Respected Leaders Present Info Linking Muslim Brotherhood to American Conservative Union
Late Tuesday, February 11, a group of respected former national security leaders and officials presented evidence against Grover Norquist (President of Americans for Tax Reform) and Suhail Kahn (Board of Directors of the American Conservative Union (ACU) of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
According to Breitbart, the 45-page dossier was issued to ACU lawyer Cleta Mitchell, “who in 2011 cleared Norquist of the allegations initially brought by former high-ranking Reagan official Frank Gaffney”. Signatories include Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former CIA Director James Woolsey, former Florida Rep. Allen West, retired Army Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, and former chief assistant U.S. attorney Andrew McCarthy.
Breitbart reported that Dan Schneider, the executive director of the ACU, told Breitbart that he is reviewing the report, adding, “But let me be clear, Suhail Khan and Grover Norquist are board members in good standing. They have been positive contributors to the conservative movement for a long time and their efforts must not be diminished.”
In an exclusive interview for PolitiChicks.tv, Frank Gaffney discussed the new presentation of evidence against Kahn and Norquist.
A-M: Cleta Mitchell is again denying all of your findings and claiming you have a ‘personal vendetta’ against Norquist and Kahn. What is different today than it was when you first presented evidence to the ACU?
Frank Gaffney: The most important thing that I would argue is that we have seen these ten influential national security figures transmit to the ACU board a dossier of factual irrefutable information that makes plain that not only were the charges that I have provided for better part of 16 years have grounding in fact but also that they think the ACU should on the basis of this dossier revisit the blanket endorsement they gave to their members, Suhail Kahn and Grover Norquist.
A-M: Dan Schneider told Breitbart that they would examine your report for any “new information”. What does this mean to you and do think they will take your report seriously?
Frank Gaffney: I don’t know. I’ve spoken with him briefly and he has told me that he will in fact go through this material. You know, candidly, he’s a new executive director of this association; he wasn’t there when the board considered our resolution. I think it’s understandable for a new guy to assume that what was done in that earlier period was a rigorous examination of the facts leading to this sweeping endorsement (of Norquist and Kahn) but that’s not the case.
To the best of my knowledge, none of the members of the board did more due diligence than Mitchell’s statement that she had done ‘fair and substantial due diligence’. If I didn’t know anything about the factual nature of this case and I had somebody who was a board member with Cleta Mitchell’s stature, telling me in the most categorical terms imaginable that there was no evidence to support this person who is not on the board, who I may not know, I myself may have voted for the resolution endorsing our colleagues (Norquist and Kahn) and criticized the other individual.
The truth of the matter is, in the absence of a serious examination of the actual facts, they were misled. And it’s now time to renew this because what we’ve seen in the past week is the fruit of the kind of work that Suhail Kahn has been doing inside the US government, and that is the announcement by the president through his Homeland Security and State Department that just because you’ve been involved in running ‘a little bit’ of material support to terrorism that should not preclude you from gaining asylum in this country. Suhail Kahn has been working to eviscerate our material support to terrorism for years and I think thanks to his work and that of another prominent Muslim Brotherhood activist, Mohammad Magid, they’ve made a substantial inroad in that direction with this announcement by the president. This has to be addressed and challenged and, I hope, undone so that this kind of operation won’t be allowed by someone who confesses to be a conservative activist.
A-M: You’ve got some major heavy-hitters backing you this time: Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former CIA Director James Woolsey, former Florida Rep. Allen West, retired Army Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, and former chief assistant U.S. attorney Andrew McCarthy. These men have obviously studied your findings and found them to be true. What type of outcome are you hoping for this time?
Frank Gaffney: My feeling about this is they’ve done what they needed to do, which was to assure, by virtue of their prestige, their integrity, their substantive knowledge of national security that this information cannot be suppressed, ignored, or mischaracterized as it has been to date. And my hope is the ACU board will do what I think its judiciary responsibilities requires, as far as its more general responsibility, and that is to reconsider an action taken in haste on the basis of erroneous representations and thereby remove a bit of the stain from the organization, and hopefully set the stage for the corrective action that should be taken by the conservative movement more generally, with respect to the folks who have been aiding and abetting declared enemies of the United States.
As I said to Cleta Mitchell on numerous occasions, I don’t believe for a minute that she investigated these facts. Even if she did, she doesn’t see them as facts. She sees them as some circumstantial intonation that has no relevance to Suhail Kahn. She actually said that the quote (in which Suhail Kahn, on video, declares that he has ‘devoted his life to the Ummah, the Muslim Nation’ and asked rhetorically, ‘What are our oppressors going to do with people like us who love death more than they love life?’) has no bearing on whether this individual is actually, as was true of his parents, as has been true of him throughout his career, tied to and involved with and I think advancing the interest of the Muslim Brotherhood organizations in this country.
Another thing worth noting is Mitchell’s exact quote: ‘The fact that these luminaries would allow themselves to get dragged into the internal debate within conservative organizations is really odd. If they are concerned about national security, they have better things to do than write me a letter.’ This s the way she has cast this, that this is just some personality dispute within conservative organizations, which, by the way, she has worked vitally to banish me in the interest of suppressing information. She has no knowledge of national security; she evidently has no appreciation of national security and she certainly is misrepresenting what this is about. This isn’t about some internal debate within conservative organizations. First and foremost, this is the threat to the national security to the United States and it is a threat that unfortunately, her false representations have enabled to continue now for years. And that’s why these ‘luminaries’ as she put it have become involved in the hopes of correcting what is fundamentally a national security problem. And I hope it will be seen by the board and treated as such.
In Part 2, PolitiChicks will continue this report with background information on Frank Gaffney’s previous tries in bringing the evidence of alleged Muslim Brotherhood ties within the ACU to light.
