A writer awaiting the official release (tomorrow!) of a book could do absolutely no better than to sit down and talk through the sure-to-be-controversial findings with The remarkable Ginni Thomas of The Daily Caller.
In her introductory comments, Ginni writes:
Dear reader,
Diana West is a meticulous researcher who writes compellingly. She is also a new friend. Her new book,“American Betrayal,” reads like a historical thriller as she weaves remarkable details from a variety of sources, including intelligence archives from the collapsed Soviet Union. In this week’s interview, West explains the thesis of her book that she admits even shocked her: “Americans have been betrayed … by our leaders going back to FDR’s administration in the 1930s because we were penetrated by Soviet agents to such an extent that our policies and, indeed I argue, our character as a nation was subverted.” You may not agree, but give this one a read if you are ready to have your brain stretched!
This interview includes her observations about what is not being discussed in the Benghazi turmoil, why ideology matters, the inevitable erosion of trust in our government and President Obama’s record on relating to allies and enemies.
A 2011 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document released by The Daily Caller advises government agencies against training about the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood and to shun “Muslim reformers.”
Shockingly, the advisory committee that likely influenced these guidelines includes numerous individuals affiliated with the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.
The document says it is a list of “tips for federal, state and local government and law enforcement officials organizing CVE [Countering Violent Extremism], cultural awareness, counter-radicalization, or counterterrorism training.” It was produced by the Department of Homeland Security Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in cooperation with the National Counterterrorism Center.
The DHS suggestions in the document include:
Don’t use training premised on theories with little or no evidence to support them. Examples (from the report “Manufacturing the Muslim Menace”) of unsubstantiated theories include:
a. Many mainstream Muslim organizations have terrorist ties.
b Mainstream Muslim organizations are fronts for Islamic political organizations whose true desire is to establish Sharia law in America. Muslim Americans are using democratic processes, like litigation and free speech, to subvert democracy and install Sharia law.
The “Manufacturing the Muslim Menace” report cited depicts concerns about the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood as the fabrications of anti-Muslim bigots. Moreover, it defends the Brotherhood, saying it is a moderate group that wouldn’t use front groups in America.
In reality, solid evidence exists to the contrary – evidence ironically from the federal government’s own determinations as well as documents from the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood itself including a 1991 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood explanatory memorandum that explicitly states: “[O]ur work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.”
The Brotherhood memorandum lists “our organizations and the organizations of our friends.” The list includes “mainstream” Muslim-American groups—the very same groups which appear to have influenced these very same Department of Homeland Security guidelines (see below).
Specifically, the federal government designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) as unindicted co-conspirators in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation for financing Hamas. Federal prosecutors labeled these three mainstream groups as U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entities in 2007. In 2009, the designations were upheld by District Court Judge Solis because of “ample” evidence linking them to Hamas.
The Clarion Project has broken numerous stories about other Islamist groups doing exactly what the DHS dismisses in the current training document as “unsubstantiated theories.”
For example, a Pennsylvania-based group, Sankore Institute of Islamic-African Studies International (SIIASI), tells Muslims to engage in “litigation jihad” to advance Sharia law in America.
A California-based group, the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA), which issues authoritative fatwas, or religious declarations, said in a 2007 Arabic paper presented at one of its conferences it recommends that Muslims become judges and use deception to implement sharia law to the best of their ability. To call their rulings unsettling would be a gross understatement.
These are important facts but the DHS guidelines would leave law enforcement personnel ignorant of them.
On the topic of “Muslim Reformers,” the DHS document had this to say:
Don’t use trainers who answer primarily to interest groups. For example, trainers who are self-professed “Muslim reformers” may further an interest group agenda instead of delivering generally accepted unbiased information.
This is a chilling reflection of how the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups have succeeded in marginalizing their competitors. (SeeThe Clarion Project.org’sCAIR Lashes Out at Non-Islamist Muslim Groupwhere CAIR labels their competitors as being part of an “Islamophobia” network.)
In fact, the Brotherhood groups have become treasured partners of the Obama Administration, while their opponents have been shut out of the policy process. Radical Islamists with known connections to terrorism have had an open door to the White House, but moderate Muslims are not among the list of invitees.
Experts on Islam and terrorism are decrying the Department of Homeland Security’s recently revealed anti-terrorism training guidelines, which pressure cops to ignore Islamic beliefs when investigating terror crimes.
The Boston bombings demonstrated the impact of such training, Andrew McCarthy, a former New York prosecutor, told The Daily Caller.
“The Boston Marathon was bombed by a jihadist who had been investigated by the FBI … [and was confirmed in 2011 to be] an Islamist, which would have been hard not to do since he does not appear to have made any secret of it,” said McCarthy, who persuaded a New York jury in 1995 to convict “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel-Rahman for his use of Islamic teaching to spur jihad attacks, including the 1993 attack against the Twin Towers.
But before the bombing, “the FBI closed its file [on Tamerlan Tsarnaev] because it found this did not constitute ‘derogatory information,’” McCarthy said.
McCarthy and other security experts, and even members of the American Islamic community, indicate that a culture of excessive concern for the sensibilities of Muslims supremacists is preventing law enforcement agencies from pursuing jihadists.
Under the federal guidelines, “agents are admonished to discount the possibility that an Islamist’s constitutionally protected abhorrence of the United States might possibly lead to violence,” McCarthy told TheDC.
Even if FBI officials had learned about Tsarnaev’s 2012 trip to a part of southern Russia that is embroiled in a jihadi war, they would not have restarted their 2011 investigation, a government official told the Washington Post in April.
“The FBI investigation into the individual in question had been closed six months prior to his departure from the United States and more than a year before his return. …Since there was no derogatory information, there was no reason to suggest that additional action was warranted,” the official said in April.
On his six-month trip, starting in January 2012, Tsarnaev visited several militant Islamic leaders and mosques in Dagestan, where jihadis are fighting the Russian government, according to several U.S. and Russian media sources.
“The fiasco regarding Boston is a prime example” of how bad training degrades security, said Robert Spencer, an authority on Islamic doctrine who is heavily criticized by Islamic groups in the United States. He noted that even though FBI agents had interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the FBI was unable to identify Tsarnaev in crowd photographs taken before and after the bomb strike.
After the attack, FBI officials also did not ask the main mosque in Boston for help in identifying the suspects, said Nichole Mossalam, a spokeswoman for the Islamic Society of Boston.
“We were the ones who reached out to them … on Friday” once the picture were released, Mossalam told TheDC.
Under the federal guideline, the FBI officials had “no reason to go to the mosque since the [Tsarnaev] brothers don’t show any outward signs in the [street] photos of being Muslims,” said McCarthy.
Because of the guidelines, it would be “a ‘profiling’ scandal to show the pictures at the mosque just because it was a bombing with … no other evidence of connection to Muslims,” he said.
The guidelines, titled “Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Training Do’s and Don’ts,” don’t merely promote respect for free expression but actively promote extremist views by telling officials to sideline experts who “venture too deep into the weeds of [Islamic] religious doctrines and history. … [T]hese topics are not necessary in order to understand the [Muslim] community.”
The DHS also actively discourages engagement with moderate Muslims. “Don’t use trainers … who are self-professed ‘Muslim reformers’ … [or who] equate radical thought [or] religious expressions … with criminal activity,” say the training guidelines.
The guidelines also advise cops, “Don’t use a trainer or training that has received repeated external negative feedback … don’t use training that treats the American Muslim community as a problem rather than as a partner … don’t use training that relies on fear [for example, by citing convictions that show] mainstream Muslim organizations have terrorist ties.”
The training guidelines go so far as to urge federal officials to rely on a political report by the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC), a Los Angeles, California-based Islamic advocacy group with extensive ties to jihadists and Islamist groups, including the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood.
Rep. Louie Gohmert (TX-01) read and commented on an article from The Daily Caller on the House floor. The article notes, “The Department of Homeland Security…has shown a keen interest in monitoring and warning about outspoken conservatives, takes a very different approach in monitoring political Islamists, according to a 2011 memo on protecting the free speech rights of pro-Shariah Muslim supremacists.”
The Obama Administration’s relationship with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity, has grown beyond strictly Muslim-related issues. On May 6, Vice President Biden met with about 20 interfaith leaders including ISNA President Mohamed Magid for two hours to rally religious support for gun control.
A FBI source identified ISNA as a Muslim Brotherhood front as early as 1987. A 1991 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood memo identified ISNA as one of “our organizations and the organizations of our friends” for use in its “work in America as a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.”
Federal prosecutors labeled ISNA an unindicted co-conspirator in the terrorism-financing trial of the Holy Land Foundation, a Brotherhood “charity” housed within the ISNA building that was found to be financing Hamas. The U.S. government specifically called ISNA a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity.
The President of ISNA is Imam Mohamed Magid. In 2004, he reacted to the U.S. government’s investigations and prosecutions of groups like the Holy Land Foundation by claiming they were part of an anti-Muslim agenda. He said that parts of the U.S. government are “intent on dismantling Muslim organizations and bringing them down.”
He was among those that met with Vice President Biden to discuss the legislation mandating background checks for gun sales. Several more Obama Administration officials including Biden’s chief of staff were also there.
Other interfaith leaders at the meeting included Franklin Graham of Billy Graham Evangelistic Association; Rabbi David Saperstein of the Religion Action Center of Reform Judaism; Barrett Duke of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission; Pastor Michael McBride of PICO National Network and Richard Cizik of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good.
Gun control isn’t the only political issue that the Obama Administration seeks ISNA’s support on. On March 8, Magid met with President Obama and senior advisor Valerie Jarrett for 90 minutes about immigration reform. About 10 other interfaith leaders were there. Only three days later, Magid again met with President Obama to offer “recommendations” for his trip to the Middle East.
The Obama Administration treats ISNA as the leader of the Muslim-American community, even though only 4% of Muslim-American males and 7% of females chose ISNA as the group that best represents them in a 2011 poll. In March, the Associate Director of the Office of Public Engagement said ISNA is his top Muslim outreach partner.
Robert Spencer interviews Stephen Coughlin on the subversive nature of the Interfaith Movement which is making use of Saul Alinsky tactics.
“One of the things Alinsky’s goal was to do is to take terms, sacred terms, sacred ideas, patriotic and religious, and redefine them without telling people …”
Stephen Coughlin is a senior fellow at the Center For Security Policy. An attorney, decorated intelligence officer and noted specialist on Islamic law, ideology and related strategic information programs, Mr. Coughlin integrates experience in international law, intelligence, strategic communications and high-level project management in both the national defense and private sectors to develop unique perspectives, assessments and training packages relating to the intersection of national security and law. Often cited as the Pentagon’s leading expert on Islamic law, Coughlin is in demand as a lecturer at leading Defense training institutions, including the Naval War College, Marine Corps HQ-Quantico, and at Staff, Command and Division levels, as well as for the FBI and other agencies and private sector groups. A Major in the United States Army (res.), assigned to USCENTCOM, with a military intelligence specialty, Coughlin has served in a strategic communications role in CENTCOM-Doha. U.S. assignments have included attachment to the Pentagon’s National Military Joint Intelligence Center, the National Security Council’s Interagency Perception Management Threat Panel, and culminating in his assignment to the intelligence staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Coughlin’s private sector career has focused on international law, competitive intelligence and the development and provision of open source, classified and proprietary commercial data and information products and programs at leading publishing houses such as Lexis-Nexis/Reed Elsevier and West Group/WestLaw.
The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), a group with Muslim Brotherhood origins and an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror-financing trial, recently toured the White House and met with multiple officials. According to the group, Paul Monteiro, Associate Director of the Office of Public Engagement, “cited ISNA as his primary means of outreach to the American Muslim community.”
The Obama administration’s close relationship with ISNA is about more than photo ops and press releases. It is about policy formulation. The input of ISNA is so treasured that the officials coached the organization on how to engage the White House.
On March 8, ISNA President Mohamed Magid joined 10 other religious leaders in a 90-minute conversation with President Obama about immigration reform. Also present was senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett, who spoke at ISNA’s 2009 convention. Three days later, Magid took part in a meeting with President Obama where he got “recommendations” in preparation for his Middle East trip, including some from groups with a history of defending Hezbollah.
“Over the past two years, I-along with my White House colleagues-have benefited from the advice of many of your [Magid’s] organizations through our Office of Public Engagement,” said Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough on March 6, 2011 during a speech at the mosque that Magid leads.
ISNA’s White House tour included spending time with George Selim, the White House Director for Community Partnerships, who is an annual speaker at ISNA’s conventions. Selim previously admitted that “hundreds” of meetings have taken place between government officials and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, another group with Brotherhood origins that was designated an unindicted co-conspirator.
The U.S. government stated that ISNA is a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity when it designated it as an unindicted co-conspirator in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation. A federal judge upheld the designation in 2009 because of “ample” evidence linking ISNA to Hamas. A 1991 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood memo lists ISNA and several of its components among “our organizations and the organizations of our friends,” and a 1988 document says it is part of the Brotherhood “apparatus.”
If you are asking yourself why the Holy land Foundation trial’s findings have been ignored by everyone all you need to do is note the timing of the conclusion of the trial….2008, just as the Obama administration came into power with Eric Holder at the helm of the DOJ. Since then Obama has been partnering with and empowering the Muslim Brotherhood in every way he can while the various MB front groups work feverishly to undermine the legitimacy of the HLF trial. And 80 file boxes worth of evidence submitted during the 2008 Holy Land Foundation trial including “The Project” documents, are being withheld from the American public by the Department of Justice
On Monday, President Obama prepared for his trip to the Middle East by meeting with around 10 Muslim and Arab officials that provided him with “recommendations.” The attendees included representatives from the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, two anti-Israel groups with a record of pro-Hezbollah advocacy. The meeting came four days after his meeting with Jewish leaders.
A joint press release by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), American Task Force for Palestine, American Federation of Ramallah Palestine and the Arab-American Institute boasted of the meeting. Separately, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) alerted its supporters that the director of its Washington D.C. office, Haris Tarin, also attended. He was previously thanked by President Obama in a personal phone call for his activism on July 13, 2011. The ADC earlier tried to get President Obama’s attention by helping to organize an interfaith “No Blank Check for Israel” rally in the capital near Inauguration Day.
The meeting took place in the Roosevelt Room near the Oval Office and also involved unidentified national security officials and Valerie Jarrett, the senior adviser who was a keynote speaker at the 2009 annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America, a group with Muslim Brotherhood origins. The meeting apparently wasn’t all good news for the invitees. The president of ADC, Warren David, complained that President Obama has let down many Arab-Americans with his Middle East policy and said he left with a “bittersweet feeling.”
The ADC was founded by the first Arab-American Senator, who praised Hezbollah during its war with Israel in 2006. He also has stated that Zionists were secretly behind the 9/11 attacks. The ADC leadership opposed its designation as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. In 2000, an ADC spokesperson called Hezbollah a “responsible liberation force.” The ADC also honored Helen Thomas after she said the Jews in Israel should “get the hell out of Palestine” and go to Poland.
As Raess Alam Qazi and Sheheryar Alam Qazi, two Muslim men from Pakistan, are indicted in Florida for plotting to carry out a terrorist attack using a weapon of mass destruction it is time to analyse the Obama Doctrine on terrorism.
On August 3, 2011 President Obama released the National Strategy on Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism. The strategy, now known as the Obama Doctrine, was based upon the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) study group findings and recommendation developed in 2010 by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The CVE has become the blueprint for both domestic and foreign policy when dealing with terrorism. The Obama Doctrine redefined “terrorism” as “violent extremism”.
The DHS website states, “The threat posed by violent extremism is neither constrained by international borders nor limited to any single ideology. Groups and individuals inspired by a range of religious, political, or other ideological beliefs have promoted and used violence against the homeland.”
Who developed the Obama Doctrine?
The Obama Doctrine is based in large part upon the 2010 findings and recommendations of a Department of Homeland Security’s Advisory Council. The twenty member advisory council is unique in its composition, with eight members who are Islamists, three representing large Islamic communities and one openly supportive of Islam.
Islamist members included: Nimco Ahmed, Policy Aide, Vice-President of the Minneapolis City Council, Omar Alomari Community Engagement Officer, Ohio Homeland Security, Asli Bali Acting Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law, Mohamed Elibiary President and CEO, The Freedom and Justice Foundation, Amin Kosseim Deputy Inspector, New York City Police Department, Imam Mohamed Magid Executive Director, All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS Center), Asim Rehman President, Muslim Bar Association of New York and Dalia Mogahed Senior Analyst and Executive Director, Gallup Center for Muslim Studies
Members from predominantly Islamist communities included: Michael Downing Deputy Chief, Commanding Officer, Counter Terrorism and Criminal Intelligence Bureau, Los Angeles Police Department and Ronald Haddad Chief of Police, Dearborn Police Department. Richard Cohen President and CEO, Southern Poverty Law Center, was a pro-Islamist council member. Pro-Islamist subject matter experts advising the council included: Arif Alikhan Assistant Secretary, Policy Development, DHS and Laurie WoodAnalyst, Southern Poverty Law Center/Instructor, Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
“Muhammad Magid is not only the head of the ADAMS center, he is the son of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) Grand Mufti of Sudan and current president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), an MB front group named by the Department of Justice as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation – HAMAS (HLF) terror funding trial. Magid is also one of the closest advisers of the National Security Council of the USA (in particular Denis McDonough). He’s an A-list invitee at the White House. Some believe he may be the head of the North American MB Shura Council.
Mohamed Elibiary is affiliated with numerous identified MB figures who are members of the Freedom and Justice Foundation Advisory Council: they come from the Muslim American Society (MAS), CAIR, ISNA, and the Islamic Association of North Texas. He publicly criticized the HLF trial convictions and has written admiringly of Sayyed Qutb.
IIIT likewise is listed in the MB’s “Explanatory Memorandum” of 1991 as one of its ‘friends and the organizations of our friends’.”
The Obama Doctrine states, “Government officials and the American public should not stigmatize or blame communities because of the actions of a handful of individuals.” The doctrine notes, “This type of violent extremism is a complicated challenge for the United States, not only because of the threat of attacks, but also because of its potential to divide us.” The Obama Doctrine states, “Violent extremists prey on the disenchantment and alienation that discrimination creates, and they have a vested interest in anti-Muslim sentiment.”
Muslim Brotherhood in America, Part 9: Team Obama & the Islamist Agenda: (You can fast forward to 1:32 for the section on DHS and the Countering Violent Extremism policies but I recommend viewing the entire video)
In 2001, an inconspicuous manifesto now known as “The Project” was recovered during a raid in Switzerland: A manifesto that turned out to be a Muslim road map for infiltrating and defeating the West. Today, files containing evidence from the largest terror financing trial in U.S. history, which include details about “The Project”, are being withheld by the Department of Justice.
In an explosive two-part mini-series, The Blaze documentary unit investigates how the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the American government and exposes how our nation’s safety is in jeopardy as a result of this dangerous government cover up.
By Diana West, May 27, 2013
