The Third View on Mujahedin Khalq

Filner will pay group back for Paris trip

San Diego Mayor Bob Filner said Wednesday that he will pay out of his own pocket the nearly $10,000 it cost for his trip to France last month.

Filner’s announcement came one day after U-T Watchdog reported that the IRS had no record of the organization Filner said paid his tab of being a U.S. tax-exempt nonprofit.

Filner said his $9,839 in travel costs to Paris were covered by the Organization of Iranian-American Communities, a group Filner initially claimed was a charity organized under Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(3).

“I have become aware that the OIAC’s representations regarding its non-profit status were inaccurate,” Filner said in a news release late Wednesday. “For this reason, I will reimburse OIAC for all amounts it paid for my travel and expenses in its international conference in Paris, France, above the $440 gift limit.”

Filner filed a similar statement on a mid-year disclosure of gifts, filed Wednesday on the day it was due.

The tax status is important because, under city and state law, officials such as Filner are prohibited from receiving gifts totaling more than $440 in a calendar year from most sources. Nonprofits are allowed to exceed that limit if facilitating the official’s appearance or speech at an event — such as the Iranian resistance rally Filner participated in.

Filner’s trip to France has been controversial since he returned in late June.

The U-T revealed on July 16 that two top aides to Filner increased their city charge-card limits to $30,000 each in advance of Filner’s trip.

Councilman Kevin Faulconer sent a series of questions to interim Chief Financial Officer Greg Bych in response to that story, in large part because of the cost to the taxpayers for the trip.

Filner later released some details of the trip’s funding, including the cost of his travel covered by the outside group and the cost of his security detail’s travel, covered by taxpayers — $21,244. Filner has said that his fiancee, Bronwyn Ingram, paid her own way. The two have since broken up, and Ingram has not returned messages seeking confirmation that she paid her own way.

Filner’s spokeswoman did not respond to calls for comment seeking more information about Filner repaying the Iranian-American organization.

Faulconer, chairman of the city’s audit committee, said Filner’s actions in reimbursing the group for the trip confirm a suspicion Faulconer had — that the gift was illegal.

“As Chairman of the City’s Audit Committee, I’ve continued to ask questions about Mayor Filner’s junket because the story doesn’t add up,” Faulconer said. “Nothing makes sense about a San Diego Mayor taking this trip to France. I’m going to continue to investigate to determine if other rules meant to protect taxpayers were broken.”  

Felipe Monroig, president of the San Diego County Taxpayers Association, also said Filner’s action was inadequate.

“Mayor Filner has announced that he’ll cover the roughly $9,000 cost of his recent trip to Paris,” Monroig said. “Yet, there remains a much larger cost for his security detail that taxpayers are still on the hook for. Since it’s clear the Mayor’s trip to Paris was little more than a vacation, the Taxpayers Association calls on him to do the right thing and reimburse the full cost, which was upwards of $30,000.”

Filner has previously accepted travel from groups that are part of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. He went to Paris in June 2011 as a member of Congress. He also took a similar trip in June 2007, federal records show.

His 2011 trip cost $6,589 and was paid for by Colorado’s Iranian American Community, a group tied to the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq or MEK, the militant — and largest — arm of the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

The 2007 trip to France, also paid for by Colorado’s Iranian American Community, cost $7,949. The plane ticket in that case was business class.

Filner is not alone in accepting travel from the Iranian groups. Others who have gone include former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Rep. Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island.

In large part, the trips were part of a lobbying campaign to remove the MEK from the U.S. State Department’s foreign terrorist organizations list. In a speech to the group, Filner compared their plight to the U.S. civil rights movement.

“This will happen,” Filner said in a speech to the group in 2011. “This will happen. The laws, the facts, are on our side.”

The de-listing effort succeeded last year.

Trent Seibert, U-T San Diago

A group of wealthy, hawkish Iranians-in-exile has premier access to U.S. Congress members.

MeK-backed lobbyists have been increasingly successful in engaging with members of Congress, many of whom are attracted by the National Council of Resistance’s self-described democratic and secular opposition to the unpopular Iranian regime.

Last month, in a Paris suburb, a bipartisan group of American politicians attended a massive conference and political rally held by an organization calling for the overthrow of the Iranian government. With wealthy donors spread across Europe and the Middle East, the group is beating the war drums for American intervention in Iran. 

The conference was the tenth such event organized by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), which is the political wing of the People’s Mujahideen of Iran (MeK), a group that was classified as a terrorist organization by the State Department as recently as September 2012. The MeK and its supporters have increased their clout in Washington, as highlighted by the fact that three sitting representatives attended June’s annual conference—Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas), Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) and Rep. Lacy Clay (D-Mo.). Last Friday, Roll Call reported that the representatives’ trips each cost more than $10,000 for the weekend.

In addition to those sitting representatives, this year’s event featured a collection of high-profile American political figures spanning the political spectrum. Republican conference participants featured former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey. Democratic conferencegoers included former Rhode Island congressman Patrick Kennedy, former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell and former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. More than thirty other current House members were invited to the conference but did not attend.

As the political face of the MeK, the National Council of Resistance is a shadow Iranian government that was founded in Tehran in 1981 in the aftermath of [Ayatollah]Khomeini’s rise to power.  in 1992. A now infamous 2009 Rand study, commissioned by the Defense Department characterized the MeK as “dissident cult group” (noting its practice of mandatory divorce for members) and remarked on its “deceptive recruitment and public relations strategies.”

While the organization has little actual presence in Iran, it has boosted its international profile as of late. The group reportedly offers handsome speaking fees at its conferences, according to the BBC, roughly $20,000 for a 10-minute speech.

“This is a group that is extremely dangerous,” says Jamal Abdi, senior policy advisor at the National Iranian American Council, an organization that lobbies against U.S. sanctions on Iran and for peace talks between the two nations.

A senior Democratic staffer tells In These Times that the MeK-backed lobbyists have been increasingly successful in engaging with members of Congress, many of whom are attracted by the National Council of Resistance’s self-described democratic and secular opposition to the unpopular Iranian regime. These lobbyists often work for groups with innocuous-sounding names, such as the Iranian-American Community of North Texas or the Iranian-American Community of Northern California. The name of the trip’s sponsor this year was the Organization of Iranian-American Communities.

“Part of what’s scary from a progressive perspective is that they’re very much pushing for war with Iran,” the staffer says, referencing the group’s leaking of alleged intelligence about Iran’s nuclear program to members of Congress. “They’re always here. I see them [on Capitol Hill] almost every day. Clearly they’re constantly meeting with people and pushing this agenda.”

The staffer compares the group’s tactics to those used by Iraq War supporters in the run-up to the 2003 invasion. At that time, many war hawks championed the cause of Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress. That marginal group of Iraqi exiles, financed by the CIA, endorsed by the Bush Administration and promoted by the New York Times’ Judith Miller managed to earn a degree of international support by branding itself as a democratic alternative to the Saddam Hussein regime. Chalabi, whose organization leaked documents to the press and high-ranking politicians in the hopes of justifying American military intervention, eventually earned the title of “the George Washington of Iraq.” Chalabi is now a member of the Iraqi Parliament.

The MeK equivalent is Maryam Rajavi, president-elect of the government-in-exile. Her husband used to lead the MeK but has been in hiding for the last 10 years. The couple maintains a cultish allure among their supporters.

At the rally last month outside of Paris, Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) presented the beaming president-in-waiting with a gift. “On behalf of the U.S. Congress, I want to give you a plate that is sealed in glass, and when Iran is free and you are the President we will break this glass and break bread in Tehran together.”

BY Cole Stangler ,In These Times