they knew that, under the old rules, it had been difficult for FBI counterterrorism operatives to surveil terrorists once they stepped into the mosques. And they, the terrorists — and many Muslim allies in the U.S. — took advantage of this.
The old rules were used by a blind cleric, a professor, and even the mosque founded and headed by the father of a Bush administration official, to fund and/or plan terror, undetected.
Take the Santa Clara Masjid (Mosque). According to the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat, Osama bin Laden's deputy (or boss, depending upon the intelligence report), Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, visited the United States in early 1995 using a forged passport, and raised money for terrorist operations at various U.S. mosques, including the Santa Clara Mosque, a.k.a. Masjid Al-Noor, a.k.a. MCA (Muslim Community Association) of Santa Clara.
The late Mahboob Khan is identified by a 1999 "MCA Newsletter" as the man "whose constant efforts and guidance. . . establish[ed] the Islamic Center" of Santa Clara. A 1999 Islamic Horizons magazine obituary for Mahboob Khan quotes a former secretary general of the Islamic Society of North America as saying that Dr. Khan "was in the forefront in the struggle" of "the Santa Clara mosque." This includes the time period when Zawahiri was staying in Santa Clara and raising money at Khan's mosque.
Khan was the founder of American Muslims for Global Peace and Justice, the group spearheading the boycott of Starbucks in the United States. Incredibly, Khan's son, Suhail Khan, was the Bush White House's Muslim outreach official last year. He is also a current and founding board member of the Islamic Institute, which openly opposes the new FBI rules, lodging protests with Ashcroft.
Schlussel Column LINK - July 10th, 2002

So Suhail Khan's father helped Ayman Al Zawahiri (who helped mastermind 9/11, the Cole bombing, the American Embassy bopmbings in Kenya and Uganda, the Luxor Temple massacre of dozens of European tourists, and the assassination of Anwar Sadat), secretly raise money in the United States for terrorist enterprises while on the FBI's watch list? This is who Grover Norquist aligns himself with as a founding board member of Norquist's Islamic Institute? This is who Gover Norquist recommends for a job as the Bush Administration's Muslim outreach official?

Is it such a stretch that Suhail Khan, who sat on the board of the Norquist and Khaled Saffuri's Islamic Institute, and got his White House position as a result of the lobbying of Grover Norquist, arranged meetings for other like-minded radical Islamists with members of the Bush Administration?