Paid advocacy for MKO

Rudy Giuliani asks Obama to take tougher stance against Iran

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani says US President Barack Obama is making an “extremely reckless” mistake in its policy regarding Iran’s nuclear energy program.

Giuliani, who was speaking at a gathering organized by the anti-Iran terrorist group, Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) in the German capital Berlin, called on the Obama administration to take a tougher stance against Iran during nuclear negotiations.

Iran and the P5+1 group of states – the US, Britain, France, China, Russia, and Germany – are holding negotiations to narrow their differences on the outstanding issues related to Tehran’s nuclear program ahead of a July 1 deadline for the final agreement.

Giuliani also spoke strongly in support of giving refuge to members of the MKO living at Camp Liberty in Iraq, located at a former US military base.

“What he (Obama) is doing with Iran right now is extremely reckless and it’s going to create an Iranian-controlled northern Middle East,” Giuliani claimed.

The event venue in Berlin was mostly filled with students lured in from Poland and the Czech Republic. Several told the Associated Press they were offered a return journey and hotel in Berlin in return for their participation in the gathering.

Iran has previously condemned Washington for backing the terrorist group, saying MKO bribes US politicians in order to gain public support in the West.

MKO has been involved in numerous crimes against Iranian citizens and politicians.

Despite the group’s international notoriety, the European Union and the US removed the group from their list of terrorist organizations in 2009 and 2012 respectively

March 9, 2015 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Sen. Menendez Top Recipient of MEK-Related Campaign Funding

As readers of this blog already know, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) was the top congressional recipient of “pro-Israel” campaign funding in the 2012 election cycle, the last time he ran for office, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. He has since distinguished himself as the leading proponent among Senate’s Democrats of new sanctions against Iran. He has repeatedly co-sponsored sanctions legislation-with Mark Kirk (R-IL), the top recipient of pro-Israel campaign funding for the past decade-with the ostensible purpose of increasing pressure on Tehran to make far-reaching concessions at the negotiating table.

It appears that Menendez has also been the top recipient of campaign funding from donors with ties to the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MeK), the cultish group that was until recently included on the State Department’s terrorism list, according to a new investigative report published Thursday by LobeLogalumni and occasional contributors Ali Gharib and Eli Clifton on The Intercept website. The article,“Long March of the Yellow Jackets: How a One-Time Terrorist Group Prevailed on Capitol Hill,” details how Menendez, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, maintained a hold for some six months-from July 2013 until late January 2014-on an arms package for the Iraqi government that included 24 Apache helicopters. Menendez explained publicly that he was concerned about then-Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s record of attacks against civilians and his tacitly allowing Iran to use Iraqi airspace to transport weapons to Syria.

But Ali and Eli cite sources that cumulatively suggest that Menendez’s position may have been influenced by intense lobbying on the part of pro-MeK individuals, including the lobbyist for one of the MeK’s political fronts and Menendez’s immediate predecessor, Robert Torricelli. Menendez finally lifted his hold after the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) launched their first major offensive into al-Anbar province from bases along the Syrian-Iraqi border, taking Fallujah and most of Ramadi.

As noted in the article, the delayed Apaches would not likely have been ready to be flown by Iraqi pilots by the time ISIL launched its January offensive even if the hold had been lifted six months before. But the fact that those six months were lost made Baghdad more reliant on the air power of the United States and other countries (including Iran) to halt ISIL’s advance some nine months later after the jihadi group and its tribal allies had captured Mosul and driven to within 30 kilometers of Kirkuk. Although it would be unfair to conclude that Menendez was motivated only by his sympathy for the MeK, sources quoted by Ali and Eli suggest pretty strongly that the issue played a role. As Iraq’s ambassador to the United States Lukman Faily told Ali in relation to his efforts to release the hold on the Apaches, “The issue of the MEK came up in most of my meetings with the House and Senate, especially the Foreign [Relations Committee].”

According to the article,Menendez accepted more than $25,000 from donors with ties to the MEK, making him the largest recipient from 2012, when the MeK was delisted that September, to the present. That’s not much compared to the well over $300,000 Menendez received from pro-Israel groups during the 2012 election cycle, but it was more than twice what was provided to the next biggest recipients, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA).

In any event, the article casts light on the seamier side of the politics around Iran, and it’s a good read besides.

By Jim Lobe

About the Author:

Jim Lobe is best known for his coverage of U.S. foreign policy, particularly the neoconservative influence in the Bush administration. The Washington Bureau Chief of the international news agency Inter Press Service (IPS), Lobe has written for various outlets and was featured in BBC and ABC television documentaries about motivations for the US invasion of Iraq. Read his complete biography.

March 1, 2015 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

The Disgraceful Pro-MEK Campaign Continues

Ken Maginnis wants Western governments to jump on the bizarre pro-MEK bandwagon to which he belongs:

In adapting policy to meet the increasing threats from Iran and the increasingly obvious vulnerability of the ruling religious establishment, the West should be seeking to develop proper relationships with those identifiable moderate influences who courageously pursue freedom and democracy. Mayram Rajavi, the president of one of those rare moderate groups, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), has consistently offered a voice of moderate and informed opinion. Yet the West stubbornly cuddles up to Rouhani while treating NCRI with something akin to disdain.

Maginnis’ post is a good example of the egregious misuse of the word “moderate” in U.S. foreign policy debates about the Near East. He urges the U.S. and other Western governments to cultivate closer ties with the NCRI, which is the political umbrella group that includes the Mujahideen-e Khalq totalitarian cult. He repeatedly dubs Rajavi and the NCRI as “moderate” when they are nothing of the kind. This is a reminder that “moderate” is often the preferred word to describe groups that sane people would abhor but which are deemed useful in an effort to destabilize a foreign government.

The MEK is neither moderate nor democratic, and it seeks only its the aggrandizement of its leaders. The group is understandably distrusted and loathed by most Iranians for its past record of hostilities against Iran, and it doesn’t speak for any of the legitimate opposition to Iran’s regime. Anyone advocating for Western support of this organization and its allies is not helping anyone inside Iran. All that MEK boosterim does is to try to whitewash a monstrous group that has killed both Americans and Iranians. Maginnis is just one of many current and former Western politicians and officials to be recruited into the disgraceful campaign to legitimize this monstrous group. This campaign relies on deceiving Western audiences into thinking that the MEK and its friends are something that they are not, and if Western governments are to avoid pursuing another disastrous policy of regime change they can’t be allowed to succeed.

By Daniel Larison

February 22, 2015 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

How To Stop Being Terrorists: A Guide For ISIS, Courtesy Of The MEK

An Iranian group shows that as long as you stop being violent, it’s possible to gain supporters in the U.S. government and get removed from the Foreign Terrorist Organizations list — especially if your end-game is to overthrow the current Iran regime and take over.

Transcript:

WASHINGTON — While the world’s eyes are focused on ISIS [the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] and rising tensions in the Middle East, a former terrorist group from Iran is tromping through the halls of Congress, and garnering support from some of America’s most powerful and prominent politicians and officials.

Speaker: “Howard Dean, Ed Rendell, Patrick Kennedy, and many others.”

The group is the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, or the MEK, in its Persian acronym. It was taken off of the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organizations list [in 2012] after demonstrating that it had not been engaged in terrorist activities for the last 10 years.

The group is led by Massoud Rajavi, who has been in hiding since 2003, when the United States and Britain invaded Iraq, and Maryam Rajavi, who acts as the president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the group’s political wing.

According to the FBI, the MEK murdered American citizens in Iran during the 1970s, allied with the ayatollahs to help overthrow the Iranian government, participated in the American embassy hostage crisis in 1979, and teamed up with Saddam Hussein to fight their own countrymen during the Iran-Iraq War.

They are responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iranians and a campaign of bombings, assassinations, and military attacks, as well as collusion with Iraq.

The goal of the group now is to overthrow the current Iranian regime and take power for themselves.

So how does a group go from being one of the most dangerous terrorist organizations in the world to having an office on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., with backing from the likes of the former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton and former Director of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, among many others?

CNN: “There’s been a lot of pressure in the United States both from the group and from its supporters in Congress, and very high-paid former officials speaking on their behalf to delist the group.”

In 2011, groups around the country acting as front organizations for the MEK — including the Iranian American Community of Northern California — hired lobbyists to help remove the MEK from the Foreign Terrorist Organizations list.

They recruited the likes of Howard Dean, who is a former Democratic presidential candidate; Michael Hayden, the former CIA director; Newt Gingrich, who is the former Speaker of the House; and the lobbying firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, among many others. They [MEK] often paid five-figure speaker fees to individuals, and six figures to the firms lobbying on their behalf.

Jeremiah Goulka: “They’re just thorough PR jobs, that do a very good job of making lawyer-like arguments based on taking very nit-picky looks at wording.”

That’s Jeremiah Goulka, the author of “The Mujahedin-e Khalq in Iraq: A Policy Conundrum,” a report published by the Rand Corporation in 2009 that assesses the status of the MEK at a camp called Ashraf in Iraq.

Goulka: “I was asked to join the Rand Research Team. … Who are the MEK? Why are they there in Iraq? What should the detainee operations command do, if anything?”

However, following publication, the Rand report came under fire by the MEK and its paid lobbyists in Washington.

Lincoln P. Bloomfield: “Well, I’m a former policy official and one of my roles is as a consultant to a law firm in Washington. An American citizens group hired the law firm to help them advocate to remove the MEK from the terrorism list.”

That’s Ambassador Lincoln P. Bloomfield, the former deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs from 1992 to 1993. He wrote a book, entitled “The Mujahedin-e Khalq, MEK: Shackled by a Twisted History,” that posits that the MEK has been severely misunderstood over time.

Bloomfield: “I found out that there’s a gap between what everyone was saying about the MEK and what the information seemed to show, that there was a gap, something was amiss. So that really piqued my curiosity and I just kept digging for the next two years.”

Ambassador Bloomfield’s law firm, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, was reportedly paid $620,000 dollars by a group supportive of the MEK during those two years, according to the Senate Office of Public Records.

But are his claims — which match those of the MEK — true?

Bloomfield: “As I began to examine what think tanks were saying, what the press was saying, a very consistent set of allegations arose: that they’d killed Americans in the 1970s in Iran, that they had helped with the embassy hostage takeover during the revolution in 1979, that they were a violent, left-wing, Marxist group that was speaking about democracy but didn’t really mean it, and that they’d engaged in a whole series of violent actions, and that they were also human rights abusers in their own midst.”

In June 1973, Lt. Col. Lewis Hawkins of the U.S. Army was the first American assassinated by the MEK, as he walked near his home in Tehran, according to The Associated Press.

Ambassador Bloomfield claims that Hawkins was murdered by a man named Vahid Afrakhteh, citing two Washington Post articles from 1976.

This is significant because the MEK narrative has attempted to gain credibility in the United States by separating itself from the killing of Americans.

Bloomfield: “Other activists who were impatient with the MEK took the Mujahedeen name and weren’t interested in Islam, and they wanted a secular Marxist, violent revolution, and they were the ones who killed the Americans. They were caught. I have put The Washington Post articles from those days in my report.”

The Washington Post articles are referenced as proof that a U.S. State Department report on the MEK is problematic — and possibly untrue — because it says Reza Rezai, not Afrakhteh, “was arrested and executed by the Shah’s government for the murder of Colonel Hawkins.”

The MEK and its supporters are trying to separate Rezai from the killing of Lt. Col.

Hawkins because even though he is dead, he is still idolized by the current MEK as a hero.

However, while it may be true that Afrakhteh committed the actual murder of Hawkins, two separate reports from The Associated Press in 1973, obtained by MintPress News, named Reza Rezai as the “man alleged to have planned the murder of… Lieutenant Colonel Lewis Hawkins” and as the leader of the group. One of the reports says, “The gunman who killed Hawkins still is at large.”

That person who was “still at large” very well could have been Afrakhteh, so the fact he is named as the actual gunman does not in any way absolve Rezai from responsibility for the murder, nor does it contradict the State Department report.

The MEK also claims, as does Ambassador Bloomfield, that it is separated from the murder of the seven Americans, including Lt. Col. Hawkins, because there was a schism in the group between a Marxist-leaning faction, and the Muslim faction led by Massoud Rajavi.

Bloomfield: “There was blood between the two factions. The one that wanted Islam is the one that we see today, and for their commitment to Islam a couple of people were gunned down by these leftist revolutionaries, who were using the name Mujahedin.”

However, that schism did not happen until 1975, according to Ervand Abrahamian, author of “The Iranian Mojahedin,” and one of the foremost scholars of the group. Therefore, in the words of Muhammad Sahimi, “Hawkins’ assassination, at least, was irrefutably the work of the original” MEK.

Another problem with the narrative of the MEK not being involved with the killings of Americans is that the group bragged about those murders in its very own newspaper called “Mojahed,” seen here.

The text states:

“It was the Mujahedin-e Khalq that killed with guns American Generals and also blew up nests of spies, like America’s information office… ”

[Mojahed – Number 77, Page 2]

The MEK and its supporters also claim that the group was not involved with the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis and that it did not support it in any way.

Bloomfield: “This one is very black and white, and misunderstood. And, frankly, allegations that the MEK were behind the embassy takeover, and were promoting keeping the Americans hostage only surfaced in detail a few years ago.”

The problem with this statement is that the MEK clearly promoted the 1979 embassy takeover in its newspaper.

The headline to the article in this issue of “Mojahed” says:

“We are happy that this time they targeted the real Shah, which is America’s imperialism; The nest of the spies has been seized!”

[Mojahed – Number 10, Front page, November 12, 1979]

Further, despite an intense campaign to expunge the MEK’s troubled history toward the safety and well-being of American citizens and the way it treats its own members, the State Department, the FBI, Human Rights Watch, and the Rand Corporation have not changed their stance on any of these issues.

So, what is the MEK? The aforementioned organizations claim that not only is it an opposition group to the current Iranian regime, but it is a kind of cult.

Goulka: “At the MEK camps, there’s a whole set of practices that are all textbook out of cult theory – sleep deprivation, make-work projects, which is one of the reasons why Camp Ashraf has all this — surprisingly, it’s pretty. I mean there’s all of these beautification projects there. There’s fountains and there’s gardens, and there are all of these statues and memorials to things. Make-work projects. Sometimes food limitation. But one of the big things I didn’t know about them, the stuff that gets at people, um: 1) forced celibacy; 2) forced divorce; 3) gender segregation. They will claim that the divorce was not forced. One of their representatives told me that, I don’t remember his exact words, but that in the desert, it just doesn’t support family life. And I’m sure that Iraqi families feel just the same way.”

Masoud Banisadr was an MEK member for 20 years and served as the group’s representative to the United Nations and the United States during that time. He now ardently denounces the group. His account of what it’s like on the inside supports Goulka’s claims.

Masoud Banisadr: “Not only me, all members were forced to divorce their spouses, and later they have to send their children abroad to Europe and United States to be adopted by supporters and other members. The final stage was self-divorce, which meant that you have to divorce your own personality, your own individuality. You had to prove to the group that your whole individuality and personality before you become member of the group were devilish and wrong and corrupt and so-on.”

The MEK and its supporters claim that the group is not a cult, though, and that former members have been coerced into saying that it is a cult by Iran’s intelligence services.

Goulka: “This is what’s important to remember: Even if there are Iranian efforts to paint the MEK as terrible, which there are — I mean, the Iranian regime is always trying to make the MEK look terrible. But, it’s easy to make the MEK look terrible because the MEK looks terrible.”

Part of Goulka’s job in Iraq when assessing the MEK camp was to interview members of the group.

Goulka: “I mean, I interviewed loads of people, and, I mean, were they all agents? I doubt it. Were they Iranian agents, were they sneaking into the locked-off refugee camp off of F.O.B. [Forward Operating Base] Grizzly, and planting information to somehow feed me when they did not know I was coming?”

In response to the MEK’s claims, Human Rights Watch even went back and re-assessed their reporting and re-interviewed the original people from their report.

The second time around, they made the same claims that the organization is a cult and that they [members of the group] were tortured and abused by MEK’s leaders.

Human Rights Watch found no evidence of influence by Iranian intelligence services.

Despite all the documented history behind the group’s nefarious claims, it still came off the [Foreign Terrorist Organizations] list. And that’s because the single most important thing it did was end all acts of violence. And on this point, both Goulka and Ambassador Bloomfield agree.

Bloomfield: “In September of 2012, when Secretary of State Clinton removed the MEK from the U.S. terrorism list, the announcement said that the MEK had conducted no acts of violence for at least 10 years.”

Goulka: “I was actually thinking they should come off the list. I don’t think the U.S. made the decision for the right reasons, but I think they made the right decision. I think they needed to come off the list because I think the list, as written — I mean, the statute as written — they no longer really satisfied. And I think it’s important that there be some kind of incentive to terrorist groups in the world to say, ‘You know, if you stop being violent, we will take you off the list.”

So now that the MEK is no longer officially considered a terrorist group, what is it? How are they any different from other Iranian opposition groups, such as the National Front, or supporters of the previous monarchy?

Banisadr: “This is the problem which they are facing. I mean, the kind of questions that they face from ordinary Iranians outside of Iran, or their supporters outside of Iran is: How do you want to go back to Iran? How do you want to overthrow this government? The only answer which they have is that, ‘We are lobbying the United States. We are lobbying Western countries to fight against the Iranian government. First to put sanctions, put hardship on Iranian government so they cannot solve the problems of [the] Iranian people. And this might create some resistance on the opposition within Iran, and create an environment of revolution, perhaps, inside of Iran. At the same time, we are inviting Western countries, especially [the] United States to attack Iran because of [the] nuclear issue, because of [the] Israeli issue, and so on. So, when [the] United States attacks Iran the only the only people that can govern the country are us. There is nobody else.’”

Goulka agrees with Banisadr’s assessment of the group. He echoed his remarks about the MEK trying to grab power in Iran through pressuring the American government, but from a perspective rooted in the shame behind the horrors of America’s invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Goulka: “We’re always trying to make it sound like Iran is so super powerful as a military force. And it’s nothing compared to Israel, which is nothing compared to us. Yet we’re going to get ourselves up into a lather where the only, the only end result of that, the only logical end result if you let it keep going, is that we get violent with Iran. And that doesn’t suit anybody’s interests, without even questioning the actual morality of it. I mean, do I support the Iranian regime? No. But when you look at what we did to Iraq, where now people in the media constantly talk about 100,000 civilians dying as if that’s something we should accept. And most evidence suggests that’s like one-tenth of the people that actually died. And that’s death — that’s not the number of people who are just displaced, or injured, or had their lives ruined. The millions of people who were displaced and had to leave the country, or just displaced in the country – I mean, we wrecked that country because some people here wanted to do it, and you had fools like Ahmed Chalabi saying that they could go in and take over the place, and our fools who followed it. And the number of deaths for our people, too, and the way we’ve ruined lives here, and the way we’ve, you know, the money we’ve spent on it. Why would we repeat that in Iran? I mean, it’s insane. But, of course, insanity is the whole notion, you know, thinking you can do it again right this time. And it’s just frightening to watch us go down that path if we keep listening to the MEK.”

For MintPress News in Washington, this is Sean Nevins.

Download How To Stop Being Terrorists

January 24, 2015 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Freeh declined to comment for this story.

Ken Silverstein, The Intercept

Photo: Sotheby’s

Email the author: kensilverstein@firstlook.org

January 3, 2015 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

MEK Muck-up

It may seem a bit late, but ex-San Diego mayor Bob Filner, who quit office following revelations of sexual harassment last summer, has just received a warning from California’s Fair Political Practices Commission. In a letter dated July 23, commission senior counsel Neal Bucknell calls out Filner for accepting what it calls an “unlawful gift” of travel from an Iranian-American group that provided an all-expenses-paid trip to Europe beginning on June 21 of last year.

“As Mayor of the City of San Diego, you accepted a gift from the Organization of Iranian-American Communities in the approximate amount of $9,839 in the form of a paid trip to Paris, France,” Bucknell notes. “In a letter to the FPPC dated January 20, 2014, you acknowledged that this was an over-the-limit gift, claiming that you ‘immediately wrote a personal check to [the Organization of Iranian-American Communities] for the total cost of the trip…’ However, it appears from your bank records that you did not make your payment until August 2013.” If the ex-mayor ever finds himself again in a position to be offered a similar deal, Bucknell warns he should be mindful that “the information in this case will be retained and may be used against you should an enforcement action become necessary due to newly discovered information and/or failure to comply with the Act in the future. Failure to comply with the provisions of the Act in the future may result in monetary penalties of up to $5,000 per violation.”

As first reported here back in November 2007, Filner, then a congressman, had long been accepting Parisian freebies from backers of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, also known as the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization, or MEK for short. That June, Filner and GOP congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado co-authored an op-ed piece in the editorial pages of the conservative Washington Times demanding that the Bush Administration stop labeling the group as a terrorist organization. Though Filner never returned calls seeking an explanation of his fervid MEK support, wealthy Iranian expatriates were often fingered as cash underwriters of the effort, which included the lobbying services of Republican ex-House majority leader Dick Armey. The Obama administration’s then–secretary of state Hillary Clinton finally took the group off the government’s terrorist list in September 2012.

By Matt Potter, Sandiego Reader

August 21, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

The Disgraceful Shilling for the MEK Continues

The de-listing fight may be over, but that hasn’t stopped the Mujahedin-e Khalq‘s American cheerleaders from uncritically repeating its propaganda. Here is Hugh Shelton, a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs:

The main Iranian opposition, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), is a viable alternative to the Islamist regime, and we owe it a chance to build a secular, democratic, non-nuclear Iran. If anyone doubted the NCRI’s support base, a groundswell of more than 100,000 Iranians turned up in Paris last month for its annual rally, joined by top politicians, dignitaries and former national security figures, myself included. It was an enormous display of support.

Shelton is opposed to diplomacy with the Iranian government, because he insists that Tehran can’t be trusted to honor its agreements and shouldn’t be “rewarded” for previous deceptive behavior. Leaving aside how crazy it is to spurn diplomacy because governments sometimes lie and break their promises, there is something especially weird about an argument that simultaneously promotes the cause of the MEK while complaining about Iranian deceit. (The NCRI is the umbrella organization that the MEK dominates.) As it has sought to rehabilitate itself in the West, the MEK has claimed all sorts of spurious, self-serving things about what it represents. Despite being a bizarre authoritarian cult with Marxist and quasi-Islamist views, it now pretends to be exactly what Westerners want an Iranian exile group to be. It doesn’t matter to the MEK’s American fans that it is lying about its political views, and they are obviously not worried about reciting those lies for Western audiences. Indeed, it has so completely hoodwinked them that they think it should be rewarded with American support.

It’s important to remember that the MEK and its umbrella group are not “the main Iranian opposition” or anything like it. For one thing, the real “main” Iranian opposition is still in Iran, and unlike the MEK it is not widely loathed by Iranians. Naturally, any exile group would like foreign governments to believe that it is the “main opposition” to the regime in its home country, but in order for this deception to work the foreigners have to be thoroughly oblivious and/or indifferent to the internal political realities of the country in question. If there is ever to be a “viable alternative” to the current Iranian regime, it will come from inside Iran and won’t have anything to do with a group that is best-known for its service to one of Iran’s worst enemies during the Iran-Iraq war. The shilling for this group by many prominent American former officials and politicians is one of the more disgraceful displays of the last decade, and as long as it continues it should be held up for derision.

By Daniel Larison

August 10, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

US politicians bribed to back MKO: Iran diplomat

An Iranian diplomat has slammed the US for backing the anti-Iran Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), saying the terrorist group has bribed American politicians into showing public support for it.

In a column published on the USA Today daily on Thursday, Counselor and Head of Press Office for the Permanent Mission of Iran to the UN Hamid Babaei, criticized Washington for removing the MKO from the US State Department’s list of terrorist organizations in 2012.

The Iranian official also highlighted the crimes perpetrated by the MKO members against the Iranian and Iraqi nations and said the support of some American political figures for the terrorists as an Iranian “opposition group” shows “their cluelessness about Iran.”

“Washington lobbyists and former American politicians and officials have accepted millions of dollars from the group…in return for which they have publicly supported” them, wrote Babaei.

He further censured the Western states for sheltering the terrorists instead of bringing them to justice for their crimes.

“It remains unclear why an organization with such a violent history would be allowed so freely to operate in many Western countries,” said Babaei, stressing that the “dual nature of standards against terrorism is likely the greatest threat being faced by international efforts to stop terrorism today.”

The MKO fled Iran in 1986 for Iraq, where it received the backing of Iraq’s executed dictator Saddam Hussein and set up a camp near the Iranian border. The terrorist group also sided with Saddam during Iraq’s eight-year war on the Islamic Republic in 1980-1988.

The group is listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community and is notorious for committing numerous terrorist acts against Iranians and Iraqis.

The European Union also removed the MKO from its list of terrorist organizations in 2009 after the group filed a petition against the blacklisting in 2008.

July 13, 2014 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Big money buys powerful friends: Column

Why are Newt Gingrich, Joe Lieberman and Patrick Kennedy hanging with members of a terrorist cult?

Several well-known American political figures appeared at a rally in Paris on June 27 in support of an anti-Iran organization that was until recently formally listed as a terrorist group by the United States and Europe. They included Howard Dean, John R. Bolton, Bill Richardson, Newt Gingrich, former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, and Joseph I. Lieberman. Their appearance and their support for the People’s Mujahedin Organization (MEK) as an Iranian "opposition group" demonstrates their cluelessness about Iran. Considering the group’s history, its popularity in Iran is comparable to an American-led affiliate of Al-Qaeda.

Among the many victims of MEK terror are innocent civilians in Iran, as well as Westerners including Americans. Its violent history, cultic nature and oppression of its own members spans close to four decades. It supported Saddam Hussein’s regime in the 1980s, and its leader even boasted about killing thousands of Iranians while this cult served ex-Iraqi dictator’s expansionist ambitions. The scope of their crimes against the people of Iran and Iraq among others is baffling, and yet many Western countries seem to be unwilling to impose serious restrictions on the MEK the way they do with other terrorist groups.

It has also been reported that some in the American foreign policy community are conflicted about there being a possible role for this group in the future of American policy towards Iran. But one must wonder what state of bewilderment has befallen American foreign policy when such a group is seen as even a potential part of a solution to its policy conundrums in the Middle East.

Some American politicians supporting the MEK have claimed that these accusations are merely allegations from opponents in Tehran. In fact, scores of journalists, government agencies, and think tanks from around the world have catalogued these practices. The U.S. Department of State has stated that the MEK is "responsible for violent attacks in Iran that victimize civilians" including "attacks against clearly civilian targets." Adding that the MEK "joined Saddam Hussein’s brutal repression of the Kurdish rebellion" in 1991. The State Department has also referred to them as a "repressive cult despised by most Iranians and Iraqis." This is the reason why the Iraqi people, Kurds and Shiites in particular despise this group, not Iranian political influence as some have tried to claim.

U.S. based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has extensively recorded the MEK’s oppression of its own members, demanding that they divorce their spouses and "all physical and emotional attachments in order to enhance their ‘capacity for struggle.’" HRW also stated that MEK members are exposed to "solitary confinement to beatings, verbal and psychological abuse, coerced confessions, threats of execution, and torture that in two cases led to death."

Recently the French Foreign Ministry decried the MEK’s "violent and non-democratic inspirations," its ”cult nature" and "intense campaign of influence and disinformation."

U.S. officials attributed their removal from the list of terror groups to what they deemed the MEK’s "public renunciation of violence." But the MEK’s stated renunciation of violence also involved the claim that it had never itself targeted civilians — an assertion the State Department has clearly said is false. After the September 11 attacks, the MEK understood that their fate would lie in the hands of the West and that they could no longer rely on their benefactor, Saddam Hussein. The decision in 2001 to lay down arms and stop murdering civilians was a tactical decision — not a moral epiphany — that can be overturned if the aforementioned strategic calculation was ever to change.

Moreover, in 2009, the State Department submitted information in court stating the MEK had trained individuals "to perform suicide attacks" and a declassified FBI report from 2004 similarly found that MEK cells around the world were "actively … planning and executing acts of terrorism." Most importantly, none of the members of the organization have ever been brought to justice by the Western governments who give them shelter.

Instead Washington lobbyists and former American politicians and officials have accepted millions of dollars from the group, as campaign donation or speakers fees — the exact amounts of which most refuse to disclose publicly — in return for which they have publicly supported the MEK, claiming them to be an opposition group that deserves the protection of the U.S. By undertaking these efforts that the Rand Corporation called "cultic practices and its deceptive recruitment," the group managed to get itself removed from the terror list.

The dual nature of standards against terrorism is likely the greatest threat being faced by international efforts to stop terrorism today. If politicians are to be selective in opposing one terrorist group while supporting another based on their potential geopolitical usefulness, many nations would have many reasons to support various terrorist groups. When fighting terrorism, reaching for moral consistency cannot be seen as a possible option or an inconvenience; it must be considered a necessity.

It remains unclear why an organization with such a violent history would be allowed so freely to operate in many Western countries, raise money, build institutions, and ultimately be allowed to engage in a multi-million dollar political campaign. It’s simply impossible to imagine al-Qaeda or Boko Haram having the same level of freedom to operate.

The principle of the prevention of impunity dictates that acts of terror must not remain without legal consequence and those responsible must be brought to justice. The many victims of the MEK, those who have been killed or maimed and their family members deserve justice and the principles that Western nations claim to be unflinchingly dedicated to in the context of the so-called war on terror are trampled on every day that they accommodate terrorists, rather than contribute to their prosecution.

Hamid Babaei is counselor for the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations.

Hamid Babaei

July 12, 2014 0 comments

Maryam Rajavi

Maryam Rajavi’s annual Rally in Villepinte

Maryam Rajavi’s annual Rally in Villepinte. This year promoting ISIS, MEK, Saddamists – Everyone Loses

This past Friday in Paris, the Mojahedin Khalq is held its annual rally to celebrate its violent past. This year, as every year, the MEK will pay both speakers and audience to attend. The annual rally is increasingly exposed and mocked by the media.

Who are they?

Mojahedin Khalq is one of the rare forces which advertises and is proud of being a mercenary force. They never had an agenda of their own but have taken money from their paymasters, such as Saddam Hussein, Saudi Arabia and Israel. Although no government except Saddam Hussein’s regime has ever publicly condoned or supported the MEK, various Western agencies – the Pentagon, CIA, MOSSAD, the Israeli lobby and various neoconservatives – have at various times, and for various purposes, used the MEK. The MEK undertakes activities and poses in particular ways which suit their agendas – information laundry, assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, and more, culminating in Maryam Rajavi’s disastrous, ludicrous attempt to pose as a human rights advocate in the Canadian Parliament in May this year.

What is different this year?

This time the annual rally is being held at the same time that Western leaders meet in Paris to discuss how to find a political solution to the crisis in Iraq.

Each government is, of course, pursuing its own interests in Iraq and each wants to wrest the greatest political influence and benefit from the current crisis. But what they all share in common is the need to confront and stop the terrorist threat of ISIS in Iraq.

Iraqi media and analysts identify this current manifestation of ISIS as a sophisticated military force – although said to be an offshoot of Al Qaida formed in Syria – as an element of the Baath Party (that is, the remains of Saddam’s regime), who had warned before that they would take revenge and create chaos and mayhem. Some ISIS equipment has been found to have previously belonged to the MEK. This is not a group which has newly emerged or lately come together, but is part of an existing cohort of groups and individuals prepared to use extreme violence to pursue political aims. The MEK are part of this cohort.

While the violence of the triangle of Saddamists, ISIS and MEK in Iraq is ongoing, we witness that the MEK’s strongest advocates in the west, Struan Stevenson, Alejo Vidal-Quadras, Paulo Casaca and a couple of others have abandoned their mainstream political careers in the European Parliament and similar places to become full time advocates for this cohort. Under the organisational label ‘European Iraqi Freedom Association’ (EIFA), they claimed that the recent violent acts in Iraq were not carried out by ISIS, but were “part of a popular uprising” against Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. In doing so, they are openly backing the MEK, ISIS and Saddamist cohort against the government of Iraq even after successful elections returned popularly elected political representatives.

For those with any lingering doubt about where the MEK stands on the issue of terrorism, an examination of their own website in Farsi is instructive. Only days before the current crisis erupted in Iraq, MEK leader Massoud Rajavi expressed his solidarity with the Saudi backed Jaish-ul-Adl terrorist group based in Pakistan. Referring to the execution of 16 men affiliated to Jaish-ul-Adl terrorist group Masoud Rajavi described them as “martyrs” and “brothers”.

A screenshot of the MEK site’s first page quickly circulated on the internet as shocked Iranians of every stripe denounced the MEK. As the world looked on in horror at the actions of ISIS (beheadings, mass murders, etc), the MEK hailed the group as “revolutionary forces”, (an echo of the false identity it ascribes to itself as “Iran’s resistance movement”), and continued to advertise ISIS achievements and stances.

Humanitarian issues

The MEK’s collaboration with Saddamists and its public support for ISIS is unsurprising for experts on the group, but it is problematic. This support has made MEK in Camp Liberty a legitimate target for revenge killing by its old enemies – the Kurdish and Shiite populations among which the MEK massacred several thousand for Saddam Hussein during the First Gulf War in 1991. This matches with one of Massoud Rajavi’s recent internal proclamations; that should Camp Liberty be threatened by (unspecified) outside forces the residents should all kill themselves. In this way, Rajavi would be rid of many witnesses to his multiple crimes against humanity and war crimes. A meeting of ex members in Paris on 21 June highlighted this very threat.

But this stance contradicts another of Rajavi’s positions, which is to use the forces in Camp Liberty as advertising products in the Paris rally. The speakers may admit to being paid, but they also claim to sincerely believe in the MEK’s ability to bring about freedom for Iran, and will no doubt be keen to use the platform in Paris to echo the demand to ‘rescue’ the Camp Liberty residents. Whether they are willfully ignorant of the facts or simply naïve is open to question. Indeed, both speakers and attendees should ask how this rally will help rescue the residents in Camp Liberty, Iraq, who the MEK leaders absolutely refuse to help. The UN has not hesitated to denounce the hindrances and obstruction created by the MEK leaders when it has tried to help these victims. In addition, the UN has accused the MEK of human rights abuses against its own members.

Lobbying for what? survival of a terrorist cult?

The idea that this rally is for lobbying is not only false but it is dangerous. Lobbying cannot involve the promotion of bloodshed and terror; that is murder. In any case, the MEK are not lobbying anyone for anything. The MEK is a cult and has its own agenda quite independent of its publicly stated policies. Its own internal interests are paramount and the current rally is being used to promote Maryam Rajavi as a replacement for Massoud Rajavi as the cult guru or ideological leader.

Everything the MEK has ever done has been to ensure its own survival; from working for Saddam Hussein to getting de-listed as a terrorist group. Governments, countries, agencies and lobbyists would do well to sit down and work out what have been their gains and losses because of using this organisation. For example, the MEK has not advanced the neoconservative agenda at all, instead because of its resort to violence it has benefited the conservatives of the Islamic Republic of Iran who use it to point out western double standards on terrorism. The MEK’s achievements in relation to its proclaimed stance are nil.

Can MEK be trusted? beneficial?

The MEK pretend to work as mercenaries to suit western backers but have in reality simply exploited loopholes and weaknesses in western political systems purely to promote themselves and, like parasites, find a niche to exist in for a while. The MEK have infiltrated parliaments and ministries and misused them. The rally in Paris on June 27th exploits the concept of ‘freedom of speech’ to promote a pretended political point of view.

Given the MEK’s very clear and public support for ISIS, the fallout from this rally will affect everyone. While Western leaders are in the same city promoting the formation of a united front (according to configurations best suited to themselves) to confront the terrorist group, by turning a blind eye to a rally held by ISIS supporters in Paris, all western governments, not just that of France, are implicated in tacit support for that terrorism.

June 30, 2014 0 comments

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