Material Support for the MEK Terrorists

Hersh: US facilitates MEK terror in Iran

American Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymore Hersh, reporting in the New Hersh: US facilitates MEK terror in Iran Yorker, says that the Bush administration provided MEK operatives terror training at secret facilities in Nevada starting in 2005.

“We did train them here, and washed them through the Energy Department because the D.O.E. owns all this land in southern Nevada,” a former senior American intelligence official told me. “We were deploying them over long distances in the desert and mountains, and building their capacity in communications.”

The Iranian dissident agents received the full panoply of spook training offering by U.S. Special Forces operatives:

They got “the standard training,” he said, “in commo [communications], crypto [cryptography], small-unit tactics, and weaponry—that went on for six months…”

The communications training in Nevada involved more than teaching how to keep in contact during attacks—it also involved communication intercepts. The United States…at one point found a way to penetrate some major Iranian communications systems. At the time…the U.S. provided M.E.K. operatives with the ability to intercept telephone calls and text messages inside Iran—which M.E.K. operatives translated and shared with American signals intelligence experts.

The MEK had been designated a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department in 1997. Hersh writes that though the training ended before Obama took office, the MEK terror activities using U.S. supplied arms and logistical support continue inside Iran to this day.

“Some American-supported covert operations continue in Iran today, according to past and present intelligence officials and military consultants.”

This means of course that certainly George Bush, and implicitly Barack Obama were not concerned about the terror designation, which makes it an empty exercise and a laughingstock.

In mid-January, a few days after an assassination by car bomb of an Iranian nuclear scientist in Tehran, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, at a town-hall meeting of soldiers at Fort Bliss, Texas, acknowledged that the U.S. government has “some ideas as to who might be involved, but we don’t know exactly who was involved.” He added, “But I can tell you one thing: the United States was not involved in that kind of effort. That’s not what the United States does.” Prison Planet

April 7, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Investigative reporter Hersh details U.S. training of MEK terrorists

Although the dissident Iranian group known as the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) has been listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department since 1997, there have been Investigative reporter Hersh details U.S. training of MEK terrorists long-standing rumors that it was also being used by the United States as part of its efforts to destabilize the Iranian government.

Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh has been following these allegations for years. Only now, however, does he appear to have pieced the whole story together — or perhaps the subject has taken on fresh urgency as the result of a vigorous lobbying effort, which spans both political parties, to have MEK taken off the list of terrorist organizations and given open support.

Last August, for example, Christina Wilkie reported at the Huffington Post on a high level pro-MEK presentation:

“Onstage next to former FBI director Louis Freeh,” she wrote, “sat Ed Rendell, the former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania and current MSNBC talking head; former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean; former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Hugh Shelton. … In addition to those named above, the commissioned figureheads include Obama’s recently-departed National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones; former Bush Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge; onetime State Department Counselor Philip Zelikow and former CIA directors Porter Goss and James R. Woolsey.”

Another presentation this past winter included Dean, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, and Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein.

Wilkie’s article raised questions about the lavish funding of these pro-MEK events, and just last month the Treasury Department launched an investigation of that funding, with subpoenas being issued to speaking agencies representing Rendell, Ridge, Freeh, and Shelton.

“The investigation, being conducted by the Treasury Department, is focused on whether the former officials may have received funding, directly or indirectly, from the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, or MEK, thereby violating longstanding federal law barring financial dealings with terrorist groups,” investigative correspondent Michael Isikoff explained. “The sources, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity, said that speaking fees given to the former officials total hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

“The investigation comes at a time of intense internal debate about the MEK,” Isikoff continued, “in part spurred by assertions it could prove a useful ally in pressuring the Iranian government to suspend its nuclear program. NBC News reported recently that MEK operatives, trained by the Israeli Mossad, are believed by some U.S. intelligence officials to have been involved in the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists — a report that the group has denied as ‘absolutely false.’”

In the context of this ongoing controversy, Hersh’s article in the current issue of The New Yorker appears intended as a reminder of some of the more questionable aspects of past U.S. relations with the MEK. He begins by describing the former nuclear test site in a desolate region of Nevada where the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) began secretly training MEK members in 2005.

“We did train them here, and washed them through the Energy Department because the D.O.E. owns all this land in southern Nevada,” a former senior American intelligence official told Hersh. “We were deploying them over long distances in the desert and mountains, and building their capacity in communications.”

Hersh was apparently aware of this training as early as 2008, when he told NPR’s Terri Gross, “We’re funding a group that is on U.S. terrorist list to work against the Iranian government. They’ve been on the border for years. The enemy of my enemy is my friend (even if they’re on our terrorist watch list). This group has had covert training in America (in Nevada).”

More than two years earlier, Raw Story investigative reporter Larisa Alexandrovna had exposed the same connections, writing in April 2006, “The Pentagon is bypassing official US intelligence channels and turning to a dangerous and unruly cast of characters in order to create strife in Iran in preparation for any possible attack, former and current intelligence officials say. One of the operational assets being used by the Defense Department is a right-wing terrorist organization known as Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), which is being ‘run’ in two southern regional areas of Iran.”

According to Hersh’s sources, the MEK training continued at least to 2007 but had ended before the start of the Obama administration. A retired four-star general told Hersh that “the men doing the training were from JSOC, which, by 2005, had become a major instrument in the Bush Administration’s global war on terror.

“The JSOC trainers were not front-line guys who had been in the field,” the general stated, “but second- and third-tier guys—trainers and the like—and they started going off the reservation. ‘If we’re going to teach you tactics, let me show you some really sexy stuff…’ I told one of the guys who called me that they were all in over their heads, and all of them could end up trouble unless they got something in writing. The Iranians are very, very good at counterintelligence, and stuff like this is just too hard to contain.”

“The M.E.K. was a total joke,” a senior Pentagon consultant told Hersh, “and now it’s a real network inside Iran. How did the M.E.K. get so much more efficient? Part of it is the training in Nevada. Part of it is logistical support in Kurdistan, and part of it is inside Iran. M.E.K. now has a capacity for efficient operations that it never had before.”

By Muriel Kane

April 7, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Giuliani openly promotes terrorism

Rudolph “Rudy” Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City during the time surrounding the tragic events of September 11, 2001, is now coming out in support of terrorism.

As absurd as it sounds, it is unfortunately true. He has voiced support for the terrorist group known as Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), even going as far as to claim that supporting terrorism is the only thing that can stop the Iranian nuclear program.

Keep in mind; this is the same group which, according to anonymous U.S. officials, is working with the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad to carry out terrorist attacks and assassinations in Iran.
Giuliani openly promotes terrorism as a way to stop Iranian nuclear program
According to the International Business Times, Giuliani made these disturbing statements at a press conference earlier this week in Paris, France.

He spoke with former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, the former chief of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, and former Representative for Rhode Island Patrick Kennedy.

It is impossible to deny at this point that this terrorist group has some very powerful allies in Washington.

“I have a feeling that the only thing that will stop [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] and the only thing that will stop [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad is if they see strength, if they see power, if they see determination, if they see an America that is willing to support the people that want to overthrow the regime of Iran,” Giuliani said.

The MEK is still officially listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department, which makes one wonder how anyone except these Washington players would be treated if they openly expressed support for an organization like al Qaeda, al Shabaab or the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Something tells me that if you were not in such a position of power, you very well might be targeted as a supposed supporter of terrorism.

Seeing as providing “material support or resources” to any organization on the State Department’s list is actually a crime, one must wonder how these people supporting and promoting the MEK are not held accountable for their actions.

Indeed, three former senior U.S. officials are currently under investigation for accepting speaking fees from the MEK.

These individuals include Ed Rendell who is the former Governor of Pennsylvania, former mayor of Philadelphia, former Chairman of the Democratic National Committee and former Chairman of the National Governors Association; former Director of the FBI Louis Freeh and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired General Hugh Shelton.

However, these are not the only political figures who have been paid to speak by the MEK. Indeed, others include former Vermont Governor and Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean, retired General Wesley Clark, Chief of Staff for the Bush White House Andy Card, former Governor of New Mexico Bill Richardson and former Representative Lee Hamilton, who incidentally was the co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission.

How these individuals who claim to be opposed to terrorism and so often point to the tragic events of September 11, 2001 as justification for the erosion of our freedoms can turn around and openly support a designated terrorist organization is beyond comprehension.

Giuliani was invited to the conference in Paris by the French Committee for a Democratic Iran. It is unclear if he was paid and if so, how much he actually received, but Giuliani charges up to $100,000 for every speaking engagement so one must assume it didn’t come cheap.

The United States Treasury Department alleges that groups like the French Committee for a Democratic Iran actually act as a front, allowing for funds to be funneled to speakers by the MEK without having any direct ties.

“This is an utter lie and there is not even a scintilla of truth to it,” MEK spokesman Hossein Abedini said in a statement which was prepared to respond to the allegations.

“The MEK, as the legitimate opposition to the clerical regime, enjoys international recognition in Europe and the U.S. The objective of this failed propaganda is to weaken the widespread public support of the members of Congress, officials and scores of U.S. generals for … revoking of the illegitimate and unjust terror listing of the MEK,” he added.

The MEK has a long and ugly history of terrorist activities, although they claim to have stopped such actions.

However, the MEK is widely regarded as having assisted Saddam Hussein in crushing the uprisings in southern Iraq in 1991 and even participated in or helped with the massacre of Iraqi Kurds.

Suffice it to say, it is nothing short of disturbing to see anyone, especially these high-powered former officials, openly supporting terrorism and the murder of innocent people.

The fact that every single person involved with the MEK is not being investigated and arrested shows just how little our government actually cares about fighting terrorism. In reality, the “War on Terror” is just a flimsy pretext to engage in neo-colonialist adventurism abroad while robbing us blind and stripping us of our rights here at home.

by Madison Ruppert

April 4, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Romney adviser blasts government investigation, Says Bring It On

Last December, Mitt Romney claimed that he had never heard of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, an Iranian dissident group that’s drawn prominent American defenders despite being labeled by the State Department as a terrorist organization.

Romney’s ignorance was surprising: Mitchell Reiss, his foreign policy adviser and a known Mujahedin-e-Khalq supporter, had spoken at a MEK rally just the previous weekend. Now it’s another adviser to his campaign, Michael Mukasey, who’s voicing his support for the MEK. At an event in Paris last week, the former Attorney General spoke passionately against a recent Treasury Department investigation into the terrorist group.

Last month, Treasury delivered subpoenas to speaking agencies that count several high-profile figures and MEK advocates as clients, including former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, former FBI director Louis Freeh, former Department of Homeland Security head Tom Ridge, and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Hugh Shelton. The subpoenas demand payment records from speeches given by the figures—records which might detail MEK payments to its backers.

MEK’s supporters have included Andrew Card, Howard Dean, John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani, Bill Richardson, Wesley Clark, and many others. And the MEK has treated some of them very nicely. According to a March report by NBC’s Michael Isikoff, pro-MEK speakers can earn up to "$30,000 or more per talk and first-class flights to European capitals." (The office of former Pennsylvannia Governor Ed Rendell, just one such speaker, told Isikoff that he’d earned $160,000 in 2011 for speaking at MEK-sponsored events.)

But the money might come with a very big string attached: if the feds were to contend that someone’s public support of the MEK was tied to payment, the speaker could run afoul of U.S. laws prohibiting material support to terrorist organizations.

The MEK, which has directed bombing campaigns in Iran, has spent the last year pushing the State Department to take their name off its terrorism list. The campaign included a visit to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit where the MEK attempted to get the Court to order the State Department to remove them.

At last week’s Paris event, Mukasey said he and his fellow MEK supporters in attendance would not back down despite the government’s investigation: "The people here aren’t afraid. Rudy Giuliani, John Bolton, Patrick Kennedy, Tom Ridge, they’re all sitting up there behind placards that have their names on them. We all use our names."

While the government has not commented on suggestions that the subpoenas are related to MEK’s lawsuit, earlier in his speech, Mukasey insinuated that the State Department asked the Treasury Department to get the speech records as a means to intimidate prominent MEK supporters from filing briefs on the group’s behalf. "I stopped believing in coincidences like that when I stopped believing in the Tooth Fairy, and that was a long time ago," Mukasey joked.

Isikoff’s report last month quoted an Obama administration official explaining the reasoning behind the investigation: "This is about finding out where the money is coming from. 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."

At the end of his speech, Mukasey, who has brought in former Solicitor General Seth P. Waxman to defend the officials under investigation, delivered a polemic against the US government.

"Let me repeat the words of a famous American industrialist, a man named Henry Kaiser who was once confronted by the U.S. government. And people asked him, ‘Do you think that you can prevail against the U.S. government?’" Muskasey began. "His response was, ‘You know what? There’s no such thing as the U.S. government. They’re just a bunch of people.’ Some of them are smart and dedicated and some of them are stupid and lazy. And we know who’s on which side in the current dispute."

By Hamed Aleaziz , MotherJones.com

April 3, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Romancing The MEK: America’s Love Affair With Terrorists

Rudy Giuliani, the 2008 Republican Presidential candidate and the former New York Mayor has publicly stated that the United States should use a terrorist group to launch a military attack on Iran’s civilian infrastructure — the nuclear power plants. Giuliani is not alone in his support of the Mujahedin-e Khalq terrorist cult (MEK, also known by other acronyms such as MKO, NCRI). Many prominent voices have put their weight behind the terrorist group.

America has had a long-standing love affair with terrorists. Support for terrorist groups and governments has been part and parcel of American policy. According to William Odom, President Reagan’s former NSA Director, terrorism is a tactic with the having a long record of supporting terrorists[ see pdf ] [i] . But what is unique and novel about romancing the MEK is the political elite’s brazen public display of support for the group, and the shameless prostitution of their services for a fee.

This must be a rude awakening for the American public. After hundreds of thousands of lives lost, trillions of dollars spent on waging a war on terror –"fighting them over there so they don’t come over here", what has come home with the body bags and the debt is the realization that "they", the terrorists ARE here – and they have out politicians in their pockets.

Many citizens fail to understand of present day. They have a hard time reconciling "fighting there", and the government establishing the Unites States as a battleground. They have difficulty understanding prominent politicians receiving payments from a group listed on the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), while a provision of the defense authorization bill would grant the military the authority to detain and hold anyone indefinitely, or to assassinate any individual suspected of having ties to al Qaeda [ii] — a terrorist group who according to Hillary Clinton was funded and armed by the US (CNN ).

Incomprehensible as the actions of these distinguished MEK supporters may be, it may well be that they take comfort in the fact that it is the MEK that is buying their lip service and not vice versa. Perhaps they would rather line their pockets instead of asking where the money comes from. But the question does bear asking.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations , the approximate number of the MEK terrorist cult is estimated at a few thousand members, 3-4,000 of whom live in Camp Ashraf, . While the MEK residents of Camp Ashraf greatly benefit from American hospitality, including being chauffeured around by American soldiers , it is unlikely that they would be major contributors to their American supporters.

Who then, provides the funding for the solicitation of ‘s political elite?

The MEK has long had the support of the United States and policy makers ( History Commons ), although recently, after the most recent assassination of yet another Iranian scientist, U.S. officials disclosed to NBC that the MEK terrorist group was "financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service. With American tax payers forking out billions of dollars a year to , buying the services of American politicians by the MEK gives new meaning to the words money-laundering and prostitution.

Up Ed News

April 2, 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

Giuliani claims ‘terrorist’ MEK only chance to stop Iran

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has become the latest senior US politician to call for regime change in Iran – and endorse an organization his own government considers terrorist to Giuliani claims ‘terrorist’ MEK only chance to stop Iran carry it out.

Mujahedin-e Khalq, also known as MEK, is a former radical Islamic-Marxist movement, labeled a “cult” by Human Rights Watch and listed by the US State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, alongside Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah.

It is also embroiled in a US political scandal for allegedly making illegal payments to retired US politicians.

Yet Giuliani believes the US government should put its might behind MEK, which is currently based in Iraq.

"I have a feeling that the only thing that will stop [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] and the only thing that will stop Ahmadinejad is if they see strength, if they see power, if they see determination, if they see an America that is willing to support the people that want to overthrow the regime of Iran," Giuliani told the audience at an international conference in Paris, reports the International Business Times.

Although officials in Washington have openly accused Iran of trying to acquire nuclear weapons, President Obama has so far called for a diplomatic resolution. And while some in Israel and the US have advocated limited military action to disable Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities, Republican Presidential candidates Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum have all called for the Iran Regime to be overthrown.

But none of them have campaigned for MEK to lead the revolution.

The MEK has forsaken its anti-Western and radical Islamist roots, and promotes itself as a secular, democratic government-in-waiting – to its Western backers. But at its base in a refugee camp in Iraq it enforces strict discipline – celibacy, limited sleep, no electronic communication, forced divorce for married members, and a personality cult surrounding its leader Zohreh Akhyani[Nejat Society note: the so called leader of MEK is now Maryam Rajavi as his husband Massoud is in hiding]. Human Rights Watch has accused it of severe human rights violations.

Meanwhile, the US first placed it on the terrorist list in 1997 over fears that it might attack American citizens, and as recently as 2007 it claimed MEK was a terrorist organization despite its formal renunciation of violence against civilians.

Cash for credibility

But despite its dubious credentials, MEK has proved almost irresistible to a whole slew of nominally respectable US politicians. Among them former UN ambassador John Bolton, presidential candidate Howard Dean, and former Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge, who’ve all made speeches in favor of the MEK.

But a recent investigation initiated by the US Treasury Department discovered that the MEK was paying its supporters lavish speech fees in the tens of thousands for several minute-long talks extolling its virtues. It has already subpoenaed several former officials including former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell.

If it turns out that they received money from MEK, they will be in contravention of US legislation prohibiting anyone – never mind top political figures – from receiving funding from terrorist organizations.

Considering Giuliani’s long history of ostentatious support for the MEK, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that he is next to be investigated. Aware of this, in his Paris speech he brushed off the investigators, saying they "don’t frighten me, won’t stop me.”

Nonetheless, MEK have launched legal action in US courts, to be taken off the terrorist list, provoking an angry reaction from the State Department, which doesn’t want the courts to dictate who it considers a potential national threat. In his speech Giuliani accused "cowardly sources in the State Department or elsewhere” of “unknowingly doing the bidding of the mullahs [the current regime in Tehran]."

If as expected, the MEK legal campaign fails, and Giuliani’s long-rumored financial links with the MEK are exposed, the nation will wonder how the man considered a national hero for his response to 9/11 has become closely associated with a terrorist organization.

April 2, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Guest Op-Ed: MEK and its material supporters in Washington

Jeremiah Goukla worked as a lawyer in the Bush Justice Department, and then went to work as an analyst with the RAND Corporation, where he was sent to Iraq to analyze, among other things, MEK and its material supporters in Washington the Iranian dissident group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), publishing an oft-cited study on the group. MEK has been in the news of late because a high-powered bipartisan cast of former Washington officials have established close ties with the group and have been vocally advocating on its behalf, often in exchange for large payments, despite MEK’s having been formally designated by the U.S. Government as a Terrorist organization. That close association on the part of numerous Washington officials with a Terrorist organization has led to a formal federal investigation of those officials. Goukla has written and supplied to me two superb Op-Eds on the MEK controversy — one about the group itself and the other explaining why so many prominent Washington officials are openly providing material support to this designated Terror group — and I’m publishing the two Op-Eds below with his consent (as you read them, remember that paid MEK shill Howard Dean actually called on its leader to be recognized as President of Iran while paid MEK shill Rudy Giuliani has continuously hailed the group’s benevolence).

Before posting those Op-Eds, I want to note one update on this matter: supporters of MEK have filed a lawsuit asking a federal court to force the State Department to decide within 30 days whether to remove MEK from the list of designated Terrorist organizations (State Department officials have previously indicated they are considering doing so). In response, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has told the court that (1) it has no role to play in directing the timing of this decision (“Any interference by a court with the Secretary’s ability to carry out these absolutely critical duties would set a seriously troubling precedent”); and (2) the U.S. Government is currently attempting to force MEK to move from its current base in Camp Ashraf to another location in Iraq (something MEK does not want to do), and whether MEK cooperates with the U.S. Government’s directives will play a large role in determining whether the group is removed from the Terrorist list.

With regard to that second argument: in determining whether MEK belongs on the Terrorist list, what conceivable difference should it make whether MEK is cooperative in moving from Camp Ashraf as the U.S. Government wants? What does their cooperation or lack thereof have to do with whether they are a Terrorist organization? The answer, of course, is that the U.S. list of Terrorist organizations (like its list of state sponsors of Terrorism) has little or nothing to do with who are and are not actually Terrorists; it is, instead, simply an instrument used to reward those who comply with U.S. dictates (you’re no longer a Terrorist) and to punish those who refuse (you are hereby deemed Terrorists). The scholarship of Remi Brulin documents how Terrorism, from its prominent introduction into world affairs, has been manipulated that way. Andrew Exum of the Center for a New American Security yesterday objected to my argument that the field of “Terrorism expertise” is basically fraudulent because the concept of “Terrorism” itself is largely propagandistic and ideological, rather than being some meaningful term with a fixed, coherent definition. His commenters have very effectively addressed his claims, but this game-playing with MEK is yet another example underscoring what I mean.

__________________________________

By Jeremiah Goukla

THE IRAN WAR HAWKS’ FAVORITE CULT GROUP

Despite the flurry of support by some prominent politicians as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton scrutinizes its case, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), a dissident Iranian group based in Iraq with a propaganda arm in Paris, is no enigma.

The U.S. declared the MEK a terrorist organization 13 years ago partly because the group is thought to have assassinated three U.S. Army officers and three U.S. civilian contractors in Tehran in the 1970s. The group’s pep rallies feature U.S. politicians lured with high fees to come speak on its behalf. The MEK wants the U.S. government to take the group off its terrorist list – as the E.U. and U.K. have already done. But before that happens the group requires close scrutiny.

I studied the MEK for the U.S. military and visited Camp Ashraf, the MEK facility 40 miles north of Baghdad. I also interviewed former MEK members. As Human Rights Watch also concluded, I saw that the MEK is a cult. It uses brainwashing, sleep deprivation, and forced labor to indoctrinate members. It segregates men from women, mandates celibacy, forces married members to divorce (except for its leaders), and separates families and friends who must seek permission just to converse.

MEK members must report their private sexual thoughts at group meetings and endure public shaming. In a Catch-22, those who deny having sexual thoughts are accused of hiding them and shamed, too. The cult has but one purpose: to put itself in charge in Iran.

A brief history lesson illuminates how the MEK transformed from a radical student group in 1965 to what it is today. When the MEK was founded it embraced both Marxism and Islam and dedicated itself to the violent overthrow of the Shah of Iran. All this is reflected in its name, the “People’s Holy Warriors.” By 1979 the MEK evolved into a major movement that threatened Ayatollah Khomeini’s dominance after the Iranian Revolution. He suppressed the group, executing some leaders and imprisoning others. In 1981 some MEK leaders escaped in a stolen plane. Among these was Masoud Rajavi. Exiled to Paris, he established the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an umbrella organization of Iranian dissident groups opposed to Khomeini. The NCRI soon became the propaganda arm of the MEK. Rajavi’s wife, Maryam, runs the NCRI, which is also on the U.S. terror list. She calls herself “president-elect” of the NCRI’s “parliament-in-exile.”

When Saddam Hussein waged war against Iran, Rajavi moved the MEK from Paris to Iraq. His alliance with Saddam in a brutally violent war cost the MEK credibility and its font of recruits. Isolated in Iraq’s desert, Rajavi instituted authoritarian control over his decimated army and confiscated his troops’ assets. He encouraged Saddam to send Iranian POWs to MEK’s Camp Ashraf rather than repatriate them. With promises of asylum for POWs and family reunions with the new MEK members, Rajavi duped Iranian visitors to come to the camp and stole their passports so they couldn’t leave.

Human Rights Watch reports that those who tried to escape endured confinement or torture. After the U.S. invaded Iraq, the MEK ejected its most “difficult” members and used guards and concertina wire to entrap the rest. Members must swear allegiance to Masoud and Maryam, whose pictures are in every building at Camp Ashraf. But these days Maryam’s is the public face of the NCRI. Masoud Rajavi mysteriously disappeared in 2003.

Maryam trumpets the dangers of Iran’s nuclear program and gives the NCRI credit for discovering Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility. That self-serving claim is doubtful, as is the NCRI’s posture as a democratic government-in-waiting. While its propaganda arm espouses Western values to Western audiences, the MEK continues to force-feed its doctrine to members who may not criticize the Rajavis and are not free to leave the Ashraf compound.

While many people would like to see a change of regime in Tehran, no one should believe that the MEK would provide Iran with a government based on liberty and justice for all. Indeed, based upon its treatment of its own adherents in Iraq, a MEK regime might not be much improvement over the current one.

________________

By Jeremiah Goukla

INVESTIGATIONS BEGIN INTO MEK SUPPORTERS

The U.S. Treasury Department has begun an investigation into nearly two dozen prominent former government officials who have been paid tens of thousands of dollars to promote the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian dissident cult group that has been designated by the State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) since 1997.

These officials include several prominent George W. Bush Administration anti-terror officials like Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge, Homeland Security advisor Frances Fragos Townsend, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, UN ambassador John Bolton; as well as former Republican Mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani; former Democratic governors Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania and Howard Dean of Vermont; ex-FBI Director Louis Freeh; and retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Hugh Shelton. These former officials have given speeches at home and abroad urging the State Department to remove the MEK from the FTO list.

Given the cacophony of saber-rattling over Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program – which the U.S. intelligence community generally believes was shut down in 2003 – and the risk, however low, of actually getting prosecuted for “material support of terrorism,” it is important to examine why anyone would promote a designated terrorist organization.

What is the MEK?

The MEK – which is also known as the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI) and often operates through its Paris-based propaganda arm, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) – is an Iranian dissident group that once-upon-a-time was a significant force in Iranian politics. Created to oppose the Shah in 1965, the MEK lost out to Ayatollah Khomeini after the Iranian Revolution, and the mullahs have been the MEK’s target ever since. The regime brutally suppressed the group, forcing it to go underground and its leaders into exile. Most MEK members are now based in Iraq, where they have lived since joining forces with Saddam Hussein in 1986 during the Iran-Iraq War. (For more history of the MEK, see the appendices here.)

Collaborating with Saddam was the MEK’s greatest mistake. Saddam started that war, which was a catastrophe for Iran, but he didn’t win and didn’t install the MEK as the new government. In the process, the MEK killed Iranian soldiers and thereby killed off whatever credibility it once had.

The MEK claims to be the best organized and the most prominent opposition group in Iran. No credible sources that I have seen suggest that it has any relevance in Iran at all, other than to get the mullahs riled up. It is, however, very well organized, because, cut off from new volunteers, the MEK’s co-leaders Masoud Rajavi (whereabouts unknown) and his wife Maryam Rajavi turned the MEK into a cult of personality.

The MEK vigorously denies that it is a cult, accusing critics of working for the Iranian regime or performing inadequate research (using the tactics of climate change, evolution, and tobacco denialists). However, I studied the MEK in depth and over a period of many months for the U.S. military. I visited Camp Ashraf, the MEK facility 40 miles north of Baghdad, and interviewed MEK members, former MEK members, and dozens of military and civilian officials. Along with almost all of my interviewees and Human Rights Watch, I concluded that the MEK is a cult. It employs many common cult practices: mandated celibacy and divorce, thought control, sleep deprivation, and forced labor. It segregates men from women, separates families and friends – who must seek permission just to converse – and even tells family members back home that the members are dead.

Why Would Any American Politicians Support the MEK?

Getting off the FTO list is a stepping-stone to the MEK’s main goal: getting America to install it as the new government of Iran. Why would American politicians want that? There are two main reasons, neither of them good.

The first is ignorance. The MEK presents itself well and is good at running “Astroturf” campaigns. Its NCRI is a self-proclaimed “parliament in exile,” dedicated to the principles of western liberal democracy. Over the years, lots of American civilian and military officials have failed to do their homework and fallen for the MEK’s sales spiel, excited as they were to hear what they wanted to hear. (If something sounds too good to be true…)

Does this remind you of Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress? It should. As Ali Gharib has shown, the same people who helped Chalabi push us into Iraq are now orchestrating public events where former officials promote the MEK.

The second reason is money. The officials were paid to speak on the MEK’s behalf, up to $30,000 per speech. Not bad for a few minutes work.

But this is just the beginning. What the media has generally failed to mention is that these former officials are now in the national/homeland security business. Just take a quick look around Wikipedia, Forbes, and OpenSecrets.org, and here is what you will find:

Tom Ridge has his own security consultancy (Ridge Global, LLC) and lobbying firm (Ridge Policy Group). He chairs the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s national security task force and sits on the boards of at least one military contractor (TechRadium, Inc.) and one company (Geospatial Corporation) that serves the oil and gas industry.
Francis Fragos Townsend chairs an industry association for intelligence contractors (the Intelligence and National Security Alliance) and is the head of lobbying for a holding company (MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc.) that owns the military contractor AM General.
Rudolph Giuliani has a security consulting firm (Giuliani Partners) and is a partner in a law firm with prominent oil and gas and lobbying practices (Bracewell & Giuliani). He used to own a private equity fund that teamed up with Bear Stearns to invest in security companies.
Louis Freeh has a security and investigations consulting firm (Freeh Group International Solutions, LLC) and a law firm (Freeh Sporkin & Sullivan, LLP), where he represents, among other clients, a Saudi prince in a bribery investigation involving an arms deal.
Hugh Shelton has served on the boards of directors of several military contractors, such as L-3 Communications, CACI International, Inc., and Protective Products of America, Inc.
Bolton, Mukasey, Rendell, and Dean are affiliated with major law firms whose clients include not just standard military contractors but many other more mundane corporations, as expert Nick Turse has shown, also benefit from military largesse. (Bolton is also affiliated with several pro-war think tanks.)
For people in the national/homeland security business, war with Iran would be a cash cow. They and their clients stand to benefit handsomely. Just stoking fears of war can get money flowing, from studies to retrofitting naval vessels. Bombing would be better, as even something as small as the Libyan war involved spending more than a billion dollars. But full-on war, that’s the mother lode. An invasion followed by an Iraq-style lingering occupation and reconstruction would open up hundreds of billions and possibly even trillions of taxpayer dollars for the grabbing.

Hopefully these Treasury Department investigations are a sign that the Obama Administration has finally decided to rein in the warmongers. Ignorance, profit, and the dreams of a terrorist-cult group are lousy reasons to start a war.

By Glenn Greenwald,

March 29, 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

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