The worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves, and the most dangerous lies are the ones we tell ourselves about terrorism. The number one lie is that there no – is no Arab-Islamic terror. Lie number two is that Arab-Islamic terror has been defeated. And the third lie: Even though Arab-Islamic terror has been defeated, there was no way to foresee it because it never existed and it never posed a threat. Yes, I know it is not logical to hold all these three lies in your mind at the same time, but that is what has happened - Michael Widlanski
Frank Gaffney, President & CEO, Center for Security Policy; former Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy
Michael Widlanski, Author of Battle for Our Minds: Western Elites and the Terror Threat, Former Strategic Affairs Advisor to the Israeli Ministry of Public Security
Patrick Poole, National Security and Terrorism Correspondent for PJMedia
Representative Louie Gohmert (R-Tx)
Sebastian Gorka, Miilitary Affairs Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies & Council for Emerging National Security Affairs
The man that federal prosecutors have charged in the bombing last Friday that rocked a Social Security Administration office in Casa Grande, Arizona appeared in federal court in Phoenix on Monday. The suspect, Abdullatif Aldosary, is a 47 year-old Iraqi refugee that was convicted and served eight months in prison in 2008 for making threats against his former employer.
New details have emerged from the criminal complaint filed against Aldosary based on information obtained by the FBI in a search of Aldosary’s home Friday evening.
The new case details include:
1) When they conducted the search warrant, they discovered his bomb making notes behind a photograph on the wall. He had been researching how to obtain ammonium nitrate and also how to make RDX, a powerful explosive favored by international terrorists.
2) They also found a handgun and a rifle with more than a thousand rounds of ammo, although he was prohibited from possessing a firearm after his felony conviction. Felony possession charges may be added to the existing charges from Friday’s explosion.
3) The FBI is also looking into where Aldosary received his income. When they checked his bank account, as recently as September he had $20,000+ in the bank, and yet had no visible means of support. He was a convicted federal felon and an occasional day laborer. He lived in a nice neighborhood in Coolidge, Arizona and bought his house in 2008.
4) During his court hearing yesterday, Aldosary refused to address the court, even refusing to state his name or a plea. His public defender also said that her client refused to speak to her. Aldosary will have another hearing on Wednesday.
Early Tuesday morning I spoke with a contact in the FBI Phoenix field office (who is not authorized to speak on behalf of the FBI) who said that the case is being handled by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. The source added that they believe based on the materials found in the house and other items not in the complaint that Friday’s bombing was a “test run” for future attacks. Aldosary was arrested by police within 90 minutes of the bombing because workers at the Social Security office had got his license plate number at the scene.
Keep in mind that the national media had barely covered the incident and had not even identified Aldosary as the suspect until I noted the media blackout in an article I filed Sunday evening. Now the case is receiving national media attention.
We will bring you more details on this case as we have them.
Could federal law enforcement’s own training protocol on what they have been defining as “terrorism” be delaying the investigation of what happened in Benghazi, Libya on September 11th? As I pointed out in a previous post, the FBI training manual after a 2011 purge, does not even include the terms “al Qaeda”, “Muslim Brotherhood”, or “jihad.”
PJ Media’s Patrick Poole wrote about the FBI’s denial of the agency’s own departmental counter-terrorism analytical lexicon. However, the agency went silent when Poole posted the official 14 page unclassified booklet.
The Obama administration’s response to media inquires over what happened during the deadly terrorist attack on our U.S. consulate in Libya that took the lives of four Americans, including a U.S. ambassador, has been that it is currently under investigation. However, according to CNN, the FBI is only investigating the attack from afar and “bureaucratic infighting between the FBI and Justice Department, and the State Department on the other” appears to be delaying the investigation.: (bolding is mine)
FBI agents have not yet been granted access to investigate in the eastern Libyan city, and the crime scene has not been secured, sources said.
“They’ve gotten as far as Tripoli now, but they’ve never gotten to Benghazi,” CNN National Security Analyst Fran Townsend said Wednesday, citing senior law enforcement officials.
Last Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters that an FBI team had reached Libya earlier in the week.
“In fairness to the secretary, it may be that she wanted to be coy about where they were in Libya for security concerns. That’s understandable. But the fact is, it’s not clear they’ve been in Libya for very long,” Townsend said on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360°.”
“They had difficulty, and we understand there was some bureaucratic infighting between the FBI and Justice Department on the one hand, and the State Department on the other, and so it took them longer than they would have liked to get into country. They’ve now gotten there. But they still are unable to get permission to go to Benghazi.”
FBI agents have made a request through the U.S. State Department for the crime scene to be secured, Townsend said, but that has not happened.
“The senior law enforcement official I spoke to said, ‘If we get there now, it’s not clear that it will be of any use to us,’” Townsend said.
The FBI team has conducted interviews of State Department and U.S. government personnel who were in Libya at the time of the attack, Townsend said, but the FBI’s request to directly question individuals who Libyan authorities have in custody was denied.
It took the administration over one week to declare the attack on the consulate in Benghazi was indeed a “terrorist” attack and many wondered why the declaration took so long. Fox News Channel’s Megyn Kelly reported that sources told Fox News that U.S. intelligence knew that the strike against the consulate was the work of terrorists within 24 hours of the attack. So why the delay in the actual declaration from the administration?
One of the lead articles linked on the Drudge Report today is a story by Adam Kredo at the Washington Free Beacon on a recent statement by top Saudi cleric Salman al-Odeh declaring the Holocaust was “exaggerated” and that Jews make their Passover matzos with the blood of Christian children:
But before we begin wagging our fingers at such outrageous stone-age beliefs it bears worth mentioning that the same blood libel views have been preached by top US Islamic clerics as well.
For example, take this appearance by Fiqh Council of North American member Salah Sultan in March 2010 saying the exact same thing:
Back in March, my friend and colleague Erick Stakelbeck of CBN News emailed me a link to an article in Tablet Magazine and asked: “Hey — isn’t that your neighbor with the head of Hamas?” Sure enough, it was. My former neighbor Salah Sultan was standing right beside Ismail Haniyeh — the Hamas “prime minister” of Gaza — as Haniyeh left a meeting with Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Cairo (purple shirt):
Stakelbeck knew about my neighbor Sultan because Erick and I had worked together on a video segment highlighting Sultan’s activity and residence in my hometown of Hilliard, Ohio, back in 2007. That was more than a year after I had first written about returning home to Ohio to discover that I had an internationally known Hamas cleric living about a mile from my own house. Not only that, but Sultan was the religious director at the local Islamic school, Sunrise Academy, which had taken over the former public library building in town. Sultan was also the resident scholar of the newly built Noor Islamic Cultural Center in Hilliard.
As I later recounted, the Columbus Dispatch attacked me as a racist and a bigot, characterizing me as a Christianist Neo-Nazi. This after I had identified Sultan’s rabidly anti-Jewish remarks, his calls for violent jihad, his open support for Hamas, his ties to Muslim Brotherhood front organizations, and his association with international Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi.
The Dispatch article encouraged readers to attend an open house set up in response to my article at the local Islamic school. The relevant section of the Dispatch article responding to my claims was titled “Hostile Assertions”:
The condemnations not only came from my local paper, but also from the “interfaith leaders” in town — namely the Interfaith Association of Central Ohio – who had arranged the Dispatch hit piece. They also came from local residents, who felt free to vent their fury in phone calls made to my family members. One local columnist wrote an article titled “Muslim Basher, Patrick Poole, Preys on People’s Fears.”
Two weeks after the Dispatch article appeared defending Salah Sultan as a well-respected Islamic scholar and local interfaith leader (curiously, the Dispatch article can no longer be found on their website), he appeared on Al-Risala TV where he claimed that the 9/11 attacks were a U.S. government plot to victimize Muslims. He also defended designated terrorist and al-Qaeda cleric Abdul Majid al-Zindani: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=LIyy5jqMUlg
Needless to say, the Dispatch never followed up, even after I sent the reporter and editors a copy of Sultan’s video translated by MEMRI.
As a demonstration of how correct I was, take note of the picture below of Sultan being chummy with Khaled Meshaal –the head of Hamas and a specially designated global terrorist according to the U.S. government — that was posted on Sultan’s Facebook page on May 6 this year:
In law enforcement circles, this is what is known as an “investigative clue.”
In case the folks at the Columbus Dispatch still have any doubts about his Hamas connections, here Sultan is again with Ismail Haniyeh in March, just days after the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) — where Sultan sits on the board – greeted Haniyeh as a member:
But what about my prior claims about Sultan’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood? Well — Sultan was actively involved in the Egyptian elections, appearing regularly with the Muslim Brotherhood’s presidential candidate Mohammed Morsi (who, I noted here, first became a Muslim Brotherhood member while in the United States studying at the University of Southern California).
Here’s a picture of Sultan and Morsi at a campaign event dated May 13:
Here is one of Morsi’s campaign flyers noting Sultan’s support (top row, second from the left):
In case there was any remaining uncertainty about Sultan’s ties to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Sultan led a Muslim Brotherhood rally and gave a fiery speech in Tahrir Square on a live June 21 broadcast on Al-Jazeera: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2Ro-Qh8QY&feature=player_embedded
No doubt officials at the Columbus Dispatch will say I’m an Islamophobe for mentioning Sultan’s exercise of democracy on behalf of his preferred political party in his native homeland of Egypt.
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Whatever happened to the respected Islamic scholar and interfaith moderate Salah Sultan, for whom the Columbus Dispatch was driven to publicly castigate me for daring to call him a terror-loving, terrorist-associating, racist Muslim Brotherhood leader?
He was a figment of the newspaper’s imagination, fed to them by their friends in the local Islamic community and by Sultan himself, and aided in no small measure by soothing narratives of interfaith peace and harmony many hold to despite all the conflicting evidence.
All along, he really was who I said he was. But it’s doubtful that the local media will correct the record.
But why does the record need to be corrected? Since his activity is entirely outside the U.S. now (he’s been banned from reentering the country), surely there’s really no relation between what happens over there and our communities here? Even though everything I said about Salah Sultan going back to April 2006 has been verified, my stated fears of a “hometown jihad” are nothing more than the paranoid fantasies of a raging, racist Islamophobe, right?
I’ll answer that question here at PJ Media shortly.
Read the entire meticulously researched expose at PJ Media
The most recent salvo in the kerfuffle between Minnesota congressmen Michele Bachmann and Keith Ellison finds Ellison attacking Bachmann for her statements made on Glenn Beck’s radio program on Thursday, where she said:
GLENN: Okay. So when you wrote this letter, then Keith Ellison comes out. And Keith Ellison is ‑‑ he has a record of being the Mafia hitman.
CONGRESSWOMAN BACHMANN: Well, he has a long record of being associated with CAIR and with the Muslim Brotherhood. CAIR is an unindicted co‑conspirator, as stated in the large terrorist financing case that we’ve had in the United States of America and so he came out and essentially wanted to shut down the inspectors general from even looking into any of the questions that we were asking. So he wanted to shut it down. In response I wrote another letter back to Keith Ellison, a 16‑page letter which I would encourage all of your listeners to go and read this letter. It’s what I call a bulletproof letter. I have 59 footnotes with one example after another of the penetration of the Muslim Brotherhood into the federal government…
“I am not now, nor have I ever been, associated with the Muslim Brotherhood,” he said with a laugh.
In fact, it is his denial that is laughable.
But this weekend Ellison doubled-down on his denial, telling Politico:
I support American institutions. I don’t know enough about [the Muslim Brotherhood]. What I know about them is that in Egypt, one of their candidates has ascended to the presidency. I’ve never met that person. But I do think the United States should have a foreign policy where we talk to foreign leaders of all kinds. But no, I don’t have any, I don’t have any Muslim Brotherhood connections that she’s talking about.
According to Ellison’s impeccable logic, since he hasn’t met Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader and new Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, therefore he has no knowledge of the Muslim Brotherhood.
But a mountain of evidence of his contacts with and support of Muslim Brotherhood front groups – identified as such by the U.S. Government – shows that the Muslim Brotherhood definitely knows who he is.
As Scott Johnson at Powerline noted at the time that Ellison had conflicting stories about who paid for the trip:
The Star Tribune first reported on Ellison’s hajj in two puff pieces by Mitch Anderson this past December. Anderson first reported the statement of Ellison spokesman Rick Jauert that Ellison had paid for the trip himself. When Anderson returned to the story, he got such deep stuff from Ellison as this: “This is just me trying to be the best person I can be.” In the second story Anderson also reported that the MAS Minnesota paid for Ellison’s trip to Mecca, though Anderson didn’t pause to note the discrepancy between his two stories on this point.
As Fox News reported on the MAS sponsorship of Ellison’s trip, Ellison returned the favor to his benefactors by speaking at the 2007 and 2008 MAS-Minnesota conventions.
But who is MAS?
Fortunately, federal prosecutors cleared up the matter back in December 2007 when they said in a court filing in the federal appeal of convicted terror operative Sabri Benkahla (page 58, footnote 13):
MAS was founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.
As support for that statement the federal prosecutors cited a September 2004 investigative report by the Chicago Tribune, which chronicles the efforts by the international Muslim Brotherhood to create Islamic states worldwide including the U.S.
The group identified by the Chicago Tribune as the main organization operating today on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood was MAS:
In recent years, the U.S. Brotherhood operated under the name Muslim American Society, according to documents and interviews. One of the nation’s major Islamic groups, it was incorporated in Illinois in 1993 after a contentious debate among Brotherhood members.
So in 2004 – four years before Ellison’s MAS-financed trip to Saudi Arabia – MAS had been identified in the establishment media as a front for the Muslim Brotherhood.
And in case there was any confusion on Ellison’s part, federal prosecutors addressed the issue again in December 2007 – one year before Ellison’s MAS hajj trip – saying that MAS was “the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.”
That alone should prompt an apology by Ellison to Bachmann.
As the late Billy Mays would say, but wait, there’s more.
Another group that Ellison has a longtime association with is the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), going back at least as far as his 2006 campaign when he was first elected to Congress.
As Joel Mowbray reported at the Washington Times during that campaign, CAIR had raised tens of thousands of dollars in bundled donations for Ellison’s election war chest and held CAIR fundraisers specifically for Ellison’s campaign.
Since that time, Ellison has reciprocated CAIR’s support by appearing at a number of fundraisers on the group’s behalf.
For example, immediately after his election Ellison gave this videotaped address to the CAIR National fundraiser on November 18, 2006:
The following year Ellison spoke on behalf of the CAIR-Los Angeles chapter:
And lest Ellison and his backers claim this is old news, here’s an advertisement for a CAIR-Los Angeles fundraiser where Ellison was the keynote speaker in May 2011:
Please note that this CAIR fundraiser was co-sponsored by none other than MAS.
So who is CAIR?
Again, federal prosecutors and the federal courts have sufficiently cleared up the matter.
In the same December 2007 federal appeals court filing by federal prosecutors in the Benkahla case that identified MAS as “the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America”, they also stated with respect to CAIR (page 58, footnote 13):
Moreover, from its founding by Muslim Brotherhood leaders, CAIR conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists.
So according to the federal government, CAIR was not only founded by the Muslim Brotherhood, but it was founded to help support terrorists. (Bet you won’t read that in the Huffington Post.)
Citing specific cases, the letters were sent just one day after Neil Munro at the Daily Caller revealed that the Justice Department Inspector General had launched an investigation into the FBI’s ongoing contacts with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), despite a stated policy of having no contacts with the group after FBI agents testified and numerous exhibits were entered into evidence in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism finance trial that showed CAIR was a front for Hamas.
Even before the conclusion of the Holy Land Foundation trial, federal prosecutors had said in court filings in the Sabri Behkahla appeal that “Moreover, from its founding by Muslim Brotherhood leaders, CAIR conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists.” (pg. 58, fn 13)
That Inspector General investigation was launched after White House Director for Community Partnerships told Munro that the administration had “hundreds” of contacts with CAIR despite the FBI’s stated policy.
In February 2010 letter to members of Congress from Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich, he explained the evidence from the Holy Land Foundation trial implicating CAIR in the Hamas support conspiracy.
So that’s the context for the dust-up last week between Rep. Michele Bachmann and Rep. Keith Ellison (Ellison is the first Muslim member of Congress). After the DOJ Inspector General announced he was looking into the FBI/CAIR contacts, the five members of Congress sent their letters to the respective Inspectors General asking them to investigate specific incidents of known or possible Muslim Brotherhood front group’s influence with these government agencies.
In response, last Thursday Ellison sent a letter to all five members demanding that they provide sources for the claims in their Inspector General request letters. Half of Ellison’s letter was an ad hominem attack on Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy. A number of media outlets, including the Huffington Post and Bachmann’s hometown newspaper, the St. Cloud Times, jumped into the fray attacking the signatories of the request letters for “Islamophobia” and ne0-McCarthism.
What they didn’t expect is that less than 24 hours later Bachmann would respond with a 16-page rejoinder with 59 footnotes to original sources backing up their claims.
I do note that the facts we presented in the Inspector General request letters are based on information presented by U.S. Government officials in court documents, court evidence, correspondence and briefings with Congress and public statements, in addition to known media reporting. These letters were far from sole-sourced as you maintain in your letter.
Throughout the letter, Bachmann notes that Ellison had deliberately misrepresented the facts stated in the Inspector General request letters to gin up his “Islamophobia conspiracy” accusations.
What follows is an impressive point-by-point systematic dismantling of Ellison. Click the link to read the letter:
At the end of the letter, Bachmann states that since sending the June 13th letters, additional information has come forth to raise even greater questions:
Since we sent the Inspector General letters requesting further investigation, other shocking incidents have occurred. Chief among these was the decision just a few weeks ago by the State Department to give a member of an Egyptian designated terrorist group (which is still listed as such by the State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism54) a visa to not only enter the country in violation of the federal laws prohibiting material support for terrorism, but to be granted a meeting inside the White House with National Security Council officials.55
The terror group member used the opportunity of his White House visit to call for the release of the imprisoned leader of his organization, the “Blind Sheikh,” Omar Abdel Rahman, who is currently serving a life sentence for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and later planned terror plots inside the U.S.56
She finishes the letter by observing the duplicity with which the U.S. Government has handled its Muslim outreach by saying one thing about terror-tied Islamic groups in federal court, and then pretending that such information doesn’t exist day-to-day:
Administration prosecutors and investigators have made statements backed up by considerable evidence in court raising serious concerns about many of the Muslim Brotherhood front groups, but the day-to-day operation of these departments and agencies continue “outreach” programs involving these exact same organizations as if the evidence presented in federal court or statements made in search warrant applications doesn’t exist.
In light of the information revealed during the Holy Land Foundation trial, the FBI officially cut ties with CAIR because of their activities in support of Hamas.57And yet just last month the new White House Director for Community Partnerships admitted that this administration has had “hundreds” of meetings with CAIR in spite of the FBI’s stated policy.58It has been reported the White House has worked to conceal these ties (in one case, with ISNA and MPAC).59
As members of Congress, we are charged to oversee and hold accountable all government agencies – a charge given to us by the Constitution on behalf of the citizens of the United States. To do anything less is to subvert the oaths we took as members to protect and defend the Constitution. For us to fail to demand action on the part of the Inspector Generals on this matter is to fail to uphold the oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States.
It has to be said that when it comes to federal prosecutors identifying Muslim Brotherhood front groups in the United States, Rep. Keith Ellison is no disinterested observer.
Back in December 2008, Ellison took a hajj trip to Saudi Arabia funded by the Muslim American Society (MAS).
But in fact, more than a year before, federal prosecutors also addressed the origins of MAS in the Sabri Benkahla appeal, stating that “MAS was founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.” The Chicago Tribune in September 2004 wrote an extensive expose of MAS as a recruitment and ideological training ground for the extremist international Muslim Brotherhood.
As Fox Newsnoted the following year when Ellison finally had to disclose in congressional filings that MAS had paid for his trip, Ellison had been a keynote speaker at the MAS 2007 and 2008 annual national convention. He has also been a regular speaker at events for CAIR and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), both of which were identified by the Justice Department in the Holy Land Foundation trial as Muslim Brotherhood fronts.
So in this case we have a congressman with extensive and documented ties to organizations identified by the U.S. government as Muslim Brotherhood fronts going to the media and attacking fellow colleagues for raising the issue of Muslim Brotherhood influence in the federal government. Such is the Kafkaesque world we live in.
The media’s response to Bachmann’s letter over the weekend is also instructive.
Activists in Tennessee are asking about a taxpayer-sponsored terror training conference scheduled for later this month, as federal and state agencies have enacted a high level of secrecy regarding the two-day event and its scheduled speakers.
The terrorism conference is being sponsored by the Middle Tennessee U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Nashville Joint Terrorism Task Force, and is being held at the offices of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation on February 27 and 28. Additional partners include the FBI’s Continuing Education and Professional Development Unit, the Tennessee Office of Homeland Security, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, and the American Muslim Advisory Council.
According to a flyer sent to federal and state law enforcement agencies:
Topics include: Introduction to Political Violence, Origins of Islam, Frameworks for Understanding Global Jihad, Radicalization, Regional Hot spots, Domestic Case Studies, Countering Violent Extremism, The Internet, Social Media, and Investigations Online.
Despite inquiries by PJ Media in recent weeks, the conference organizers have refused to provide any details about who will be instructing law enforcement officials on these issues.
Last week I requested a copy of the agenda and speakers for the conference from the U.S. Attorney’s contact listed on the conference flyer. This past Monday I received a response from David Boling, the U.S. Attorney’s public information officer:
Your request for the documents referenced below was forwarded to me for disposition. This training conference is not open to the public, therefore you would need to file a FOIA request for this information.
It is unclear what the event being closed to the public has anything to do with providing the information I requested, especially since it appears that two private outside organizations will be directly involved in providing the training.
Perhaps the presence and agendas of these outside organizations are why these government agencies are stonewalling requests for information. Mystery surrounds one of the private partner organizations for the terrorism training — the American Muslim Advisory Council — which is listed on the event flyer as a partner in the conference.
I asked Jennifer Donnals, communications director for the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security, for information related to the American Muslim Advisory Council. She replied:
The American Muslim Advisory Council is a private organization. You will need to contact the organization to get the names of its members.
However, the Tennessee Secretary of State’s office has no registration information for any such organization. Whey I asked for a contact for the organization, Ms. Donnals provided a cell phone number and no contact name.
So: none of the federal or state agencies are willing to provide any information about an organization that has partnered with these agencies for the upcoming conference, and presumably will be helping to provide some of the training.
One reason that local activists are concerned about who will be brought in to train law enforcement officials is the ongoing practice of federal and state agencies partnering with organizations and individuals that have been identified by federal prosecutors as conspiring to support overseas terrorist organizations. The federal judge who presided over the Holy Land Foundation trial — the largest terrorism financing trial in American history — expounded in a sealed court filing about such terror support activity by some of the most prominent Islamic organizations in the country. Some of the same organizations have been advising the White House, the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Homeland Security on their policies for addressing “violent extremism”.
