Western Bloggers

Money trail leading from the Israeli Lobby & MEK to key US figures

Mark Dankof and Mark Glenn discuss the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), its cultic character, its blood-stained history since the 1960’s, its present relationship to Israeli intelligence, its current trail of violent crimes in Iran, and the sordid money trail leading from the Israeli Lobby and the MEK to key figures in the American political establishment seeking to have the MEK delisted from the State Department list of terrorist organizations.

Mujahedin e Khalq–designated a dangerous terrorist organization by the US government AND YET, in violation of US law, politically-powerful and well-connected individuals from Rudy Giuliani to Howard Dean to Tom Ridge are being paid tens of thousands of dollars each to advocate on behalf of this organization.

What’s the ‘real deal’ here?

Simple, as always, when it comes to American foreign policy decisions–

ISRAEL.

Unable to have her agents and assassins move about the world freely as she has in times past, Israel now plans to use this dangerous terrorist group in doing her dirty work for her, including carrying out acts of terrorism on American soil to further the cause of war against Iran, if indeed this has not already been the case viz a viz the mouch-touted assassination plot against the Saudi Ambassador and the killing of the Iranian medical student in Houston, Texas recently

We are joined once again by the one and only Mark Dankof to discuss this very important topic.

Link to the Audio File

The Ugly Truth

April 4, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

MEK Pays US Officials, But Where Do The Iranian Exiles Get Their Money?

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Treasury opened investigations into former government officials who have been paid speaking fees by the Mojahedin-e-Khalq, or MEK, an Iranian resistance group officially listed as a terrorist organization.

Maryam Rajavi, president-elect of the People’s Mujahideen Organisation of Iran’s (PMOI) political wing, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and former mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani take part in a rally in Villepinte, near Paris

The subpoenaing of former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, ex-FBI Director Louis Freeh and retired Gen. Hugh Shelton has cast an harsh light on other U.S. officials, including former New York City Mayor Rudi Giuliani and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, as well as the organization they publicly support.

"They (MEK) are still on the terrorist list. The laws still apply. It is illegal in every sense of the word to finance them right now," said Trita Parsi, founder of the National Iranian American Council, a non-partisan community organization based in Washington.

The actual sum being paid to these officials is vague, but judging by the fees handed to certain individuals, the total could be in the millions. For example, Rendell was allegedly paid $150,000 for "seven or eight speeches," according to reports. Giuliani, who spoke in at a conference in Paris, France on behalf of Iranian resistance figures alongside 18 other international guests, has been known to charge up to $100,000 for a single appearance and sometimes demands private jets to charter him to appearances.

Other former U.S. officials told the New York Times that the American supporters of MEK received between $15,000 and $30,000 per speech, yet others said they made appearances for free.

Where does an organization based in an Iraqi refugee camp for the last 25 years get so much money? While MEK has organized rallies and campaigns to have it delisted as a terrorist group in the past, it has never, by all accounts, spent the amount of money it has over the past year.

Currently, there are rumors that the Israeli secret service is paying MEK to carry out assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists. Three unnamed U.S. government officials told NBC news last month that Mossad had trained and paid MEK militants to conduct a spate of car bombings against targets like Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a university chemistry professor who doubled as a director of Iran’s Natanz uranium-enrichment facility, who was killed in Tehran in January after two assailants on a motorcycle attached a magnetic bomb to his Peugeot 405.

MEK called the allegations "outright false," but Israel has neither denied nor confirmed its own involvement in the attack.

If the NBC report is true, Israel would not be the first government to pay for MEK’s military expertise; from 1980 until the invasion of Iraq in 2003, MEK was funded by Saddam Hussein. Following the adage "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," MEK joined Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War and fought viciously against the Ayatollah’s forces. MEK made Camp Ashraf, which is about 55 miles north of Baghdad, its permanent headquarters in 1986.

Some estimate that Hussein was paying as much as $30 million a month for at least 10 months — some of it allegedly run-off from the UN’s failed Oil-for-Food program — for MEK’s services, which included strikes against Kurdish and Shia rebels in Iraq.

Additionally, during the Iran-Iraq War, MEK leader Masoud Rajavi — whose wife Maryam Rajavi currently runs the National Council of Resistance of Iran, or NCRI, MEK’s political arm — allegedly took control of all of his members’ assets, possessions and even their passports so they couldn’t leave Camp Ashraf.

"Between 1978, when I became MEK’s supporter, till 1996 when I escaped, through use of different techniques of mind manipulation I was forced to give them whatever they asked me," explained Masoud Banisadr, MEK’s former U.S. spokesperson and the second cousin of Abolhassan Banisadr, the first president of the Islamic Republic.

"First any capital or material things we had; then any love, attachments or relation we had with our country, our family and friends in Iran; then when they asked all members to divorce their spouses, I lost the love of my life, my dear wife and could not see my children for almost six years; I lost part of my health, and many times were on the edge of dying for them."

In 2003, before the European Union took MEK off of its terror watch list, Maryam Rajavi and some 160 other Mujahedin were arrested by counter-terrorism police in a small town outside Paris. Authorities confiscated around $8 million in cash, which Trita Parsi believes was some of the last remaining funds of Saddam Hussein. All of the suspects were quickly released and the case was eventually dropped.

Follow the Money

MEK was put on the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations in 1997. MEK supporters suggest this was a failed political move by the Clinton administration to soften relations with Tehran. Regardless, the organization says it is now a peaceful and democratic resistance movement, one allied with the U.S in its distrust of the current Iranian regime and Iran’s nuclear program. A slew of American officials, including Freeh, FBI Director at the time the terror list designation was made, and a number of military officers of the highest rank, have come to the support of MEK and lobbied for its removal from the terrorist list.

A 2004 FBI investigation uncovered a glut of shady fund-raising operations. According to the report, the voracity of which has been called into question, money raised by the Los Angeles and Washington D.C. "cells" was "transferred overseas through a complex international money laundering operation that uses accounts in Turkey, Germany, France, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates."

At one point, MEK was also operating charities called the Committee for Human Rights and Iran Aid, which claimed to raise money for Iranian refugees persecuted by the Islamic regime, but was later revealed to be a front for MEK’s military arm, the National Liberation Army.

All of this could account for some of MEK’s resources but would be unlikely to cover the exorbitant speaker fees recently doled out.

Moreover, MEK supporters would claim that if true, these practices were done during a previous incarnation of the group, the middle ground between being a fully-militant organization and a refugee group under U.S. military protection in Iraq.

Almost all of the former U.S. officials who support delisting were not actually paid by MEK, but by Iranian-American cultural organizations like the Iranian American Community of North Texas and the Iranian American Cultural Association of Missouri. This network of non-profits could be the best way to track MEK’s funding. According to experts, money from benefactors and pledge drives in Europe is sent to individuals in the United States, then onto front groups and finally given to American politicians. It’s complicated, but according to federal law, it’s still illegal.

"It’s much easier to move around money in Europe because MEK is no longer on the watch list," said Parsi.

None of this may matter soon. MEK has filed a federal suit that would force the State Department, which says it continually evaluates the terrorist organization list anyway, to officially review the organization’s status within 30 days.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also said that a successful transfer from Camp Ashraf to former U.S. military base Camp Liberty[Temporary Transit Location], which is currently underway, will help speed up any potential delisting. If that happens, former politicians like Giuliani, ex-Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and former U.N. ambassador John Bolton will continue to advocate for the MEK despite criticism and possible legal ramifications.

By Daniel Tovrov,IbTimes

April 2, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

MKO’s supporters throw party in U.S. Congress

It’s not every day that groups supporting a State Department-listed foreign terrorist organization hold a party in the U.S. Congress, but that’s exactly what happened today when the friends of the Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK) threw their Nowruz party in the hearing room of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
"Members of Congress will join Iranian Americans in wishing the Iranian people a Happy Nowrouz and address the humanitarian rights of Iran’s main opposition in Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty, in Iraq," reads the flyer for the party, which was held Thursday at the Rayburn building in room 2172, where the foreign affairs committee holds all of its public events.
The flyer says that the event is sponsored by "Iranian American communities" from around the United States, but the mention of Camp Ashraf and Camp Liberty is a clear reference to the MEK, a group designated by the State Department as a foreign terrorist organization that has about 3,000 members living in the secretive Ashraf compound in Iraq.
The U.N. and the State Department are working to move them to Camp Liberty, a former U.S. military base near the Baghdad airport, but the MEK is resisting that move, and has enlisted its many supporters in the United States to decry the conditions at the former military base. Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani even went so far as to call Camp Liberty a "concentration camp."
House Foreign Affairs Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) spoke at the event and discussed human rights in Iran, but did not mention the MEK by name. Former Homeland Security secretary and Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, a paid advocate of the MEK, also spoke.
"The event was not sponsored by the MEK," Ros-Lehtinen’s spokesperson Brad Goehner told The Cable. "The room was requested by the Iranian-American Society of South Florida and sponsored by the Iranian-American communities of 39 cities for an event commemorating the Iranian New Year. Space in Congressional office buildings is routinely made available to organizations wishing to hold events on issues important to members of Congress."
The flyer doesn’t say the party is being thrown by or for the MEK, and aides who attended told The Cable that there were no MEK signs or banners at the event, as one usually sees wherever the MEK is camped out.
That could be a result of the revelation that the Treasury Department’s counterterrorism unit has issued a subpoena to former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell for records related to his paid advocacy of the MEK, as part of an investigation into the web of organizations that support the terrorist group.
There is a long list of Iranian-American organizations that fund pro-MEK events and pay speakers fees to MEK supporters. Many of these organizations – such as the "Global Initiative for Democracy, whose homepage is entirely devoted to the MEK’s concerns and who hosted an MEK conference in January — seem to have no other function other than to advocate for the MEK, and the actual sources of their money is unclear.
Receiving funding from a terrorist organization or even providing it with "material support," which could include advocacy, is a crime.
The campaign by the MEK’s supporters to disparage Camp Liberty and lobby for the MEK’s removal from the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations has included huge rallies outside the State Department, massive sit-ins at Congressional hearings, and an ongoing vigil outside the State Department’s C Street entrance.
Those supporters, many of them paid, include Giuliani, Rendell, Vermont Governor Howard Dean, Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, John Lewis (D-GA), former FBI Director Louis Freeh, former Sen. Robert Torricelli, former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, former National Security Advisor Gen. James Jones, former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers, former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, former Rep. Lee Hamilton, former CIA Director Porter Goss, senior advisor to the Romney campaign Mitchell Reiss, retired Gen. Anthony Zinni, and former Sen. Evan Bayh.
Congressional aides attended the event on Thursday in the hearing room both out of curiosity and hunger for free food. But multiple aides told The Cable the event was bizarre, even by Congressional standards.
"Looks like you just have to be the ‘right’ terrorist organization to hold a fancy party in the halls and hearing rooms of Congress," one House aide told The Cable. "Hope everyone who ate their kabobs doesn’t get hit with material support subpoenas."

Josh Rogin, Foreign Policy

March 26, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Worldview: Why single out Rendell on MEK?

Give Ed Rendell a break.

Yes, the Treasury Department is investigating the speaking fees received by the former Pennsylvania governor on behalf of an Iranian exile group that’s on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations. Rendell told the New York Times he had received about $150,000 for seven or eight speeches that called for taking the Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MEK, off the list (even though he clearly knew little about the organization).

But why is Treasury targeting only Rendell? There’s an astonishing list of high-level former officials – from both parties – who’ve embraced the MEK cause, for which they’ve collected big bucks, along with trips to pro-MEK conferences in Brussels, London, Berlin, and Paris.

And why have so many prominent men linked their names to an outfit with such a shady, and cultish, reputation – a group that has killed Americans and done dirty work for Saddam Hussein?

The MEK is lobbying hard for the State Department to take it off the terrorist list. (A decision is supposed to be made by the end of March.) It has won support, on the Democratic side, from former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, former U.S. Sen. Robert Torricelli, and retired Gen. James Jones, President Obama’s first national security adviser. And of course, Rendell.

As for Republicans, boosters include former CIA Directors James Woolsey (a big backer of the Iraq war) and Porter J. Goss; former FBI Director Louis Freeh; former Attorney General Michael Mukasey; former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani; and President George W. Bush’s first homeland security chief, former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge. Never mind that Bush renewed the MEK’s terrorist designation four times.

Add to the list a number of retired generals, along with John Bolton, foreign-policy adviser to Newt Gingrich, and Mitchell Reiss, who advises Mitt Romney.

What were they all thinking?

Maybe it was the money. Or perhaps they were conned by an incredible MEK lobbying effort carried out through a series of front groups. That effort lavished money on prime-time TV, and full-page newspaper ads, which portray the MEK as a democratic group leading the fight for Iran regime change.

Apparently none of these pooh-bahs ever asked about the source of their honoraria. "Nobody has ever been able to figure out where the money comes from," says Iran expert Barbara Slavin, the Washington correspondent for al-Monitor.com, a new website on the Mideast. Rumors abound that funds come from Gulf countries opposed to Iran, or from Israel, which reportedly has close contacts with the MEK, or from Iranian exiles.

Nor do MEK boosters appear to have researched the group’s violent history, which should have been well-known to many of them.

The group began as a Marxist-Islamist group supporting Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei; it killed six Americans in the 1970s. In the 1980s, having broken with the Tehran regime, it sought refuge in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The Iraqi leader used MEK forces to attack Iran in a brutal war that lasted a decade, and to kill rebellious Kurds and Shiites.

For that reason, the MEK is despised inside Iraq, where U.S. officials are trying to resettle 2,800 remaining MEK fighters. The Iraqis want to evict them from their base at Camp Ashraf.

More critically, the group is also despised inside Iran. "In the eyes of the Iranians, they embedded with the enemy. They were traitors," says Iran expert Vali Nasr. They are regarded likewise across the Iranian political spectrum. The idea that the group has vast support inside Iran is simply untrue.

When Ridge labeled the MEK the "most effective opposition movement" of the Iranian people, he was talking nonsense, a sad commentary on what he didn’t learn as homeland security chief. Moreover, the MEK reportedly operates like a cult, forcing members into celibacy and exacting total obedience to the MEK’s leader, the Paris-based Maryam Rajavi.

All that may not matter to some MEK boosters, like Giuliani. He recently declared on Fox News that the MEK should be named Time Magazine "person of the year." His reason: According to an NBC-News report, the group was trained by Israel’s Mossad to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists. The MEK was also reportedly used by Israel to leak intelligence about a secret Iranian nuclear facility.

What Giuliani and other advocates ignore is that – whatever the MEK’s role in covert activities – the group does not have the support of the Iranian people. Delisting it may permit it to lobby more openly for support from gullible backers. It may help those who are seeking an exile group to tout as the vehicle for Iran regime change. (Does no one remember the saga of the Pentagon’s favorite Iraqi exile, Ahmed Chalabi?)

But delisting the MEK won’t help pro-democracy forces in Tehran. Nor will it help curb Iran’s nuclear program.

Ed Rendell should have known better than to support this group of exiles. But so should a lot of former U.S. officials with far less excuse for being so blind.

Trudy Rubin, Philly.com

March 18, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Former top-ranking US officials accused of shilling for MEK terrorists

Allegations come as international community is working to remove group from secret Iraqi hideout

Former chairman, joint chiefs of staff General Hugh Shelton attends the Symposium to mark the 33rd Anniversary of the Iranian Revolution at The Waldorf-Astoria on February 11, 2012.

Among those caught in the investigation of about 40 people and subpoenaed by the Treasury Department are former FBI Director Louis Freeh and the former Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Hugh Shelton, the sources said.

The investigation is looking into whether the former officials received hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees from the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, or MEK, which would violate federal law which bars financial transactions with groups on the State Department’s list.

When asked about the allegations, Shelton told NBC that he and the other officials were "pretty miffed."

"None of us involved in this would say a good word about anyone suspected of being a terrorist," he said

He added that he supports MEK though, which he told NBC is a legitimate resistance group fighting to overthrow the government in Iran, a country he referred to as "America’s number one enemy".

But the group, which found itself on the State Department’s list after allegedly killing six Americans in the 1970s, carried out a series of bombings and assassinations against the Iranian regime in the 1980s and was also a big supporter of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. After Hussein’s death, they were accused of being a thorn in the side of Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government as they tried to mend ties with Iran.

Sources told NBC that former government officials received fees of more than $30,000 a talk and were flown first class to Europe. The officials claimed that they were told the fees came from wealthy Americans or foreign supporters of the group — but not the group itself.

Many of the speaking arrangements were made through speaking booking firms, according to the report.

"This is about finding out where the money is coming from," an Obama administration official familiar with the probe said. "This has been a source of enormous concern for a long time now. You have to ask the question, whether this is a prima facie case of material support for terrorism."

Though the MEK has lobbied for years to get off of the State Department’s list, experts say they were too dependent on the whims of their Paris-based leadership and are known to change strategies, motives and endgames without warning.

There’s no guarantee, experts warned NBC, that they won’t return to terrorism without warning.

"It’s extraordinary that so many distinguished public servants would shill for a group that has American blood on its hands," one senior official told the network.

The subpoenas come only days after Foreign Policy magazine reported that the multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign on behalf of (and paid for by) the MEK has hurt an international effort to move the group from a secretive hideout on the Iraqi-Iranian border to a new home — to avoid a bloody clash with the Iraqi military.

The Iraqi military has entered the hideout two times before, resulting in bloody clashes.

The U.N. and State Department’s efforts have been made increasingly difficult as a result of the advocates, FP reported.

“This is hard enough without paid advocates making it worse,” one official told the magazine

Nina Mandell, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

March 17, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

UN & Obama Supporting Islamo-Marxist Terror Group MEK in Iraq

The Obama administration and top former officials are reportedly violating federal law by offering support to the Iranian Mujahedin-e Khalq , a notorious Islamic-Communist terror group that has murdered senior American personnel and is officially designated a “foreign terrorist organization” by the U.S. State Department.

The U.S. government is, among other support measures, currently helping to relocate members of the MEK to a former American military base in Iraq. It is also assisting the group to settle around the world as refugees in a controversial deal brokered with help from the new Iraqi regime and the United Nations. UN & Obama Supporting Islamo-Marxist Terror Group MEK in Iraq

Outraged critics called the administration’s support for the terrorist group an act of “high treason” and “overt criminality.” But paid lobbyists, including politicians and top U.S. officials, have been waging an intense propaganda campaign on behalf of the MEK.

Incredibly, the organization’s supporters claim the transfer of MEK members to the former American base is unacceptable. The terror group’s leadership and its allies are demanding that members either be allowed to stay where they are or be relocated near the Jordanian border instead.

Several thousand members of the group had been living for decades near the Iranian border in Iraq’s “Camp Ashraf,” which analysts and officials have described as a militarized "cult" compound. And from 2003 until recently, the terror group was there under the protection of American forces.

The protection agreement with the U.S. government came after the group lost its former protector, Saddam Hussein, in the wake of the American invasion. Now, however, U.S. forces are officially out of Iraq and the new regime is supposed to be in charge.

Iraqi officials have recently tried — unsuccessfully — to evict the terror organization’s members from the camp. The efforts resulted in bloodshed, according to news reports. But the process of moving them finally began last month and is now well underway.

In an alleged bid to avoid further confrontations between the terror group and the new regime ruling Iraq, months of negotiations between the UN and American and Iraqi officials resulted in a plan to transfer the MEK members temporarily to “Camp Liberty,”[TTL] a former U.S. military base near Baghdad.

The terror group and its prominent American lobbyists, however, are crying foul, describing the former American installation — which was certified by the UN — as a sort of “substandard” prison. And an international controversy of sorts about the issue is growing.

The MEK, also known as the People’s Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI), was founded in a bizarre effort to blend economic Marxism with the values and beliefs of Islam — and impose the system by force. The group also helped Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini during the Islamic revolution that overthrew the U.S. government-backed Shah of Iran. But the warm relations soured soon after that.

America and capitalism have historically been the organization’s primary enemies. Violence and terror, meanwhile, were the means used to wage war. But after a series of terror attacks within Iran left top officials and hundreds of others dead, the Iranian regime unleashed a crackdown — attempting to dismantle the terrorist network once and for all.

The MEK was eventually designated a foreign terrorist organization in 1997 under the Clinton administration. But in recent years, the terror group has toned down its anti-American rhetoric and adopted a friendlier public-relations approach — spending millions of dollars on lobbyists and even dabbling in politics. Supporters hope to have the U.S. terror designation dropped eventually.

The group’s history, however, includes assassinations of more than a few senior U.S. military personnel, terror attacks on American installations, murder of civilians, and much more. Iranians and Iraqis have been victimized even more frequently.

The designated terrorist organization once fought alongside Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s forces too, collaborating with the tyrant against the Iranian regime in the Iran-Iraq war. It even helped Hussein to quash domestic dissidents within Iraq as well.

Iraqis and Iranians, of course, remember the MEK’s partnership with the former despot in suppressing uprisings by rebel groups and slaughtering Iranians. And the bitter memories have led to growing hostility against the terror group among Iraq’s new rulers.

Since Hussein was overthrown by U.S. forces, the new government in Iraq has also become increasingly close to the Islamic regime in Iran. So, a conflict has erupted over the status of MEK members living inside Iraq as officials demand that Camp Ashraf be permanently shut down.

In recent weeks, convoys comprised of several hundred MEK members each have started arriving at Camp Liberty [Temporary Transit Location] from the group’s previous paramilitary compound near Iran. The second group of about 400 arrived last week. And thousands more are expected in the not-too-distant future.

Meanwhile, U.S. taxpayers are reportedly paying to improve the terror organization’s new temporary residence while the UN works to shuttle them out the country. According to news reports, the MEK members are supposed to be processed at Camp Liberty[TTL] as they await UN-sponsored relocation to other countries as refugees.

But the group’s leaders and their well-paid Western lobbyists have asked for Iraqi law enforcement and security personnel to be expelled from the camp while demanding upgrades to the facilities. And they have found sympathetic supporters around the world.

The Islamo-Marxist terror organization — which much of the press now identifies as a group of “dissidents,” “exiles,” and “refugees” — has especially found favor among advocates of war and regime change in Iran. Numerous reports and experts say the U.S. and Israeli governments have actually been working directly with the group for years, in violation of federal laws, to assassinate Iranian scientists, gather intelligence, and even carry out terror attacks on various targets.

But of course, Obama administration officials would hardly be the first to violate U.S. laws — which the Supreme Court upheld at the government’s request — by supporting the designated terror organization. Top neo-conservatives such as former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and ex-Attorney General Michael Mukasey have been lobbying feverishly on behalf of the group too, along with a broad roster of former politicians and U.S. officials.

Former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, ex-Homeland Security boss Tom Ridge, former FBI chief Louis Freeh, ex-CIA Director Porter Goss, former National Security Advisor Gen. James Jones, former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, and many other prominent Americans have joined the battle to aid the MEK as well. So have officials throughout Europe.

And over the last few months, a strange brouhaha has erupted between the Obama administration and the MEK’s highly placed roster of vocal lobbyists. Instead of focusing on the fact that it is a serious breach of federal law to provide virtually any form of support to a designated terrorist organization, former U.S. officials are alleging — very loudly, even purchasing full page ads in major newspapers — that the federal government is not doing enough to coddle the terrorists.

An article in Foreign Policy, citing an anonymous Obama administration official working on the issue, reported that the terror group is actually trashing Camp Liberty itself in a bid to make conditions appear worse than they are. The official also said the MEK’s high-profile U.S. lobbying activities are making it more difficult — potentially even dangerous — for the Obama administration to properly help the terrorists reach “good solutions.”

“We have a plan that has a chance to work and the Iraqis want it to work,” the administration source was quoted as saying. “Whether the MEK wants a resolution or wants a confrontation is something we’re still debating. It’s that bad."

Apparently investigators with the U.S. Treasury Department’s terror branch have started to probe at least one former official for accepting the terrorist group’s money in exchange for lobbying. Former Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell said recently that he received a subpoena seeking documents related to his ties with the MEK.

A Treasury spokesman refused to either confirm or deny that the department was investigating. “But the MEK is a designated terrorist group, therefore U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with or providing services to this group,” the spokesman was quoted as saying by the Washington Times, which broke the story on March 9.

As part of the covert war on Iran, the U.S. and Israeli governments have reportedly been arming, training, and funding the MEK for years — as well as other known terror groups such as the al-Qaeda affiliate known as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) during the recent “regime change” in Libya. And providing support to a designated foreign terrorist organization remains a serious crime, punishable by steep fines and long prison sentences. Whether anyone will be held accountable, however, remains to be seen.

by Alex Newman , The New American

March 15, 2012 0 comments

The MEK; Baath Party Accomplice

Are MEK Politicos Taking Saddam Hussein’s Blood Money?

There are many misconceptions about the MEK so I checked in with several Iranian born experts on Iran. All of them are distressed that American politicians are advocating for the MEK. They also Laura Goldman doubt that the money paid to the politicos comes from the Iranian Diaspora because most expatriate Iranians do no support the MEK.

Raisool Nafisi, a Washington political consultant, said, "The MEK is a terrorist group. It is a cult of religious automatons. MEK is a terrible dictatorship, whose culture requires complete worship of its leaders, Massoud and Maryam Rajavi. The Rajavis require complete subservience and strictly control the thinking, activities and dress of MEK members. Members are punished if they try to leave."

Reports from Rand and Human Rights Watch corroborate that the MEK abuses its own members.
Are MEK Politicos Taking Saddam Hussein's Blood Money?
He continued, "MEK, a leftist theocracy, would be worse than the present regime. Americans that are supporting MEK because of their antipathy towards the current regime and their rumored involvement with the Israelis are being extremely short sighted. If they gained control of Iran, they would create anti-democratic regime."

Rendell may actually be taking blood money from Saddam Hussein.

Nafisi said, "When the head of the Iraqi Secret Police was interrogated, he confessed that Saddam Hussein was giving the MEK $30 million a month, more than $350 million in total."
Nafisi steered me to the previous New York Times reporting on the MEK. "The New York Times accurately described the conditions in the camp and the treatment of women."

That New York Times reporter, Elizabeth Rubin, who toured the camps and wrote an extensive magazine article on the MEK, has condemned in recent days the recent outpouring of support for the group.

Trita Parisi, who wrote “Treacherous Alliance-The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States” and “A Single Roll of the Dice-Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran," said, "US officials recently confirmed to NBC News that the MEK is carrying out assassinations against Iranian scientists, directly contradicting the MEK’s claims to have forgone terrorism and violence. The report also cites law enforcement who say ‘in 1994, the MEK made a pact with terrorist Ramzi Yousef a year after he masterminded the first attack on the World Trade Center in New York City.’ According to officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity,Yousef built an 11-pound bomb that MEK agents placed inside one of Shia Islam’s greatest shrines in Mashad Iran on June 20, 1994. At least 26 people, mostly women and children, were killed and 200 wounded in the attack."

Laura Goldman, Naked Philadelphian

March 15, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Bill Richardson speaker fees linked to known terror group MEK

When former Gov. Bill Richardson left office he told New Mexicans he was looking forward to visiting baseball parks across the United States.

Instead, the former pitcher has been traveling around the world earning speaking fees.

Eyewitness News has learned some of Richardson’s fees were paid by an Iranian dissident group listed on the U.S. State Department’s list of known terrorist groups.

In addition to paying the former governor, the Mojahedin-e Khalq, also named MEK, has been spending millions to have Richardson and other diplomats, politicians and even former U.S. military generals use their influence to help them get de-listed.

In December 2011, Richardson, the former U.N. Ambassador, told the National Resistance Council in Paris, France that there is increasing international and bipartisan support for the group.

KOB found the video from Richardson’s speech in Paris on YouTube.

At least 33 high-ranking former U.S. officials have given speeches to MEK-friendly audiences since December of last year as part of more than 22 events in Washington, Brussels, London, Paris and Berlin.

While not every speaker accepted payment, MEK-affiliated groups have spent millions of dollars on speaking fees, according to interviews with the former officials, organizers.

Richardon is represented by the Washington Speakers’ Bureau and reportedly earns between $25,000 and $50,000 a speech.

Following the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the MEK agreed to give up its weapons arsenal in exchange for protection from the U.S. military.

But following a review in 2007, the U.S. State Department maintained the organization’s classification as a Foreign Terrorist Organization when it ruled the group still possessed the "capacity and will" to commit terrorist acts.

Exiled in Iraq, members of the MEK are suspected of assassinating nuclear scientists working for Iran’s nuclear development program.

Earlier this month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton indicated she has not made a decision to de-list MEK.

She said they must voluntarily relocate from their current camp to another location inside of Iraq first.

By: Peter St. Cyr, KOB Eyewitness News 4

March 12, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq Organization's Propaganda System

What’s Up With All the MEK Ads?

The Prospect takes on the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq ads playing nonstop during campaign coverage.

If you’ve been watching cable news lately, there’s a good chance that you’ve noticed some out-of-the-ordinary adverts. Namely, a 30-second spot done in the grainy style of a spy-thriller flashback calling for the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian dissident group, to be taken off the official U.S. terrorist watch list. It’s a conspicuous outsider in the typical ad roster filled with car commercials and cholesterol meds, which might have led some viewers to wonder, “What’s up with that?”

Ask and ye shall receive.

What does the MEK purport to be?

As tabloid editors who traffic in celebrity divorces and teen-idol feuds well know, there are two sides to every juicy story. In the words of the commercial mentioned above, the “MEK is Iran’s democratic opposition working for a nuclear-free Iran founded on human rights.” The ad employs cinematically ominous music and a narrator whose vocal stylings are more stress-inducing than a pelvic exam, all to great effect. It closes with pictures of U.S. politicians and officials who have publicly supported the group, along with the imperative, “Secretary Clinton, for democracy and freedom in Iran, delist MEK.”

This sentiment is well in line with how supporters of the MEK portray the group—as a political movement with freedom-fighting roots going back to the overthrow of the shah. The MEK didn’t mesh well with Iran’s new Islamic government, however, (Marxist leanings appear to terrify powerful imams just as much as they do senators from Wisconsin), and its members were booted from the country in 1981.

Most MEK loyalists moved into a camp on the Iran/Iraq border and were materially supported by Saddam Hussein until his ouster. Over the course of the last three decades, they have been linked to attacks on Iranian embassies abroad, along with assassinations within Iran itself.

How does the U.S. government characterize the MEK?

As a Foreign Terrorist Organization, the official bad-guy label that the group earned from the State Department in 1997, the U.S.’s feelings about MEK are pretty clear. According to the official State Department report listing the MEK as a terrorist organization, which was obtained recently by NBC news, the group’s actions during the Iranian revolution were anti-American: “As part of that struggle, they assassinated at least six American citizens, supported the takeover of the U.S. embassy, and opposed the release of the American hostages.”

Most recently, the MEK has been accused of coordinating with Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, in the assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist in January in the midst of busy downtown Tehran traffic.

Why is there talk of delisting?

In July 2010, a federal appeals court in D.C. ordered the State Department to reconsider the MEK’s place on the terrorist watch list. The court ordered the State Department to revise the MEK’s delineation as a terrorist group on the grounds that it was categorized without proper evidence brought by the government. The ruling mandated that Secretary Clinton come back with sufficient evidence and a ruling on the MEK designation within 180 days. Two years later, no such announcement has been made. In 2009, the European Union removed the MEK from its watch list.

The MEK sounds sketchy! How’d it get support from all those politicians in the pro-delisting TV ads?

The short answer is, to quote the inimitable Coolio, because of the “power and the money.”

Basically, through its Paris-based political wing, The National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), the MEK has been on a PR blitz as of late. The poster girl for the movement is Maryam Rajavi, who, along with her husband Massoud (whereabouts unknown—how glam!) runs the MEK’s operations. The current TV ad features her wearing a matronly suit and a purple hijab, smiling winningly for the cameras.

The quest for legitimacy in recent years has consisted of paying prominent U.S. political figures thousands of dollars to appear at pro-MEK speaking engagements. Payments are made through speaking agents with money from pro-MEK Iranian community organizations. Videos of Howard Dean, Patrick Kennedy, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, and former National Security Adviser Jim Jones promoting the delisting of the MEK can all be found in the multimedia section of the NCRI’s website. Other delisting proponents are retired General Wesley Clark, former mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani, and former Governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson.

Mitchell Reiss, Mitt Romney’s special adviser on foreign policy is another Washington pol who has publicly advocated for the MEK over the years.

Should we be weirded out by this whole campaign?

Yes. Very much.

First of all, the MEK is not well liked by the majority of Iranians because of the numerous acts of violence it has committed within the country. This means that it’s not really a viable regime-change option—which is the reason Washington insiders have been lining up on behalf of the group.

More disturbing is the fact that the MEK is basically a cult. In a 2009 report on the group, the Rand Corporation characterizes the MEK’s practices as “cultic” and their recruitment tactics as “deceptive,” noting that the group practiced “near-religious devotion to the Rajavis…public self-deprecation sessions, mandatory divorce, celibacy, enforced separation from family and friends, and gender segregation.” It goes on to describe efforts to attract new members with false promises of employment and marriage, and the confiscation of passports once recruits reached the MEK stronghold.

In her 2011 opinion piece in The New York Times, Elizabeth Rubin, who spent an extended amount of time in Camp Ashraf, the MEK stronghold by the Iran/Iraq border, echoes these sentiments and expresses dismay at the support from U.S. officials. Her basis for concern came largely from the conditions she witnessed at the camp and the former MEK members with whom she talked: “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.”

What do these commercials mean for primary-campaign season?

Combined with the machismo “bomb Iran” rhetoric that has been bandied back and forth in this year’s GOP race, the airing of the pro-MEK ad during marquee events like the GOP debates is part of a disturbing trend. There have been MEK advocates in Washington for years, namely the Iran Policy Committee led by Raymond Tantur, a Georgetown University professor and former staff member of the National Security Council, but the hawkish leanings of the group meant that it wasn’t really part of the mainstream discourse. The spate of appearances by high-profile, mainstream public officials from both sides of the aisle is a whole different story—it lends a loud microphone to the MEK and bestows legitimacy by osmosis; coasting off of the reputations and connections of their paid supporters in Washington is a shrewd move by the group, one that could very well pay dividends.

Ramped-up talk about Iran from GOP candidates, including Romney, who lacks any real foreign-policy experience (the Olympics don’t count), coupled with the clever pro-MEK ad campaign could mean a softening of ground when it comes to public opinion of the group. There’s nothing like good polling numbers to sway a candidate with an immature foreign policy. After all, if a picture’s worth a thousand words, a cable ad is sure to pack a punch.

By Clare Malone – American Prospect

March 11, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Rudy and the MEK Terrorists

The MEK Terrorists Take Over Camp Liberty(TTL)

Terrorists rule America. They serve other terrorists. They employ other terrorists. They conspire and “plot and plan” with other terrorists. They betray other terrorists and they worship other terrorists. They use other terrorists to fulfill their terrorist agendas. They covet what some terrorists have while they lust for the same things that other terrorists want. Terrorists rule America. By deception they make war. By complicity they make allies. By terror they profit.
“There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it… I have now surpassed.
My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others… I want no one to escape.
But even after admitting this there is no catharsis, my punishment continues to elude me and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself. No new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant… nothing.” Patrick Bateman
The U.S. State Department, under heavy pressure from a D.C. based advocacy group (the Global Initiative for Democracy) and their paid shills, has decided to hand over Camp Liberty ( Temporary Transit Location) in Iraq to a terrorist organization, the MEK, which has not only killed U.S. servicemen and committed acts of indiscriminate terror inside Iran, but under another name of their organization called the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) they also oversaw the slaughter of thousands of Iraqi Kurds, the very same Iraqi Kurds that the Bush administration eventually used as proof that Saddam Hussein must be removed from power because he was a brutal tyrant who killed his own people (those self-same Iraqi Kurds)
“U.N. special representative in Iraq Martin Kobler, with help from the U.S. Embassy in Iraq and the State Department, has organized efforts to relocate the MEK to Camp Liberty ( Temporary Transit Location), a former U.S. military base near the Baghdad airport. The first convoy of about 400 MEK members arrived there last month. The second convoy of about 400 MEK members arrived Thursday at Camp Liberty (TTL), Reuters reported” Foreign Policy
The MEK is listed as a terrorist organization at the State Department for a good reason: they’re terrorists… but like the Cuban exiles and the Contras and bin Laden… they’re our terrorists. They serve a purpose: mammon.
“MEK has carried out decades of brutal terrorist attacks, assassinations, and espionage against the Iranian government and its people, as well as targeting Americans including the attempted kidnapping of US Ambassador Douglas MacArthur II, the attempted assassination of USAF Brigadier General Harold Price, the successful assassination of Lieutenant Colonel Louis Lee Hawkins, the double assassinations of Colonel Paul Shaffer and Lieutenant Colonel Jack Turner, and the successful ambush and killing of American Rockwell International employees William Cottrell, Donald Smith, and Robert Krongard.

Admissions to the deaths of the Rockwell International employees can be found within a report written by former US State Department and Department of Defense official Lincoln Bloomfield Jr. on behalf of the lobbying firm Akin Gump in an attempt to dismiss concerns over MEK’s violent past and how it connects to its current campaign of armed terror – a testament to the depths of depravity from which Washington and London lobbyists operate.” Tony Cartalucci
How’s that for irony? We go to Iraq, supposedly to fight the Global War on Terror, we stage our soldiers have-way around the world at Camp Liberty (TTL) among other places, then we move (some) of them out and bring in the terrorists to take up residence at their old base which they defended with their lives from… the terrorists.
Irony is perhaps the wrong word. Maybe “insult” or “treason” would be a better choice.
The MEK (PMOI) is a cult of fanatical Iranian dissidents led by the husband and wife duo of Massoud and Maryam Rajavi. They do not allow the women in their group of say 5,000 living in exile in Iraq to marry. They must devote their entire lives to the cause, and by extention to the Rajavis. While the MEK live in squalor in Iraq, hated by even the Iraqis for their terrorist and treasonous history, the Rajavis live in splendor in Paris occasionally jet-setting over to the U.S. to plead for more money and get their marching orders from Clinton or Cheney or whomever is in office at the time.
In 1981 after the Iranian Revolution, Massoud Rajavi planned and carried out a terrorist act against the new regime. It’s effects were devastating.
“The Mujahedeen (MEK) detonated a powerful bomb that killed more than 70 officials in the Iranian theocracy. (Today’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, lost the use of his right arm in one such explosion that year.)” New York Times
After being chased out of France long ago, the terrorist duo landed in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Massoud quickly betrayed his Iranian brothers by providing intel to Saddam that ended up causing the deaths of thousands of Iranians. Then, when Saddam faced an uprising in the north, it was the MEK (PMOI) he sent in to deal with it.
“Iraqi intelligence officers, Kurdish commanders and human rights groups — said that in 1991 Hussein used the Mujahedeen and its tanks as advance forces to crush the Kurdish uprisings in the north and the Shia uprisings in the south. And former Mujahedeen members remember Maryam Rajavi’s infamous command at the time: ”Take the Kurds under your tanks, and save your bullets for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.”” New York Times
The PMOI (MEK) have a long history of terrorist activity but they also have a long history of being supported by certain factions within the United States… anyone who wishes to help Israel pick a fight and force a regime change in Iran.
Back in February there was a conference held by Iranian dissident groups who wish to cause the violent overthrow of the Iranian regime. Several retired U.S. politicians and intelligence officials decided to cash in on the momentum and help the terrorist organization, the MEK (PMOI), in their bid to be removed from the State Department’s terrorist organization list. The MEK touts a long list of this kind of supporter here in America.
“The campaign has included huge rallies outside the State Department, massive sit-ins at congressional hearings, and an ongoing vigil outside the State Department’s C Street entrance. MEK supporters there tout the support of a long list of officials, including Congressman John Lewis (D-GA), former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, former FBI Director Louis Freeh, former Sen. Robert Torricelli, former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, former National Security Advisor Gen. James Jones, former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers, former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, former Rep. Lee Hamilton, former CIA Director Porter Goss, senior advisor to the Romney campaign Mitchell Reiss, retired Gen. Anthony Zinni, and former Sen. Evan Bayh.” Foreign Policy
The “famed” Watergate journalist, Carl Bernstein, recently spoke at a GID conference on behalf of the MEK and the dissident Iranians living outside Iran who want nothing more than to have the United States bomb the crap out of their home country so they can regain power and hand over the nations assets to their globalist banker CEO friends. This is part of what he said…
“One of the things that we do as journalists, the most important thing we do, is decide what is news. And this is news, … And one of the things we do when we decide what is news is we decide what portion of the story is devoted to what we know to be fact and what portion of the story is devoted to what we know is a lie.” “famed Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein“
Notice that Bernstein didn’t say that telling the truth or exposing the truth was the most important thing for journalists, but rather it’s deciding what is or is not news and then deciding what portion is true and what is a lie. That makes perfect sense considering it was the MEK who provided the now infamous “laptop” forgery that fingered Iran for having a nuclear program in the first place.
Interesting that Bernstein would make such a claim at a conference promoting the forced regime change in Iran on behalf of Israeli interests.
Right on cue, enter former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani claiming that Camp Liberty (TTL)isn’t good enough for his newly found terrorist friends. It was good enough for our soldiers who fought and died there, but apparently Rudy thinks it’s a “concentration camp” that is beneath the gold standard status of a well equipped terrorist training facility we should provide for the MEK.
“Camp Liberty (TTL): A Prison For Iranian Dissidents in Iraq,” reads a March 3 full-page ad in the New York Times, leveling the surprising accusation that the former U.S. military base is unfit for human occupation. The ad quotes former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani calling Camp Liberty (TTL) “a concentration camp” — a charge Giuliani made at an MEK-sponsored conference late last month in Paris.” Foreign Policy
Giuliani went on Fox News recently and spewed one outrageous lie after another dealing with Iran. The president, the intelligence community, even the Israeli Prime Minister all admit that Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon program and has not as of yet even decided to create one. But that doesn’t stop someone like Giuliani from lying through his teeth except at the point where he says that if the MEK actually did commit terrorist acts in Iran killing nuclear scientists (teachers and workers at power plants) then they should be made TIME magazine’s persons of the year.
Some would say killing a scientist, a civilian, is an act of terrorism.
Giuliani: uh. uh. yes if they are building weapons of mass destruction to give to a madman. Would it be terrorism if we killed Hitler’s scientists?
)in fact, we didn’t kill Hitler’s scientists, we brought them over here and gave them security clearances. Operation Paperclip)
The lies and circular logic on display in this deplorable interview is enough to make your head explode. This is what the war-mongering chicken hawks are reduced to. Pay careful attention to the part near the end where Rudy wonders aloud that if we have to determine that the MEK are terrorists for killing Iranian scientists then we would also have to declare the people who attacked Libya and Syria as terrorists as well.
Well, since it’s WELL KNOWN that al Qaeda is committing acts of terrorism in Syria on behalf of the Free Syrian Army and since it’s also WELL KNOWN that several NTC leaders in Libya are ex-al Qaeda recruiters and trainers… yes, I guess we could make that conclusion, couldn’t we?
But Iran is not building weapons of mass destruction. WMDs are an affront to Islam according to their religious leaders. The scientists who were killed by the MEK and their glorious leaders the Rajavis were simply citizens murdered in an act of terrorism. After all, it is acknowledged by the United States and Israel both that Iran is not in fact building a nuclear weapon.
So by that standard, by Giuliani’s own admission, the MEK and Massoud and Maryam Rajavi are terrorists because the MEK did not murder people in the process of building a weapon of mass destruction to give to a madman, as Rudy so desperately put it.
Ergo, even by Rudy’s convoluted and desperate logic, the MEK are terrorists. Period.
The shock of seeing someone like Rudy Giuliani praise the terrorists who supposedly attacked us on 9/11 as “Persons of the Year” does not elicit even a dull pain these days. I saw it coming years ago.
What I find interesting is watching their panicked little dances around the history and the facts of the last few decades. It’s an ever spiraling streamer of tail flaming justifications and minced logic rushing headlong down the toilet that was once our great republic.
But the look on his face was priceless when that reporter asked the great “terrorist fighter” Rudy Giuliani if he was supporting terrorists by backing the MEK. You could see the toilet flushing in his little geeked out overloaded brain.
He certainly felt more at ease hanging out with them (what’s he doing? Chopping up lines with his credit card? (
Terrorists rule America. They serve other terrorists. They employ other terrorists. They conspire and “plot and plan” with other terrorists. They betray other terrorists and they worship other terrorists. They use other terrorists to fulfill their terrorist agendas. They covet what some terrorists have while they lust for the same things that other terrorists want. Terrorists rule America. By deception they make war. By complicity they make allies. By terror they profit.
by Scott Creighton

March 10, 2012 0 comments

Newer Posts

Older Posts