Material Support for the MEK Terrorists

Training terrorists in America, from MEK to Khashoggi killers

Four Saudis who participated in the 2018 killing of the Arab journalist Jamal Khashoggi received paramilitary training in the United States the previous year under a contract approved by the State Department, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, June 23, 2021. The news is a reminder of a very similar story about the agents of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) that was revealed by Seymour M. Hersh of the New Yorker, in April, 2012.
Hersh reported that the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) of the US military conducted training, beginning in 2005, for members of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a dissident Iranian opposition group known in the West as the M.E.K. in the terrain of the Department of Energy’s Nevada National Security Site, with its arid high plains and remote mountain peaks, has the look of northwest Iran. The site, some sixty-five miles northwest of Las Vegas.

According to the investigated report of the New Yorker, the training of MEK operatives ended sometime before President Obama took office, the former official said. A retired four-star general, who has advised the Bush and Obama Administrations on national-security issues, told Hersh that “he had been privately briefed in 2005 about the training of Iranians associated with the M.E.K. in Nevada by an American involved in the program”. They got “the standard training,” he said, “in commo, crypto [cryptography], small-unit tactics, and weaponry—that went on for six months,” the retired general said. “They were kept in little pods.”

According to Hersh, directly or indirectly, the MEK ended up with resources like arms and intelligence. “Some American-supported covert operations continue in Iran today, according to past and present intelligence officials and military consultants,” he added.

June 24, 2021 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

Beware of MEK’s activities in Western media

The Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) has indicated that it counts on the impact of propaganda and psychological war rather than practical activities. Its propaganda work started from the Mujahed journal, the Mujahed radio and later on their TV channel Sima-ye Azadi. Rajavi’s efforts were to show off his group’s so-called activities.

The MEK have constantly tried to showcase their large-scale, popular form of advertising through media and promotional activities, instead of succeeding in creating a successful social base among Iranian nation. Using such techniques, the MEK leaders deceive their members and their foreign sponsors about the social base of the group in Iran. They have to make them believe that the so-called supporters in Iran donate funds to the group.
Perhaps this is not the case for Saddam and Rajavi relationship but Saddam was one of the most deceived ones by the Cult of Rajavi. Although the Ba’ath Party’s intelligence service tried to make a precise assessment of the veracity of Rajavi’s claims, the fact was in the videos of the meetings of the Rajavi’s representatives with the Ba’athist security officers that were published after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

The MEK: Masters of Propaganda

The assassination of the Iranian civilians in the streets and markets was actually sold to Saddam Hussein. The former Iraqi dictator also paid large amounts of money to the group for the assassination of Iranian officials and military figures. The group’s terrorist acts were actually used as a fuel for their propaganda machine.

However, during Saddam’s era for a group that was looting the Iraqi people’s oil, using media capabilities of the Ba’athist regime and international capabilities with Saddam’s help was nothing special. But after the collapse of Saddam, it was also discovered that the MEK used to use Iraqi media tools. One of the most prominent examples of this action were one-page or half-page advertisements of the MEK in Iraqi newspapers, calling Iraqi tribes for support. In one case, they had allegedly issued a statement to prevent the group’s expulsion from Iraq!

Photo: President of the National Resistance Council of Iran Massoud Rajavi, left, meets with and the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in Iraq in June 1986.

Meanwhile, the use of western and European media capacity was also considered by the MEK who was seeking to attract western politicians. The MEK-sponsored expensive reportage advertainments became possible by paying hefty amounts of money to politicians and journalists. All expenses were made to gain support of the terrorist Cult of Rajavi.

The MEK has more or less kept on the policy throughout the recent years. Today, the list of politicians and journalists who sell their dignity to a handful of dollars can has been revealed in the mainstream media several times, even the exact amount of money that they were pail has been made public. Eventually, the group has repeatedly has lost its connections in Western media over the past years, its communications have been blinded, and it has been forced to spend a lot of money on new connections.

Nevertheless, the sensitivities of Western audiences on the credibility of their media should be regarded as serious. The disclosure of such communications with MEK as a cult-like violent group, will make the Western audience react.

Studying the websites owned by the MEK simply reveals the clues of the communication of the Cult of Rajavi with certain Western media, and the repetition of the reportage ads for an event related to the group, indicates the links. The Western governments should prevent the publication of such contents because it is a case of material support for a terrorist group.

May 15, 2021 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

To worry or not to worry: ‘Hidden war’ on Iran

Architects of the new warfare seek to find”the soft financial underbelly of the US enemies”.

Over the past decade, the United States has waged a new brand of financial warfare, unprecedented in its reach and ferocity and unique in its intricacy and slyness, mainly against Iran and other countries.

Initially launched as a “hidden war” to financially squeeze America’s principal enemies, it is no longer secret since it is viewed central to America’s national security doctrine.

Far from relying solely on the classic sanctions or trade embargoes, the campaign has consisted of a novel set of financial strategies that harness the international financial and commercial systems to ostracize America’s enemies and constrict their funding flows with the aim of inflicting maximum pain.

Based on a blueprint developed after 9/11 attacks, this warfare is defined by the use of financial tools, pressure, and market forces to leverage the banking sector, private-sector interests, and foreign partners in order to isolate targets from the international financial and commercial systems and eliminate their funding sources.

The intricate plan is based on a simple hypothesis: If you can cut off funding flows to the enemies, you can restrict their ability to operate and force them to submission.

According to Juan Zarate who as deputy national security adviser helped the US Treasury develop the new warfare, “finding the soft financial underbelly of the US enemies” has become the mission of its architects whom he calls “bureaucratic insurgents” and “guerrillas in gray suits”.

For months, the group reportedly debated whether the same tools that the US had used to isolate al-Qaeda from the formal financial system after 9/11 and to target North Korea could be leveraged to attack Iran. Could the new brand of financial warfare be waged successfully against Tehran?

Though it had been subject to US sanctions for years, Iran and its business sector had continued doing billions of dollars’ worth of trade every year with the rest of the world. The sixth largest supplier of energy resources to the European Union in 2012, the country retained deep commercial and financial ties with economic powers such as Germany and South Korea and represented an important market for Europe and Asia.

Neighboring countries, including the United Arab Emirates and Turkey, had even deeper commercial and financial ties with Iran. Likewise, Iranian businessmen and companies did easy and open business in most parts of the world.

Most importantly, Iran had oil which remained its trump card. Oil provides instant access to markets and the business of extracting, selling, and transporting oil brings with it an array of business and financing relationships. Oil also creates ties to an international market reliant on the flow of crude from the Middle East.

Vulnerabilities

Still, Iran depended on its international connections in the global financial and commercial system. The same ties that gave Iranian businesses access to foreign markets created dependencies – and hence vulnerabilities – for them in the international financial system.

What’s more, the Iranian oil market was not immune from pressure. Global oil trading occurs in US dollars, and any deals for Iranian oil had to be priced and transacted in dollars.

Perhaps most important was the vulnerability of the Iranian banking sector. Iranian banks such as Bank Saderat, Bank Melli, Bank Mellat, and Bank Sepah had a deep international presence in places like London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Beirut, and Dubai. They were important for Iran’s business ties and relations, providing lines of credit, correspondent accounts, and account access around the world to Iranians and their customers.

Enveloping trap

The US had already leveraged relevant multilateral forums to target purported terrorist financing and define international obligations according to its own interests. Just days after 9/11, the Treasury had taken the international components of the National Money Laundering Strategy (FATF) and directed its “bureaucratic insurgents” to steer this international body to focus on US priorities of combating terrorist financing.

The move draws attention again to the real motives and masterminds behind the mysterious attack which unleashed US troops across the Middle East under the moniker of “the war on terror”.

The FATF had been established by the Group of Seven (G7) largest developed economies at a Paris summit in 1989 to tackle the threat of money laundering to the international banking and financial system. By 2012, it had thirty-six members.

The new US campaign included bringing the full weight of the FATF to bear on Iran. If Iran was to be isolated financially, the FATF had to be engaged to pass judgment on Iran’s anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist-financing system.

If the Iranians were found to be outside the bounds of the financial system or purportedly failing to cooperate or comply with G7-imposed standards, then there could be consequences.

In the post-9/11 era, the United States and other G7 members developed tools to isolate a jurisdiction deemed as non-compliant and make investment and business in that jurisdiction suspect.

As the FATF began engaging directly with the Iranian government, the process soon appeared to be an enveloping trap. Each letter from the FATF seeking sensitive financial intelligence raised Iran’s suspicions about the true intent of the process.

Amid this campaign to put increasingly greater financial pressure on Iran, there emerged an unexpected opportunity to hit the country through a witch hunt. In 2008, the US government searching for Iranian assets became aware of what appeared to be more than $2 billion in a Citibank account held by Clearstream.

In June 2008, a judge in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York froze over $2.25 billion in Clearstream assets belonging to the Central Bank of Iran under the counter-terrorist-financing prerogative.

That year, the US identified Bank Saderat as a principal target per Section 311 of the Patriot Act, under which the Treasury is authorized to designate foreign financial institutions as being “of primary money laundering concern”.

Pressuring Iran to answer questions about its nuclear program was a major goal. When it became clear that Iran would not budge, the United States turned to the use of an all-out financial pressure campaign.

According to Zarate, the aim was to stage the financial assault on Iran’s banks and its financial system—in large part by demonstrating to CEOs and compliance officers around the world that the risk of doing business with Iran was too high.

The Swiss banking giants UBS and Credit Suisse announced then that they would stop or curtail their business with Iran. Other banks and companies would soon follow, including the European banking giants ABN Amro and ING. Germany’s second-largest bank, Commerzbank, also ended its dollar-clearing transactions with Iran.

The financial pressure campaign continued to mount, with more designations and targeting of the private sector. In September 2008, the Treasury designated Iran’s shipping line IRISL and eighteen of its subsidiaries because they were critical to most of Iran’s primary overseas engagements.

‘Tool of hegemony and coercion’

The FATF has raised criticisms of an unfair process targeting easily identifiable and politically vulnerable states.

It is a non-binding regulatory institution formed by Germany, Britain, Italy, the US, France, Japan and Canada plus the European Commission, and eight other European states. It is based on the 40+9 Recommendations imposed by the G7 countries — 40 recommendations on money-laundering and nine special recommendations on terrorist financing.

FATF’s founders praise it for its global standards on countering terrorism financing and protecting the integrity of the international financial system.

Global standards, however, consist of a standard setter and a standard user. The standard setter influences independent organizations and standard users to adopt standards based on the expert knowledge that is suitable for the standard setters’ logic of appropriateness.

Unlike most intergovernmental bodies, the FATF is not regulated by an international treaty. This, experts say, has resulted in the organization having a vaguely defined constitution.

The FATF is also often referred to as a transnational expert network that consists of government officials, finance ministers or financial regulatory agencies. The transnational expert network produces standards that are normally considered to be neutral or fair.

However, various scholars argue that the FATF reflects the interests of powerful countries such as the EU member states and the US that enforce preferences on other jurisdictions. They say the organization reflects the interests of powerful countries because it depends on funds from Western governments, mainly the US.

The US has been at the center of the international counterterrorism policies through the Treasury and the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which is in charge of overseeing the counter-terrorism measures or recommendations and issuing sanctions to non-compliant countries and many states have adopted the American model.

Political scientist and sociologist Anja Jakobi says the US has adopted a Gramscian strategy understood through concepts of hegemony, coercion and consent, such that actors accept the USA preferences as their own.

According to Gramsci’s theory, the world order is controlled by an alliance of elites that have power to influence world affairs to serve their interests. The transnational alliances have common socio-economic and political values and manipulate civil society through the rule by consent.

Gramsci’s theory shows how the 40+9 Recommendations have been imposed by developed countries on developing countries through the use of coercion in the form of blacklisting countries or meting out hefty fines on financial institutions.

The FATF rule-making or decision-making process is also characterized by unequal negotiating power between the developed and developing countries and tends not to reflect the norms of developing countries.

According to Atanu Ghoshray, an economic researcher at Newcastle University, the FATF’s recommendations have been imposed by Western countries on the developing countries’ national laws and financial institutions without considering their different socio-political or economic realities.

It has therefore resulted in the developing countries being coerced to adopt the Western countries’ counter-terrorism measures without having had an input in the decision-making process.

James Thuo Gathii, a professor of law at University of Chicago, says the current setup of FATF’s recommendations and interpretative guidance notes tend to be insensitive to the concerns of the countries that are not economically powerful. Various countries have further implemented all the recommendations without having played a role in formulating the standards.

Other experts say the unequal negotiation power between the developed and developing countries has been worsened by the experts who are appointed and paid by the Western countries to participate on the formulation of FATF standards. The experts, they say, are accountable to institutions such as the UN Security Council and the IMF, which are dominated by powerful Western states.

According to Gathii, like the World Bank and the IMF, the FATF is controlled by the Western countries that manage and control the social and economic realities of the developing countries.

When countries do no not comply with the recommendations they face economic penalties such as reduction of foreign investments, increase on the interest rates on credits, reduction of a country’s credit rating, withdrawal of banking license, freezing of assets or hefty fines impose by US entities like the Office of Foreign Asset Control.

Financial institutions have further feared sanctions by not abiding by the FATF standards. However, countries from the West and their allies have not been subjected to risk- or standards-based reviews in implementing FATF recommendations.

Who is a terrorist? Who are terrorism sponsors?

The FATF views Iran as a jurisdiction of concern chiefly because of its support for Hezbollah which besides defending Lebanon against Israeli invasions is involved in building hospitals, schools and homes. The West also accuses Iran of terrorist links for supporting popular Palestinian movements such as Hamas which are fighting the Israeli aggression and occupation.

However, the FATF has never subjected the US and the Europeans to its anti-terrorism standards for supporting the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) which until recently was on their list of terrorist organizations. Ironically, a key architect of the anti-terror measures, John Bolton, is a familiar face at MKO’s annual meetings in Paris.

Other anti-Iran terrorist groups such as Jaish al-Adl and PJAK are widely believed to be in the pay of Saudi Arabia and connected to US and European spy agencies, but they have never come under scrutiny to prompt a standard-based review under FATF recommendations.

Saudi Arabia and other Western allies in the Persian Gulf are also known to be the key sponsors of the most violent terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and Daesh, but they have robust trade ties marked by multibillion dollar arms deals with the US and the Europeans which always escape the FATF’s attention.

Even being wrong-footed by the FATF does not warrant sanctions to be imposed on those countries or to be isolated from the international financial system.

For example, the UAE has been the focus of numerous reports about its role in the dirty gold trade, and chastised by the FATF for inadequate oversight of the sector. A report by the UK’s Home Office and Treasury has also named the UAE as a jurisdiction vulnerable to money laundering by criminal networks because of the ease with which gold and cash could be moved through the country.

Reports have linked European companies, including Swiss refiner Valcambi, to the dirty gold trade by the UAE, but there have never been any consequences.

The US itself created and funded al-Qaeda, according to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Former US president Donald Trump described his predecessor Barack Obama as the”founder”of Daesh and Hillary Clinton as co-founder.

Still, the FATF standards are not applied against the US for founding the most macabrely murderous terrorists, but Iran is a regular target for supporting Hezbollah which is currently a leading anti-terror force and the chief protector of Lebanon.

Israel, another US ally, is given the same treatment. Viewed by many independent international groups and institutions as a prime state terrorist, Israel is known for its sophisticated assassination of Muslim leaders, scientists and scholars.

Intel gathering from ‘gold mine’ of financial transactions

The twenty-first-century economy is defined by globalization and the deep interconnectedness of the financial system. The United States has remained the world’s primary financial hub, with inherent value embedded in access to the American financial system. The dollar serves as the global reserve currency and the currency of choice for international trade, and New York remains a core financial capital and hub for dollar-clearing transactions. With this concentration of financial and commercial power comes the ability to wield access to American markets, American banks, and American dollars as financial weapons.

To exert this power, US strategists found out that what they needed was to develop a more active financial intelligence capability.

Financial intelligence is any bit of information that reveals commercial or financial transactions and money flows, asset and capital data, and the financial and commercial relationships and interests of individuals, networks, and organizations.

Such information can come in a variety of forms, but the quintessential form is the information used and kept by banks and other financial institutions on its clients, customers’ accounts, and transactions. For this reason, the national and international anti-money-laundering frameworks built in the 1980s and 1990s focused on setting reporting requirements for banks and other bank-like financial institutions.

These requirements were expanded well beyond the classic banking sector with the passage of Title III of the USA PATRIOT Act, which further expanded the reporting requirements to nonbank financial institutions such as insurance companies, money-service businesses, and brokers and dealers in precious stones and metals.

Under these requirements, banks and regulated institutions around the world today have to submit transaction reports and currency transaction reports above a certain amount ($10,000 in the United States) to their host governments. Banks that make cross-border wire transfers are required to report specific information about the originator and ultimate beneficiary of any transaction.

The records of those transactions—addresses, phone numbers, real names, banks utilized—are deemed a gold mine of information for the US government.

According to US government planners, “such information can help complete the mosaic of intelligence being gathered by other means and the enemy networks can then be targeted, watched, and disrupted”.

Codename ‘Turtle’: US-Europe complicity

The idea prompted the Treasury to execute the most aggressive financial intelligence collection campaign it ever attempted, but it needed to tap into a system under the European oversight.

The US had to gain access to the bank-to-bank transfer information contained in the databases of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), which operates a financial messaging service for financial transactions communicated between member banks.

The SWIFT system is used daily by thousands of institutions around the world. Based in Brussels, it is overseen by central banks from the Group of Ten (G10) countries. When assets are moved across borders from one bank to another, banks need a harmonized, secure system by which to communicate and transfer those assets—detailing where the transfer is coming from, what amounts are being transferred, and what institutions and clients are the recipients and beneficiaries.

SWIFT has a virtual monopoly as the switchboard of the international financial system. The Treasury never had access to this information, but it would need to find a way of gaining access to this treasure trove of financial data.

The US government had already tried to have access to SWIFT data, but without success. Intrigued by the idea of leveraging SWIFT data, US officials finally invited the CEO of SWIFT who was an American to visit the Treasury, “and he was there to cooperate—seeing himself first and foremost as an American”.

By the end of October 2001, the Treasury Department was reportedly getting the information from SWIFT that it requested and beginning to build the program that would later become known as the Treasury Terrorist Financing Tracking Program.

Within the Treasury, officials gave it the code name “Turtle”—the opposite of SWIFT. The program took on a great deal of secrecy and more code names, with limited access reportedly given to a select group of officials and analysts.

SWIFT was supposed to be apolitical and neutral, but with this move, it was cooperating with the United States in its economic warfare. SWIFT officials had made a risky decision, but the US government had achieved what it wanted.

As pressure on Iran increased, European and American politicians would put access to SWIFT squarely into the debate about isolating Iranian banks. In 2012, for the first time ever, SWIFT unplugged designated Iranian banks from its system, in accordance with a European directive and under the threat of possible US legislation.

Collapse of Western order

Member banks including from China and Russia are now questioning whether SWIFT and the FATF are merely a political tool of the West.

Alternative networks challenge SWIFT’s hold on its position as the core global banking communications system. Already, the Iranians have resorted to using the Internet and faxes to send messages to brokers and banks as a means of replacing SWIFT messages.

While the US has found new ways of using financial intelligence, tools, and campaigns to isolate perceived enemies from the formal financial system, the countries have adapted to avoid the pressure leveled by the formal financial system and the US Treasury.

Most importantly, the states and nonstate actors that the United States has targeted are inventing new means of avoiding sanctions. The United States has little influence over the separate financial and monetary systems that are emerging, particularly in the cyberrealm.

Moreover, there are increasing efforts, including by some US allies, to limit the United States’ unilateral leverage in the financial sphere which is coming home to roost on the yards of the Europeans.

A quick example is the Nord Stream project to bring Russian gas into the heart of Europe, which is nearing completion. However, it has emerged as a major source of friction in trans-Atlantic relations, with the US pushing back against it and threatening to sanction European companies involved in it.

The threat is antagonizing European allies such as Germany, Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states which are unhappy with the US for using its domestic laws to impose sanctions on foreign companies.

Government’s puzzle

Amid this changing geopolitical power theater and push to channel financial processes away from the US system, there is renewed debate in Iran on the contentious anti-money-laundering and anti-terrorism financing legislation.

In a televised speech recently, President Hassan Rouhani advocated for the ratification of two remaining bills to complete Iran’s action plan with the FATF.

Rouhani admitted that the adoption of the two bills may not solve the country’s problems, but said officials who opposed them should consider how they would explain to the people how not ratifying them would allegedly hurt the country.

Iran’s government officials have said there is no guarantee that after fully signing on all FATF recommendations the West would lift the sanctions. That begs the question as to why then Iran should ratify something which would mean exposing some of its most crucial data to the enemies’ intelligence gathering in return for almost nothing.

The FATF is only one of the tools among US measures to find, in Zarate’s words, “the soft financial underbelly” of the Islamic Republic in order to strike at the country’s crucial economic and trade arteries.

Many observers believe the West’s main issue is with Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities and joining the FATF would not stop the US and the Europeans from pushing the Islamic Republic further to the corner.

March 13, 2021 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Paid speeches, MEK Terrorists, Legal woes

Giuliani’s work for Iranian group with bloody past could lead to more legal woes

Giuliani ally Michael Mukasey’s move to register as a lobbyist for an Iranian dissident group may spur the DOJ to investigate, experts say.

In the spring of 2017, former U.S. attorney general Michael Mukasey met with representatives of the Iranian dissident group Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK), a State Department-designated foreign terrorist organization until 2012.

Mukasey wasn’t alone. Joining him at the meeting was another high-profile American political figure: Rudy Giuliani.

For nearly a decade, the former law partners have pushed the agenda of the MEK, giving paid speeches and writing newspaper op-eds expressing support for a group linked to the deaths of six Americans in the 1970s.

But it wasn’t until late last month that Mukasey registered as a foreign agent lobbying pro bono for MEK’s political arm. Giuliani still hasn’t, raising the possibility that the Justice Department could target him in an illegal lobbying probe, experts say.

“This is the kind of scenario that very commonly leads them to launch an investigation,” said Josh Rosenstein, a Washington-based lawyer who advises clients on compliance with federal lobbying laws.

If Giuliani and Mukasey were”working together or in parallel,”Rosenstein added,”then it’s a huge problem for Giuliani.”

Mukasey’s move to register as a lobbyist for the MEK’s political affiliate comes as Giuliani, the former New York City mayor-turned-personal lawyer to President Donald Trump, is facing growing legal peril connected to his international business activities.

Giuliani’s overseas dealings, primarily in Ukraine, are under fresh scrutiny after two of his associates were charged last week in a scheme to funnel foreign money to U.S. politicians.

The New York Times has reported that Giuliani’s business dealings are under federal investigation and prosecutors may be looking at his exposure for failing to file as a foreign agent.

Legal experts say Giuliani’s work on behalf of the MEK and its political arm, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, also raises questions about whether he may have run afoul of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA. The law requires American citizens to disclose to the Justice Department any lobbying or public relations work on behalf of a foreign entity, regardless of whether they’re paid for the representation.

A review of the group’s government filings shows that Giuliani met with MEK officials at least once every year since 2014. A range of issues were discussed, including “Iran’s nuclear weapons as well as Iran’s terrorism in the region, including Iraq and Syria” in 2014, the plight of Iranian dissidents living in Iraq in 2015, and the protests in Iran in 2018.
During that period, he has appeared at MEK-related events in Poland, Albania, Paris and Washington. FARA experts say Giuliani’s speech in Washington in May 2018 and U.S.-based writings in support of the group are particularly problematic.

“This certainly walks like a FARA issue and talks like a FARA issue,” said Matthew Sanderson, a defense lawyer who specializes in foreign lobbying cases.

He said the Justice Department will likely try to “develop facts to determine whether these efforts to influence public opinion in the U.S. were at the request or direction of MEK, a foreign interest.”

“This is a particularly unusual situation because Mr. Giuliani was acting as the president’s counsel, all while acting in ways that suggest he was simultaneously representing certain foreign interests,” Sanderson said.

In an interview with NBC News, Giuliani said he has no reason to register as a foreign agent because, unlike Mukasey, he’s not planning to speak to U.S. government officials about the MEK.

“I’m not doing what he’s doing,”Giuliani said.”He’s not registering for any previous activity. He’s registering because he’s asking for a specific meeting with the government.”

Giuliani would not elaborate on the reason for the meeting. Mukasey declined comment.

Representatives for the group’s political arm did not return requests for comment.

Formed in the 1960s as a Marxist-Islamist movement, the MEK has a bloody history.

The group, whose name translates as “People’s Holy Warriors of Iran,” is accused of killing six Americans before the 1979 Iranian revolution and assassinating Iranian diplomats in the subsequent years.

A longtime ally of the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the MEK was placed on the State Department’s terror blacklist in 1997. The group enlisted an A-list cast of former American political and law enforcement leaders as part of its effort to remove itself from the terrorist list and enhance its reputation in the West.

The strategy worked. In 2012, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced a decision to remove the group from the list.

Daniel Benjamin, a State Department counterterrorism coordinator from 2009 to 2012, has focused extensively on the network of American politicians who have been paid by MEK, including Giuliani and Mukasey.

“I found it pretty distasteful that they were shilling for this group even if it was delisted,” said Benjamin, now a professor at Dartmouth College. “This is a group that has American blood on its hands, and it’s never owned up to that.”

Benjamin said the group has long attracted anti-Iran hard-liners who recruit like-minded peers.

“Look at those who have gone on their gravy train and then go to their events and say MEK is going to bring democracy and peace to Iran,” Benjamin said. “Basically these guys bring aboard their pals. Especially among the hardest line anti-Iran folks, this is the place to go. Though plenty of people become much more hard line once their pockets are filled with MEK money.”

“The big question,” Benjamin added,”is where does all this money come from?”

Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, described the organization as a fringe group with mysterious benefactors that garners scant support in its home country.

“Their population in Iran hovers between negligible and nill,” Sadjadpour said.
Still, the MEK’s roster of supporters includes an array of prominent Americans: former FBI Director Louis Freeh; former Democratic governors and presidential candidates Howard Dean and Bill Richardson; Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton; and former Obama national security adviser James L. Jones.

In speeches and media interviews, Giuliani and the others have insisted the MEK is now a democratic-minded opposition group committed to overturning the mullah-led government in Tehran. They say their support for the group is also based on humanitarian motives — to ensure the safety of the Iranian dissidents living in Iraq who face the threat of attacks.

Giuliani’s MEK advocacy dates to at least 2010. In December of that year, he and Mukasey were among a group of prominent Republicans who traveled to a rally in Paris where they called on the Obama administration to remove MEK from the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations.

“For your organization to be described as a terrorist organization is just really a disgrace,” Giuliani declared before a crowd of Iranian exiles, according to an article in The Washington Post.

Mukasey urged the White House to offer “all possible technical and covert support to those fighting to end oppression in Iran.”

“What it has done and what it is doing is nothing less than an embarrassment,” he told the crowd, according to The Post.

The following year, Giuliani and Mukasey co-wrote an op-ed in the National Review with two other MEK supporters defending the organization.

In the 2011 piece, headlined “MEK is not a terrorist group,”Giuliani and the others argued against suggestions that the authors were providing material support to a terror group. The MEK has”provided valuable intelligence to the United States to Iranian nuclear plans,”they wrote.

In his FARA filing, dated Sept. 26, Mukasey wrote that he’s not being compensated for his MEK advocacy.

“The registrant has agreed to communicate with executive branch and legislative officials in the United States government on behalf of the foreign principal and its members on an unpaid basis,”the filing says.”However, the foreign principal will reimburse the registrant for direct expenses such as filing costs and travel.”

The filing lists Sept. 20, 2019, as the date of the agreement with MEK.

Sanderson, the defense lawyer who focuses on government lobbying, said the listing of that date could pose problems for Mukasey if he started doing lobbying work for MEK before then.

“Filing a late registration, especially if you’re not accurate in your description, could result in charges,”Sanderson said.

But Sanderson added that filing late is still better than not filing at all.”If you approach the government and proactively say, ‘I’m registering,’ even if it’s late, you’re in a much better position than if the government comes to your door.”

Giuliani would not say how much the group pays him for his appearances. He said there’s no reason why the Justice Department would target him for activities that dozens of other former U.S. politicians and military figures are participating in.

“If I have to register, so do three former heads of the joint chiefs of staff and eight very prominent Democrats and eight very prominent Republicans,”Giuliani said.

In an interview with NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell in Poland this past February, Giuliani said he worked to get the MEK off the terror list because”there was no evidence of any kind of terrorist activity for over 20 years, if any, and they were basically revolutionaries who overthrew the shah.”

“They believe in democracy, in human rights, rights of women,”said Giuliani, who was appearing at an MEK event.

In the interview, he also defending advocating for the MEK while also working as the president’s personal lawyer.

“I’m a private lawyer, so private lawyers have private clients,”Giuliani said.”This has been a client of mine for years. Maybe if I was taking a new position. Maybe if i was taking a bold new different position. I’m just repeating what I said 11 years ago, 10 years ago.”

Mukasey told The New York Times in 2011 that he had been paid his standard speaking fee — $15,000 to $20,000, according to the Web site of his speakers’ agency — to deliver talks at MEK-related events.

He insisted that his decision to advocate on behalf of the group was not driven by money.”There’s no way I would compromise my standing by expressing views I don’t believe in,”Mukasey told The Times.

Federal prosecutors have brought few FARA cases over the years. But the law garnered renewed attention during the special counsel’s investigation into Russian election interference.

Two Trump associates, Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, were charged with failing to register as foreign agents.

Giuliani’s contacts with the MEK extended into this past summer. In July, he traveled to Albania to meet with the group’s president, Maryam Rajavi.

An article from the MEK’s official website said Giuliani”emphasized that America stands on the side of the Iranian people and supports their struggle for freedom.”
By Julia Ainsley, Andrew W. Lehren and Rich Schapiro – nbcnews.com

October 20, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Alejo Vidal-Quadras: We (VOX) Received money from Mojahedin Khalq terrorists

Alejo Vidal-Quadras: “Abascal knew about Iranian opponents’ financial support for Vox and was fine with it”

The former head of Vox’s list of candidates for the 2014 European Parliament elections, Alejo Vidal-Quadras, assures that the current leader of the far-right formation, Santiago Abascal, was aware that supporters of the National Council of Resistance Iran (NCRI) contributed funds for that campaign and did not object to that support. “Santiago Abascal knew the economic support of Iranian opponents and it seemed good to him, all help, within the law, was welcome,” he told eldiario.es.

The NCRI is the name adopted by the People’s Mojahedin of Iran (MeK, its acronym in English) to try to pretend it is part of a coalition of groups opposing the Iranian regime. Although originally inspired by Marxism, for years it has been adopted by neoconservative pundits as the alternative to the Iranian regime. According to El Pais, the far-right group received 800,000 euros in 146 donations from people linked to this group to finance that campaign. 80% of the funds that Vox used to try to have representation in the European Parliament came from that group. Vidal-Quadras, who lacked 2,600 votes to enter the European Parliament, left Vox after that fiasco. Before he had spent thirty years in the PP, as an MEP, for which he was trained, between 1999 and 2014.

The Organic Law of the General Electoral System (LOREG) prohibits contributions to the electoral accounts of “funds coming from foreign entities or persons”, that is, they do not have Spanish nationality. However, in October 2013, months before these elections, the Central Electoral Board specified that this prohibition operates only during the electoral period: from the time the elections are formally convened until their conclusion.
The decree calling for these elections was published in the Official Gazette (BOE) on 31 March 2014, which set May 25 as the date for the poll. That is, any foreign donation in this period would have been irregular. Vidal-Quadras says that the law was “scrupulously” complied with. “I did not receive a euro when the elections were already called, if I had, I would have contravened the law and I always abide by the law,” he says.
Alejo Vidal-Quadras: Vox leader Abascal approved financial support from Mojahedin Khalq (MEK) terrorists Alejo Vidal-Quadras en 2012 junto a Maryam Rajavi, presidenta del Consejo Nacional de la Resistencia de Irán (CNRI) FREEIRAN1

Although his departure from the PP and signing up for Vox was not announced until January 27, 2014, Vidal-Quadras says that since the end of December 2013 the circles of the opposition to the Iranian regime already knew of his intention to leave for another party and try again to be a member of the European Parliament under other group. “That’s when that support began to be forged because I am a well-known person in that area,” he explains. In any case, Vox’s candidate was not formally announced to the European Parliament until April 10, with the elections already officially convened and, therefore, when the ban on the receipt of funds from abroad already operated.

Collaboration “without conditions”
Vidal-Quadras frames the “collaboration” of Iranian opponents in his frustrated attempt to be a member of Vox in his “years” relationship with the NCRI. He says that this “close relationship” began to be forged in 1999, when he arrived in Brussels as a PP member of the European Parliament. “I joined then with the Friends of a Free Iran platform, in which were other representatives of the PP and also socialists, liberals, greens … we staged public events, statements or press conferences to give them their support,” he says. “When I left the PP and launched myself at Vox, people from civil society, not the NCRI as an organization, lent me their financial support,” he adds. He insists that they did so “without conditions” as thanks for the 15 years he had been working with them.

When the European Union decided to remove the People’s Mojahedin of Iran (MEK), the main opposition group to the Islamic regime in Tehran, from the European list of terrorist organizations, Maryam Rajavi, president of the National Council of the Resistance of Iran (considered the political wing of the Mojahedin), thanked a group of members of the European Parliament for their support, especially Vidal-Quadras. It was common for the then PP politician to participate actively in all kinds of acts of lobbying in Brussels for the Iranian opposition in exile, reports Marina Estévez.
Vidal-Quadras ascribes the contributions of funds to the period in which he was in Vox and links them “totally” to his person. “There was no donation while he was in the PP”, he says, although he reiterates that members of parliament also participated in activities for the Iranian opposition. On Monday, the party presided over by Pablo Casado announced that he was considering forcing Vox to appear before the Commission of Investigation into the Financing of Political Parties that he is driving solo in the Senate to explain receipt of funds from Iranians that the vice-secretary of Communication of the PP, Marta González, described as “worrying”.

And politicians who concern Pablo Casado, such as former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, have also lent their support to this group of Iranian opponents. In fact, not even its terrorist past, as the USA and the EU considered it until a few years ago, has prevented this organization from enjoying the support of Western leaders. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, for example, attended the annual meetings that the group organized in Paris in 2013 and 2014.

Elena Herrera, Eldiaro.es, Spain, Translated by Iraninterlink

January 19, 2019 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

And the Winner of the ‘War On Terror’ Financed Dream Home 2014 Giveaway Is…

Oceanfront views, 24-hour doorman, heated pool, and perhaps best of all, a “private tunnel to the beach.” This $3 million Palm Beach, Florida penthouse could be yours, but unfortunately it isn’t because this prize has already been claimed by a former high-level U.S. official who helped pave the way for the over decade-long “war on terror,”which has been a near complete catastrophe.

Iraq is aflame, the Islamic State is on the rampage, the situation in Afghanistan worsens by the day, and thousands of Americans—and many more Iraqis and Afghans—have died during the post-9/11 conflicts. Meanwhile, the combined cost of the “war on terror” comes to an estimated $1.6 trillion.

But if the American people got screwed on the deal, a lot of former senior government officials who played important roles in this debacle have done quite well for themselves. It’s New Year’s Eve and I need to write a final sendoff to 2014, so I thought I’d take a look at the fortunes (literally) of some of these figures: Former CIA director George Tenet and former FBI director Louis Freeh (I’ll cover former Department of Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge in a New Year’s post).

Consider Tenet. As head of the CIA, he missed multiple signs of a major Al Qadea attack directed against the United States, called the case against Saddam building Weapons of Mass Destruction a “slam dunk,” and approved the Bush administration’s torturing of terror suspects.

In any fair world Tenet would be tried for criminal incompetence. Instead, he got the Presidential Medal of Freedom and after resigning in 2004 (at which point his agency salary was south of $200,000), he received a $4 million advance to write a memoir. In it, he confessed to “a black, black time” a few months after 9/11 when he was sitting at home in his favorite Adirondack chair thinking about the tragedy that killed 3,000 Americans on his watch and asked, “Why me?”

Tenet has received millions more in his current role as managing director of a privately held New York investment bank and as a board director and advisor to intelligence and military contractors. Meanwhile, he collects fat speaking fees to talk about “current global threats to U.S. security and what the future holds for the U.S., our allies and interests around the globe.” (Top Secret: Here’s where he gets his best intelligence.)

Not bad for the son of Greek immigrants who before entering government service in 1982 (as legislative director to then-Senator H. John Heinz III) worked at the American Hellenic Institute and the Solar Energy Industries Association. When he headed the CIA, Tenet lived in a ranch house in Potomac, Maryland, which he bought in 1986 for $179,000. He currently splits his time between New York and the affluent D.C. suburb of Bethesda, where he reportedly lives in a neighborhood “known for its tree-lined streets, vintage brick homes, and atmosphere oozing with understated luxury.”

Then there’s Louis Freeh, Tenet’s counterpart at the FBI during the run-up to 9/11. (He resigned a few months before the attacks.) The former FBI director was seriously injured in a car wreck this August, but told police he had no idea what happened because he’d been asleep at the wheel, which is a perfect metaphor for his FBI stewardship. (And let me sincerely say I wish Freeh a speedy recovery, but the metaphor is precise.) Like Tenet, Freeh failed to act on a mountain of evidence pointing towards 9/11, i.e. an April 2001 memo sent to him by his assistant director that cited “significant and urgent” intelligence of “serious operational planning” for terrorism attacks by Islamic radicals linked to Osama bin Laden. He also botched cases involving Richard Jewell, Wen Ho Lee, and Robert Hanssen.

Freeh resigned from the FBI two months before 9/11. When he worked there he was making an annual salary of $145,000 and lived “in a heavily mortgaged house in Great Falls, a Virginia suburb,” according to an old and admiring New Yorker profile. He and his wife now own at least four lavish estates worth many millions of dollars, including a residence in Wilmington, Delaware, a six-bedroom summerhouse worth more than $3 million in Vermont, and a beachfront penthouse at 100 Worth Avenue in Palm Beach, Florida, which was bought for $1.4 million and now has an estimated value of $3 million.

How’d that happen? Well, Freeh is one of many former U.S. officials who got paid big speaking fees (reportedly up to $50,000 a pop) by a creepy Iranian group called the People’s Mujahedin, also known as Mojahedin-e-Khalq, or MEK, to successfully advocate for its removal from the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. He also opened up a consulting firm whose clients have included Saudi Arabia’s Prince Bandar, who the U.S. Department of Justice accused of taking massive bribes from a British defense contractor. That’s right, Freeh represented a prince from America’s old pal Saudi Arabia, home to fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers, and whose export of Wahhabism is credited with giving rising to the Islamic State.

Freeh is also hired to conduct investigations, like the controversial report he produced about Penn State’s football program. Nasser Kazeminy, a Minnesota businessman who in 2008 was accused of bribing former Senator Norm Coleman, also hired Freeh to conduct a “thorough investigation” of the allegations against him in the hopes of clearing his name.

In 2011, Freeh issued a public statement saying that his investigation had “completely vindicated” both Kazeminy and Coleman. Sure, Kazeminy had bought Coleman $100,000 worth of presents, but, Freeh said at a press conference, “There was no quid pro quo in the gifts. There was no wrongdoing.” Freeh also met with the Justice Department – which was investigating the bribery charges but declined to bring a case—on Kazeminy’s behalf.

Oh yeah, about Freeh’s Palm Beach penthouse. As I discovered through Florida property records, Freeh’s wife co-owns it with Kazeminy, which kind of makes you wonder about just how thorough and impartial his investigation was. The quit claim deed giving Freeh’s wife one-half ownership of the penthouse was signed nine days after Freeh’s vindication of Kazeminy.

Freeh declined to comment for this story.

Ken Silverstein, The Intercept

Photo: Sotheby’s

Email the author: kensilverstein@firstlook.org

January 3, 2015 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

NY Times: MKO bribed US politicians to get off terror list

The anti-Iranian Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) paid immense bribes to top American politicians to gain their support for delisting the group from the US terror watch list, a New York Times report says.

According to the NY Times report, former CIA and FBI officials as well as retired generals and well-known members of both political parties in the US were among those supporting the terror group.

The revelation comes as US State Secretary Hillary Clinton on September 21 sent the Congress a classified communication about delisting the MKO from the US terror watch list.

This comes as the group has been responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iranian civilians and officials.

The terror group has also been involved in the suppression of Iraqi Kurds and assisted former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Furthermore, the group had for the last 15 years been formally described by the US State Department as a "foreign terrorist organization.”

The Bush administration had claimed that one of its reasons for attacking Iraq in 2003 was Saddam Hussein’s support of "international terrorism," for which he mentioned Iraq’s "sheltering" of the MKO as a major example.

Nonetheless, conservative politicians in the US seek to portray the MKO terror group as a Democratic option for Iran’s future, the report noted.

Two officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in advance of an official announcement, said that Clinton’s decision to drop the group’s terror label was partly based on the group’s recent cooperation in moving more than 3,000 of its members from its longtime Iraq location, Camp Ashraf.

The MKO fled to Iraq in 1986, where it enjoyed the support of Iraq’s executed dictator Saddam Hussein, and set up its Camp Ashraf near the Iranian border.

On Sunday a final convoy of 680 MKO members from Camp Ashraf arrived at the former site of Camp Liberty, located near the Baghdad airport.

The NY Times article reaffirms that the support of prominent American politicians for the MKO organization will undoubtedly play a role in the de-listing of the MKO organization as a terrorist group.

The long list of high-ranking US politicians supporting the MKO includes: former CIA Directors, R. James Woolsey and Porter J. Goss; former FBI director Louis J. Freeh; former US President George W. Bush’s homeland security secretary, Tom Ridge; Attorney General, Michael B. Mukasey; and President Barack Obama’s first national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones.

Many of MKO’s American supporters, yet not all, are said to have received fees of up to 15,000 to 30,000 USD to give speeches to the group, in addition to travel expenses to attend MKO rallies in Paris.

The former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, Edward G. Rendell, admitted in March that he had received a total of 150,000 to 160,000 USD.

According to an American official, for the time being, about 100 of the group’s members are expected to stay at Camp Ashraf, with permission of the Iraqi government to oversee the group’s property there.

In the meantime, MKO members at the Camp Liberty site are being interviewed by United Nations officials who have granted refugee status to several hundred of them and are now looking for countries that are ready to accept them.

October 2, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Our (New) Terrorists the MEK: Have We Seen This Movie Before?

Yes, and what kind of mind-boggling corruption — of the worst kind — influence peddling by a “foreign power” (as defined by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to include foreign Our (New) Terrorists the MEK: Have We Seen This Movie Before? terrorist groups) — lies hidden behind the curtain? Could some members of the MEK “foreign terrorist organization,” their murderous history magically erased, be sent to a nice suburb somewhere to live as your next door neighbor as happens with the organized crime “witness protection program?” Or will the soon-to-be-legalized “terrorism” of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (or Mojahedin-e Khalq, usually referred to as MEK) find more utilitarian function in the mode of how U.S. neoconservative officials plotted with and used convicted con artist Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqi expatriate group to gin up the false “intelligence” that served to launch the unjustified and counter-productive war on Iraq? Even worse, might this new MEK operation end up resembling the sequel to Charlie Wilson’s War?

Since we cannot seem to learn from history and therefore seem doomed to repeat our mistakes, all of the above could be true. In any event, the old movie script will require few changes.

From MAK to MEK

The popular 2007 movie Charlie Wilson’s War found a way to glorify a rather derelict Texas congressman’s exploits and secret appropriations to fund CIA covert assistance to Mujahideen “rebels” (one faction recruited and trained by Osama Bin Laden himself) based on the repeatedly discredited notion that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” As John Hanrahan points out, Hollywood and Tom Hanks also found a way to edit out the real truth: “that the U.S.-aided Mujahedeen’s ouster of the Soviets in 1989 ultimately led to civil war and the ultra-orthodox Islamic Taliban coming to power in 1996, an event that also enabled anti-Soviet fighter Osama bin Laden and his fledgling al Qaeda to set up a base from which to plan the 9/11 attacks.”

…Osama bin Laden arrived in the country…sent by then-Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Faisal, where he set up the Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK) which helped finance, recruit and train mujahidin fighters. Bin Laden, the MAK, and the Afghan mujahidin in total received about half a billion dollars a year from the CIA, and roughly the same from the Saudis, funneled through Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI)

…Continued US sponsorship of the al-Qaeda-Taliban nexus in Afghanistan was confirmed as late as 2000 in Congressional hearings. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on South Asia, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher — former White House Special Assistant to President Reagan and now Senior Member of the House International Relations Committee — declared that ‘this administration has a covert policy that has empowered the Taliban and enabled this brutal movement to hold on to power’. The assumption is that ‘the Taliban would bring stability to Afghanistan and permit the building of oil pipelines from Central Asia through Afghanistan to Pakistan’ — From “Our Terrorists” by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed in New Internationalist Magazine.

In other words, Charlie Wilson’s War seriously backfired and was a significant factor that gave rise to the 9-11 attacks. (Incidentally — and a big reason why there’s so little hope of anyone having learned from this sordid history — is that Dana Rohrabacher happens to be one of the main Congressmen who has now taken big sums of money from the MEK front groups!)

An October 2010 report (“Restoring Afghanistan’s Tribal Balance”) for the New World Strategies Coalition described U.S. covert support of the Mujahideen as follows:

During the ‘jihad’ against the Soviets, the Judeo-Christian West teamed up with violent Islamic radicals of the worst sort, against the Soviets, because they shared a common hatred for the godless communists. The same people American leaders once called ‘freedom fighters’ throughout the 80′s are now [in the current war] violent extremist jihadist terrorists who commit immoral acts and heinous human rights violations that all Americans should find deplorable. Of course, before 9/11 when these ‘terrorists’ were fighting against the Soviets, they were ‘our terrorists’ and such human rights violations and war crimes hardly ever made the press. Today, people aren’t really supposed to remember nor point out this interesting historical irony, especially within the media.

By fast forwarding 30 years and changing one vowel, (MAK to MEK) we see history repeating almost exactly. There’s ample evidence that Iranian MEK terrorists, “our new terrorists,” are responsible for conducting assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists. U.S. officials confirmed the charges leveled by Iran’s leaders as well as the fact that the killings and bombings in Iran were financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service. In an exclusive report, NBC reported that:

The group, the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, has long been designated as a terrorist group by the United States, accused of killing American servicemen and contractors in the 1970s and supporting the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran before breaking with the Iranian mullahs in 1980. The attacks, which have killed five Iranian nuclear scientists since 2007 and may have destroyed a missile research and development site, have been carried out in dramatic fashion, with motorcycle-borne assailants often attaching small magnetic bombs to the exterior of the victims’ cars. — From NBC Rock Center exclusive report February, 2012.

In April of this year, Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker article “Our Men in Iran” that members of MEK were also being trained in Nevada by U.S. Joint Special Operation Command for covert actions to topple the Iranian government.

The following comments are from former U.S. security experts Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett’s excellent analysis of the highly politicized flip-flop, “By Delisting the MEK, the Obama Administration is taking the Moral and Strategic Bankruptcy of America’s Iran Policy to a New Low“:

We have seen too many times over the years just how cynically American administrations have manipulated these designations, adding and removing organizations and countries for reasons that have little or nothing to do with designees’ actual involvement in terrorist activity… Yet, precisely because we know how thoroughly corrupt and politicized these designations really are, we recognize their significance as statements of U.S. policy.

Today, the Obama administration made a truly horrible statement about U.S. policy toward Iran… Just this year, U.S. intelligence officials told high-profile media outlets that the MEK is actively collaborating with Israeli intelligence to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists, see here; Iranian officials have made the same charge. Since when did murdering unarmed civilians (and, in some instances, members of their families as well) on public streets in the middle of a heavily populated urban area (Tehran) not meet even the U.S. government’s own professed standard for terrorism?

…Here, the Obama administration is taking an organization that the U.S. government knows is directly involved in the murder of innocent people and giving this group Washington’s “good housekeeping seal of approval.”… Count on this: once the MEK is formally off the FTO list — a legally defined process that will take a few months to play out — Congress will be appropriating money to support the monafeqin as the vanguard of a new American strategy for regime change in Iran.

In the 1990s, similar enthusiasm for Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress — who were about as unpopular among Iraqis as the MEK is among Iranians — led to President Bill Clinton’s signing of the Iraq Liberation Act, which paved the way for George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003. The chances for such a scenario to play out with regard to Iran over the next few years — with even more disastrous consequences for America’s strategic and moral standing — got a lot higher today.

Flynt Leverett served as a Middle East expert on George W. Bush’s National Security Council staff until the Iraq War and worked previously at the State Department and at the Central Intelligence Agency. Hillary Mann Leverett was the NSC expert on Iran and — from 2001 to 2003 — was one of only a few U.S. diplomats authorized to negotiate with the Iranians over Afghanistan, al-Qaeda and Iraq.

Governmental Influence Peddling Barely Hidden

A steady flow totaling in the millions of dollars during these last years has been revealed, funneled through various front groups to latter-day Charlie Wilson U.S. congresspersons, Washington lobbying firms and former high level Department of Justice, Homeland Security, military and U.S. counter-terrorism officials. Check out the excellent reports — here and here — of Chris McGreal, a Guardian investigative journalist based in Washington who really did some good research attempting to trace the sordid money trail, writing:

US policy change on banned Iranian group came after extraordinary fundraising operation to transform its image. Only a few years ago, US authorities were arresting pro-MEK activists. To the US government, the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (MEK) was a terrorist group alongside al-Qaida, Hamas and the Farc in Colombia. The MEK landed on the list in 1997 with American blood on its hands and by allying itself with Saddam Hussein along with a long list of bombings inside Iran.

But the organization is regarded very differently by a large number of members of Congress, former White House officials and army generals, and even one of the US’s most renowned reporters, Carl Bernstein. They see the MEK as a victim of US double dealings with the regime in Tehran and a legitimate alternative to the Iran’s Islamic government.

That difference is in no small part the result of a formidable fundraising operation and campaign to transform the MEK’s image led by more than 20 Iranian American organisations 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.

In a highly sensitive political game, MEK supporters have succeeded in pressing the state department into removing the group from the list of terrorist organisations after winning a court order requiring a decision to be made on the issue before the end of this month. But its supporters were forced to tread a careful path so as not to cross anti-terrorism laws.

Only a few years ago, the US authorities were arresting pro-MEK activists and freezing the assets of front groups for “material support for a terrorist organisation”. Now members of Congress openly praise the group in apparent contradiction of the anti-terrorism legislation many of them supported. Nearly 100 members of the House of Representatives backed a resolution calling on the US government to drop the MEK from the terrorist list.

Most of the damning details, however, of what would probably be otherwise considered “material support for terrorism” will probably lie buried and stamped “Top Secret” in Treasury Department files forced closed when the presumptive targets of the investigation turned out to include over three dozen top U.S. officials and even many of the federal investigators’ former bosses and cronies: former Attorney General Michael Mukasey; former Assistant Attorney General and Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff; two former CIA Directors; former DOJ Attorney and Homeland Security Advisor to the President Frances Townsend; former U.S. Attorney and NYC Mayor Rudy Guiliani; former FBI Director Louis Freeh; former Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge, etc. Clearly such powerful “political considerations” can trump the law and easily subvert even the U.S. terrorism laws constantly promoted since 9-11 as all-important but now turned on their head. So unless a brave whistleblower or two steps forward, we probably won’t know much more about the presumably forced closure of these criminal terrorism investigations for another 20 years or so until a federal judge finally rules in agreement with a FOIA request. Or unless new movie producers can force some leaks out to jazz up the old script.

“Terrorism” Propaganda: How to Play it Up or Play it Down

The last 11 years have seen almost uninterrupted, cynical exaggerating and distorting of the threat of Mid-east “terrorism” by our mainstream media (to scare us into doing dumb things like launching war on countries like Iraq that had no connection to 9-11) so it was strangely out of the norm for the Washington Post article to frame the de-listing of the MEK Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) as humanitarian intervention. Interestingly, the Post reporter also chose the term “label” to minimize the importance of the U.S. government’s designation-undesignation of a “FTO” in the case of the MEK.

So it’s just a “label” when Michael Mukasey and three dozen other high level political figures flaunted the law in support of a “foreign terrorist organization.” But would the Post say mere FTO “labels” justify launching thousands of US government investigations and prosecutions of ordinary, non-powerful, non politically-connected people for “material support”? There are 23 anti-war activists in the Mid-west who are still under Department of Justice investigation two years after their homes were raided by the FBI; and there are thousands of people serving long prison terms or, even worse, on “kill lists” to be summarily executed due, the Government would allege, to even a fleeting or tenuous connection to someone or some group on the US FTO list. Furthermore, no transparency, no judicial process has seemingly existed — until MEK’s big money lobbying campaign came along — to dispute the accuracy of such FTO “labels.”

An article at the Bill of Rights Defense Committee’s “Peoples Blog for the Constitution” entitled “Terrorist designation a problem? Befriend a politician” points out this terrible double standard:

The severe ramifications of this law have resulted in solitary confinement and a fifteen year sentence for US citizen Fahad Hashmi, who allowed a suitcase of raincoats at his apartment, and a 17 year sentence for Tarek Mehanna, who translated a text by a Saudi religious scholar. The removal of the MEK from the FTO list demonstrates not only the double-standard for enforcement of material support laws, but also the over-broad and heavy-handed criminalization of constitutionally protected activity.

When the overbroad law resulted in investigations of prominent politicians and former officials, the law was not modified to address First Amendment concerns, but instead maintained, while a specific organization was removed from the terrorist list to accommodate those politicians’ activities. The material support law should be changed so that it doesn’t criminalize association, expression, or other activity protected by the First Amendment, or efforts aimed to advance humanitarian goals.

Finally, consider how unbelievable and in-congruent for the MEK to have such a powerful lobby that it can reach its tentacles into U.S. political “leadership” like this, spending millions of dollars in exchange for political endorsements and yet be portrayed at the very same time, as the Post and other media does, as a poor group of refugees trapped in Iraq enemy territory in need of humanitarian intervention. Where would this refugee group which (for 15 years) has been designated a “foreign terrorist organization” get the millions it paid to U.S. officials and politicians for their assistance and influence-peddling? News articles do allude to the fact that the payments and the political pressure were in violation of U.S. law, but these articles fail to go into how and why federal investigators were apparently forced to drop their investigation of officials who received huge payments from the MEK.

The big money model for lobbyist success has paved the way for the coalition of MEK front groups to corrupt U.S. Government by funneling millions of dollars from who-knows-where to elected and appointed political figures to turn dark into light. Certainly there will now be other foreign-based front groups following this example in ever more flagrant disregard of what Justice Brandeis long ago warned us, about how government wrongdoing and contempt for (and subversion of) the law functions.

Contrast the portrayal of the need for “humanitarian intervention” on behalf of what was portrayed as defenseless women and children refugees in the MEK Camp in Iraq with the millions of dollars that have gone into PR propaganda firms, corrupt U.S. congresspersons and former high level DOJ, Homeland Security and counter-terrorism officials to essentially re-write the history of a violent terrorist group that worked for Saddam Hussein — who some of these same officials were, only a decade before, falsely implying was responsible for 9-11. Why did these millions of dollars not go to helping the MEK women and children move from Iraq if they are in such danger instead of going into corrupt U.S. political figures’ pockets?

If only the American people would wake up to this corruption, they might find themselves, at the very least, extremely confused that some of the same U.S. political figures who were so hell-bent to take out Saddam Hussein are now sponsoring one of Saddam’s main “terrorist” underlings. Don’t they remember Charlie Wilson’s War? Or what Friedrich Nietzsche said: “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”

by Coleen Rowley

September 29, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Terrorists No More: MEK

An Iranian group’s lobbying campaign to get removed from the U.S. list of terror organizations looks to be a success. But what does that say about the state of politics in Washington?

It’s no secret how a group gets designated as terrorists in the eyes of the U.S. government. Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act enumerates the authorities of the secretary of state in listing a group as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO). The act references the existing statutory definitions of terrorism, provides avenues for appeal of the classification, and otherwise lays out various processes for review.

Nowhere, however, does the act lay out the options for buying your way out of a designation. Luckily, the Iranian expat group Mojahedin e-Khalq (MEK) soon to be "delisted" as an FTO, according to multiple reports, has provided us with a roadmap. But first, a little background.

The MEK, an anti-shah, Islamist, Marxist Iranian opposition group that fell afoul of the Islamic Revolution early on, was designated — put on the terrorist list — in 1997. It earned the designation fair and square, having been involved in numerous attacks, including the hostage-taking and Terrorists No More: MEK murder of Americans, according to a State Department report. Indeed, it was at times more hardline than the Ayatollahs: The group reportedly condemned the new Iranian government’s decision to release the American hostages in 1980 as "surrender."

More recently, the MEK has restricted its attacks to Iranian nationals. Those curious can check out this lengthy FBI report for all the gory details. Suffice it to say that these erstwhile Marxists have proven themselves remarkably adaptable: The leadership moved with ease from the shah’s Iran, onward to France and, once ousted from Paris, to a congenial perch in Baghdad, where the MEK was reportedly involved in Saddam’s extermination campaign against the Kurds and repression of Iraq’s Shia.

But the world is now a different place — Saddam is gone and the MEK claims it has reformed. Certainly, the embassy takeovers and the anti-American, anti-Israel rhetoric are gone. Now it appears that the MEK is merely a cult-like organization — intensely devoted to its leaders Massoud and Maryam Rajavi and virulently opposed to the Islamic Republic. Reports from former members suggest that followers require permission from the Rajavis to marry, that parents are separated from children, that communication with outsiders is banned, and that more senior followers are required to divorce to commit themselves more fully to the fight.

The State Department has long resisted efforts to remove the MEK from the terrorist list. As of 2004, the FBI had evidence that the group was still planning attacks against Iranian targets around the world. In addition — and this is no small caveat — successive secretaries of state in both Republican and Democratic administrations have recognized that delisting the MEK could throw a monkey wrench into efforts toward rapprochement with Iran. …

Setting aside the fact that the MEK worked hand in glove with other masterminds of the Islamic Revolution, Iranians are rightly wary of the fact that the MEK sided with the hated Saddam in his war against Iran. Indeed, the MEK has never appeared as the voice of democratic hope for the Iranian people, but merely a dictatorship in waiting. Washington, however, has been more suggestible.

The recent history of the MEK — also known in other guises such as the National Council of Resistance, the National Liberation Army, and the People’s Mojahedin of Iran — has featured various front groups that have lobbied aggressively for the removal of the MEK’s terrorist designation. These lavishly resourced groups have pursued a sophisticated and multi-dimensional campaign that reached from the state-by-state field offices to the toniest K St. lobbying shops. And their efforts have gained substantial momentum in recent years, leaning on former senior government officials and journalists to make their case.

On Capitol Hill, the MEK emphasizes its credentials as an opponent of the Iranian regime, allowing wannabe masters of the "great game" to imagine that this enemy of our enemy is our friend. Among Republicans and Democrats alike, there is seemingly little curiosity as to the MEK’s nature or its plans for Iran should it ever should come to power.

A who’s who of former government officials have led the way in advocating for the MEK in Washington’s corridors of power. There’s former New York City mayor and presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, former Vermont governor and Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean, President Barack Obama’s former National Security Advisor Gen. James Jones, and the former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Democrat Lee Hamilton. There’s also Mitt Romney advisor Mitchell Reiss and former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. Who says bipartisanship is dead in Washington?

Is every one of these men and women a principled supporter of the MEK, dedicated to the liberation of Iran? Seems doubtful. As their own records in government will attest, most did nothing for the MEK when in a position to do so. The more likely explanation is that at least some of these folks have been persuaded with money, most of it coming in the form of speaking fees. And there is lots of it. Where does it come from? The FBI won’t tell those on Capitol Hill who have asked; the MEK insists the money is from its donors.

The ethics of accepting money for a speaking gig from a designated terrorist group is dubious — but if it’s happening through non-designated fronts, it’s likely to be legally kosher. On the other hand, the Washington Postreportedin July that some of these speakers are also taking part in regular briefings and negotiations regarding the fate of Camp Ashraf, the MEK camp inside Iraq that the government in Baghdad is disbanding.

According to State Department sources, participants in those calls were advocates on behalf of the MEK, and were being used to relay messages to and from the group. If so, these individuals were acting as unregistered foreign agents for the MEK. The law is specific on this question: Acting on behalf of a foreign organization without properly registering with the U.S. government is a crime. The Justice Department is reportedly investigating former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell for his MEK ties, but few are sanguine the probe will go anywhere.

So what’s the lesson here? Pretty simple. Announce you’ve renounced terrorism. Buy a bunch of supporters. Lobby to get off the terrorism list. ET voila.

The tale of the MEK reflects poorly on all involved, from the State Department to Capitol Hill to undeclared lobbyists. Unfortunately, the designation of foreign terrorist organizations has become a highly politicized exercise in which some groups are designated for the right reasons (terrorism) and others are not labeled, despite clearly meeting the statute’s requirements. For example, the Haqqani network in Pakistan was only designated in September despite its long association with other terrorist groups and its own terrorist activities. At the very least, however, we will soon find out whether, freed of the opprobrium of its terrorist designation, the MEK will make any difference in our long-running battle with Iran. Somehow, I doubt it.

By Danielle Pletka, Foreign Policy

September 29, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

The Hypocrisy and Looming Danger of De-Listing MEK

The Obama administration’s decision to remove the Iranian cult Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) from the State Department’s list of officially designated terrorist groups was a long time coming. But The Hypocrisy and Looming Danger of De-Listing MEK no single act by the administration so crystalizes the hypocrisy and recklessness of US postures towards Iran.

The MEK has a long history of terrorist activity going back to the 1970s and has the goal of overthrowing the Iranian government. Because of this goal, there has been a big money push by many influential people in Washington to get the group de-listed, presumably to make it eligible for US funding to act against the Iranian regime.

Please ignore the fact that these political elites that received payments from the MEK in order to advocate on their behalf appear to be in violation of laws prohibiting material support for “terrorists.” Also ignore the fact that George W. Bush included Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorists like MEK in his propaganda justifying the invasion of Iraq in 2003. “Iraq shelters terrorist groups including the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization,” reads a document in the archives of the White House’s website, “which has used terrorist violence against Iran and in the 1970s was responsible for killing several US military personnel and US civilians.” As recently as 2007, a State Department report warned that the MEK, retains “the capacity and will” to attack “Europe, the Middle East, the United States, Canada, and beyond.”

As Glenn Greenwald pointed out yesterday, whether the MEK is still an officially designated “terrorist” group has exactly zero to do with whether or not they carry out terrorism:

The history of the US list of designated terrorist organizations, and its close cousin list of state sponsors of terrorism, is simple: a country or group goes on the list when they use violence to impede US interests, and they are then taken off the list when they start to use exactly the same violence to advance US interests. The terrorist list is not a list of terrorists; it’s a list of states and groups which use their power to defy US dictates rather than adhere to them.

This was also exemplified earlier this month when the Obama administration decided to officially designate the Haqqani network a terrorist organization. The Haqqanis are a branch of the Taliban that launches attacks on occupying forces in Afghanistan. The Reagan administration funneled money and weapons to Islamic fighters in Afghanistan against the Soviets in 1980s. Back then, the Haqqani network were freedom fighters. Now the US says they’re officially terrorists.

And as Greenwald explains, “Saddam was put on it when he allied with the Soviets in the early 1980s, then was taken off when the US wanted to arm and fund him against Iran in the mid-1980s, then he was put back on in the early 1990s when the US wanted to attack him.”

Aside from the clear-as-day hypocrisy of this list, the decision to de-list MEK will have deleterious effects for US policy towards Iran. The Obama administration has stubbornly refused to reciprocate to Iranian concessions in the international negotiations over their nuclear program and has imposed harsh economic sanctions. The two things the administration had going for it was the fact that it was pretty clear to the world that they were blocking an immediate Israeli strike and also that negotiations are continuing, probably in an attempt to deal with it more freely after the US presidential elections. But now that the US has de-listed MEK and opened up the potential for more direct support of the group, which argues for the overthrow of the Iranian regime, how can the administration claim its policy is one of engagement and negotiations as opposed to subversion and aggression?

As Paul Pillar wrote yesterday:

The regime in Tehran will tacitly welcome this move (while publicly denouncing it) because it helps to discredit the political opposition in Iran—a fact not lost on members of the Green Movement, who want nothing to do with the MEK. The MEK certainly is not a credible vehicle for regime change in Iran because it has almost no public support there. Meanwhile, the Iranian regime will read the move as another indication that the United States intends only to use subversion and violence against it rather than reaching any deals with it.

So why de-list the MEK? The only credible answer is that the US aims to undermine the Iranian regime. And even though MEK has virtually zero support in Iran, and despite the embarrassing history the US has of aiding dissident groups in rival countries, Washington seems to view the MEK as instrumental in undermining Tehran. Furthermore, according to US officials, Israel has supported and is supporting the MEK to carry out terrorism in Iran and targeting Iranian nuclear scientists for assassination. Pillar says it might have been nice to mention this when the State Department was de-listing MEK, “But that, of course, would have required the politically inconvenient act of publicly addressing Israeli terrorism.” Better to just de-list MEK than to have Israel supporting an officially designated terrorist group.

MEK’s de-listing very well might come along with increased Israeli support for them…and increased US support.

By John Glaser

September 25, 2012 0 comments

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