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Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

MEK Terrorists Coordinate Attack on Iran’s Embassy

On Nov. 28, three days after the Schiller Institute conference in Germany, which included a speech by Iran’s Ambassador to Germany, His Excellency Ali Reza Sheikh Attar, a team of 30 executed a violent break-in of the Iranian Embassy compound in Berlin. The well-prepared group first blocked off the street, before using ladders and wirecutters to scale the barbed-wire-topped fence. According to the Iranian Embassy and government officials in Tehran, the attack was coordinated by the Mujahideen e-Khalq (MEK), or People’s Mujahideen, and included individuals who had been at the MEK military base in Iraq that had been shut down.

Ambassador Sheikh Attar said that his embassy had warned the responsible Berlin police unit three times that morning on Nov. 28, that an attack was being planned. No additional preventive police measures were undertaken, and arrests only followed after the police had arrived 10 minutes later, and caught 10 people in the nearby Free University to which they fled. No embassy personnel were injured, as the attackers did not succeed in entering the building itself. Until now, there has been no evidence that the attackers had weapons. The media are calling the attackers "refugees" protesting human rights conditions in Iran, with no mention of the MEK.

In February this year, 24 attackers stormed the Syrian Embassy in Berlin.

The Nov. 28 attack was similar to an attack/occupation of the Iraqi Embassy in Berlin in August 2002, a part of the early Tony Blair machinations leading to the 2003 military invasion of Iraq. Any sabotage of competent police reaction must be seen in ..PAGE light of who internationally coordinates the terror activities of the MEK, an organization which openly solicits contributions within Germany, but under a different name. The U.S. government removed the MEK from the official list of terrorist organizations in September.

Any move by MEK cadre from Iraq to Germany would have been closely monitored by German security agencies, even if there was no complicity. The Berlin attack must be seen as part of the ongoing strategic confrontation with Russia and China, which is playing out around planned military actions against Syria and Iran.

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Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Wilkerson: Delisting Mojahedin Khalq a terrible move by US

Obama’s or Romney’s Foreign Policy: Does it Matter Who Wins ?

Larry Wilkerson: All US administrations have similar foreign policy, but the neo-con group around Bush/Cheney was more dangerous and many of the same characters are advising Romney

Bio

Lawrence Wilkerson is a retired United States Army soldier and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell. Wilkerson is an adjunct professor at the College of William & Mary where he teaches courses on US national security. He also instructs a senior seminar in the Honors Department at the George Washington University entitled "National Security Decision Making."

Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay in Baltimore.

A lot of people have suggested that the Obama foreign policy is not that much different than Bush term two’s foreign policy, that Bush term one, invasion of Iraq, was somewhat of an aberration, and in fact it really doesn’t make that much difference who’s president, because you get the Pentagon, you have the military-industrial-security complex, a whole whack of foreign-policy professionals, and the presidents kind of go along with their opinion. So does it really matter whether it’s President Obama, a President Romney, when it comes to the next four years and U.S. foreign policy?

Now joining us to talk about all of this is Lawrence Wilkerson. Larry is a retired colonel. He was the former chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. He’s currently an adjunct professor of government at the College of William & Mary. He’s a regular contributor to The Real News Network. Thanks for joining us.

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON, FMR. CHIEF OF STAFF TO COLIN POWELL: Thanks for having me, Paul.

JAY: So does it matter whether it’s Obama or Romney? We haven’t seen a heck of a lot of difference, I think, between Obama and Bush term two, as I said.

WILKERSON: There was a marvellous consistency to U.S. security and foreign policy over the period from, say, 1947 to the present, aberration being George W. Bush in 2001. But to say as I’ve said before—and you know this, Paul—that there would be no difference, really, in terms of that policy, regardless of who’s elected, has begun to take on a new tone and tint, if you will, of late.

And there are basically two reasons for that. One is the fact that I don’t know what Mitt Romney thinks. I simply do not know what he thinks, because he said everything from A to Z from the primaries to now, the general election. And while that’s explicable in terms of the extremism in the Republican Party and what one has to do to cater to that extremism in the primaries in order to get to the general election, it’s not entirely explicable. I really do not know where Mitt Romney stands.

Then the second issue is the people he’s arrayed around him. Many of these people are the neoconservatives, like John Bolton, for example, whom I have seen before. And I see them singing off essentially the same sheet of music they sang from in 2002 and early 2003 when they essentially took an inexperienced president and marched him into war with Iraq—one of the most disastrous decisions the U.S. has made in the post-World War II era. So I see these same people around him, and I see an inexperienced man in terms of security and foreign policy, and I see them being able to manipulate him much the same way these neoconservatives—indeed, many of them the same people—manipulated George W. Bush.

So I have to revise my views about whether or not I believe Barack Obama, now with four years of experience, or Mitt Romney would be the same, roughly, with regard to foreign and security policy. I do think Barack Obama would probably promise a better decision-maker in that regard.

JAY: Now, it’s not to say that Barack Obama hasn’t carried on and even extended some of Bush’s policies, his drone attacks and other such things if anything are setting all new precedents for the kind of behavior that the U.S. does abroad. Doesn’t that concern you?

WILKERSON: It does. And I think you put your finger on what is the most concerning aspect of his security policy overseas, and that is the drone attacks. We are creating far more terrorists, potentially, in the future than we are killing with those drone attacks, not to mention the fact that we were crossing whole chasms of international law, even of domestic law, as we do this and do it rather cavalierly.

But the other aspects of his security policy domestically bother me too, everything from the Patriot Act to the FISA Amendments Act to the national security letters, to his unprecedented prosecution of whistleblowers. All of that bothers me. But when it comes to Mitt Romney, I don’t see a relaxation of any of those things. Indeed, from his rhetoric [inaud.] is an even more ardent pursuer of those things.

JAY: So you’re not a great admirer of President Obama’s foreign policy, but your point is you think Romney and the kind of people around him would be significantly worse.

WILKERSON: There are people who are—as I understand it, they range the gamut. Now, there’s a gentleman who is president of Washington College over in Chesterton, Maryland, and he was the second director of policy planning for Colin Powell when I was there. So I know Mitchell Reiss quite well. Mitchell is a moderate in the sense that he takes the middle road, usually, in U.S. national security and foreign policy. But Mitchell was an advocate for the delisting of the MEK, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, the terrorist group—still a terrorist group, in my mind—from Iran. So you take someone like Mitchell Reiss, who normally is a person with whom I find a great deal of agreement with regard to security and foreign policy, and here he is advocating for the delisting of the MEK, which I think was a terrible move in all respects, because terrible move in the way the Iranians perceived it, and a terrible move because it basically acknowledged a terrorist group is now not a terrorist group anymore, and they clearly certainly still are.

So, I mean, you actually see people like that who you would normally cheer being in an administration, who’ve taken on a tone and tint that’s very different from what I consider to be sound and rational national security policy.

JAY: And to what extent do you think people like Karl Rove, even Cheney, Kyl, some of the—Senator Kyl—some of those people that were very much part of that foreign-policy cabal, how much are they going to have to say if there’s a Romney administration?

WILKERSON: I don’t know, Paul. That—I’m concerned about that, as I said before. But my biggest concern stems from at least I don’t—my lack of knowledge. I simply don’t know who’s going to influence Mitt Romney, because I don’t know who Mitt Romney is.

I think you’ve heard me say this before. I was searching for a Republican candidate for whom I could vote. I would vote for Mitt Romney at the drop of a hat, and therefore feel good about my political party’s candidate once again, if I thought I knew where he stood and I had a reasonable approximation of that stand being [roughly congruent]. I don’t even know where Mitt Romney stands, so how can I make a decision to vote for Mitt Romney? I can’t.

JAY: Alright. Thanks for joining us, Larry.

WILKERSON: Thanks for having me, Paul.

JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

End

The Real News,

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Mujahedin Khalq Organization as a terrorist group

Washington backed MEK terrorist group demands delisting in Australia

AN Iranian group with a history of violent clashes with authority is fighting to be delisted as a terrorist organisation in Australia and it has the backing of several federal politicians.
Washington backed MEK terrorist group demands delisting in Australia
For half a century the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), or People’s Mujahideen of Iran, has fought to topple what it calls the "oppressive" Iranian government.

Listed as a terrorist group in Australia since 2001, it is seen by some as a modernising democratic force, and others as a mystical terror-cult.

Its logo, in use since the 1970s, features a Marxist clenched fist holding a sickle, crossed over a gun and bayonet.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade told AAP the MEK was listed because it satisfied, on reasonable grounds, the definition that it was either "a person who commits, or attempts to commit, terrorist acts or participates in or facilitates the commission of terrorist acts; an entity owned or controlled directly or indirectly by such persons; or a person or an entity acting on behalf of, or at the direction of such persons and entities."

Now the MEK is lobbying to be removed from the list, saying it has cleaned up its act.

But it’s unclear whether the outfit will be able to shake off its past.

In 1992, about 15 MEK members trashed the Iranian embassy in Australia and assaulted staff, an event filmed by an SBS camera crew which had been tipped off by local MEK supporters.

Federal police raided about 10 homes of suspected MEK members in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane in 2003.

No one was charged or arrested, and the AFP still won’t comment on the raids.

The organisation has a far more troubled record overseas.

Defectors speak of a Marxist-Islamist cult centred for 40 years on its leaders; husband and wife team Massoud and Maryam Rajavi.

US government-funded think tank RAND Corporation, which produces analysis for the armed forces, listed the group’s cult-like characteristics in a 2009 report.

"(Massoud) Rajavi instituted what he termed an ‘ideological revolution’ in 1985, which, over time, imbued the MEK with many of the typical characteristics of a cult," the RAND report states.

It lists tactics including authoritarian control, confiscation of assets, sexual control (including mandatory divorce and celibacy), emotional isolation, forced labour, sleep deprivation, physical abuse, and limited exit options.

"Recruits were brought into Iraq illegally and then required to hand over their identity documents for ‘safekeeping’. They were effectively trapped," the report said.

The findings of the RAND report are largely replicated in a 2005 Human Right Watch (HRW) report.

It states that during the ideological revolution in Iraq, married couples were forced to divorce and families were broken up, with children sent to live in safe houses run by the MEK.

The HRW document says many were told their families had died, only to find out years later they had been alive all along.

Likewise the families had been told their loved ones in the camp had died.

The report claims members were also forced to undergo daily self-deprecation sessions where they would be marched out in front of hundreds of other members and asked to chastise themselves.

Those who tried to get out of the MEK were beaten, tortured, held in solitary confinement and even killed, it says.

But last month the US delisted the MEK as a terrorist group after a well-funded lobbying campaign.

Australian Federal MPs who support the group, including Labor Senator Claire Moore, and Nationals Senator John Williams, hope this country will follow suit.

"I think it’s worth giving them a go," Senator Williams said.

"Are they a threat to our society if they come here, are they a threat to the rest of the world?" he asked.

"A lot of countries have delisted them, saying they aren’t."

Co-Secretary of Australian Supporters of Democracy in Iran, Peter Murphy, isn’t surprised the US delisted the MEK, calling the group "a peaceful, democratic, constitutionalist force for change".

But University of NSW Middle East expert Dr Anthony John Billingsley claims that’s a fantasy.

"It’s a dark illusion and a shameful demonstration of the power of lobbyists," Dr Billingsley told AAP.

"I wouldn’t call them a force for democracy in Iran, quite the opposite.

"They’re a group of weird, quite nasty terrorists, guilty of killing a fairly large number of Iranians including leading members of the regime, but also a large number of Americans and other westerners as well."

Upon delisting the MEK, US State Department officials released a statement saying it "does not overlook or forget the MEK’s past acts of terrorism, including its involvement in the killing of US citizens in Iran in the 1970s and an attack on US soil in 1992.

"The department also has serious concerns about the MEK as an organisation, particularly with regard to allegations of abuse committed against its own members," it said.

"The secretary’s decision today took into account the MEK’s public renunciation of violence, the absence of confirmed acts of terrorism by the MEK for more than a decade."

Dr Billingsley said some members are giving up their lives for the group.

MEK observer Mohammed Sadeghpour explained that last year a Brisbane based supporter sold his home and donated all the money to the group before moving to France to become a full member.

"He is a good supporter, whole-hearted," he said.

"He sold it for about $300,000 or $400,000.

"But these are individual decisions; they make them on their own."

A report produced later in 2005 by a group known as Friends of a Free Iran (FOFI), comprising four European Parliament MPs, found no evidence of the RAND and HRW claims.

Mr Murphy said HRW’s report was "a spray job, but useful slander" for the MEK’s opponents.

"There are obviously HRW staff that are very pro-Iranian regime," he said.

"It’s a shame HRW let itself go down that path."

But HRW says its critics haven’t provided any evidence to back up claims the organisation is pro-Iranian.

Mr Murphy bristles at any suggestion the MEK has operated as a cult, including instances of self-immolation.

When MEK leader Maryam Rajavi was detained and questioned by French police in 2003, 10 members set themselves on fire in Paris – three died.

Hunger strikes also occurred in Australia, and Ms Rajavi was released without charge after a few weeks.

When asked about these events, Mr Murphy’s frustration becomes apparent.

"There’s absolutely no evidence anyone asked them to do that," he said.

"What you are suggesting is just absurd, ridiculous."

After the interview with AAP Mr Murphy took to Twitter to say this author was a pawn of the Iranian government.

"AAP journalist Martin Silk is unethically entrapping torture victims, ultimately for the misogynist Iranian regime," he Tweeted.

AAP rejects this notion as absurd and ridiculous.

Mr Murphy denies the MEK was ever anything but a pro-democracy group or has used any terrorist tactics in its war with the Iranian government.

"One of the MEK’s cultic characteristics is a focus on suicide," the RAND report states.

"Although it had not used suicide as a tactical weapon in terrorist attacks since 1981, the MEK has frequently used the threat of suicide as a negotiating tactic or to frustrate investigations," the document says.

Labor Senator Claire Moore admits it seems odd a democratic group has only had one leader in 40 years.

But she blames the terrorist listing for stopping the MEK telling governments its side of the story.

She says she understands the group has been at war with the Iranian government in the past, and employed tactics including bombings and assassinations.

"But they deny they’ve been careless, and they haven’t been involved in terrorist activities against Australia, the US or any European countries," she said.

But Dr Billingsley insists any portrayal of the MEK as a peaceful organisation is flawed.

Some people think the MEK isn’t so nasty after all, he said, because "they’re blowing up our enemies rather than us".

"The fact is they’re killing civilians," he said.

"It’s terrorism by any definition."

By Martin Silk, AAP

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Palling Around With Terrorists: Obama Administration Embraces MEK

Four years after Sarah Palin famously accused then-candidate Barack Obama of “palling round with terrorists,” it can be said truthfully. Last Friday, news leaked that the U.S. State Department is going to remove the Iranian terrorist group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) from its list of foreign terrorist organizations.

MEK’s ideology is a mixture of Islam and Marxism with cult-like practices. The group once called itself “the People’s Holy Warriors of Iran.” They supported the Islamic revolution in Iran and later allied with the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. During the 1970s MEK conducted numerous

The Bush administration cited MEK as a reason to invade Iraq

attacks on American officials, including an attempted assassination of the U.S. ambassador in Tehran. Six Americans were killed. It has been listed as a terrorist organization since 1997. The MEK fought in the Iran-Iraq War, made use of chemical weapons, and brutally put down Iraqi Kurdish people in the early 1990s. The Bush administration cited Saddam’s support of MEK as a reason to invade Iraq, and the group was forcibly disarmed by the U.S. Army. In recent years, the MEK is believed to be involved in a wave of terrorist attacks against Iranian nuclear scientists.

The Obama administration’s decision was made with bipartisan support. MEK has many prominent U.S. political figures on its payroll, including Howard Dean, Rudy Giuliani, Wesley Clark, Bill Richardson, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former FBI Director Louis Freeh, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, former National Security Advisers Frances Townsend and General James L. Jones, and former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell.

Note to all U.S. Attorneys: Everyone associated with MEK can be charged with providing material support for terrorism, a federal crime under the USA PATRIOT Act (18 U.S.C. §2339A and §2339B) punishable by 15 years in prison.

Now that the United States has de-listed the MEK as an international terrorist group, our government can overtly fund them to conduct terrorist attacks on Iran. According to some reports, MEK has received covert U.S. and Israeli assistance for years.

Glenn Greenwald:

[W]ith the MEK, we have a group that, at least according to some reports, appears to have intensified its terrorism, and yet they are removed from the list. Why? Because now they are aligned against the prime enemy of the US and Israel – and working closely with those two nations – and are therefore, magically, no longer “terrorists.”

Posted by Richard Warnick , Oneutah.org

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

War with Iran started five years ago

Syria’s mortar attack that killed civilians inside Turkey will prove to be the final domino to fall in a coordinated effort to take down both Syria and Iran. It is part of a not-so covert war started more than five years ago following the invasion of Iraq and the occupation of Afghanistan.

A wider and far more deadly war is now coming into view as Iran gears up for an inevitable attack and the U.S. and its partners escalate proxy wars inside Iran and Syria and fan the flames of conflict in northern Africa.

The global elite and their corporate and bankster partners are determined to force on Iran the fate suffered by Iraq – more than a million killed and its civilian infrastructure decimated – and implement the globalist plan of balkanization and order out of chaos realized through never-ending sectarian and religious violence.

Evidence of the covert and not so covert war against Iran and other enemies in the Middle East abounds, as we note below:

“As a global-macro analyst, I am frequently asked if war with Iran will come and, if so, when,” writes Jim Rickards, a Wall Street economist and investment banker, wrote in February.

“My answer is that the war has already begun. It’s not a shooting war – yet. What the U.S. and Israel are now waging with Iran is what experts call unrestricted warfare. This is warfare that consists of sabotage, assassination, special operations, psychological operations, attacks on critical infrastructure, cyber warfare and – the most recent addition to the arsenal – financial warfare.”

A concerted effort aimed at undermining Iran began in earnest following the Iranian revolution in 1979, but escalated considerably during the Bush years and continues under Obama.

• The United States has spent millions funding militant ethnic separatist groups to cripple Iran. The CIA has worked closely with Kurds, Azeris, Ahwazi Arabs, and the Baluchis. “The latest attacks inside Iran fall in line with US efforts to supply and train Iran’s ethnic minorities to destabilize the Iranian regime,” Fred Burton, a former US state department counter-terrorism agent, admitted.

The support includes funding Jundallah, a Sunni and Baluchi group with links to al-Qaeda.

“The operations are controversial because they involve dealing with movements that resort to terrorist methods in pursuit of their grievances against the Iranian regime,” the Telegraph reported in February, 2007, during the Bush administration.

• In 2008, a story by journalist Seymour Hersh appearing in the July 7, 2008 issue of The New Yorker reported U.S. covert action plans against Iran involved extensive activity by the CIA, DIA and Special Forces.

• Israel’s Mossad and MEK have collaborated on terror attacks inside Iran and have worked together on assassinating Iran’s nuclear scientists. The MEK, short for Mujahideen e-Khalq, a violent Iranian militant group, is listed by the State Department as a terrorist organization, although Bush-era neocons have worked to change this designation. MEK claims it has killed 40,000 Iranians who support the government. The CIA has trained the group at a little-known base in Nevada.

• The war waged inside Iran continues under Obama. In April, Iran arrested a group of Israel-backed mercenary terrorists. In November, officials in the U.S. admitted the CIA is active inside Iran and stealth drones have made hundreds of trips into Iran, according to the Washinton Post.

• Israel has hinted it was behind a devastating explosion at a military base near Iran’s capital of Tehran in November. According to blogger Richard Silverstein, an Israeli source with extensive senior political and military experience provided an exclusive report that the explosion that killed 40 people was the work of the Mossad in collaboration with the MEK.

• The United States and the European Union have engaged in coordinated economic warfare against Iran and its national currency, the rial. “Iran’s rial plunged against the U.S. dollar in open-market trade on Monday, taking its loss in value over the past week to more than a quarter in further evidence that Western sanctions are shattering the economy,” Reuters reported last week. The Iranian currency has experienced considerable devaluation since banking sanctions were placed on the country.

• Syria and its Shiite ruling elite are also under attack. The New York Times and the establishment media admit that the Free Syria Army is a CIA proxy paramilitary group. In August, “President Barack Obama signed a secret order authorizing the CIA to aid Syrian rebels in attempting to overthrow Bashar Al-Assad. However, the order stopped short of allowing the CIA to provide lethal weapons,” Paul Joseph Watson writes for Infowars.com.

• A massacre in Houla, Syria, in May was the work of the FSA, according to eye witnesses. Despite evidence to the contrary, the establishment media continued to report the massacre was the work of Assad’s military. The FSA and its al-Qaeda affiliates stand accused of other war crimes and atrocities, activity routinely covered up or dismissed by the corporate media.

• In September, we reported on Turkey’s efforts to support the FSA and allow it to conduct military operations from its territory. Turkey is now poised to expand the war against its neighbor following the death of five civilians inside Turkey from a Syrian mortar attack.

“Turkey’s Parliament approved a motion Thursday that authorizes further military action against Syria,” the New York Times reports. The attack and Turkey’s response will be used by the United States and NATO to impose a no-fly zone over Syria similar to the one established in Libya.

The United States expressed “outrage” at the deadly shelling of a Turkish border village from inside Syria, according to the Christian Science Monitor, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon strongly condemned the attack on the border where the FSA is allowed to operate with impunity under the direction of the CIA and the Pentagon.

by Jacque Fresco , Hang the Bankers

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Iraq

Anti-Terror Conference to be held in Baghdad

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to attend the second international conference on global fight against terrorism in the Iraqi capital.
The conference is scheduled to be held in Baghdad in late October attended by countries including Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
During his stay in Baghdad, the Iranian chief executive will hold talks with senior Iraqi officials, including President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki, Fars News Agency reported on Saturday.
The first International Conference on the Global Fight Against Terrorism was held in Tehran in late June. Senior officials from at least 60 countries and representatives from several international organizations including the UN attended the two-day meeting.
Iran, having suffered a long record of the killing of its officials in bombings and other acts of terror, mostly carried out by the terrorist Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) regards itself a victim of terrorism.
Out of the 17,000 Iranians killed in terrorist attacks since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, some 12,000 of them have fallen victim to MKO terrorism.
Members of the MKO fled to Iraq in the 1980s, where they had the support of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and set up Camp Ashraf in the eastern province of Diyala near the Iranian border.
On September 28, the US formally removed the MKO from its list of terror organizations one week after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent the US Congress a classified communication about the move.
Following the delisting, Foreign Ministry said in statement that Tehran strongly condemns Washington’s irresponsible move, which is against the international and legal commitments of the US.
The Islamic Republic holds the US government responsible for the terrorist acts carried out by the MKO in the past, present and the future, the statement added.
The Foreign Ministry also stated that the United States has expressed official support for the terrorist cell with this move, which also proves that Washington follows no logic in its actions.
The European Union also removed the MKO from its list of terrorist organizations in 2009.

Iran Daily

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

MEK: When terrorism becomes respectable

Department of State Public Notice ‎‏8050‏‎ dated September ‎‏21‏‎, ‎‏2012‏‎, reads thus:‎

In the matter of the designation of Mujahadin-e Khalq, also known as MEK, also known as ‎Mujahadin-e Khalq Organization, also known as MKO, also known as Muslim Iranian Students’ ‎Society, also known as National Council of Resistance, also known as NCR, also known as ‎Organization of the People’s Holy Warriors of Iran, also known as the National Liberation Army ‎of Iran, also known as NLA, also known as National Council of Resistance of Iran, also known ‎as NCRI, also known as Sazeman-e Mujahadin-e Khalq-e Iran, as a Specially Designated Global ‎Terrorist Pursuant to Section ‎‏1‏‎[b] of Executive Order ‎‏13224‏‎, as amended. Acting under the ‎authority of Section ‎‏1‏‎[b] of Executive Order ‎‏13224‏‎ of September ‎‏23‏‎, ‎‏2001‏‎, as amended ]"the ‎Order’] I hereby revoke the designation of the entity known as the Mujahadin-e Khalq, and its ‎aliases, as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist pursuant to Section ‎‏1‏‎[b] of the Order. This ‎action takes effect September ‎‏28‏‎, ‎‏2012‏‎.
‎
Hillary Rodham Clinton,Secretary of State

With this stroke of the pen, as it were, the United States removed from its global terrorist list an ‎organization—Mujahedin-e Khalq [MEK]—that had been listed since ‎‏1997‏‎. A shadowy outfit, ‎MEK’s delisting was the result of a full-court press by a bipartisan group of policy influentials, ‎including General Hugh Shelton, former chairman of the joint Chiefs of Staff; Lee Hamilton, ‎former congressman from Indiana; Bill Richardson, former governor of New Mexico; General ‎Wesley Clark, former supreme commander of NATO; and Louis Freeh and Michael Hayden, ‎former directors of the FBI and CIA, respectively.

In a speech at a conference in February ‎‏2011‏‎, Governor Richardson urged that MEK should be ‎removed from the terrorist list : "This is a movement that doesn’t want any money. This is a ‎movement that doesn’t want weapons," Richardson declared. "This is a movement that just wants ‎to be allowed to roam, to do your democratic thing." Equally opaquely, General Shelton said at ‎the same event: "When you look at what the MEK stands for, when they are antinuclear, ‎separation of church and state, individual rights, MEK is obviously the way Iran needs to go."

‎On one level, the ostensible reason for the United States’ delisting is that the Iraq-based MEK is ‎a force in exile dedicated to removing the current regime in Tehran. As General Shelton added, ‎‎"By placing the MEK on the FTO [Foreign Terrorist Organizations] list we have weakened the ‎support of the best organized internal resistance group to the most terrorist-oriented anti-Western ‎world, anti-democratic regime in the region." In the zero-sum game of U.S.-Iran relations, there ‎appears to be, then, a certain logic to the move. It is illuminating, however, to take a closer look ‎at this movement, through the eyes of some individuals lesser known than the heavyweight list ‎that supports their cause, but who might just be in a position to know more about it. These would ‎include Ray McGovern, an ex-CIA operative, who said of the MEK: "Why the U.S. cooperates ‎with organizations like the Mujahedin, I think, is because that they are local, and because they are ‎ready to work for us. Previously, we considered them a terrorist organization. And they exactly ‎are. But they are now our terrorists and we now don’t hesitate to send them into Iran….for the ‎usual secret service activities: attacking sensors, in order to supervise the Iranian nuclear program, ‎mark targets for air attacks, and perhaps establishing secret camps to control the military locations ‎in Iran. And also a little sabotage."

Or, from Karen Kwiatkowski, formerly with the Department of Defense: "MEK is ready to do ‎things over which we would be ashamed, and over which we try to keep silent. But for such ‎tasks we’ll use them." (For both these quotes, see "US Government’s Secret Plans for Iran," by ‎Markus Schmidt, John Goetz, WDR TV, Germany, February ‎‏3‏‎, ‎‏2005‏‎).

And what exactly are these "tasks"? According to the State Department’s original statement ‎designating MEK as a terrorist organization (in ‎‏1997‏‎, when the Clinton administration was trying ‎to engage Iran), MEK instigated a bombing campaign, including an attack against the head office ‎of the Islamic Republic Party and the Prime Minister’s office, which killed some ‎‏70‏‎ high-ranking ‎Iranian officials, including Chief Justice Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, President Mohammad-‎Ali Rajaei, and Prime Minister Mohammad-Javad Bahonar. In addition, MEK assassinations ‎range in date and targets from U.S. military personnel and civilians in the ‎‏1970‏s (hence the ‎original terrorist listing) to, almost certainly, the killing of at least five leading Iranian nuclear ‎scientists in recent months.

Complementing the lethal violence of the MEK is the organization’s bizarre internal dynamic. ‎Elizabeth Rubin of The New York Times visited its Camp Ashraf headquarters in Iraq in ‎‏2003‏‎, ‎and, in the course of the drumbeat of support for de-listing, posted an article in the Times on ‎August ‎‏13‏‎, ‎‏2011‏‎, "An Iranian Cult and its American Friends." Herein she describes a—"cult" is ‎the only appropriate term—headed by a woman named Maryam Rajavi and her husband, ‎Massoud. What she relates is eerily reminiscent of the doomed Jim Jones cult in Guyana in the ‎‏1970‏s—"a fictional world of female worker bees…staring ahead as if they were working at a ‎factory in Maoist China….Friendships and all emotional relationships are forbidden. From the ‎time they are toddlers, boys and girls are not allowed to speak to each other. Each day at Camp ‎Ashraf you had to report your dreams and thoughts….After my visit, I met and spoke to men ‎and women who had escaped from the group’s clutches. Many had to be reprogrammed. They ‎recounted how people were locked up if they disagreed with the leadership or tried to escape; ‎some were even killed."

So far, this is only a Jim Jones situation—which is bad enough—in that the tragedy affected only ‎the cult’s members. But, as Rubin also reports:‎

During the Iran-Iraq war in the ‎‏1980‏s, the group served as Saddam Hussein’s own private militia ‎opposing the theocratic government in Tehran. For two decades, he gave the group money, ‎weapons, jeeps and military bases along the border with Iran. In return, the Rajavis pledged their ‎fealty.

In ‎‏1991‏‎, when Mr. Hussein crushed a Shiite uprising in the south and attempted to carry out a ‎genocide against the Kurds in the north, the Rajavis and their army joined his forces in mowing ‎down fleeing Kurds. Ms. Rajavi told her disciples ‘Take the Kurds under your tanks, and save ‎your bullets for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.’ Many followers escaped in disgust.‎

Rubin concludes: "MEK is not only irrelevant to the cause of Iran’s democratic activists, but a ‎totalitarian cult that will come back to haunt us."

All of which begs the pressing question: Why the policy reversal? And why now? There are at ‎least three reasons, from the pragmatic to the venal. First, MEK’s presence in Iraq has been a ‎growing source of tension between the host country’s Shia government and the United States. As ‎a ‎‏2009‏‎ Rand Corporation report ("The Mujahedin-e Khalq in Iraq: A Policy Conundrum") says:‎

From the early weeks of Operation Iraqi Freedom [OIF] until January ‎‏2009‏‎, coalition forces ‎detained and provided security for members of the MEK, an exiled Iranian dissident cult group ‎living in Iraq. From the outset of OIF, the MEK was designate d a hostile force, largely because ‎of its history of cooperation with Saddam Hussein’s military in the Iran-Iraq war and its alleged ‎involvement in his suppression of the Shia and Kurdish uprisings that followed the Gulf War of ‎‏1991‏‎.‎

The Rand report goes on:‎

The coalition’s decision to provide security for a foreign terrorist organization was very ‎controversial because it placed the United States in the position of protecting a group that it had ‎labeled a terrorist organization. Among many resulting complications, this policy conundrum has ‎made the United States vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy in the war on terrorism.‎

The Nour Al- Maliki government in Iraq, therefore, wanted the MEK out; but only by offering ‎the prospect of de-listing could the Obama administration persuade its rogue protectee to leave ‎Ashraf peacefully, as it has now done, to be processed for resettlement by the UN High ‎Commissioner for Refugees.

Second, the dance with the MEK is a commentary on our lack of engagement with Iran, despite ‎early promises for such by President Obama. According to a blog posting of September ‎‏24‏‎, ‎‏2012‏‎, ‎by Leila Kashefi, a Washington-based Iranian-American human rights activist: "It has been ‎incredible to watch members of a designated terror group walk the halls of Congressional office ‎buildings, mingling with Hill staffers and representatives. ‘The only Iranians we see are the ‎MEK’, said one staffer."

Third—and this is the least salubrious factor in the de-listing—despite General Shelton’s ‎protestations to the contrary, the MEK both wants and gets money, and uses it strategically. ‎How exactly the group receives its support is a murky, perhaps impenetrable question. A report ‎by the UK daily, The Guardian ("Iranian exiles, DC lobbyists and the campaign to delist the ‎MEK," September ‎‏21‏‎ ‎‏2012‏‎) attributes this to "a formidable fundraising operation and campaign ‎to transform the MEK’s image led by more than ‎‏20‏‎ Iranian-American organizations across the ‎US. These groups and their leaders have spent millions of dollars on donations to members of ‎Congress, paying Washington lobby groups and hiring influential politicians and officials, ‎including two former CIA directors as speakers." As the Financial Times summed up in a recent ‎editorial (Mujahedin mistake," September ‎‏25‏‎, ‎‏2012‏‎) "MEK has found the best friends money can ‎buy". (As a footnote, it goes without saying that neither of these press organs is typically ‎amicably disposed toward the Iranian regime.)

‎Others have been skeptical about the role of expatriate groups—citing their characteristic ‎frugality! Another, perhaps fanciful, explanation has been the largesse of Saddam Hussein ‎toward MEK in the ‎‏1990‏s, and shrewd stewardship of his funding. Or perhaps the multiple ‎aliases—self describing as "freedom fighters" or "democracy" activists—have diversified the ‎funding options. Whatever the nature of the money trail, according to the Guardian report, ‎‎"Several prominent former officials have acknowledged being paid significant amounts of money ‎to speak about the MEK. The former Pennsylvania governor, Ed Rendell, has accepted more than ‎‏$150,000‏‎ in speaking fees at events in support of unbanning the MEK." (Others who have ‎accepted fees include Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont, and Rudy Giuliani, former ‎mayor of New York City. See, for example, "Iranian group’s big-money push to get off US ‎terrorist list," Christian Science Monitor, August ‎‏8‏‎, ‎‏2011‏‎.) Nor do these friends in court appear ‎overly concerned with a process of background checking: For Representative Dana Rohrabacher, ‎‎"If they want to contribute to me because I believe strongly in human rights and stand up in cases ‎like this, that’s fine. I don’t check their credentials." [Guardian]

Finally, what are the consequences of the step to delist the MEK? In practical terms, the ‎liberation will enable the MEK to lobby the U.S. Congress for support in the same way as the ‎Iraq Liberation Act of ‎‏1998‏‎ allowed the Iraqi National Congress led by the exiled Ahmad ‎Chalabi to do so—a monumental policy error that led to the invasion of Iraq in ‎‏2003‏‎. In this ‎regard, history, as we know all too well, has a habit of repeating itself. Some ‎‏30‏‎-odd years ago, ‎we saw the mujahedin of another state as "allies" in a cosmic struggle. Welcome to the ‎Afghanistan of the Taliban, three decades on. It is the old adage "the enemy of my enemy is my ‎friend" taken to absurd extreme.

Lest there are doubts about the adverse ethical as well as policy consequences, consider the ‎response from the National Iranian American Council [NAIC], an organization opposed to the ‎current regime, dated September ‎‏21‏‎, ‎‏2012‏‎:‎

The NAIC deplores the decision to remove the MEK from the U.S. list of foreign terrorist ‎organizations. This decision opens the door for Congressional funding of the MEK to conduct ‎terrorist attacks in Iran, makes war with Iran far more likely, and will seriously damage Iran’s ‎peaceful pro-democracy movement as well as America’s standing among ordinary Iranians. The ‎biggest winner today is the Iranian regime, which has claimed for a long time that the U.S. is out ‎to destroy Iran and is the enemy of the Iranian people.‎

All in all, a sad saga—one of taking the moral low ground in pursuit of dubious policy objectives. ‎Let us give the last word to the Financial Timeseditorial, which sums it up rather well:‎

‎"The US government’s decision to take Mujahedin-e Khalq, the exiled Iranian organization, off ‎its list of terrorist groups is a vivid example of the influence of money and lobbying in ‎Washington. At worst it highlights the analytical fog that clouds many US policy heavyweights’ ‎view of Iran."‎

By David C. Speedie , Carnegie Council

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

MKO Served Moscow during the Cold War

•Islamist-Marxist terrorist group that seeks to topple the Iranian regime
•Served Moscow as a source of information on Iran during the Cold War
•By the late 1980s, created a 10,000-strong fighting force in Iraq to aid Saddam Hussein

Mujahedin-e-Khalq, or MEK (a.k.a. Iranian Mujahedin Khalq, or IMK, and Mujahedin al-Khalq Organization, or MKO) is an Islamic-Marxist sect that has been trying to topple Iran’s governing regime since 1981. (It is most commonly known by the acronym MEK.) MEK was classified as a terrorist organization by President Bill Clinton in 1997, and five years later the European Union followed suit.
MKO Served Moscow during the Cold War
MEK is led by the husband-and-wife team of Massoud Rajavi and Maryam Rajavi. Massoud Rajavi heads the organization’s military forces. Experts say that MEK has increasingly come to resemble a personality cult that is devoted to Mr. Rajavi’s secular interpretation of the Koran and is prone to sudden, dramatic ideological shifts. Mr. Rajavi was last known to be living in Iraq, but his current whereabouts are unknown. His wife Maryam, who hopes to become President of Iran someday, is MEK’s principal leader. Born in 1953 to an upper-middle-class Iranian family, she joined MEK as a student in Tehran in the early 1970s. After relocating with the group to Paris in 1981, she was elected its joint leader and later became deputy commander-in-chief of its armed wing.

MEK has a network of sympathizers in Europe, the United States, and Canada. The group’s political arm, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, maintains offices in several capitals, including Washington, DC. MEK’s membership has dwindled since about 2001, and the organization is currently believed to have some 10,000 members in its ranks; one-third to one-half of these are fighters.

MEK, whose name means “People’s Combatants,” was established in 1965 after a split in a Marxist-Leninist movement that had waged a guerrilla action in northern Iran. Its founders were college-educated Iranian leftists opposed to the country’s pro-Western ruler, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Its ideology emerged as a mix of Islam and Marxism, with influence as well from the Iranian religious sociologist Ali Shariati, who advocated an “Islam without a clergy.” With KGB help, MEK engaged in a campaign against the Shah and sent cadres to Cuba, East Germany, South Yemen, and Palestinian camps in Lebanon to train as guerrillas.

Vladimir Kuzishkin, a former KGB head in Tehran, reveals in his memoirs that MEK became a major source of information on Iran for Moscow. It also helped Moscow in its efforts to thwart U.S. influence in Iran. In 1970 and 1971, MEK murdered five American military technicians working with the Iranian army. An MEK team tried to kidnap U.S. Ambassador Douglas MacArthur III in Tehran. The attempt failed and the MEK leader, Massoud Rajavi, was given a death sentence, later commuted thanks to a plea to the Shah from Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny.

During Iran’s 1978-79 turmoil, MEK played an active role in helping Ayatollah Khomeini come to power. Its squads burned cinemas, restaurants, hotels and bookshops, and they murdered policemen. After Ayatollah Khomeini took control of the government, MEK worked to radicalize the regime, supporting the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Yet within a year, MEK — now led by Massoud Rajavi, who had been released from prison during the revolution — decided that the Ayatollah Khomeini regime was not revolutionary enough and had to be toppled; there ensued a terrorist operation against the regime, and it continues to this day. In 1981, MEK was driven from its bases on the Iran-Iraq border and resettled in Paris, where it began supporting Iraq in its eight-year war against Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran. In 1986, MEK moved its headquarters to camps in Iraq near the Iran border.

By 1988, MEK had created in Iraq a 10,000-strong fighting force that helped Saddam Hussein in his genocidal campaign against the Kurds, and would also help him crush the Iraqi Shiites in the south in 1991. MEK maintained a reciprocal relationship with Saddam, whose regime was the main source of MEK’s financial support. (Saddam also provided MEK with bases, weapons, and protection.) To raise additional funds, MEK used front organizations such as the Muslim Iranian Student’s Society to collect money from expatriate Iranians and others. MEK also organized an asylum seekers’ campaign – sending 40,000 Iranians to Europe in exchange for their “voluntary contributions” of up to $10,000 apiece.

New MEK recruits.. traditionally have been indoctrinated and prevented from developing normal relationships outside the organization. Their children are not permitted to attend school, but must be educated at home.

During the Iraq War in 2003, U.S. forces cracked down on MEK’s bases in Iraq, and in June of that year French authorities raided an MEK compound outside Paris and arrested 160 people, including Maryam Rajavi. These authorities accused MEK of conspiring to finance and carry out acts of terrorism from the organization’s French base. All the suspects, including Rajavi, were subsequently released.

Acts of violence linked to MEK over the years include:

• The series of mortar attacks and hit-and-run raids during 2000 and 2001 against Iranian government buildings; one of these killed Iran’s chief of staff.

• The 2000 mortar attack on President Mohammad Khatami’s palace in Tehran

• The February 2000 “Operation Great Bahman,” during which MEK launched 12 attacks against Iran

• The 1999 assassination of the deputy chief of Iran’s armed forces general staff, Ali Sayyad Shirazi

• The 1998 assassination of the director of Iran’s prison system, Asadollah Lajevardi

• The 1992 near-simultaneous attacks on Iranian embassies and institutions in 13 countries

• Assistance to Saddam Hussein’s suppression of the 1991 Iraqi Shiite and Kurdish uprisings

• The 1981 bombing of the offices of the Islamic Republic Party and of Premier Mohammad-Javad Bahonar, which killed some 70 high-ranking Iranian officials, including President Mohammad-Ali Rajaei and Bahonar

• Support for the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran by Iranian revolutionaries

• The 1970s killings of U.S. military personnel and civilians working on defense projects in Tehran

DiscoverTheNetwork.org

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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Leading US Officials Support MEK Terrorists with Impunity

Michael Ratner Report: Supreme Court finds Telecoms won’t be prosecuted for illegal wiretapping
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Bio

Michael Ratner is President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York and Chair of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin. He is currently a legal adviser to Wikileaks and Julian Assange. He and CCR brought the first case challenging the Guantanamo detentions and continue in their efforts to close Guantanamo. He taught at Yale Law School, and Columbia Law School, and was President of the National Lawyers Guild. His current books include”Hell No: Your Right to Dissent in the Twenty-First Century America,”and “ Who Killed Che? How the CIA Got Away With Murder.” NOTE: Mr. Ratner speaks on his own behalf and not for any organization with which he is affiliated.

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Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network, and welcome to this week’s edition of The Ratner Report with Michael Ratner. Michael is president emeritus at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. He’s chair of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin. He’s also a board member of The Real News Network. Thanks for joining us again, Michael.

MICHAEL RATNER, PRESIDENT EMERITUS, CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS: Paul, it’s always good to be with The Real News.

JAY: So what do you got this week?

RATNER: This week I’ve just been outraged by a couple of things, mostly around the impunity of our own government, of the United States government, for clear crimes that its officials, former officials have committed, as well as some corporate crime.

And the big two cases that came down—or, really, the two situations that came down were first with the MEK, which is a former Iranian group living in Iraq that had been listed on a U.S. terrorist list. That means that you couldn’t support that group in any way in the United States. They’ve listed the MEK as a terrorist group. It had been involved in the Iranian Revolution, had a falling out with Khomeini’s people, eventually fled to Iraq, became close to Saddam Hussein.

But it’s not really the nature of the group I want to talk about; it’s the nature of what happened. It’s listed on a U.S. terrorist list. What that means is you can’t give any aid to that group, you can’t take anything from that group, you can’t cooperate with that group. You can’t even teach it the principles of the Geneva Convention, which is a case we lost on in the United States Supreme Court Humanitarian Law Project. So you’re completely prohibited from having any transactions with that group, because it’s considered a terrorist group.

So what happens over the last couple of years: a number of former officials from the United States took money—they claim they didn’t know it was directly from the group, etc.—but through essentially what I think were fronts for the MEK. And they took a lot of money. Former governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania took somewhere between $150,000 and $160,000; the former head of the FBI, freeh, took money; former heads of the CIA took money; all to do public speaking in which they talked about how MEK should not be listed as a terrorist group. But the point is they took the money at a time when it was listed as a terrorist group, which is a serious felony in the United States.

And so then what happens? There’s an investigation, supposedly, of their taking money from this terrorist group. But in fact, of course, what are they going to do? Prosecute a bunch of CIA former heads? Prosecute the former head of the FBI? Prosecute a former governor?

JAY: And Mayor Giuliani and others.

RATNER: Right. It’s just a long list.

So what do they do last week? They denied—Hillary Clinton, the State Department, says, well, we’re going to de-list—take it off the terrorist list and no longer treat the MEK as a terrorist organization. Now, there may be a lot of complicated political reasons why they did that, having to do with both the politics in Iraq, their own politics about Iran, etc., but in any case, this group of people who all took money—which I believe came indirectly through the MEK—were lobbying to take it off the terrorist list. And what did they do? They’re not going to prosecute any of these people who took money indirectly or directly, however it came, from the MEK.

And what’s outrageous about that is that they took this money at a time it was a terrorist group listing. Whenever we think of that listing, it was illegal at the time that money was taken—you couldn’t take it from the MEK. And what you have to contrast is what happens with clients of my own or others who had any communication, anything with groups that the U.S. doesn’t like that are on the terrorist list.

JAY: Yeah. I mean, some of the people that get charged do charitable contributions to charities that have some kind of connection to Hamas or Hezbollah, and that’s enough to get you convicted.

RATNER: That’s one of the best examples, Paul. The Holy Land Foundation, they were the biggest Muslim charity in the United States. They gave money to a number of groups in Gaza and other places that the UN gave money to and you couldn’t even argue were necessarily connected with Hamas.

They tried Holy Land Foundation. And, of course, the heads of the Holy Land Foundation are now serving decades—decades in prison. The foundation has been wiped out. There’s a case—Hamas on the terrorist list, supposedly indirect contributions to Hamas for humanitarian aid, let’s say—this is blankets and hospitals and things like that—and yet these people go to jail. Yet when our own former officials close to the Bush administration, close to the Democrats, close to the Republicans do the same thing with a terrorist organization that now the U.S. has a use for, those people are given, basically, complete impunity and the organization is taken off the terrorist list.

JAY: Has the Justice Department given any explanation for why these cases aren’t being pursued? I mean, we know the politics of why they’re not, but there needs to be some official reason here.

RATNER: So far there isn’t. I mean, they might still be technically under investigation, but they’re not going to go anywhere. I mean, the argument’ll probably be that, well, we don’t think there’s enough evidence that people knew that the money came from the MEK or whatever else, or now that it’s off the terrorist list we don’t feel that there’s much purpose served by a prosecution. But that’s just wrong. I mean, that’s just completely wrong. I mean, but that may be their explanation.

But it does highlight that what officials in the United States do, or former officials do, is essentially given impunity. And, of course, we’ve talked about it before. That’s been the case with regard to the torture program that was carried on under the Bush administration. The Obama administration has given them, you know, a complete case—complete impunity. And the second—.

JAY: Yeah, I was going to ask: what do you make of this decision of the Supreme Court?

RATNER: Well, it’s a decision in a manner of speaking. The second big case that comes up is this question of warrantless wiretapping, warrantless electronic surveillance. And that’s going after American citizens’ communications, whether it’s by phone or email or Twittering or whatever else that are not public, you know, direct Tweets or email messages, going after them without a court-ordered warrant that’s required under our constitution.

And I got to give you a minute of history on that. After 9/11 the president, on his own, secretly decided that he was going to authorize the warrantless wiretapping of American citizens by the National Security Agency, the NSA. But, of course, without the cooperation of [incompr.] communications companies, AT&T and others, they can’t do that. So, secretly, unbeknown to the courts, unbeknown to anyone, they went to these telecommunications companies and said to them, we want you to warrantlessly wiretap various people, organizations, etc. They put these machines on—and we actually have evidence about that—a machine on, you know, the back end of one of their big servers that would just look at all this email.

It got discovered. It got exposed. James Risen of The New York Times exposed it. And it was a completely massively illegal program. In fact, former vice president Gore said that Bush ought to be impeached for this program.

So then what happens? Then what hapens: Congress gets in the act, and they decide two things. First of all—first of all Congress decides they’re going to allow this wiretapping to go on, and basically legalize it in a piece of legislation. And in addition to legalizing it, they’re going to say that those corporations, those communications corporations, Verizon and the like, that went along with it, we’re going to give them retroactive immunity from lawsuits that could be brought by people who were wiretapped. And there are millions, maybe billions of dollars’ worth of lawsuits.

So that legislation comes up. It comes up when Obama, our now current president, was a senator. When he was senator, he says, well, I’m going to veto that—I’m not going to veto; I’m going to vote against that immunity for the telecoms. In other words, I’m not going to say that the telecoms are immune, but I’m going to agree that they can be sued and let the courts decide. Of course, what then happens: Obama gets nominated to be president of the United States, Senate vote comes up when he’s still senator, he changes his mind, if you want to call it that, or he makes what I can say a political vote because he wants to be seen as strong on national security, etc., and he votes along with the majority of the Senate to give impunity or immunity to the telecoms. And that’s the statute.

Then what happens? Then the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the ACLU sue these telecoms, and they sue on the grounds that that law is unconstitutional. How can you give retroactive immunity for something that these people knew was illegal when they did it, and now you’re saying as a legislative matter, you know, that’s the end of it? Isn’t this a court question of whether they should have immunity or not?

And, of course, here’s what happens. They go to the court, they go to the district court, the lowest court. They go to the middle court, court of appeals. The court held that there is immunity for those telecoms, that the statute is upheld. And then this last week they go to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court says, we’re not going to review the case; we’re going to agree with the lower court that the telecoms, Verizon and the like, are immune from lawsuits for what was clearly an illegal set of wiretapping.

So there you have it. You can’t sue the telecoms. You already have a situation you can’t sue the government, although there’s some litigation still going on on that. So you have immunity for both the government officials, as well as the telecoms, who were engaged in a massive violation of the law, warrantless wiretapping.

So we have the MEK on one hand and the U.S. officials, former officials who took money from the MEK, at least indirectly, if not directly, and then you have the telecoms as well being given immunity. So you have—.

JAY: Now, where are we at on that question of warrantless wiretapping?

RATNER: We’re not in good shape, Paul. We basically have a statute that allows the president, sometimes through this secret court, sometimes on their own, to engage in warrantless wiretapping of American citizens. It was, of course, always allowed for people overseas who are not citizens, and that’s a given that that’s what they do. You lose that. But right now I would say that, you know, our communications in the United States are completely unprotected by what should have been our constitution.

JAY: Thanks for joining us, Michael.

RATNER: Thanks for having me again, Paul.

JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network. And don’t forget there’s a”Donate”button over there. If you don’t click on it, we can’t do this.

Michael Ratner, The real news
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Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Iranians see Mujahedin as traitors rather than opponents

The return of People’s Mujahedin, unpopular opponents in Iran
Washington withdrew the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran led by Maryam Rajavi, from their list of "terrorist". A decision denounced by Tehran, which required collaboration between the group and Washington.

"Old forefronts of the opposition against the Shah, but also the Islamic Republic of ayatollah Khomeini, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) was listed in 1997 as terrorist organization by the United States. Since the Iranian opposition group has renounced violence long time ago, Washington finally decided on September 28 to remove them from the list. But according to Thierry Coville, Iran’s researcher at the Institute of International and Strategic Relations (IRIS), the overdue recognition is futile, because the organization suffers its image within its own country.

The opposition has lost much of its aura in Iran. "The People’s Mojahedin are opponents in exile and have lost all legitimacy in Iran since the episode of the war with Iraq, where they conducted operations against the Iranian army," explains Thierry Coville. The "Iranian public opinion far from considering them as opponents see them as traitors. They no longer enjoy any popularity among the Iranians, whether in the country or among the diasporas," he insists.

Founded in 1965 in opposition to the Shah, PMOI, with obedience to Marxism, conducted urban guerrilla actions to undermine the regime. After the 1979 Islamic revolution and the advent of ayatollah Khomeini, the organization becomes the most aggressive opposition to the Islamic Republic of Iran. In 1981, Massoud Rajavi, leader of mujahedin, founded with other opponents, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which reflected the forces opposed to the dictatorship of the Shah and ayatollah Khomeini’s government.

During the Iran / Iraq war (1980-1988), the Mujahedin settled in Iraq where they create the National Liberation Army of Iran (NLA) in 1986 and launched operations against their country. In 1988, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa ordering the execution of members of the organization. Based in France, PMOI is directed by Maryam Rajavi, the wife of Massoud Rajavi.

In announcing the news of his removal from the list of terrorist organizations, the group, which is headquartered in the Auvers-sur-Oise in suburb of Paris, in a statement hailed a "correct decision".

"Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance for the period of the transfer of sovereignty to the Iranian people, welcomed" the decision of the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, "the statement said." we hope to better introduce ourselves and our goals to international community and the American people. "

Lobbying and working with American Secret Service

According to Thierry Coville, several factors explain the change in U.S. position. Tensions between the U.S. and Iran over its nuclear program are no strangers. "The fact that the United States declares the Mujahedin accessible now, is not trivial at a time when Washington and Israel raise Iran as the greatest enemy in the planet," noted the researcher.

In addition, it has been long time that PMOI seeks to improve its image. Designated in 1997 as a "terrorist" organization in the United States, it has, for several years, renounced violence and actively collaborated with the U.S. Secret Service.

"The Mujahedin have worked effectively with the U.S. Secret Service in providing information gleaned from their contacts in the country on the Iranian nuclear program, but still on the Iranian aid to Bashar al-Assad", explains the researcher.
Thierry Coville also noted that the decision of the U.S. administration is the result of a genuine communication by the Iranian opposition organization. "The Mujahedin have been lobbying and in a less conventional way: they paid services responsible for American security to testify in their favor. Rudolph Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, for example, who was present at the last Congress in Paris, was paid to speak at the forum, "reveals Thierry Coville.
The decision of the U.S. State Department to remove the PMOI from the list of terrorist organizations finally coincide with the evacuation ,nearly complete and demanded by the UN and the United States, of Camp Ashraf, North of Baghdad, where the Mujahedin had occupied for years.

France24  – Translated By Nejat Society

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