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Filner’s friends, the Iranian MEK

So, exactly why did Mayor Filner rush off to Paris in June with little notice and less information about his purpose for going there? Filner’s friends, the Iranian MEK

Who or what had the clout to demand our mayor drop everything and appear in Paris forthwith?

The mayor’s staff did aver that a teeny part of the trip was to promote employment in San Diego through some vague ooh-lah-lahing in gay Paree.

That transparent dodge is laughable.

I hereby enter a California Public Records Request that the city announce any job, other than additional law-enforcement investigators, that resulted from that Gallic escapade.

The answer to those first two questions seem to be, in this order, Mr. Masoud Rajavi, and his Marxist-Muslim organization known as the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (translated “the people’s army) now known internationally as the MEK.

We get our first hint of all this by looking at the name of the organization that purportedly paid for this trip and a prior one.

The original report was that the trip was paid for by the Organization of Iranian-American Communities, a self-described IRS 501(c) authorized contributor.

And his purpose for going was ostensibly to attend a rally of the National Council of Resistance to Iran.

Yeah, right! Why would our mayor be required at their rally?

Too bad for that liar. The U-T Watchdog had the temerity to check with the IRS and found no such named organization in their files.

That didn’t faze the National Council’s representative because he is a practitioner of “taqiyya” the Islamic principle that one may lie about anything as long as it promotes his cause.

Sounds exactly like the American political left of which Mr. Filner is a card-carrying cardinal.

Oh, and there was no rally. Nor did Mayor Bob attend one of the city-related conferences that was the nominal rationale for the trip.

So what was really going on?

An easy check of open Internet sources, along with insight from some Iranian friends, paints a clear picture of Filner’s sinister conduct toward not only his city but his country.

Bob Filner is what used to be called a “red-diaper baby.”

These were the children of active communists.

Bob’s dad was Joseph Filner a senior official with the Communist Party of Pennsylvania.

Filner pere and his fellow Pittsburgh communist buddies were rewarded by the Soviet state with a franchise to market and otherwise dispose of Russian national assets while laundering Soviet currency making themselves wealthy, while millions of others suffered privation and death in the Soviet gulags.

The Filners, pere et fils, ought to be ashamed of their ill-gotten wealth.

Bob did not stray far from the political tree. He is a long-time member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

As a member of Congress, he helped found and was a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus created by the DSA.

The Progressive Caucus is now chaired by Keith Ellison, the first Muslim to be elected to the Congress.

Former Rep. Allen West was the only member brave enough to call them what they are: “…nearly all communists.”

Muslims and godless communists have nothing in common except their hostility to capitalism and democracy, so they make fine bedfellows for the time being.

When that nitwit Jimmy Carter ceded Iran to the Islamic terrorists and threw our secular ally Shah Reza Pahlavi under the Muslim juggernaut, he opened the country up to a vicious internal power struggle between the two major forces that brought the shah down.

One force was headed by the eventual winner, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his Shia Islamists.

They defeated Maroud Rajavi, the founder and leader of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, supposedly a Marxist-Muslim Party but actually the Soviet Communist proxy that was attempting to bring Iran within the Soviet ambit.

When the battle was over, Khomeini assured the peace by murdering a reported 6,000 MEK members in one night of terror.

That may be why there are hundreds of MEK members hiding in the United States under the organizational name given as the donor for Filner’s trip.

Any wonder that Rajavi, too, moved out of Iran? But where does he live now? You guessed it, Paris.

And that is who was able to and did have the clout to summon our mayor, on short notice, to appear at his residence in Paris to deal with a problem among the MEK and the U.S. Department of State, and the E.U. Foreign Affairs Office.

Once summoned, Filner had to attend because the MEK leader commands his respect, but also knows all there is to know about Filner and his work on behalf of the communists not only in the United States, but also throughout the Middle East.

The MEK was listed as a terrorist organization for many years because of its front-man status for the Soviets.

When the Soviet state collapsed because of the inherent flaw in socialism, the MEK was left without a sponsor.

No doubt they submerged their hatred for the “Great Satan” long enough to begin currying favor with the United States by providing intelligence about the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for being allowed to “come in out of the cold.”

How many tax dollars did Filner broker for the MEK in exchange for their help against their own old enemies?

It is likely that some fallout from this political back flip required Filner’s urgent attention.

Filner is likely helping this butcher’s organization through his ties to Muslim activist Keith Ellison and the rest of the DSA, oops I mean his Progressive Caucus colleagues.

I doubt if our chief of police knew any of this when he supposedly insisted that two of our officers, on our taxpayer’s dime, accompany Filner.

Did the chief know about Filner’s ties to the MEK and the danger that entailed anywhere in Europe where Iranian agents would have no trouble hurting our officers while trying to get at Filner?

In addition to Filner’s sexual peccadilloes, he hates everything decent Americans stand for and has spent his life trying to undermine our freedom and way of life.

Filner must be the master political charlatan to hide his MEK buddies and his lust for women from the thousands that voted for him in this last election.

Stirling, a former U.S. Army officer, has been elected to the San Diego City Council, state Assembly and state Senate. He also served as a municipal and superior court judge in San Diego. Send comments to larry.stirling@sddt.com. Comments may be published as Letters to the Editor.

By Larry Stirling, sddt.com

August 24, 2013 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

60 years after the 1953 coup, US back the MKO

An unhappy 60th birthday: The CIA coup of 1953 still resonates in Iran. Operation Ajax remembered

Mohammed Mossadeq under arrest in 1953.To disseminate [views of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq as a fanatic], the British press attaché in Tehran sent his counterpart in Washington "a steady supply of suitable poison too venomous for the BBC." The Washington attaché reported American columnists made "good use of this poison." He boasted he even helped them write some their pieces on Iran. Drew Pearson—the venerable dean of American journalism and lead columnist for the Washington Post—circulated a completely fabricated story about how Fastemi, Mossadeq’s right hand, had multiple convictions of embezzlement and jury tampering. […] Stewart Alsop and his brother Joseph—both leading columnists for The New York Herald—warned that unless the United States took a firm stand, "all the little Musaddiqs would be tempted to cause trouble."—Ervand Abrahamian in The Coup: 1953, The CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations, p. 100

••• •••

It would make a great movie. But a tad different than Argo.

Straightforward plot. Characters bigger than life. Stunning success against difficult odds after initial failure.

At the behest of two of the most powerful brothers in U.S. history, the aristocratic grandson of a famous president engineers a coup d’etat against a secular, democratically minded reformist leader and replaces him with a pro-Nazi prime minister overseen by a spoiled, craven monarch who proceeds to keep democracy at bay, the oil flowing and the torture chambers full for the next quarter century, after which he is ousted only to be replaced by a theocratic regime. From this flows the most devastating example of blowback America has ever felt. Blowback that continues today. Blowback that has contributed to internal wrangling within three U.S. administrations between those who choose not to make war beyond sanctions and assassinations and those who want to go full out.

Unfortunately, all this is not a script being pitched to a Hollywood studio. It is history. Operation Ajax. Planning and control: CIA. Partner: MI-6. Target: Iran. The date: Aug. 19, 1953. Objective: Its oil, its near-Soviet locale and overthrow of its democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadeq, to be replaced by a weak-willed wastrel, the hereditary monarch, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.

No short commentary can possibly do justice to any complex subject, and the Iranian coup and its fall-out is no exception. Condensing inevitably damages nuance. Interpretation across cultural divides cannot help but get many little matters and some essential ones wrong. Despite these pitfalls, however, it’s important for Americans to understand how the policies conducted before 85 percent of the U.S. population and 95 percent of the Iranian population were born still has a serious impact and creates perils today.

After all, it’s a rare month that goes by without saber-rattling from some high-up U.S. politicians about the need to use U.S. firepower to "fix" Iran. Tactics aside, there is bipartisan consensus in the heights of U.S. foreign policy circles for curtailing Iran, particularly what is usually labeled its "nuclear ambitions." While conventional war, the bomb-bomb-bomb Iran approach has been so far avoided because that still remains a last resort of the bipartisan consensus, other attacks on Iran have continued, including by means of Stuxnet, the cyber-weapon built by the National Security Agency together with CIA and Israeli intelligence and used to temporarily cripple the uranium enrichment operations in Natanz, Iran. There are, in addition, assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists by the Iranian terrorist organization Mojahedin-e-Khalq assisted with funding and training assistance of America’s ally Israel.

by Meteor Blades , Daily KOS

August 22, 2013 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Prof. Wilkerson: U.S. move to delist the MEK very hypocritical

Supporting Terrorists Is Not A New Policy For The U.S.: Prof. Lawrence Wilkerson

Iran Review Exclusive Interview with Lawrence Wilkerson

The election of Dr. Hassan Rouhani as Iran’s 7th president renewed hopes around the world that a new era of Lawrence Wilkerson interaction and cooperation between Iran and the international community will begin soon. The government of “prudence and hope” promised to improve Iran’s foreign relations and find a negotiated solution to Iran’s nuclear stalemate after almost one decade of confrontation and dispute.

Iran has had no official ties with the United States for nearly 3 decades, and relation with the U.S. has always been a controversial and contentious point in Iran’s foreign policy. President Rouhani has pledged to find a way for settling the disputes with the United States, if the officials in the White House and Congress recognize and admit that talks based on mutual respect and on equal footing should replace the language of sanctions and threats against Iran.

In order to investigate the future of Iran-U.S. relations, Washington’s approach toward Iran following the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the White House’s reactions to the election of President Rouhani in Iran’s June 14 presidential elections and the missed opportunities of reconciliation between Iran and the United States, Iran Review conducted an interview with Lawerence Wilkerson, political scientist, former U.S. Army Colonel and chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Wilkerson has been a vocal critic of the U.S. foreign policy after stepping down and has written several articles and taken part in different interviews rebuking the Iraq War and the United States’ tacit and implicit sponsorship of global terrorism.

Prof. Wilkerson kindly accepted our request for an interview and responded to some of our important questions. What follows is the text of the interview.

Q: In his State of the Union Address on January 29, 2002, President George W. Bush talked of an Axis of Evil which stretches from North Korea to the Middle East and encompasses Iran and Iraq. He called Iran a threat to the international peace and security. This is while Iran’s former president Mohammad Khatami who was a reformist figure with a reconciliatory foreign policy which was based on détente and easing the tensions with the West had cooperated with the United States and the EU on a number of issues and his promotion of the idea of the Dialogue of Civilization was embraced internationally. Don’t you think this branding Iran a member of the so-called Axis of Evil was a strategic mistake by President Bush?

A: This was a strategic mistake if the strategic objective one imagines the U.S. pursuing is advancing the fundamental interests of the U.S., its allies, and friends in the world and, importantly, if one’s overall objective is world peace. It was not a strategic mistake if the strategic objectives of the U.S. were turmoil in western Asia, support of Israel’s continued aggression, increased U.S. control over the region’s oil reserves, and a state of perpetual war. Two of the three members of the Axis harbor close to a quarter of world oil reserves; Israel’s aggression has not ceased—indeed, it has increased; and the region is in turmoil. The U.S. is in an interminable state of war. The Axis of Evil speech helped to achieve these results. Some people in the U.S.—and Israel—wanted these results.

Q: So you think certain extremist elements in Washington and Tel Aviv benefit from confrontation between Iran and the United States. What about the state of bilateral relations between the two nations under President Khatami? He had signaled his willingness to engage in bilateral negotiations with the United States when he was in power. He was one of the first world leaders who sent a message of condolences to the U.S. government following the 9/11 tragedy. However, it seems that President Bush was not willing to react positively as he turned down Khatami’s message. Can we consider President Bush guilty for the failure of the attempts to bring Iran and the United States to the negotiation table?

A: President George W. Bush was not sufficiently knowledgeable to have contrived to produce failed diplomatic circumstances with Iran. His Vice President, Richard Cheney, worked to produce this failure. Cheney maintained an adamant policy that there would be no negotiations with Iran. He sold this policy to the unwitting President. Later, in 2003, when there was again an opportunity to start meaningful negotiations with Tehran, Cheney had captured the entire government with his views. Even Secretary of State Colin Powell opposed the Iranian initiative in 2003. See my answer to your question number one: Cheney is one of those who wanted the results I have described in my answer.

Q: It’s widely believed that the CIA had close ties with the Afghan rebels in 1990s that later on formed and shaped the inner circles of Al-Qaeda and Taliban. Some political scientists cite evidence showing that the United States had supported the Afghan Mujaheedin to fight the Soviet forces in 1990s. Do you deny the view that the U.S. intelligentsia furtively provided arms and dollars to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda prior to the 9/11 attacks?

A: I do not deny it at all. The U.S. is as much responsible for the Mujahidin who fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan as any other factor. The CIA term for this sort of activity is “blowback”. What it means, simply, is that secret actions taken by the CIA in one period, come back to haunt the U.S. in a later period.

Q: Prominent investigative journalists and political commentators Seymour Hersh and Glenn Greenwald have released reliable evidence that CIA, with the help of Israel and Saudi Arabia, has been providing arms, ammunitions and financial support to the exiled anti-Iranian terrorist cult Mujahedin-e-Khalq in the past 10 years in a bid to impose political pressure on Iran. Do you confirm these clandestine and underground ties?

A: I cannot confirm these ties because I have not had an active security clearance since 2005. However, if I were a betting man, I would bet that what Hersh and Greenwald asserted is correct.

Q: Let’s get to the next question. The U.S. played its last card in 2012 by removing the name of MKO from its list of foreign terrorist organizations. What’s your viewpoint on this controversial decision? Isn’t it a dualistic and somewhat hypocritical approach toward terrorism and human rights?

A: The U.S. move to delist the MEK was a very hypocritical move—and even a very stupid move. It was based on a passionate but irrational dependence on Israel, large amounts of money changing hands, and an utterly unreasonable desire to punish Iran through any means possible. The MEK are bloodthirsty terrorists. But the U.S. harbors Luis Posada Carrilles in its very midst, the terrorist responsible for bringing down a Cuban airliner in 1976 and killing everyone on board, and for bombing Havana hotels in 1997. So supporting terrorists is not a new policy for the U.S.

Q: One question on the growing wave of Islamophobia in the United States. The Muslim minority in the United States has been under a lot of pressure in the past years, and it’s widely believed that the Bush administration, with his fierce anti-Islamic rhetoric, contributed a great deal to the promotion of Islamophobia and the portrayal of Muslims as a fanatic and extremist group of people. The Muslims have been denied their basic rights in the West following the 9/11 attacks, and were shown as terrorists who want to debilitate the Western democratic values. What’s your take on that?

A: I don’t believe President Bush was that unwise; in fact, he went out of his way to state publicly that the U.S. was not at war with Islam. However, other people in the U.S.—some of whom are quite wealthy—began a campaign to denigrate Islam and Muslims in general. They made movies, ran public advertising, and gave talks aimed at vilifying Islam and Muslims. They are still doing it. Many of these elements are connected directly with right-wing elements in Israel. I believe they are also connected to people such as Richard Cheney and Karl Rove.

Q: What’s your viewpoint regarding the United States’ reaction to Iran’s 2013 presidential elections? Have the U.S. statesmen and Congressmen received the message the Iranian people intended to impart by electing a reform-minded, moderate president?

A: The U.S. Congress has been sending mixed messages. More than one hundred members recently sent a letter to President Obama that asked him to take this opportunity of a new Iranian president to achieve a diplomatic solution to U.S.-Iran concerns. At the same time, more than two-thirds of the Congress voted to increase sanctions. The U.S. Congress, like Iran’s majlis , does not seem to know what it wants. But, that said, its collective actions have been more damaging than helpful over the past several years.

Q: As you correctly mentioned, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill on July 31 that imposed new sanctions on Iran’s oil, mining and automobile sector. Wasn’t this hasty decision detrimental to the forthcoming nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1, especially given that President Rouhani hasn’t even appointed his nuclear negotiation team and his foreign minister is yet to receive a confidence vote from the Parliament (Majlis)? Of course the new round of sanctions undermines President Rouhani’s efforts for resolving Iran’s nuclear standoff in a peaceful manner. What’s your viewpoint on that?

A: I agree. Most actions of the U.S. Congress have been decidedly unhelpful.

Q: And finally, what’s your prediction for the future of Iran-U.S. relations in President Rouhani’s administration? What steps should the U.S. take in order to defuse the tensions, and what confidence-building measures should Iran adopt for more transparency in its nuclear activities?

A: The U.S. should make substantive sanctions-relief [as] a major negotiating point. In return for such relief, Iran should allow the IAEA to examine thoroughly its past actions to create a nuclear weapon, stop enhancing uranium above 5%, send out of country or use itself in a short, IAEA-supervised period of time all on-hand uranium enhanced above 5%, agree to a rigorous inspection regime by the IAEA for at least 5 years, or until the international community is satisfied with the strictly civilian nature of Iran’s nuclear program, and strive to live within the parameters of the NPT, safeguards agreement, and additional protocols. The U.S. should start off negotiations by recognizing Iran as a member of the community of nations with all the rights and privileges appertaining thereto. The U. S. should also state that its overall objective vis-à-vis Iran is not regime change. Once these opening moves produce success, all issues should be on the table, from support of terrorism to the situations in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.

My prediction, however, for the upcoming talks is that because of Iranian intransigence and U.S. obduracy—and, with regard to President Obama, a decided lack of political and moral courage—no meaningful success will be achieved. There is simply too much mistrust and there are too many people—on both sides—who are heavily invested in the failure of negotiations. There are people in Iran and people in the U.S. who do not want a diplomatic solution. There are also such people in Tel Aviv.

Kourosh Ziabari is an award-winning Iranian journalist and media correspondent. He writes for Global Research, CounterCurrents.org, Tehran Times, Iran Review and other publications across the world. His articles and interviews have been translated in 10 languages. His website is http://kouroshziabari.com

Interview by Kourosh Ziabari, Iran Review

August 22, 2013 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

The Obama-Al Qaeda-MEK Connection

British puppet President Barack Obama has entered into an alliance with two of the world’s leading terrorist organizations — Al Qaeda and the Mujahideen e-Khalq (MEK) — in his zeal to overthrow the present governments in Syria and Iran. The Obama-Al Qaeda marriage of convenience is particularly deep and it centers on the drive to overthrow the Bashar Assad government in Damascus, through an armed opposition.

U.S. intelligence agencies are aware that the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) has no actual military capabilities inside Syria, and consists largely of a group of defectors from the Syrian Army who are safe-housed on military bases inside Turkey. All of the significant military actions targeted at the Syrian government have been carried out by Al Qaeda terrorists, who have infiltrated the country from Iraq. The suicide bombings in Damascus and Aleppo, the assassinations of Syrian government and military officials, and the sabotage of pipelines and other infrastructure have all been carried out by Al Qaeda. Despite widespread evidence in the hands of U.S. intelligence agencies, President Obama continues to join hands with the new Al Qaeda head, Ayman al-Zawaheri, in calling for the violent removal of President Assad from power.

The idea that the President of the United States is so blatantly in bed with the terrorists who carried out the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001 should be sufficient grounds for his immediate removal from office, under the impeachment provisions of the U.S. Constitution or Section 4 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment. Last year, following the U.S. Navy SEAL Team killing of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin-Laden, President Obama did cartwheels to claim credit for the act. Now, he is allied with the very same 9/11 perpetrators in pushing for a war in the Persian Gulf that will rapidly expand into a global thermonuclear confrontation with Russia and China.

– The British role –

As well-documented in Executive Intelligence Review, the Al Qaeda attacks of 9/11 were carried out with the full support of the Anglo-Saudi Al Yamamah apparatus. Under the Al Yamamah oil-for-arms deal, launched in 1985 and continued through to the present, British intelligence and the Saudis created a string of offshore covert operations funds, which directly financed the 9/11 attacks. Al Yamamah funds, in excess of $2 billion, were funneled to Saudi Prince Bandar bin-Sultan, and at least $50,000 of those funds went to the San Diego-based team of 9/11 hijackers. A Joint Congressional Select Committee, probing the 9/11 attacks, established evidence of the Bandar-Al Qaeda funding, but the 28-page chapter detailing this evidence was suppressed by the George W. Bush White House. At the start of his administration, President Obama promised family members of the 9/11 victims that he would release the 28 pages, but he never kept his promise, and moved to further suppress the evidence of Al Yamamah angle on the attacks, thus protecting his British masters along with the Saudi Royals.

To this day, former Senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who co-chaired the Congressional probe, insists that the cover-up of the Saudi Monarchy’s complicity in the attacks must be exposed publicly.

President Obama’s embrace of the 9/11 terrorists, after the fact, constitutes a scandal of enormous proportions for this Administration, and underscores further the hypocrisy of Obama’s efforts to exploit the bin-Laden assassination, while he colludes with the remnants of Al Qaeda.

The same is true of the President’s collusion with the Mujahideen e-Khalq, an Iranian terrorist group that has been on the U.S. State Departments list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations since its inception in 1997. MEK assassinated a number of U.S. military personnel in Iran in the 1970s, actively participated in the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and then fled to Iraq and allied with Saddam Hussein, after they were purged from the Islamic Republic leadership. In recent weeks, MEK has been linked to the assassinations of Iranian scientists. This week, the Bangkok Post revealed that Thai authorities believe that MEK terrorists were behind foiled attempts to attack Israeli officials. Those attacks were loudly blamed on the Iranian government, and fed the drive to launch military action against Iran.

While the Obama Administration has attempted to keep a distance from the assassinations and bombings and other acts of sabotage inside Iran over the past two years, MEK has been protected by U.S. military forces at Camp Ashraf inside Iraq, ever since the U.S. invasion of that country in March 2003.

by Jeff Steinberg – larouchepac

August 22, 2013 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Former Terrorist Group Gets Into Lobbying

As conflict in the Middle East rages on, this week’s Economist called for the West to stop the rise of Iranian power in the wake of Hassan Rouhani’s election as president and worried that “the balance of power between Former Terrorist Group Gets Into Lobbying Iran and the rest of the world has been shifting in Iran’s favour.” Another voice has long been calling for the West — the United States, in particular — to counter the Iranian government. The most visible Iranian exile group in Washington, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, was taken off the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2012 after a robust lobbying campaign and they’ve kept lobbying since shedding the label.

Members of the MEK call for regime change in Iran as “the only option” and see their leader, Maryam Rajavi, as the legitimate successor to the seat of power. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., and Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, have been especially receptive to these claims, and not without some convincing: the MEK has invested heavily in getting members of Congress to see things its way.

This should sound familiar. Ahmed Chalabi was the head of the Iraqi National Congress when he pushed for the U.S. government to depose Saddam Hussein in 2003. His group’s coordinated calls for regime change led to a fruitless pursuit for weapons of mass destruction and large-scale distraction from the concurrent war in Afghanistan. So when an Iranian opposition group purports to be the preeminent resistance-in-exile, worthy of the spoils in the scenario of the Iranian government’s downfall, regarding the group’s ambitions with suspicion is only prudent.

Especially when nobody knows where the MEK gets its money.

The MEK is the main branch of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which was founded in 1981 in Tehran, according to the NCRI’s website. Penetrating their records has proven difficult. A 14-page Christian Science Monitor report from 2011 provides the most detail about who pays for MEK’s events and campaigns, but even that reporting only shows that the funding comes from various shell organizations around the country. That hardly answers the question.

According to a form submitted in compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act in May, the NCRI is registered as a foreign principal under Rosemont Associates, LLC. That company is owned by Robert G. Torricelli, a former Democratic U.S. senator from New Jersey. A man who picked up the company phone on Thursday morning wasn’t keen on chatting, and a receptionist who answered another call later that afternoon said Torricelli wasn’t in.

According to his company’s FARA filing, the NCRI pays Torricelli $420,000 per year for his services, which include lobbying executive and legislative branch officials. They also gave him $34,975 in March for speeches he gave in Europe.

Torricelli’s not the only former U.S. official to receive huge sums in exchange for lobbying and speeches on MEK’s behalf. Indeed, lavish compensation was the backbone of MEK’s effort to get off the State Department’s terrorist watch list, according to the Monitor report.

So where does the group get all this money? On another FARA form, this one submitted in April, the NCRI says it is not financed or subsidized by a foreign government, foreign political party, or other foreign principal. And since the U.S. has certainly never engaged in, or heard of, providing covert funding to militant opposition groups abroad, it’s safe to take these documents at face value. (Not.)

Wherever the funding and organizing comes from, MEK advocates are making good use of it. Groups of lobbyists who hail from the MEK-affiliate groups roam the halls in groups and eat in the Rayburn cafeteria every day. A Democratic staffer whose office is in Rayburn said, “They are here constantly. I probably see them every day.”

In March, MEK advocates appeared at a photo exhibit in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill for women and girls in Afghanistan. They invited me to attend their then-upcoming Persian New Year celebration, which was set to take place in the same building a few days later. I didn’t go — but if I had, I’m sure the hors d’oeuvres would have been top-notch.

Julie Ershadi is a writer based on Washington, D.C. Capitol image courtesy of Big Stock Photo.

by Julie Ershadi ,Americas Future

August 11, 2013 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Bob Filner now claims he was fooled by fake MEK charity in U.S.

Filner will pay group back for Paris trip

San Diego Mayor Bob Filner said Wednesday that he will pay out of his own pocket the nearly $10,000 it cost for his trip to France last month.

Filner’s announcement came one day after U-T Watchdog reported that the IRS had no record of the organization Filner said paid his tab of being a U.S. tax-exempt nonprofit.

Filner said his $9,839 in travel costs to Paris were covered by the Organization of Iranian-American Communities, a group Filner initially claimed was a charity organized under Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(3).

“I have become aware that the OIAC’s representations regarding its non-profit status were inaccurate,” Filner said in a news release late Wednesday. “For this reason, I will reimburse OIAC for all amounts it paid for my travel and expenses in its international conference in Paris, France, above the $440 gift limit.”

Filner filed a similar statement on a mid-year disclosure of gifts, filed Wednesday on the day it was due.

The tax status is important because, under city and state law, officials such as Filner are prohibited from receiving gifts totaling more than $440 in a calendar year from most sources. Nonprofits are allowed to exceed that limit if facilitating the official’s appearance or speech at an event — such as the Iranian resistance rally Filner participated in.

Filner’s trip to France has been controversial since he returned in late June.

The U-T revealed on July 16 that two top aides to Filner increased their city charge-card limits to $30,000 each in advance of Filner’s trip.

Councilman Kevin Faulconer sent a series of questions to interim Chief Financial Officer Greg Bych in response to that story, in large part because of the cost to the taxpayers for the trip.

Filner later released some details of the trip’s funding, including the cost of his travel covered by the outside group and the cost of his security detail’s travel, covered by taxpayers — $21,244. Filner has said that his fiancee, Bronwyn Ingram, paid her own way. The two have since broken up, and Ingram has not returned messages seeking confirmation that she paid her own way.

Filner’s spokeswoman did not respond to calls for comment seeking more information about Filner repaying the Iranian-American organization.

Faulconer, chairman of the city’s audit committee, said Filner’s actions in reimbursing the group for the trip confirm a suspicion Faulconer had — that the gift was illegal.

“As Chairman of the City’s Audit Committee, I’ve continued to ask questions about Mayor Filner’s junket because the story doesn’t add up,” Faulconer said. “Nothing makes sense about a San Diego Mayor taking this trip to France. I’m going to continue to investigate to determine if other rules meant to protect taxpayers were broken.”

Felipe Monroig, president of the San Diego County Taxpayers Association, also said Filner’s action was inadequate.

“Mayor Filner has announced that he’ll cover the roughly $9,000 cost of his recent trip to Paris,” Monroig said. “Yet, there remains a much larger cost for his security detail that taxpayers are still on the hook for. Since it’s clear the Mayor’s trip to Paris was little more than a vacation, the Taxpayers Association calls on him to do the right thing and reimburse the full cost, which was upwards of $30,000.”

Filner has previously accepted travel from groups that are part of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. He went to Paris in June 2011 as a member of Congress. He also took a similar trip in June 2007, federal records show.

His 2011 trip cost $6,589 and was paid for by Colorado’s Iranian American Community, a group tied to the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq or MEK, the militant — and largest — arm of the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

The 2007 trip to France, also paid for by Colorado’s Iranian American Community, cost $7,949. The plane ticket in that case was business class.

Filner is not alone in accepting travel from the Iranian groups. Others who have gone include former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Rep. Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island.

In large part, the trips were part of a lobbying campaign to remove the MEK from the U.S. State Department’s foreign terrorist organizations list. In a speech to the group, Filner compared their plight to the U.S. civil rights movement.

“This will happen,” Filner said in a speech to the group in 2011. “This will happen. The laws, the facts, are on our side.”

The de-listing effort succeeded last year.

Trent Seibert, U-T San Diago

August 3, 2013 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

MEK actively working for our intel agencies

US Congressman Ted Poe: MEK actively working for our intelligence agencies

STATEMENT IN RESPONSE TO REPORTS OF SECRETARY OF STATE CLINTON’S INTENTION TO DE-LIST MEK TODAY

Washington, D.C. – “Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s expected decision to delist the People’s Mojahedin Ted Poe: MEK actively working for our intelligence agencies Organization of Iran (MEK) from the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list is long overdue, but a much welcomed and warranted decision,” said Poe. “The MEK long ago renounced violence, and in recent years, has been actively working with US intelligence agencies to get information on activities inside Iran. …”

In March 2011, Congressman Ted Poe, a Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, introduced H.Res. 60, urging the Secretary of State to remove the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran from the Department of State’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The bill has 98 bipartisan cosponsors.

US Congress,

August 1, 2013 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

U.S. Politicians Seduced by MKO’s Shadow Government

A group of wealthy, hawkish Iranians-in-exile has premier access to U.S. Congress members.

MeK-backed lobbyists have been increasingly successful in engaging with members of Congress, many of whom are attracted by the National Council of Resistance’s self-described democratic and secular opposition to the unpopular Iranian regime.

Last month, in a Paris suburb, a bipartisan group of American politicians attended a massive conference and political rally held by an organization calling for the overthrow of the Iranian government. With wealthy donors A group of wealthy, hawkish Iranians-in-exile has premier access to U.S. Congress members. spread across Europe and the Middle East, the group is beating the war drums for American intervention in Iran.

The conference was the tenth such event organized by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which is the political wing of the People’s Mujahideen of Iran (MeK), a group that was classified as a terrorist organization by the State Department as recently as September 2012. The MeK and its supporters have increased their clout in Washington, as highlighted by the fact that three sitting representatives attended June’s annual conference—Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas), Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) and Rep. Lacy Clay (D-Mo.). Last Friday, Roll Call reported that the representatives’ trips each cost more than $10,000 for the weekend.

In addition to those sitting representatives, this year’s event featured a collection of high-profile American political figures spanning the political spectrum. Republican conference participants featured former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey. Democratic conferencegoers included former Rhode Island congressman Patrick Kennedy, former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell and former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. More than thirty other current House members were invited to the conference but did not attend.

As the political face of the MeK, the National Council of Resistance is a shadow Iranian government that was founded in Tehran in 1981 in the aftermath of [Ayatollah]Khomeini’s rise to power. in 1992. A now infamous 2009 Rand study, commissioned by the Defense Department characterized the MeK as “dissident cult group” (noting its practice of mandatory divorce for members) and remarked on its “deceptive recruitment and public relations strategies.”

While the organization has little actual presence in Iran, it has boosted its international profile as of late. The group reportedly offers handsome speaking fees at its conferences, according to the BBC, roughly $20,000 for a 10-minute speech.

“This is a group that is extremely dangerous,” says Jamal Abdi, senior policy advisor at the National Iranian American Council, an organization that lobbies against U.S. sanctions on Iran and for peace talks between the two nations.

A senior Democratic staffer tells In These Times that the MeK-backed lobbyists have been increasingly successful in engaging with members of Congress, many of whom are attracted by the National Council of Resistance’s self-described democratic and secular opposition to the unpopular Iranian regime. These lobbyists often work for groups with innocuous-sounding names, such as the Iranian-American Community of North Texas or the Iranian-American Community of Northern California. The name of the trip’s sponsor this year was the Organization of Iranian-American Communities.

“Part of what’s scary from a progressive perspective is that they’re very much pushing for war with Iran,” the staffer says, referencing the group’s leaking of alleged intelligence about Iran’s nuclear program to members of Congress. “They’re always here. I see them [on Capitol Hill] almost every day. Clearly they’re constantly meeting with people and pushing this agenda.”

The staffer compares the group’s tactics to those used by Iraq War supporters in the run-up to the 2003 invasion. At that time, many war hawks championed the cause of Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress. That marginal group of Iraqi exiles, financed by the CIA, endorsed by the Bush Administration and promoted by the New York Times’ Judith Miller managed to earn a degree of international support by branding itself as a democratic alternative to the Saddam Hussein regime. Chalabi, whose organization leaked documents to the press and high-ranking politicians in the hopes of justifying American military intervention, eventually earned the title of “the George Washington of Iraq.” Chalabi is now a member of the Iraqi Parliament.

The MeK equivalent is Maryam Rajavi, president-elect of the government-in-exile. Her husband used to lead the MeK but has been in hiding for the last 10 years. The couple maintains a cultish allure among their supporters.

At the rally last month outside of Paris, Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) presented the beaming president-in-waiting with a gift. “On behalf of the U.S. Congress, I want to give you a plate that is sealed in glass, and when Iran is free and you are the President we will break this glass and break bread in Tehran together.”

BY Cole Stangler ,In These Times

July 18, 2013 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

US Sponsored Iranian Terrorist MKO claims

US Sponsored Iranian Terrorist MKO claims, Iran Builds Secret Nuclear Site

The Iranian terrorist organization Mujahedin e Kkalq, MKO, has accused the Iranian government of building a secret nuclear facility northeast of Tehran. Iran´s Foreign Ministry dismisses the allegations.

The Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has rejected allegations, made by the Mujahedin e Khalq, MKO, terrorist organization, in which the MKO accuses the Iranian government of building a secret nuclear facility. The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Seyyed Abbas Araqchi, dismissed the claims as being mere lies from a desperate terrorist group.

The MKO stated, that it has evidence that supports the accusation, that Tehran is building a nuclear site underneath a mountain near the city of Damavand, approximately 43 kilometers northeast of Tehran.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Araqchi dismissed the statements, saying:

“This report is by no means true and the Islamic Republic of Iran denies it. The terrorist MKO has been discredited to such a degree, that the publication of such stories by them is not worth a response”.

The Mujahedin e Khalq, which has been waging a low intensity conflict against Iran since the early 1980s, has been responsible for the death of more than 17.000 Iranians. Its main fighting forces are based in Iraq from where it has operated an insurgency with the approval of the former Iraqi administration of Saddam Hussein. The MKO is known for ties to the United States Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, and Israel´s Mossad. It has been tied to several high profile assassinations in Iran, including the assassination of Iranian nuclear physicists.

After the election of Nouri al-Malaki, relations between the MKO and the MKO soured. Iraqi support to the organization ceased, and the MKO was prohibited from launching attacks against targets in Iran from Iraq.

In 2012 both the United States and Canada removed the MKO from the terror list, drawing heavy Iranian and international criticism for double standards in their approach to combating international terrorism. MKO brigades have since been reported to be involved in the attempted subversion in Syria.

Several hundred leading MKO kadres have opened a facility in Kosovo, where the MKO is reportedly cooperating with the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA/UCK, US Special Forces, and civilian as well as military U.S. intelligence services. The MKO´s human rights record has been criticized by Iran as well as international rights organizations. The MKO is, among other, accused of forced recruitment and repression against families, who reject contributing members of their family to the insurgency.

By Christof Lehmann , nsnbc.me

July 16, 2013 0 comment

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

MEK Re-Ups 3 Year Old Nuclear Propaganda

Dirty Laundry: MEK Re-Ups 3 Year Old Nuclear Propaganda

Terror Group is Sounding Board for Dubious US Intel

Embracing its recent removal from the U.S. State Department’s list of designated foreign terrorist organizations, the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), an exiled Iranian terror cult with deep pockets and close ties to the Washington establishment, is attempting to ramp up the fear-mongering and propaganda over Iran’s nuclear program following last month’s election of moderate cleric Hassan Rouhani as the Islamic Republic’s next president.

In April 2013, the group opened an office in Washington DC and officially registered as a lobbying organization the following month. Terror Group is Sounding Board for Dubious US Intel

Now, a Reuters article from July 11, 2013 reported the MEK and its affiliate organizations such as the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) claim to have “obtained reliable information on a new and completely secret site designated for [Iran’s] nuclear project,” despite providing no credible evidence to back up the allegation.

The supposed site is said to be “located in a complex of tunnels beneath mountains 10 km (6 miles) east of the town of Damavand, itself about 50 km northeast of Tehran.” The MEK claimed that construction of the site began in 2006 and it was recently completed. “The site consists of four tunnels and has been constructed by a group of engineering and construction companies associated with the engineering arms of the Ministry of Defence and the IRGC (Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards force),” a statement from the terror group said.

Unsurprisingly, the Iranian government immediately denied the allegations.

As in nearly all media reports on the MEK, Reuters credits the group with having “exposed Iran’s uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and a heavy water facility at Arak” in 2002. But beyond the fact that Iran’s nuclear program was never a secret, this specific claim is untrue, as nuclear experts Jeffrey Lewis and Mark Hibbs pointed out back in 2006.

In fact, the U.S. intelligence community had been tracking Iran’s nuclear facility development for quite some time, notably its construction at both Natanz and Arak. Lewis notes that, in 2002, “someone leaked that information to an Iranian dissident group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which then released the second-hand dope in a press conference where they got the details wrong.” The information the MEK supposedly gleans from sources inside Iran are actually just leaks received from intelligence agencies in the United States and Israel.

Since then, the MEK has not itself provided a single shred of credible information regarding Iran’s nuclear program. Furthermore, in early 2007, an unnamed senior official at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) revealed to the Los Angeles Times, “Since 2002, pretty much all the intelligence that’s come to us [from the United States about the Iranian nuclear program] has proved to be wrong” and has never led to significant discoveries inside Iran.

“They gave us a paper with a list of sites. [The inspectors] did some follow-up, they went to some military sites, but there was no sign of [banned nuclear] activities,” the official told The Guardian at the time. Additionally, the LA Times reported that “U.S. officials privately acknowledge that much of their evidence on Iran’s nuclear plans and programs remains ambiguous, fragmented and difficult to prove.”

Additionally, the Associated Press reported this past May that, when it comes to accusations about the Iranian nuclear program and despite their terrible track record, “about 80 percent of the intelligence comes from the United States and its allies.”

Reuters, writing about the MEK’s most recent revelation, noted, “The group released satellite photographs of what it said was the site. But the images did not appear to constitute hard evidence to support the assertion that it was a planned nuclear facility.” Clearly, a non-state actor like the MEK doesn’t have satellites of its own floating around in space taking pictures of Iranian mountains; it’s obviously getting the information from government organizations with advanced spying resources.

Though these latest claims by the MEK have garnered quite a bit of attention this week, they are, in fact, nothing new. Allegations about tunnel systems have long been a go-to source of alarmism over Iran’s nuclear program. Back in January 2010, on the heels of promoting an opinion piece that explicitly advocated an unprovoked military attack on Iran, The New York Times‘ William Broad published a hysterical report, which claimed, “Over the past decade, Iran has quietly hidden an increasingly large part of its atomic complex in networks of tunnels and bunkers across the country.”

The report goes on to lament that Iranian efforts to protect their own nuclear infrastructure from military attack is viewed by the U.S. administration as “a stealth weapon, complicating the West’s military and geopolitical calculus.” Translation: it’s harder to spy on things and then blow them up when they’re not out in the open and that’s annoying.

Broad doesn’t even try to mask the frustration:

“It complicates your targeting,” said Richard L. Russell, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst now at the National Defense University. “We’re used to facilities being above ground. Underground, it becomes literally a black hole. You can’t be sure what’s taking place.”

Even the Israelis concede that solid rock can render bombs useless. Late last month, the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, told Parliament that the Qum plant was “located in bunkers that cannot be destroyed through a conventional attack.”

Despite the decades of threats from the United States and Israel, then-U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates didn’t realize the blistering irony when, discussing the heavily-fortified uranium enrichment site at Fordow, he said, “If they wanted it for peaceful purposes, there’s no reason to put it so deep underground, no reason to be deceptive about it, keep it a secret for a protracted period of time.”

Later in his report, Broad describes Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a tunnel aficionado and quotes Greg Duckworth, a “civilian scientist” described as having “recently led a Pentagon research effort to pinpoint enemy tunnels,” as saying, “Deeply buried targets have been a problem forever. And it’s getting worse.”

As the January 2010 report continues, a familiar name emerges under the heading “An Opposition Watchdog.” Who could that be? Broad writes, “In 2002, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an opposition group, revealed that Iran was building a secret underground nuclear plant at Natanz that turned out to be for enriching uranium. Enrichment plants can make fuel for reactors or, with a little more effort, atom bombs.”

He goes on to sing the praises of NCRI for having announced “that Iran was digging tunnels for missile and atomic work at 14 sites” in 2005 and announcing “that Iran was tunneling in the mountains near Natanz, the sprawling enrichment site” in 2007, which he says was confirmed by satellite images.

In December 2009, Broad writes that NCRI issued yet another report on “Iranian military tunneling,” which claimed “Iran had dug tunnels and bunkers for research facilities, ammunition storage, military headquarters and command and control centers.”

“A group of factories” in the mountains east of Tehran, it insisted without providing proof, specialize in “the manufacturing of nuclear warheads.”

Broad even quotes the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Frank Pabian saying of the MEK, “They’re right 90 percent of the time. That doesn’t mean they’re perfect, but 90 percent is a pretty good record.” Mohamed ElBaradei, former IAEA Director-General, had a different take on the group. “We followed whatever they came up with. And a lot of it was bogus.”

In his reporting, William Broad never once identifies the MEK or NCRI as an officially designated terrorist group, which at the time they both were and had been for over a decade.

To hammer home how deliberately alarmist the claims actually were, the Times even published the article with a photograph of a smiling Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his entourage in red hardhats emerging from what is apparently supposed to resemble a steel-reinforced underground lair. Yet the photo is wholly unrelated to any of the allegations made within the report.

The caption beneath of the picture reads, “President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, center, at a highway tunnel near Tehran. Much of Iran’s atomic work is also in tunnels.”

Yes, that really happened. Fit to print, indeed.

The focus on Iranian tunnels leads inevitably to discussion of American military capabilities and the challenges faced by less vulnerable facilities. Broad, in his 2010 report, noted that the “Pentagon is racing to develop a deadly tunnel weapon” for such circumstances. That weapon has since been completed and tested, but has not been sold to Israel for fear it might be used without American authorization.

Clearly, the MEK’s latest revelations are recycled claims and, like before, are essentially allegations based on vague intelligence leaked to the group by American officials. The MEK merely acts as a laundering service for the unproven accusations of its handlers in the United States and Israel.

Unfortunately, the mainstream press – even when skeptical about the information – continues to dutifully provide a platform for such propaganda and fear-mongering by publishing such accusations.

By Nima Shirazi | Wide Asleep in America

July 16, 2013 0 comment

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