Terrorist organizations are in the job of doing terror. In recent years they have been inside Iran conducting terrorist activities, bombing up places. The fact that they are Iranians, the fact that their native language is Persian means that they can move in and out of Iran a lot easier than anyone else could and so this would be a continuation of (the United States) using them inside Iran to kill people and blow up buildings.”
An analyst says the recent US, MKO meeting signifies that Washington is trying to use the organization for killings and bombings inside Iran as acts of terrorism are what terrorist groups typically do.
The comment comes as a bipartisan group of US congress members has met with the anti-Iran terrorist group Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) in France.
The congressional team led by Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican, met the MKO terrorists in Paris on Sunday and expressed strong support for the group.
The MKO is listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community.
On September 28, the terrorist group was taken off the US State Department’s terrorism blacklist a week after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent the US Congress a classified memo about the move.
Press TV has conducted an interview with Professor of California State University Paul Sheldon Foote to further discuss the issue. What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.
Press TV: Sir welcome to the program. Well the MKO is well-known for carrying out a long list of terror acts. How do you see the sequence of events that led to Europe and the United States delisting the MKO from their list of terrorist organizations and also about the timing of this meeting in France?
Foote: The problem America has had for very many years is that the Iraqi government has said you say we are a free country now well why do we have to keep Iranian communists, free terrorists in our land and there have been frequent action for some of the Mujahidin cult terrorists have been killed by Iraqi troops.
So America keeps trying. It’s a real shame that Dana Rohrabacher who claims to be a Republican from Southern California is continued being reelected. It shows you how stupid Republican voters are when you have Republicans supporting communist terrorists.
Press TV: And what do you think the United States has in mind next for the MKO?
Foote: Terrorist organizations are in the job of doing terror. In recent years they have been inside Iran conducting terrorist activities, bombing up places. The fact that they are Iranians, the fact that their native language is Persian means that they can move in and out of Iran a lot easier than anyone else could and so this would be a continuation of using them inside Iran to kill people and blow up buildings.
Videos
NO EXIT An investigative documentary, showing how the Mujahedin Khalgh Organization (MKO,MEK, Rajavi cult) treated its members
… An investigative documentary, showing how the Mujahedin Khalgh Organization (MEK) treated its members and the efforts made by the members to escape … Research suggests that most of the MeK rank-and-file are neither terrorists nor freedom fighters, but trapped and brainwashed people who would be willing to return to Iran if they were separated from the MeK leadership. Many members were lured to Iraq from other countries with false promises, only to have their passports confiscated by the MeK leadership, which uses physical abuse, imprisonment, and other methods to keep them from leaving …
Michael Ratner Report: Supreme Court finds Telecoms won’t be prosecuted for illegal wiretapping
Bio
Michael Ratner is President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York and Chair of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin. He is currently a legal adviser to Wikileaks and Julian Assange. He and CCR brought the first case challenging the Guantanamo detentions and continue in their efforts to close Guantanamo. He taught at Yale Law School, and Columbia Law School, and was President of the National Lawyers Guild. His current books include”Hell No: Your Right to Dissent in the Twenty-First Century America,”and “ Who Killed Che? How the CIA Got Away With Murder.” NOTE: Mr. Ratner speaks on his own behalf and not for any organization with which he is affiliated.
Transcript
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network, and welcome to this week’s edition of The Ratner Report with Michael Ratner. Michael is president emeritus at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. He’s chair of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin. He’s also a board member of The Real News Network. Thanks for joining us again, Michael.
MICHAEL RATNER, PRESIDENT EMERITUS, CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS: Paul, it’s always good to be with The Real News.
JAY: So what do you got this week?
RATNER: This week I’ve just been outraged by a couple of things, mostly around the impunity of our own government, of the United States government, for clear crimes that its officials, former officials have committed, as well as some corporate crime.
And the big two cases that came down—or, really, the two situations that came down were first with the MEK, which is a former Iranian group living in Iraq that had been listed on a U.S. terrorist list. That means that you couldn’t support that group in any way in the United States. They’ve listed the MEK as a terrorist group. It had been involved in the Iranian Revolution, had a falling out with Khomeini’s people, eventually fled to Iraq, became close to Saddam Hussein.
But it’s not really the nature of the group I want to talk about; it’s the nature of what happened. It’s listed on a U.S. terrorist list. What that means is you can’t give any aid to that group, you can’t take anything from that group, you can’t cooperate with that group. You can’t even teach it the principles of the Geneva Convention, which is a case we lost on in the United States Supreme Court Humanitarian Law Project. So you’re completely prohibited from having any transactions with that group, because it’s considered a terrorist group.
So what happens over the last couple of years: a number of former officials from the United States took money—they claim they didn’t know it was directly from the group, etc.—but through essentially what I think were fronts for the MEK. And they took a lot of money. Former governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania took somewhere between $150,000 and $160,000; the former head of the FBI, freeh, took money; former heads of the CIA took money; all to do public speaking in which they talked about how MEK should not be listed as a terrorist group. But the point is they took the money at a time when it was listed as a terrorist group, which is a serious felony in the United States.
And so then what happens? There’s an investigation, supposedly, of their taking money from this terrorist group. But in fact, of course, what are they going to do? Prosecute a bunch of CIA former heads? Prosecute the former head of the FBI? Prosecute a former governor?
JAY: And Mayor Giuliani and others.
RATNER: Right. It’s just a long list.
So what do they do last week? They denied—Hillary Clinton, the State Department, says, well, we’re going to de-list—take it off the terrorist list and no longer treat the MEK as a terrorist organization. Now, there may be a lot of complicated political reasons why they did that, having to do with both the politics in Iraq, their own politics about Iran, etc., but in any case, this group of people who all took money—which I believe came indirectly through the MEK—were lobbying to take it off the terrorist list. And what did they do? They’re not going to prosecute any of these people who took money indirectly or directly, however it came, from the MEK.
And what’s outrageous about that is that they took this money at a time it was a terrorist group listing. Whenever we think of that listing, it was illegal at the time that money was taken—you couldn’t take it from the MEK. And what you have to contrast is what happens with clients of my own or others who had any communication, anything with groups that the U.S. doesn’t like that are on the terrorist list.
JAY: Yeah. I mean, some of the people that get charged do charitable contributions to charities that have some kind of connection to Hamas or Hezbollah, and that’s enough to get you convicted.
RATNER: That’s one of the best examples, Paul. The Holy Land Foundation, they were the biggest Muslim charity in the United States. They gave money to a number of groups in Gaza and other places that the UN gave money to and you couldn’t even argue were necessarily connected with Hamas.
They tried Holy Land Foundation. And, of course, the heads of the Holy Land Foundation are now serving decades—decades in prison. The foundation has been wiped out. There’s a case—Hamas on the terrorist list, supposedly indirect contributions to Hamas for humanitarian aid, let’s say—this is blankets and hospitals and things like that—and yet these people go to jail. Yet when our own former officials close to the Bush administration, close to the Democrats, close to the Republicans do the same thing with a terrorist organization that now the U.S. has a use for, those people are given, basically, complete impunity and the organization is taken off the terrorist list.
JAY: Has the Justice Department given any explanation for why these cases aren’t being pursued? I mean, we know the politics of why they’re not, but there needs to be some official reason here.
RATNER: So far there isn’t. I mean, they might still be technically under investigation, but they’re not going to go anywhere. I mean, the argument’ll probably be that, well, we don’t think there’s enough evidence that people knew that the money came from the MEK or whatever else, or now that it’s off the terrorist list we don’t feel that there’s much purpose served by a prosecution. But that’s just wrong. I mean, that’s just completely wrong. I mean, but that may be their explanation.
But it does highlight that what officials in the United States do, or former officials do, is essentially given impunity. And, of course, we’ve talked about it before. That’s been the case with regard to the torture program that was carried on under the Bush administration. The Obama administration has given them, you know, a complete case—complete impunity. And the second—.
JAY: Yeah, I was going to ask: what do you make of this decision of the Supreme Court?
RATNER: Well, it’s a decision in a manner of speaking. The second big case that comes up is this question of warrantless wiretapping, warrantless electronic surveillance. And that’s going after American citizens’ communications, whether it’s by phone or email or Twittering or whatever else that are not public, you know, direct Tweets or email messages, going after them without a court-ordered warrant that’s required under our constitution.
And I got to give you a minute of history on that. After 9/11 the president, on his own, secretly decided that he was going to authorize the warrantless wiretapping of American citizens by the National Security Agency, the NSA. But, of course, without the cooperation of [incompr.] communications companies, AT&T and others, they can’t do that. So, secretly, unbeknown to the courts, unbeknown to anyone, they went to these telecommunications companies and said to them, we want you to warrantlessly wiretap various people, organizations, etc. They put these machines on—and we actually have evidence about that—a machine on, you know, the back end of one of their big servers that would just look at all this email.
It got discovered. It got exposed. James Risen of The New York Times exposed it. And it was a completely massively illegal program. In fact, former vice president Gore said that Bush ought to be impeached for this program.
So then what happens? Then what hapens: Congress gets in the act, and they decide two things. First of all—first of all Congress decides they’re going to allow this wiretapping to go on, and basically legalize it in a piece of legislation. And in addition to legalizing it, they’re going to say that those corporations, those communications corporations, Verizon and the like, that went along with it, we’re going to give them retroactive immunity from lawsuits that could be brought by people who were wiretapped. And there are millions, maybe billions of dollars’ worth of lawsuits.
So that legislation comes up. It comes up when Obama, our now current president, was a senator. When he was senator, he says, well, I’m going to veto that—I’m not going to veto; I’m going to vote against that immunity for the telecoms. In other words, I’m not going to say that the telecoms are immune, but I’m going to agree that they can be sued and let the courts decide. Of course, what then happens: Obama gets nominated to be president of the United States, Senate vote comes up when he’s still senator, he changes his mind, if you want to call it that, or he makes what I can say a political vote because he wants to be seen as strong on national security, etc., and he votes along with the majority of the Senate to give impunity or immunity to the telecoms. And that’s the statute.
Then what happens? Then the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the ACLU sue these telecoms, and they sue on the grounds that that law is unconstitutional. How can you give retroactive immunity for something that these people knew was illegal when they did it, and now you’re saying as a legislative matter, you know, that’s the end of it? Isn’t this a court question of whether they should have immunity or not?
And, of course, here’s what happens. They go to the court, they go to the district court, the lowest court. They go to the middle court, court of appeals. The court held that there is immunity for those telecoms, that the statute is upheld. And then this last week they go to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court says, we’re not going to review the case; we’re going to agree with the lower court that the telecoms, Verizon and the like, are immune from lawsuits for what was clearly an illegal set of wiretapping.
So there you have it. You can’t sue the telecoms. You already have a situation you can’t sue the government, although there’s some litigation still going on on that. So you have immunity for both the government officials, as well as the telecoms, who were engaged in a massive violation of the law, warrantless wiretapping.
So we have the MEK on one hand and the U.S. officials, former officials who took money from the MEK, at least indirectly, if not directly, and then you have the telecoms as well being given immunity. So you have—.
JAY: Now, where are we at on that question of warrantless wiretapping?
RATNER: We’re not in good shape, Paul. We basically have a statute that allows the president, sometimes through this secret court, sometimes on their own, to engage in warrantless wiretapping of American citizens. It was, of course, always allowed for people overseas who are not citizens, and that’s a given that that’s what they do. You lose that. But right now I would say that, you know, our communications in the United States are completely unprotected by what should have been our constitution.
JAY: Thanks for joining us, Michael.
RATNER: Thanks for having me again, Paul.
JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network. And don’t forget there’s a”Donate”button over there. If you don’t click on it, we can’t do this.
Michael Ratner, The real news
Download Leading US Officials Support MEK Terrorists with Impunity
We examine why the US has decided to de-list the Iranian group Mujahedin-e-Khalq as a terrorist organisation.
The US has designated the Iranian group Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) as a terrorist organisation since it began keeping a terrorist list in 1997.
The group’s supporters say it represents Iran’s democratic opposition, and is working for a nuclear-free Iran. But critics argue it has a violent history that dates back to the reign of Shah Reza Pahlavi.
“What may have happened in the past few months is the US essentially cut the best deal to relieve this headache of having the MEK in Iraq, that is to get the members out of Camp Ashraf and into Camp Liberty, and as many of them as possible resettled into third countries.”
– Ali Gharib, a senior editor of Open Zion blog
The group was sheltered by Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s former leader, as it carried out attacks against Iran during the Iran-Iraq war.
In fact, as the US made its case for invading Iraq in 2003, it cited the Iraqi leader’s support for the MEK as evidence of his support for terrorism.
But now, after a two-year lobbying campaign that enlisted many prominent US politicians and former military officers, the group will no longer be considered a terrorist organisation.
Former US officials have received tens of thousands of dollars to give speeches to and on behalf of the MEK.
Millions of dollars have been spent on a campaign to get the MEK dropped from the banned list of terror groups.
Three top Washington lobby firms have been paid a total of nearly $1.5m over the past year to press the US administration and legislators to support the de-listing if the group.
The US treasury department is believed to be investigating whether speaking fees paid to MEK supporters are restricted by a law that prohibits Americans from doing business with designated terrorist groups.
Ed Rendell, the former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, has accepted more than $150,000 in speaking fees at events in support of the MEK’s unbanning.
Tom Ridge, who served as secretary of homeland security under George Bush, has also received speaking fees.
“They certainly appeared on the list at a time which was politically very convenient for the US government which was trying to reach out to Iranian government … it was the Iranian government that brought to their [US] attention that the MEK was not on the list.”
– Patrick Clawson, the research director at the Washington Institute
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Republican chair of the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee, has accepted at least $20,000 and has spoken out against the ban.
Other prominent American politicians who have spoken in favour of the MEK include Democratic governors and former presidential candidates Howard Dean and Bill Richardson. Another Democratic support is NATO commander Wesley Clark.
And Republican Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York mayor, has also called for the ban to be dropped.
In addition to the MEK, the US state department lists 52 foreign terrorist organisations including al-Qaeda, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, as well as the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA.
So what is the MEK and why is it being removed from the US terrorist list now? Has the group really changed?
Joining Inside Story Americas for the discussion with presenter Shihab Rattansi are guests: Ali Gharib, a senior editor for the Daily Beast’s blog, Open Zion; Patrick Clawson, the director of research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; and Jeremiah Goulka, the lead author of The Mujahedin-e-Khalq in Iraq: A Policy Conundrum, and a former justice department lawyer.
“After the Iran-Iraq war the leaders of the MEK Massoud and Maryam Rajavi turned the group into a cult, partly because they were unable to get new recruits from Iran … the move to join Saddam Hussein ended any legitimacy that the MEK had among the Iranians.”
Jeremiah Goulka, a former US government lawyer
——————————————————————————–
WHO IS THE MEK?
•Founded in 1965 by Islamic-Marxist students, the group helped to overthrow the Iranian government in 1979, prompting a clampdown following the revolution
•The group began an armed struggle against the US-backed Shah of Iran in 1971
•Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi leader, used them for attacks against Iran and the Kurds
•In 1981, the group launched a bombing campaign attacking the Islamic Party headquarters, killing Iran’s president and the prime minister
•The US disarmed them following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which the MEK agreed to in exchange for protection.
•The US turned over MEK refugees to the Iraqi government in 2011
•Massoud Rajavi led the group since 1972 but has not been seen since 2003. His wife Maryam Rajavi is the group’s public face now
•Many members are refugees in both Iraq and France, and the group’s leaders continue to live and operate in France
902
Inside Story Americas,Aljazeera.com
The Iraqi government has announced the relocation of MKO terrorist group members. The relocation comes according to an agreement signed between Iraq and the UN to evacuate the camp and hand it over to the Iraqi authorities.
Diyala provincial officials said the seventh group of the MKO terrorists was transferred from Camp New Iraq, formerly known as Camp Ashraf situated about 120 kilometers west of the border with Iran.
The sixth convoy of about 400 residents of Camp Ashraf was moved to another camp on August 29.
Diyala’s Police Chief stated that the remaining 168 MKO members will be relocated very soon, he further added that the MKO members who are in Iraqi wanted list for committing Humanitarian crimes against civilians will be rechecked in their new camp in Baghdad.
The spokesperson of Diyala’s headquarter said that the relocation of the MKO members has been implemented according to an agreement between the Iraqi government and the UN and under the supervision of the UN representatives in Iraq.
The MKO members fled to Iraq in 1986, where they enjoyed the support of Iraq’s executed dictator Saddam Hussein, and set up their camp near the Iranian border.
The group is also known to have cooperated with Saddam Hussein in suppressing the 1991 uprisings in southern Iraq and carrying out the massacre of Iraqi Kurds.
The MKO has carried out numerous acts of violence against Iranian civilians and government officials.
Download Last group of MKO terrorists relocated
The Iraqi government has announced that the time table which was given to the Mojahidine Khalq Organization has ended.
In a meeting with the representatives of eight foreign counties the Iraqi national Security Advisor stated that the MKO members have never shown any cooperation with the Iraqi government and Iraqi has accepted the six months period in response to request of the UN.
the meeting which was organized and headed by the Iraqi national security advisor included the United States, UK, EU, China, Russia, Canada, Australia and the representative of the Arab League.
During the meeting the Iraqi national security advisor stated that the Iraqi government will deal with the MKO members as an Anit-Iraqi Sovereignty group.
On the other hand the Iraqi national security advisor stressed that Many MKO members are on the Iraqi wanted list for committing crimes against humanity in the country during the 1991 popular uprising, the list containing 38 MKO members including Masoud Rajavi and Mariam Rajavi.
He said that the Iraqi justice system will do its duty in bringing the wanted criminals to justice to be prosecuted according to the Iraqi law.
The representative of the UN’s Secretary General Mr. Martin Coupler stated that the time is up and urged the MKO members to pack up their properties and be prepared for the next move.
He further said that the United Nation is directly involved in the issue and called for finding a peaceful solution for the MKO issue in Iraq.
SB of the Representative
The MKO is listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community, and is responsible for numerous terrorist acts against both Iranians and Iraqis.The group is especially notorious in Iran for siding with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war
Wisam al-Bayati, Baghdad
Download Iraqi government requests for MKO evacuation
Addressing the Security Council on July 19th, the top United Nations envoy in Iraq highlighted the key role played by the UN Mission in the country, stressing that there is still much to be done to improve the political, economic, and social situation in the Middle Eastern nation.
The envoy voiced concern about the delay in the relocation of the residents of Camp New Iraq – formerly known as Camp Ashraf – to a new location, Camp Hurriya, prior to their resettlement in third countries.
“Time is running out to find a sustainable situation,” Mr. Kobler said, urging the Camp Ashraf residents to cooperate with the Iraqi authorities and to relocate. He also urged Member States to offer resettlement to eligible former Ashraf residents, as “without prospect for resettlement the ongoing process runs the risk of collapsing.”
Through UNAMI’s facilitation, about two thirds of the residents have moved to the new location in the past months, but 1,200 residents still remain in Camp Ashraf.
Following his official report and briefing situation on Iraq Martin Kobler, appeared before the reporters to share his informal comments to the media.
In his comments, he verified the UN 24/7 hours monitoring at the Liberty and stated that the situation in Camp Liberty is ideal and humanitarian according to the UN living standards. He stressed that the UN monitoring team observed the needed water and electricity therein.
He also declared that the camp could afford to accommodate the remaining 1200 members at Camp Ashraf and the necessity of the residents’ cooperation with the Iraqi authorities.Download Liberty conditions comply with UN living standards
Since May of this year, the Obama administration has been pushing to have a terrorist organization removed from the terrorist watch list.
The Mujahadeen- e-Khalq of Iran is allegedly responsible for assassinating US citizens and even worked together with Saddam Hussein.
The group has been on the watch list for approximately 15 years, so why is there this push to remove the MEK as terrorists?
Jamal Abdi, policy director at The National Iranian American Council, takes a closer look at the possible motives.
An Iranian group considered as terrorist by the US for 15 years is moving off the black list.
Government officials are advocating to clear the name of Mujahedin-e Khalq or MEK, even releasing a number of PR adverts.
This could further strain relations between Washington and Tehran.
Jamal Abdi, the policy director for the Iranian-American national council, believes it’s MEK’s ties with Israel and US lawmakers that are driving the push.
Download MEK terror group moved off US blacklist over Israeli ties
Former U.S. Officials Investigated for Receiving Payments to Promote a Designated Terror Group
Jeremiah Goulka, former RAND expert on the Mujahedin-e Khalq, says war hawks from Bush admin. and some Democrats were paid by the group to advance its interests in DC and are being investigated by US Treasury
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay in Washington.
Well, what do the following list of former government officials have in common? People like former Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge, former Homeland Security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend, former attorney general Michael Mukasey, former UN ambassador John Bolton, as well as former Republican mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani, former Democratic governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, and former governor of Vermont Howard Dean, ex-FBI director Louis Freeh, and retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Hugh Shelton? What are all these people have in common? Well, they’re all being investigated by the Treasury Department for material aid, receiving money from a terrorist organization, at least an organization that’s on the State Department’s foreign terrorist organization list. What’s the organization? Well, the MEK.
Now joining us to talk about what the MEK is and what this is all about is Jeremiah Goulka. Jeremiah is an independent public policy scholar and writer. From 2007 to 2010 he was an analyst at the RAND Corporation, where he conducted research for the U.S. military and was a lead author of The Mujahedin-e Khalq in Iraq: A Policy Conundrum. Before that, he worked as a lawyer in the Justice Department under the Bush administration. And let me add he has now become a critic of much of the policy he used to work for. Thanks for joining us, Jeremiah.
JEREMIAH GOULKA, PUBLIC POLICY SCHOLAR: Thanks for having me.
JAY: So give us a quick, first of all, rundown just what the MEK is, for those who haven’t followed the story, and then we’ll get into what the heck are all these officials doing taking their money.
GOULKA: Sure. The MEK is an Iranian dissident group. It was founded in 1965 by several graduate students at the University of Tehran. Their goal was to fight against the regime of the Shah, which they saw, accurately, as a puppet of the U.S. government. Soon the Shah’s regime found out about them, suppressed them pretty brutally. And one leader survived prison, whose name is Massoud Rajavi. In the Iranian Revolution there were lots of different dissident groups, not just Ayatollah Khomeini’s group.
And as the leader of the Mujahedin-e Khalq, Rajavi tried to participate in the new government. He
wanted to run for president. Several members of the MEK wanted to run for the Majlis, which is the Iranian parliament, but Ayatollah Khomeini’s government pushed the MEK out of the running. And in response to that, the MEK turned against the new government, and it did so violently. The result was that the new government brutally suppressed the MEK, its leaders went into exile in France, and its members went underground in Iran. So this is 1981.
Fast forward to 1986, and you’re in the middle of the Iran-Iraq war. The MEK’s leadership makes a deal with Saddam Hussein, the starter of the Iran-Iraq War, which was an absolutely catastrophe for Iran. The deal was that Saddam would provide weapons, some territory within Iraq, in exchange for the services of the MEK. The services that they would render would be providing some soldiers, particularly providing some intelligence and interrogation of Iranian POWs. In exchange for this, what the MEK was going to get in the bargain was the power of Saddam’s military, in their hope to install themselves as the new government of Iran.
Well, this failed. Historically it was their biggest mistake, because the Iranian people saw the MEK essentially as traitors by signing up with the instigator of that horrible war. The MEK, you know, voluntarily crossed the border into Iran and fought against Iranian soldiers. In fact, they launched an invasion after the ceasefire in that war. So the Iranians basically have no—there’s no support for the MEK, not much support. The MEK claims that there’s a lot, but it’s not true. The government still hates the MEK, but that’s a side matter.
JAY: And why were they put on the terrorist list?
GOULKA: So in 1997, after the creation of the Foreign Terrorist Organization list, MEK was one of the first couple to be put on there. One—well, the factual predicate for them being on there is that they assassinated several Americans in Tehran back during the Shah’s era, specifically three military officers and three civilians who were military contractors. They also did various attacks against American interests and assassination attempts during the time. And the MEK have been violent until just a few years ago, doing lots of attacks against Iranian targets, government targets, mostly in Iran but occasionally in Europe, even in the U.S., with some bystanders as casualties. The MEK also make a point of saying that the MEK was added to the FTO list as a political reason, because the Clinton administration was trying to make nice with the government, at the time, in Iran, which was perceived as being more moderate. And, well, of course, it’s a political list and political actions by governments, so I think that there’s probably some truth to that, but that doesn’t make it not true that the [crosstalk]
JAY: And why did they stay on this list during the whole Bush administration years, when we know that Bush—the Bush administration was actually putting a lot of money into trying to have this sort of terrorist fund subversive types of activity in the border regions of Iran? I mean, there’s lots of stories that the CIA and others were promoting this kind of stuff, so why not take them off the list?
GOULKA: Well, there’s a bit of having your cake and eating it too. The government could—the Bush administration was able to keep—by keeping the group on the list, they have more of a negotiating point with the group. You know, it’s a carrot to offer the group if they’ll kind of play nicely. That’s part of it.
But it also was not like there was a monolithic point of view in the Bush administration about the MEK. When I was at the RAND Corporation and did my interviews for the report that you mentioned in the introduction, I spoke to dozens of U.S. officials, and the points of view varied. The people who were of the strongest on to Tehran type attitude, who wanted to invade Iran, they saw the MEK as a potentially useful ally, in the sense of the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And there were several people who were sort of fooled by the MEK’s excellent press relations that it’s been doing since leaving Iran in 1981, where they have this thing called the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which is the political arm, which has been selling themselves as a liberal, democratic, human rights respecting organization that could go in and be the new—either be the new government or help create a new democracy in Iran. It’s very much like how Ahmed Chalabi sold himself in the Iraqi National Congress.
JAY: I mean, what evidence is [there] that they’re not liberal, democratic, and so on and wouldn’t play this role?
GOULKA: Well, what we’ve said in the report and has been said by others, such as Human Rights Watch, is that the group actually is a cult. So this is another part of the history. Starting in 1985, Massoud Rajavi, the leader, married Maryam Rajavi, who was the wife of one of his colleagues in the MEK, and the two of them turned the group into something of a cult of personality. This became—started in earnest when they were in the desert in 1986, in the desert of Iraq, fairly isolated, and they had a hard time recruiting any new recruits after their participation with Saddam in the Iran-Iraq War because they had lost their support in Iran.
So the new members who were joining after that time, at least some of them cannot be believed to have been true volunteers. But from a lot of former members I spoke to, it appears that lots of them were actually duped into ending up at MEK camps—promises of jobs, wives, and help of getting asylum or residency rights in other European countries. So you have lots of people who have now been trapped in these Iraqi camps, MEK camps in Iraq, and have been enduring various forms of cult behavior, such as sexual control, thought control, brainwashing, limited access to other media, limited food, limited sleep, make-work projects.
JAY: And there’s supposed to be celibacy and various sorts of things, unless you’re the leading couple, I guess.
GOULKA: Exactly. That’s one of the big parts of it is the mandatory divorce and celibacy,—
JAY: Of course, no one—.
GOULKA: —as well as gender segregation.
JAY: Now, what evidence is there that they have been, over the years, conducting terrorist actions against Iranians, Iranian officials? Is there evidence of assassinations or such?
GOULKA: Well, they took credit for it for years. The difference happened after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, that—well, actually, they say that as of 2001 they stopped committing violent attacks, that they’ve decided to basically change course and pursue what they were doing with more of a kind of a democratic approach. Starting in 2003, that became more in earnest, as they were now being—actually taking—. Well, it’s a confusing thing to describe, and I explained it in the RAND Corporation report, that when we invaded Iraq in 2003, the perception of the U.S. government was that the MEK was going to participate with Saddam as, quote,”a wholly owned subsidiary”, end quote, of the Saddam army, when there was a quick ceasefire soon thereafter and the U.S. consolidated the MEK at one of its several camps near the Iranian border. And since then there has been a very focused effort by the MEK to earn U.S. pleasure, approbation. And of course this makes sense, because in 2003 you had the administration saying on to Tehran. And so the MEK quickly realized that Saddam failed to put them into power into Iran—maybe the U.S. could.
JAY: So, again, just to be—are there specific examples of how this organization qualifies to be on the terrorist list?
GOULKA: So they’re putting a big push now to get off of the list. And, of course, getting off of the list matters, because that frees up their ability to raise money, and they would certainly use it to make it seem like the U.S. actually supports them. But what they’re using—one of the ways that they say they should not be on the group—on the list is that they say that those assassinations back in the ’70s were done by a splinter group or a different MEK, and that they’re not, you know, responsible for those, and therefore they don’t fall under the requirements of the act. And since Iran has not been an ally of the U.S. in many, many years, therefore attacks done against Iranians don’t count as being against the interests of the United States or its allies.
JAY: And that—I suppose that is the true definition of how United States looks at terrorism: if it’s against an ally, it’s terrorism; if it’s against an enemy, it’s not terrorism. So within the lines of Washington rhetoric and politics they may not be so wrong.
GOULKA: Exactly. And, of course, that raises the issue now that since their goal is—. Their immediate goal is to get off the FTO list, but their big goal is to get into power in Iran, and they want to use the United States’s military to get that. So as they’ve been promoting the fears of a nuclear Iran—the MEK in 2005 were the ones to have a press conference announcing to the public the existence of the Natanz nuclear facility. You know, as a side note, then that information came to them, it appears, from the Israeli government, which wanted also to have this be put into the public arena, and the U.S. already knew. But the MEK’s been waving the flag of fear about Iran since then.
And why do they want this fear promoted? It’s to get the U.S. to invade Iran to put them in power. And I can’t think of anything that would be more against the interests of American national security than for us to actually have an actual invasion of Iran. Considering the tragedy of the Iraq War, to expect anything else other than a protracted occupation and reconstruction would be foolish.
JAY: The MEK is still on the State Department’s foreign terrorist organization list. And now you’ve got all these government officials taking money and essentially—what is it?—they’re getting paid for speaking engagements and they’re lobbying to get the MEK off the list. But that in theory is illegal, is it not?
GOULKA: In theory. So the material support law created in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 is something that’s been viewed from the start as having a very low threshold of activity to count as being material support, and that’s a, you know, federal crime. And this law has been sort of broadly interpreted by the Supreme Court since then, and so you’ve seen a number of people who have gone to prison for fairly minor things.
So here you have these prominent former officials taking money to speak on behalf of the MEK at events organized by the MEK. And are they committing a crime? Well, what’s particularly interesting here is: on one end you have the notion of equal enforcement of a law. If you’re going to enforce it against Muslims in America, why would you not enforce it against prominent public officials? And, you know, we can wonder then about the impunity that prominent powerful officials can enjoy.
On the flipside, there is a First Amendment question here that, aside from their taking money and doing this in concert with a designated foreign terrorist organization, they are—these officials are making their own political statements, and maybe those should be protected by the First Amendment.
So I think this does raise questions about how well tailored that statute actually is.
JAY: But that’s quite a different thing, to take money and have your say, taking money from—or taking money from a terrorist organization or a foreign government. There was just a Pakistani fellow who I think just got sentenced to two years ’cause he was taking ISI Pakistani money to try to lobby in the United States and—but hadn’t declared himself, you know, an agent of a foreign government and such. I mean, similar issues. Once you take money, you’re not in the same category as just free speech, no?
GOULKA: That’s true. But, of course, money and speech have been heavily linked in the last few years.
JAY: Yeah. So what—just to final—to sum up or to end with, what do you make of the Treasury Department actually going after these guys, including two prominent Democrats? This doesn’t happen without the White House signing off, one would think, and it’s very hard to believe such serious high-level people get investigated and the White House doesn’t get consulted. What would be their interest in pushing this?
GOULKA: Well, I think you’re right that no bureaucrat is going to go step on the toes of prominent officials like this without serious approval from above. I mean, I can attest to that from when I used to work at the Justice Department. I think that—just speculating, I think this is probably linked to what Obama said in his AIPAC speech, that there’s a lot of loose talk of war, and I see this as being a statement to these officials that they need to watch their step. They’ve responded by giving public speeches since, so they are saying sort of bring it on, we’re going to keep doing this. But it—you know, we’ll see what actually happens.
JAY: They’ve responded by making public speeches that they got paid for? Or just public speeches?
GOULKA: I don’t actually know, but they were at at least one MEK-organized event where these folks have been paid to speak previously.
JAY: The MEK is able to organize events in the United States even though it’s on that list. How is that?
GOULKA: Oh, they—everything is done through organizations—they claim that they’re not connected to the MEK, that they just happen to have similar viewpoints, they happen to support the MEK. They’re often involved with people who actually used to be members of the MEK or the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the MEK’s political arm, until those were listed on the FTO list, and then they promptly cut their ties and say that they’re independent or have their own new, you know, little think tanks to promote the interests of the MEK. And there is also a group called the Iran Policy Center that was founded by several ex-Reagan officials that has been promoting the interests of the MEK for the last while, and, you know, they have to pay close attention to not running afoul of the law. How exactly that’s happening, how we’re doing that, I think the Treasury Department’s checking that out.
JAY: And I guess the next step—if this gets serious, at some point the Justice Department steps in. If there’s going to be any charges, does it come from the Justice Department? Or can the Treasury Department actually lay charges?
GOULKA: Well, as I understand it, the Treasury Department can take action such as freezing accounts. But if there’s going to be actual criminal charges, that’s in the Justice Department’s field.
JAY: And then that’s when we’ll find out how serious they’re really pushing this.
GOULKA: That would be a big step.
JAY: Thanks very much for joining us, Jeremiah.
GOULKA: Thanks so much for having me.
JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.