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Obama and John Kerry Covering Ransom and Iran’s Terror Attacks

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Why Iran supported Houthi attacks against the US Navy

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LWJ: As activity in the Red Sea has heated up this month, debate rages on in Washington about Tehran’s role in attacks against US forces there. The Pentagon confirmed this month that the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen were responsible for launching cruise missiles at the USS Mason on Oct. 9 and 12, while it still investigates a potential third attack on Oct. 15. The confirmed attacks, which prompted US strikes against Houthi installations on the coast, were reportedly in retaliation for US backing of the Saudi-led coalition aimed at expelling them from the capital.

It is not definitively known whether Iran supplied the missiles, but the motives are clear as to why they would have supported the attack.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Hezbollah have provided the Houthis with money, training, advising, and sophisticated weaponry for more than a decade, according to the State Department’s Country Reports on Terrorism 2012 (though that language was dropped in 2015). The Guard is believed to have transferred rocket and missile capabilities, as well. The US and its allies have intercepted five shipments from Iran to the Houthis since April 2015 that have included coastal defense systems, according to a senior U.S. official who spoke with NBC News. Tehran has stepped up its assistance since May 2016, sending anti-ship missiles, explosives, and personnel through Oman, according to Reuters, who spoke with Western and Iranian intelligence officials.

Some senior US defense officials say the missile system used against US forces may have been supplied by Iran, identified as the Chinese-made C-802, which was supplied to Iran and not to Yemen. Other senior military officials, however, say that the missiles could have been models that the Houthi forces already possessed. Yemeni military units under the command of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh that defected to the Houthis had access to the C-801, which was supplied by China to Yemen in 1995, and unsuccessfully launched several at Saudi-led coalition between Oct. and Dec. 2015, according to Tom Cooper in War is Boring.

Analysts who spoke with The Long War Journal believe the Houthi-Saleh forces may have used C-801 or C-802 against the US Navy, and that the C-801 was likely fired at the United Arab Emirates-operated vessel on Oct. 1, based on video footage posted by the Houthis. Iranian and Hezbollah media publicized a drill held by the Houthi-Saleh Yemeni coast on Oct. 4 in reaction to the US Navy dispatch of the Mason, Nitze, and Ponce, warning “the enemies” and “invading Saudi coalition” that any ship approaching Yemen’s waters “without permission” would be targeted.

Although there is no conclusive evidence yet on the weapons system used against US forces, Tehran’s political posturing following the Oct. 8 bombing in Sanaa foreshadowed its support for the missile launches against U.S. forces. On Oct. 9, the IRGC released a statement holding “America, the Zionist regime, and the House of Saud” responsible for the bombing in Sanaa. Top IRGC officials also held the US directly responsible for the attack and for selling weapons to Saudi Arabia. Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, slammed the bombing, and claimed that the attack against the UAE ship was a “legitimate defense” of Yemen’s territory.

Then, on Oct. 13, the IRGC-affiliated agency Tasnim announced that a conventional Iranian Navy group had earlier departed for the Gulf of Aden and the Bab el-Mandeb on Oct. 5 in response to the US dispatch of Navy warships. Iran’s 44th flotilla, comprised of the Alvand frigate and Bushehr support vessel, reportedly intends to “protect shipping lines under attack by pirates” in that area. The deployment, however, was also intended to reinforce Tehran’s commitment to the Houthis, as well as signal Iran’s reach into the Gulf of Aden. Read more here from LWJ.

**** Primer:

The Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program is a form of security assistance authorized by the Arms Export Control Act (AECA), as amended [22 U.S.C. 2751, et. seq.] and a fundamental tool of U.S. foreign policy.

Then we go back to the money Obama and Kerry approved to be paid to Iran:

The Story of Obama’s Ransom Payment to Iran Gets Worse

America paid Iran $1.7 billion in cash—funds that by law were not to be released unless and until Iran paid what it owed to American victims of its terrorism.

Mosaic: On the morning of January 17, 2016, President Obama declared that this was “a good day, because, once again, we’re seeing what’s possible with strong American diplomacy.”

The Iran nuclear deal had been implemented the day before—an example, the President said, of his “smart, patient, and disciplined approach to the world.” Now Iran was releasing five American hostages, the result of the administration’s “tireless” efforts. “On the sidelines of the nuclear negotiations,” the president explained, “our diplomats at the highest level, including Secretary [of State John] Kerry, used every meeting to push Iran to release our Americans.” In return for that gesture, the president continued, he was making a “reciprocal humanitarian gesture”: namely, clemency for seven Iranians imprisoned or awaiting trial for criminal violations of American sanctions. Later it was announced that the U.S. had also dropped outstanding warrants against another fourteen Iranians.

The president then added something else: with the nuclear deal implemented, and the hostages released, “the time was right” for “resolving a financial dispute that dated back more than three decades.” That dispute involved an Iranian claim regarding money advanced by the government of the Shah for military equipment that Washington did not deliver after the 1979 revolution. Now, the president asserted, we were returning Iran’s “own funds,” including “appropriate interest,” but “much less than the amount Iran sought.” The savings, he said, came potentially to “billions”—a figure quantified by his press secretary as “up to $6 billion or $7 billion” in a “very good deal for taxpayers.” In other words, now that the larger issues had been resolved, the U.S. was simply issuing a long-delayed refund to Iran, and in the process saving Americans a significant amount of money.

The president’s statement, however, omitted a great deal of relevant information. The president was returning $400 million in Iran’s “Foreign Military Sales” (FMS) account with the Pentagon, plus $1.3 billion in interest, but he failed to mention that in 1981, when Iran filed its claim before the Claims Tribunal at The Hague, the U.S. had responded with a counterclaim for $817 million for Iran’s violations of its obligations under the FMS program. In 2016, with both the claim and the counterclaim still pending, it was possible that Iran owed billions of dollars to the U.S., not the reverse.

Nor did the president mention the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, signed by President Bill Clinton in 2000 and stipulating that Iran’s FMS account could not be refunded until court judgments held by the U.S. government against Iran for damages from terrorist acts against American citizens were resolved to America’s satisfaction. Those judgments, including interest accumulated between 2001 and 2016, totaled about $1 billion. The president did not explain how, under the 2000 law, with those judgments still outstanding, he could pay Iran anything at all.

Nor did the president mention that his “refund” to Iran was being paid in untraceable European cash, a fact discovered by reporters seven months later. He would then contend that, in light of the sanctions on banking transactions with Iran, “we had to give them cash.” But the sanction regulations expressly authorize bank payments to settle Iran’s claims at The Hague, as Michael Mukasey, the former U.S. attorney general, later testified to Congress, adding that there was “no legitimate reason why [Iran] should want cash other than to pursue terrorism.” Indeed, the Hizballah International Financing Prevention Act, passed by Congress in December 2015, had resulted in Tehran’s needing significantly more cash to continue funding its terrorist organization in Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere.

In a February 3 letter, Ed Royce, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, asked the administration to provide the legal basis for paying Iran’s claim, as well as a specific computation of the interest paid. He repeated the request in a June 1 letter, adding that according to information provided to him by the Congressional Research Service, the Hague tribunal paid 10-percent simple interest on such claims. Computed at that rate, and before considering the U.S. counterclaim under the FMS and the terror judgments still outstanding, Iran’s total claim on the FMS account was virtually identical to the $1.7 billion the administration paid, with no “billions” in savings.

To date, the administration has released no legal analysis to support its payment, no evaluation of the U.S. counterclaim, no text of the settlement agreement, no computation of the interest, no credible explanation for issuing the payment in cash, and no document showing the approval of the attorney general as required for issuing such a payment. For months, the administration hid important facts—including how the settlement was paid—even in response to direct congressional inquiries.

The $1.7-billion payment thus appears to have been a ransom, just as an Iranian general claimed it was at the time—a huge cash payment to accompany the lopsided exchange of 21 Iranians, duly charged or convicted under American law, for five American hostages who had been seized by Iran and held on fabricated charges in secret proceedings.

 

As for the outstanding claims against Tehran for the terror judgments, the administration has asserted that these were satisfied “by securing a favorable resolution on the interest owed to Iran.” What favorable resolution? In effect, the settlement cost the United States $2.7 billion—the $1.7 billion in cash plus about $1 billion in forgiven court judgments—to pay a claim that was not yet due, may not in fact have been owed, and may have been more than offset by the U.S. counterclaim that exceeded Iran’s own claim.

And therein lies the most troubling aspect of President Obama’s settlement, which is neither its amount nor its appearance as ransom but the fact that Iran succeeded in having U.S. taxpayers bear the cost of the damages owed by Iran for committing despicable acts of terrorism against them. To understand the magnitude of what the President did on January 17, some background is necessary.

 

In April 1995, Alisa Flatow, a twenty-year-old Brandeis University honors student spending her junior year abroad in Israel, boarded a bus in Jerusalem bound for a popular resort area in Gaza. It was the height of the “peace process,” celebrated the year before with Nobel Peace prizes. As the bus entered Gaza, a van filled with explosives slammed into it. Eight people, including Alisa, were killed, and more than 40 others were injured. The attack was carried out by a faction of Islamic Jihad controlled, financed, and directed by the highest levels of Iran’s government.

Alisa’s father, Stephen M. Flatow, filed suit in U.S. federal court against Iran, pursuant to legislation Congress had enacted permitting such suits against state sponsors of terrorist attacks on American citizens. A federal district court issued a 35-page opinion, Flatow v. Islamic Republic of Iran (1998), awarding a total of $20 million in compensatory damages as well as punitive damages, with both types of damages specifically authorized by the U.S. Congress. The court noted that expert testimony had “detailed an annual expenditure [by Iran] of approximately $75 million for terrorist activities” and that Iran “is so brazen in its sponsorship of terrorist activities that it carries a line item in its national budget for this purpose.” Accordingly, the court awarded punitive damages of $225 million—three times Iran’s publicly-disclosed annual terrorist budget. It was the minimum amount the expert had testified was necessary to have a significant deterrent effect, which was what Congress had intended to achieve in its authorizing legislation.

Over the next four years, a series of cases held Iran liable for similarly horrific terror operations. Cicippio v. Islamic Republic of Iran (1998) involved Joseph Cicippio (comptroller of the American University of Beirut), David Jacobsen (CEO of the medical center there), and Frank Reed (who operated two private schools in Beirut)—all abducted by Hizballah, an entity the court found was “sponsored, financed, and controlled by Iran.” Jacobsen had been chained and blindfolded for eighteen months; Reed had been held blindfolded or in darkness for more than three-and-a-half years; Cicippio had been held for over five years, chained in scorpion-infested cells and randomly beaten throughout his captivity. The court awarded them a total of $65 million in compensatory damages.

Anderson v. Islamic Republic of Iran (2000) involved Terry Anderson, chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press, who was kidnapped in Beirut by Hizballah and held shackled in filthy conditions for nearly seven years, fed only bread and water. The court again found Iran responsible, and awarded $41.2 million in compensatory damages and $300 million in punitive damages.

Eisenfeld v. Islamic Republic of Iran (2000) was brought by Leonard Eisenfeld for the death of his son Matthew, a twenty-five-year-old Yale graduate studying at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Israel, and by Arline Duker for the death of her twenty-year-old daughter, Sara, a Barnard College graduate enrolled in a program at the Hebrew University. They had been on an Israeli bus, en route to visit the archeological site at Petra, Jordan, when a passenger—acting under directions from a Hamas official funded and trained by Iran—detonated a bomb that destroyed the bus and killed them and others. The court awarded $22.5 million in compensatory damages and $300 million in punitive damages.

In still other cases, Iran was held legally responsible for the kidnapping, torture, and death of CIA station chief William Buckley in Beirut; the kidnapping of Father Lawrence Jenco, the director of Catholic Relief Services in Beirut, held for 564 days in conditions described by the court as “little better than [for] a caged animal”; the kidnapping of Thomas M. Sutherland, the dean of Agricultural and Food Sciences at the American University of Beirut, tortured for more than six years; the murder of Petty Officer Raymond Wagner in the 1983 car bombing of the American embassy in Beirut; the murder of Petty Officer Robert Stethem, beaten during the hijacking of TWA Flight 847, his body dumped on the tarmac, and the holding of nine other American hostages on that flight; and many other hostage-takings, with one court noting that Tehran “virtually directed the terms and conditions under which hostages would be held or released.”

In all, sixteen cases were decided against Iran by courts in the United States between 1998 and 2004, with awards of compensatory damages totaling some $400 million and punitive damages totaling $3.5 billion.

Of course, the problem faced by each victorious plaintiff was collecting the judgment. Stephen Flatow, after unsuccessfully seeking to have the damages paid out of various Iranian assets held in the United States, learned of the $400 million in the FMS fund. The Clinton administration had supported the legislation that allowed suits such as Flatow’s, but then strenuously opposed any effort to have the judgments satisfied from that fund. In its 1999 brief in federal court, the administration stated that the U.S. had a $817-million counterclaim against Iran, that the “current cash balance in Iran’s FMS program account [was] about $400 million,” and that “It is unknown how much, if any, of that amount will be owed to Iran by the United States until the claims before the [Hague] Tribunal are resolved” (emphasis added).

The court rejected Flatow’s contention that the FMS funds were the property of Iran, which could satisfy his judgment, on the grounds that “the United States does not share [his] characterization of these U.S. Treasury funds as ‘Iranian property.’” The court held instead that the FMS fund was U.S. property.

With Flatow’s subsequent appeal pending, Congress and the Clinton administration agreed on legislation directing the U.S. Treasury to pay the American holders of terror judgments against Iran for the amount of their compensatory damages plus 10 percent of their punitive damages, up to the amount in the FMS fund. The law subrogated the United States—meaning that the terror judgments became direct U.S. government claims against Iran to the extent the Treasury had paid them. Finally, the law included a provision to ensure that Iran would ultimately have to bear the cost of those payments: “no funds shall be paid to Iran . . . from the [FMS] fund until such subrogated claims have been dealt with to the satisfaction of the United States.”

Sixteen years later, with the $400 million still held by the U.S. government, and with no payments by Iran of a single cent of any of the sixteen court judgments against it, President Obama nevertheless gave the $400 million in the FMS account to Iran, plus interest. His statement that he was merely refunding Iran’s “own funds” directly contradicts the court’s determination in 1999. Indeed, since he made no mention of “resolving” the unpaid terror judgments in his January 17 statement, it is reasonable to conclude that the president simply ignored the 2000 statute as well.

 

January 17, 2016, was thus very far from “a good day . . . [for] strong American diplomacy.” It was a day of extraordinary diplomatic deception, practiced not against Iran—which knew exactly what the administration was doing—but against the American people, who were intentionally kept in the dark by the administration about critical aspects of the deal. President Obama paid Iran $1.7 billion that may not have been owed; paid it in cash—the currency of international terror; did not tell the American people he had relieved Iran from longstanding court judgments; did not add the cost of those judgments to the $1.7 billion payment that he announced; and did not faithfully execute the 2000 law—all the while congratulating himself on his accomplishment and claiming he had saved the U.S. billions.

The president’s actions with respect to the lawsuits won by American victims of Iranian terror, after years of litigation, stand in stark contrast to the resolution of the court cases concerning Libya’s terrorism, including the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. In 2008, Libya sought to re-establish relations with the United States, but Congress and the State Department blocked action until Libya satisfied the terror claims of American citizens against it. Libya agreed to pay and did pay the U.S. $1.5 billion to resolve those claims. Nothing of the sort accompanied the seemingly endless negotiations with Iran over the nuclear deal, as the administration made concession after concession to obtain it.

January 17, 2016 was in fact a shameful day in the history of American diplomacy. The only question is which aspect was most shameful: the craven abandonment of American claims against the Islamic Republic of Iran for past terrorism, the provision of a huge amount of cash enabling it to engage in future terrorism, the systematic mendacity about the process and the willful failure to inform the American people of everything that had been done, or the underlying policy of appeasing Iran that precipitated both the process and its cover-up.

What happened on January 17, 2016 was much worse than paying ransom.

Terrifying Immigration Numbers, and Court Decision

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Hundreds of Migrants Pitch Tents on Paris Streets as Calais Camp Shuts

(REUTERS) – The number of migrants sleeping rough on the streets of Paris has risen by at least a third since the start of the week when the “Jungle” shanty town in Calais was evacuated, officials said on Friday.

Along the bustling boulevards and a canal in a northeastern corner of Paris, hundreds of tents have been pitched by migrants – mostly Africans who say they are from Sudan – with cardboard on the ground to try and insulate them from the autumn chill.

While the presence of migrants there is not new, it has grown substantially this week, Colombe Brossel, Paris deputy mayor in charge of security issues, told Reuters.

“We have seen a big increase since the start of the week. Last night, our teams counted 40 to 50 new tents there in two days,” Brossel said, adding there was now a total of 700 to 750.

This means there are some 2,000-2,500 sleeping in the area, up from around 1,500 a few days before, she said.

“It’s not a huge explosion in numbers but there is a clear increase,” she said. “Some of them come from Calais, others from other places.”

 migrants Paris JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty

After years as serving as an illegal base camp for migrants trying to get to Britain, the “Jungle” at Calais was finally bulldozed this week and the more than 6,000 residents of the ramshackle camp near the English channel were relocated to shelters around France. More here.

Sessions: ‘Critical alert,’ 817,740 illegals crossed last year

In a bid to put the issue of illegal immigration back into the presidential debate, outspoken critic Sen. Jeff Sessions on Monday issued a “Critical Alert” warning of a potentially historic surge of over the border.

“We are simply overwhelmed,” his statement said. In it he estimated the Fiscal Year 2016 illegal crossings at 817,740.

“There is a crisis at our southwest border — one that in many ways exceeds the crisis we saw just two years ago, one that further undermines the integrity of our immigration system, but one that the most of the media has elected to ignore,” said Sessions, an advisor to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

  • U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is currently detaining more than 40,000 aliens, with internal predictions indicating that the number could reach 47,000 in the coming months.
  • In fiscal 2016, the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended 408,870 illegal aliens at the southern border; a number 23 percent higher than in fiscal 2015.
  • Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, was quoted as saying just half of illegals are caught crossing the border.
  • Calculating illegal entries based on that formula, 408,870 illegal aliens evaded detection in fiscal 2016, for a total of approximately 817,740 illegal entries into the United States last year.

Sessions said the border crisis demands a new president and approach to reforming immigration starting with a closed border.

*****

In part from Breitbart: Border Patrol Agent and NBPC President Brandon Judd spoke exclusively with Breitbart Texas and condemned the leadership of the Border Patrol’s parent agency, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), for allegedly “keeping this information secret” ahead of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

“We are at breaking point. We have the highest number of illegal aliens in custody in history in Border Patrol’s RGV Sector and this information has been kept from the American public,” said Agent Judd. “The talk of amnesty has once again created pull factors and encouraged people from all over the world to cross Mexico and then cross our porous southern border to illegally enter the U.S. We are simply overwhelmed.” (See CBP’s response below.)

Agent Judd told Breitbart Texas that Americans should vote their conscience, but they should do so with all of the information available. “This is an issue of the federal government restricting crucial information from the public ahead of a presidential election and it is unacceptable. Americans deserve to know the truth. Our Border Patrol agents deserve for Americans to know what they are really facing. Too many Border Patrol agents have given their lives and left loved ones to grieve for CBP leadership to play these types of political games ahead of such an impactful election.”

Agent Cabrera said CBP were in fact concealing the gravity of the current border crisis. “One side in this coming election is downplaying illegal immigration and concealing this information only serves to help that agenda,” said Agent Cabrera.

Breitbart Texas reached out to the RGV Sector PIO for the Border Patrol and did not receive a response, though not much time was given to the agency. (See update below. A strong denial of the agents’ claims was issued by CBP to Breitbart Texas after publication.)

Historically, CBP, Border Patrol’s parent agency, has had to correct false assertions and denials. Perhaps the most glaring example occurred in June 2014 when an official CBP Twitter account directly accused this reporter of publishing a false report, only to later admit the report was accurate and true.

CBP has released numbers indicating near-record apprehensions; however, the assertions from the agents in the NBPC pertain to people who illegally entered the U.S. and are currently in custody in Border Patrol facilities. Agent Judd stated, “There is a significant difference between apprehension numbers and numbers in custody in our facilities. These record numbers in custody indicate that these are people who are not voluntarily returning. This indicates that these people will, under current policy, be released into our communities and given amnesty. This record number of people currently in detention is significant because the RGV Sector is dealing with the Gulf and Los Zetas cartels. This means our agents are busy babysitting record numbers in facilities instead of patrolling the border and stopping these murderers, kidnappers, and drug smugglers.” More here.

*****

Judge rebukes administration over few admissions for Syrian Christian refugees

FNC: A federal judge has rebuked the Obama administration over the lack of Syrian Christians being admitted from the war-zone, calling it a “perplexing discrepancy” that only 56 of 11,000 Syrian refugees to the U.S. in fiscal 2016 were Christian.

The rebuke came in a Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals opinion on a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by The Heartland Alliance’s National Immigrant Justice Center – a liberal human rights group that advocates for immigrants and asylum-seekers — seeking information on certain terror groups.

As first reported by attorney and former FEC member Hans von Spakovsky for The Daily Signal, while the court found in favor of the government, Judge Daniel Manion addressed the refugee issue and took aim at the Obama administration over how few Christians had been admitted to the U.S.

“It is well‐documented that refugees to the United States are not representative of that war‐torn area of the world. Perhaps 10 percent of the population of Syria is Christian, and yet less than one‐half of one percent of Syrian refugees admitted to the United States this year are Christian,” he wrote.

According to government figures, of the almost 11,000 Syrian refugees admitted to the United States in fiscal 2016, only 56 were Christian.

RELATED: ‘GROSS INJUSTICE’: OF 10,000 SYRIAN REFUGEES TO THE US, 56 ARE CHRISTIAN

“To date, there has not been a good explanation for this perplexing discrepancy,” Manion noted.

The numbers are disproportionate to the Christian population in Syria, estimated last year by the U.S. government to make up roughly 10 percent of the population. Since the outbreak of civil war in 2011, it is estimated that between 500,000 and 1 million Christians have fled the country, while many have been targeted and slaughtered by the Islamic State.

Manion qualified his remarks by saying that his point “is not to suggest that any refugee group is more or less welcome: quite the contrary” but warned the Obama administration against failing to provide states with enough data on the people coming in.

In the case, the NIJC was requesting the identities of Tier III terrorist organizations, which are not publicly available. The administration argued that Tier III terrorist organizations “tend to be groups about which the U.S. government does not have good intelligence, making it essential that [DHS] be able to obtain information about them during screening interviews that are as focused and complete as possible.”

Manion noted that potential ties to a Tier III organization like a Christian militia may be why the government is not letting in as many Christians, but that it was impossible to tell since the information is not publicly available.

“It is at least possible that incidental affiliation with some Christian militia could lead an immigration officer to deny entry to Syrians on this basis. That would be a dubious consequence,” he wrote.

A State Department spokesperson told FoxNews.com in September that religion was only one of many factors used in determining a refugee’s eligibility to enter the United States.

Southern Poverty Law Center Just Added More Names

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A New Blacklist From the Southern Poverty Law Center Marks the Demise of a Once-Vital Organization

15 prominent writers and thinkers are labeled “anti-Muslim extremists”—Why?

By Lee Smith

Tablet: Late last week, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which became deservedly famous in the 1980s for combating violent white-power hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis, published a list of 15 individuals it labels as particularly threatening anti-Muslim extremists. It is sad but telling that the SPLC’s so-called field guide to Muslim-haters is not a list of violent extremists—who certainly do exist—but is instead a blacklist of prominent writers whose opinions on a range of cultural and political issues are offensive to the SPLC. The SPLC blacklist list contains practicing Muslims like Maajid Nawaz, ex-Muslims like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, foreign-policy think-tankers like Frank Gaffney and Daniel Pipes, and right-wing firebrands like David Horowitz—none of whom could be reasonably described as anti-Muslim bigots.

I spoke to Nawaz on the phone in London to ask for his reaction. “A bunch of first-world, comfortable liberal Americans who are not Muslims have decided from their comfortable perch to label me, an activist who is working within his Muslim community to push back against extremism, an anti-Muslim extremist.”

On the face of it, it’s difficult to understand why Nawaz was listed as such. As he told me, he’s a proud Muslim. “I learned Arabic in order to read my holy book,” he said. “In an Intelligence Squared debate, I defended the proposition that Islam was a religion of peace. This was the same week that the man who attempted to bomb Times Square was sentenced so it wasn’t the friendliest New York audience. I hosted Morgan Freeman in a mosque for his documentary The Story of God.”

Nawaz takes the SPLC blacklist seriously, he told me, because he believes that it has put his life in danger. “They’ve put a target on my head,” he said. “This is what putting people on lists does. When Theo Van Gogh was killed in the Netherlands, a list was stuck to his body that included Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s name. It was a hit list. When Bangladeshi reformers were hacked to death by jihadist terrorists, they were working off lists. Only fascists produce lists.”

It’s not easy to understand how the SPLC got here. The organization started in 1971 as a civil-rights law firm designed to combat white-supremacist groups. In 1981 it won a civil suit against the Klan for $7 million that bankrupted the United Klans of America. In 1991, it used the same tactics to win a $12 million judgment against the White Aryan Resistance. It won a $6.5 million case against the Aryan Nations in 2001. Co-founder Morris Dees’ career was dramatized in a TV movie, Line of Fire.

For SPLC’s efforts against violent white supremacists, its members were frequently targeted for reprisal. Yet now, the SPLC is putting bounties on the heads of Muslims like Maajid Nawaz, who are opposed to Muslim extremism. Where the SPLC was once able to win legal battles through careful, often dangerous research that could stand up in court, the organization now identifies the Center for Security Policy, a hawkish right-wing think tank, as a hate group, right alongside the Ku Klux Klan. Where the organization once pushed for freedom for all regardless of race or creed, now it aims to silence those whose opinions it finds objectionable. In doing so, it makes it hard for any impartial observer to place much confidence in future claims about groups and individuals that may actually be dangerous.

Related reading: Letter written to the Justice Department about SPLC Listings

Perhaps in spite of the number of white supremacists who have moved into the light with the nomination of Donald Trump, the SPLC no longer has the resources to tackle those who threaten violence and act on it. Instead, it’s spending its time on Google and Twitter—and hoping to raise money by going after writers and intellectuals who get its goat.

What’s more troubling are the suggestions contained in the report that the SPLC no longer thinks that political violence and hate are a bad thing, or even real—as long as the people committing such acts are Muslims. Complaints against radical Islamist violence, the report bizarrely suggests, are

propaganda, the vast majority of it completely baseless, produced and popularized by a network of anti-Muslim extremists and their enablers. These men and women have shamelessly exploited terrorist attacks and the Syrian refugee crisis, among other things, to demonize the entire Islamic faith.

Sadly, a shocking number of these extremists are seen regularly on television news programs and quoted in the pages of our leading newspapers. There, they routinely espouse a wide range of utter falsehoods, all designed to make Muslims appear as bloodthirsty terrorists or people intent on undermining American constitutional freedoms. More often than not, these claims go uncontested.

Interestingly, the document fails to list the man who, according to this description, is the world’s most influential anti-Muslim extremist—President Barack Obama, who told the Atlantic  that young people in the Middle East are only thinking about how to kill Americans.

Obama isn’t a violent anti-Muslim extremist any more than the 15 people named here. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an outspoken critic of Islam and has a compelling personal narrative that reflects the story of millions of women and men who have suffered in the name of Islam. David Horowitz is a pugnacious right-wing intellectual who often engages in sharp propaganda. Daniel Pipes is a fierce adversary of Islamic extremism and a knowledgeable scholar of the Middle East. There is much to disagree with in what they and others identified in the SPLC write or argue. I find the work of a small number of the people listed in the report to be puerile. But neither they, nor anyone on this list, deserve to be listed alongside white supremacists who threaten or actually employ violence.

In reality, the SPLC’s field guide has little to do with real anti-Muslim extremism, the red-hot center of which these days is not America but Syria—where so-called secular dictator Bashar al-Assad has teamed up with Iran and Russia to slaughter nearly half a million Sunni Arabs. The SPLC document is simply an enemies’ list, of the kind that fascists, Stalinists, and other totalitarian thinkers can’t help producing. So it’s hardly surprising that the ghost of Stalin makes an appearance. In a paper nominally highlighting anti-Muslim sentiment, David Horowitz is chided for questioning why one professor identifies Paul Robeson as a “model of [American] patriotism.”

That the SPLC document seeks to re-litigate the case of Paul Robeson, who openly admired Stalin, is evidence that the field guide is simply a blunt instrument used to attack the enemies, personal and institutional, of the paper’s four contributing institutions—Southern Poverty Law Center, Media Matters for America, the Center for New Community, and ReThink Media. (Regarding the Robeson issue, perhaps it’s the pet project of SPLC Senior Fellow Mark Potok who has contributed to the People’s World, a publication affiliated with the Communist Party of the United States of America.)

Nor does the SPLC hide the fact that the purpose of its publication is to blacklist and silence its enemies. The field guide recommends to its consumers in the media that they, “research the background of extremist spokespeople and consider other sources, and if they do use anti-Muslim spokespeople, point out their extremism.”

Why is a liberal organization like the SPLC now using fascist tactics to blacklist enemies? Maajid Nawaz believes the organization has targeted him for a very specific reason. “The left is no longer about advancing progressive values,” he said. “For them, it’s now about tribal identities, and any internal critique is seen as treachery.” Nawaz also believes there may be another reason—the activists at the SPLC, he suggested, “may be influenced by Islamists themselves.” And there is evidence in the paper to suggest that Nawaz’s contention may have some truth to it.

The field guide attempts to rewrite history of the Muslim Student Association, for one. In its dossier on Horowitz, the SPLC complains that he

placed an ad in an April 2008 issue of a campus news­paper, The Daily Nexus, claiming that the Muslim Student Association was “founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the godfather of Al Qaeda and Hamas, to bring jihad into the heart of American higher education.” In fact, it had worked with Jewish campus groups, according to faculty members.

 Whether or not some chapters of the MSA worked with Jewish campus groups (while the University of California at Irvine chapter shouted down guest speaker Israeli ambassador Michael Oren in 2011), it’s established that Brotherhood members played a role in founding the MSA.

Even more telling is the rationale for blacklisting Nawaz. Among others, he “tweeted out a cartoon of Jesus and Muhammad—despite the fact that many Muslims see it as blasphemous to draw Muhammad. He said that he wanted ‘to carve out a space to be heard without constantly fearing the blasphemy charge.’ ”

That Nawaz tweeted out a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad in an effort to change the minds of Muslims who might automatically declare such an action to be blasphemy is the act not of an anti-Muslim extremist but a Muslim reformer. That the SPLC itself accuses him of blasphemy belongs not to the tradition of an American Civil Rights organization, but rather to the ideology of a religious fundamentalist organization, of the type that inspired the ISIS cadre that executed the staff of Charlie Hebdo.

The fact is that more than 40 years after its founding, the Southern Poverty Law Center is now aggressively defending the kind of violent supremacists it had once sought to prosecute, and attacking types like Nawaz it had once defended against violence. The suggestion that the organization has in fact switched sides will likely cause violent extremists of all shades and types to breathe a sigh of relief. It is also sign that there is something deeply wrong with our political culture.

****

In 2015:

(CNSNews.com) – John Carlin, the assistant attorney general for national security, announced Wednesday that the Justice Department is creating the new position of domestic terrorism counsel to combat the “real and present threat” of domestic extremism.

Carlin praised groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center “that dedicate themselves to examining what the threat is, observing it, and reporting on it,” adding that the work of the SPLC was “very important.”

The SPLC says it places groups — including conservative, Christian groups — on its “Hate List” based on their beliefs, not their propensity for violence.

“Homegrown violent extremists can be motivated by any viewpoint on the full spectrum of hate — anti-government views, racism, bigotry, anarchy and other despicable beliefs,” Carlin told a gathering  at George Washington University. The discussion was co-hosted by SPLC. “When it comes to hate and intolerance, no single ideology governs.”

Carlin was asked about the value of SPLC’s work in helping DOJ deal with the threat of domestic terrorist extremism.

“I can say, based on our briefings, that as I said in my opening remarks, we very much think that the domestic terrorism threat is a real and present threat that demands to be addressed in new, creative ways,” he replied emphasizing that “Southern Poverty Law Center and other groups in this space are very important.”

The SPLC’s website features a “hate map” that lists the conservative. Christian Family Research Council (FRC) as a “hate group” because of its defense of traditional marriage. The “hate map” was cited by convicted domestic terrorist Floyd Lee Corkins in his decision to attack the FRC in 2012 when he shot and wounded a security guard before being subdued. More here from CNS

Hillary accepts cash from Hamas-linked CAIR

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Islamist Money in Politics, Donations from Individuals Associated with American Islamist Groups

Recipient Name: Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee

Donations History

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Hillary Clinton accepts cash from Hamas-linked CAIR, leads 2016 list of pols getting money from Islamic supremacists

“Hillary Clinton Accepts Cash From CAIR, Leads 2016 List of Islamist Donations,” by John Hayward, Breitbart, October 27, 2016:

The Middle East Forum’s “Islamist Money in Politics” project compiles an annual list of politicians who receive campaign contributions from Islamist groups and “individuals who subscribe to the same Islamic supremacism as Khomeini, Bin Laden, and ISIS.”

The top-ranking recipient in the 2015-2016 list is Hillary Clinton, who raked in $41,165 from prominent Islamists, says the report:

This includes $19,249 from senior officials of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), declared a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates on November 15, 2014. For example, Mrs. Clinton has accepted $3,900 from former CAIR vice-chairman Ahmad Al-Akhras, who has defended numerous Islamists in Ohio indicted – and later convicted – on terrorism charges.

The top ten list includes nine Democrats, one independent (who just happens to have been Clinton’s chief rival for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders) and zero Republicans.

Donald Trump received no Islamist money, and neither did Libertarian Gary Johnson. Jill Stein of the Green Party accepted $250 in such donations.

“While the amounts of Islamist donations are relatively small, the information: (1) holds politicians accountable for accepting funds from soiled sources; (2) signals the Islamist lobby’s affections and intentions; and (3) tells voters who takes money from individuals linked to enemies of the United States and its allies,” the Middle East Forum argues.

CAIR has been declared a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates and was named by federal prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-funding operation.

CAIR is closely entwined with Islamists and with jihadis that court documents and news reports show that at least five of its people — either board members, employees or former employees — have been jailed or repatriated for various financial and terror-related offenses.

Breitbart has also published evidence highlighted by critics showing that CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a Texas-based criminal effort to deliver $12 million to the Jew-hating HAMAS jihad group, that CAIR was founded with $490,000 from HAMAS, and that the FBI bans top-level meetings with CAIR officials. “The FBI policy restricting a formal relationship with CAIR remains … [but] does not preclude communication regarding investigative activity or allegations of civil rights violations,” said an Oct. 2015 email from FBI spokesman Christopher Allen.

In 2009, a federal judge concluded that “the government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR… with Hamas.”

Awad has a long history of pro-HAMAS statements, according to critics. CAIR has posted its defense online.

Now Loretta Lynch Pleads the ‘Fifth’ in Iran Ransom Investigation

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H. R. 5931, a bill in Congress is designed to stop all future payments of any sort to Iran.

Senator Grassley’s letter to Loretta Lynch demanding answers to 5 questions is here.

Congress: Attorney General
Lynch ‘Pleads Fifth’ on Secret Iran ‘Ransom’ Payments

Obama admin blocking congressional probe into cash payments to Iran

Attorney General Loretta Lynch is declining to comply with an investigation by leading members of Congress about the Obama administration’s secret efforts to send Iran $1.7 billion in cash earlier this year, prompting accusations that Lynch has “pleaded the Fifth” Amendment to avoid incriminating herself over these payments, according to lawmakers and communications exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.) initially presented Lynch in October with a series of questions about how the cash payment to Iran was approved and delivered.

In an Oct. 24 response, Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik responded on Lynch’s behalf, refusing to answer the questions and informing the lawmakers that they are barred from publicly disclosing any details about the cash payment, which was bound up in a ransom deal aimed at freeing several American hostages from Iran.

The response from the attorney general’s office is “unacceptable” and provides evidence that Lynch has chosen to “essentially plead the fifth and refuse to respond to inquiries regarding [her] role in providing cash to the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism,” Rubio and Pompeo wrote on Friday in a follow-up letter to Lynch, according to a copy obtained by the Free Beacon.

The inquiry launched by the lawmakers is just one of several concurrent ongoing congressional probes aimed at unearthing a full accounting of the administration’s secret negotiations with Iran.

“It is frankly unacceptable that your department refuses to answer straightforward questions from the people’s elected representatives in Congress about an important national security issue,” the lawmakers wrote. “Your staff failed to address any of our questions, and instead provided a copy of public testimony and a lecture about the sensitivity of information associated with this issue.”

“As the United States’ chief law enforcement officer, it is outrageous that you would essentially plead the fifth and refuse to respond to inquiries,” they stated. “The actions of your department come at time when Iran continues to hold Americans hostage and unjustly sentence them to prison.”

The lawmakers included a copy of their previous 13 questions and are requesting that Lynch provide answers by Nov. 4.

When asked about Lynch’s efforts to avoid answering questions about the cash payment, Pompeo told the Free Beacon that the Obama administration has blocked Congress at every turn as lawmakers attempt to investigate the payments to Iran.

“Who knew that simple questions regarding Attorney General Lynch’s approval of billions of dollars in payments to Iran could be so controversial that she would refuse to answer them?” Pompeo said. “This has become the Obama administration’s coping mechanism for anything related to the Islamic Republic of Iran—hide information, obfuscate details, and deny answers to Congress and the American people.”

“They know this isn’t a sustainable strategy, however, and I trust they will start to take their professional, and moral, obligations seriously,” the lawmaker added.

In the Oct. 24 letter to Rubio and Pompeo, Assistant Attorney General Kadzik warned the lawmakers against disclosing to the public any information about the cash payment.

Details about the deal are unclassified, but are being kept under lock and key in a secure facility on Capitol Hill, the Free Beacon first disclosed. Lawmakers and staffers who have clearance to view the documents are forced to relinquish their cellular devices and are barred from taking any notes about what they see.

“Please note that these documents contain sensitive information that is not appropriate for public release,” Kadzik wrote to the lawmakers. “Disclosure of this information beyond members of the House and Senate and staff who are able to view them could adversely affect the diplomatic relations of the United States, including with key allies, as well as the State Department’s ability to defend [legal] claims against the United States [by Iran] that are still being litigated at the Hague Tribunal.”

“The public release of any portion of these documents, or the information contained therein, is not authorized by the transmittal of these documents or by this communication,” Kadzik wrote.

Congressional sources have told the Free Beacon that this is another part of the effort to hide details about these secret negotiations with Iran from the American public.

One senior congressional source familiar with both the secret documents and the inquiry into them told the Free Beacon that the details of the negotiations are so damning that the administration’s best strategy is to ignore lawmakers’ requests for more information.

“Every Obama administration official and department involved in the Iran Deal appear to be running for cover,” the source said. “Like we feared, the [Iran deal] is turning out to be a disaster and Iran is emboldened in its aggression. Evidently Attorney General Lynch and the Department of Justice have decided ‘refusal to cooperate’ is their best strategy. But this is dangerous and ultimately won’t protect them from anything.”

Update: The headline has been updated to more accurately characterize the story.

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In part testimony on the House side:

The deal – as well as the interim agreement known as the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) – provided Iran with substantial economic relief that helped the regime avoid a severe economic crisis and return to a modest recovery path. The lifting of restrictions on Iran’s use of frozen overseas assets as part of the interim agreement returned about $11.9 billion to Iran. The final agreement provided Tehran with access to a further $100 billion, including over $50 billion in unencumbered, liquid cash, according to the Obama administration.2 These funds gave Tehran badly needed hard currency to settle its outstanding debts, begin to repair its economy, build up its diminished foreign exchange reserves, and ease a budgetary crisis, as well as providing the regime greater resources for the financing of terrorism and other illicit activities.

The nuclear deal did nothing to address the full range of Iran’s malign activities, including ballistic missile development, support for terrorism, regional destabilization, and human rights abuses. Iran also still owes American terrorism victims and their families more than $55 billion in unpaid, outstanding damages awarded by American courts. (…)

A key driver of these threats remains the Islamic Republic’s ability to bankroll and finance a host of terrorist groups, militias, and proxy forces throughout the Middle East,6 including Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and designated Iraqi Shiite militias, as well expanding the existing asymmetric military capabilities of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its elite Quds Force. Iran remains the world’s largest and most dangerous state sponsor of terrorism, according to President Obama’s State Department.7

Iran’s ability to access cash outside the formal banking system is crucial in supporting these activities. Tehran also cash for other malign activities that it aggressively supports: WMD procurement, missile and heavy weaponry procurement, as well as aid to the murderous regime of Bashir al-Assad in Syria, designated Shiite militias, the Houthis in Yemen, and other malign actors.