The Third View on Mujahedin Khalq

Our Favorite Terrorists

On September 21st, Hillary Clinton signed a finding that the MEK, Muhajadin E-Khalil, or Peoples Muhadejin of Iran was in the process of no longer being considered a terrorist group. You should Our Favorite Terrorists know that MEK was only taken off of the US’ terrorist list after years of high pressure lobbying by a veritable galaxy of the some of the biggest and most expensive stars in Washington. Bill Clinton placed them on the terrorist list in 1997, and this decision was reaffirmed by the Bush administration in 2007.

It’s a sad commentary on the way things get done in DC, but it’s extremely doubtful whether the terrorist designation change on MEK could have been accomplished any other way. Political celebrities were hired by the dozens to sing the praises of MEK. If you want Democrats, you could find Howard Dean, former Congressman Patrick Kennedy, or Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell. For Republicans some of the hired guns include former GOP Speaker of the House Denny Hassert, Rudy Guiliani, Dick Armey, Bush II Attorney General Michael Mukasey, just to name some of the bigwigs.

Did they hire any national security types? The answer is "Yes — from both parties!" For the Democrats MEK hired former Clinton CIA chief James Woolsey. And W’s CIA chief Porter Goss got a stipend for supporting MEK, too. Other national security nabobs include former FBI director Louis Freeh, Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge, and Obama’s former National Security Advisor Jim Jones. And don’t forget the ever lovable Richard Perle.

How about journalists? Well Chicago Tribune Clarence Page was on board for some buckolas, as was Washington Post figure Carl Bernstein. Congressmen no doubt got in on the gravy train as well, but only Democrat Deborah Ros-Lehtinen and Republican Dana Rohrbacher made major appearances. Who knows how many other lesser lights received cash from MEK while it was still classified as a terrorist organization? The only thing that we know for sure is that none of these people come cheap. We’re probably talking about tens of millions of dollars being spent by MEK to get itself off of the terrorist list.

WHAT PUT MEK ON THE TERRORIST LIST IN THE FIRST PLACE?

We have to go back all the way to 1970s Iran for that answer. Originally MEK was fighting to eliminate the Shah, and they were aligned with the Ayatollah Khomenei. It was during this time that they killed six US military men and defense contractors. However, they had a falling out with the new Iranian government, and they quickly aligned themselves with Saddam Hussein. MEK personnel fought on the side of Saddam in the Iran-Iraq War including assisting Saddam in the rape of Kurdistan after the Gulf War. It’s been an open secret that since then MEK has been stationed in Iraq at US military bases.

To be charitable, both the Iraqi and Iranian government hate their guts. Even the Green Revolution in Iran wants nothing to to with them. The Iranian American Council has denounced MEK, saying that recognition of MEK by the United States will actually increase the chance of war between the two countries

In 2005, Donald Rumsfeld used MEK to carry out various reconaissance and sabotage operations in Iran after they had been equipped and trained at a base in Nevada. More recently, they have been directly linked to the assasination of Iranian military scientists, now supposedly by being trained and armed by the Israeli Mossad. If this is true, it would certainly put to the lie the US finding that MEK has denounced terrorism. But the background of MEK is even stranger and sleazier than that.

According to a report issued by the RAND corporation in 2009, Maryam Rajavi, the leader of MEK is in actuality the leader of a cult. After a disastrous raid into Iran during the Iran-Iraq War, Rajavi and her late husband decided that the reason Operation Eternal Light had failed was because there was too much love in MEK between fighters and their spouses. They then ordered mass divorces, mandatory celibacy, complete cutoffs from non-MEK family members, sleep deprivation and other manipulative techniques to enforce displine.

Seven small fry supporters came under Justice Department investigation for supporting a terrorist group when they collected donations at Los Angeles International Airport on behalf of the Committee for Human Rights, a MEK front organization. No Justice Department investigation has been undertaken of the myriad big public fish like Guiliani or Howard Dean for their support of MEK to get it kicked off of the US terrorist list. The very fact that someone would be lobbying the US government for a group on the terrorist list is classified as a crime. All in all, this represents the worst kind of example of how things get done in Washington, DC.

The only mysteries that remain about this still-terrorist organization is where their ultimate financial and other support is really coming from. Is it Israel, Saudi Arabia, the CIA, or right wing neocons? And is MEK really seen as a legitimate tool to be used against Iran, or only a distraction — supplying dupes who are willing to go on suicide missions to be used as a cat’s paw in American-Iranian (and Israeli) relations?

Regardless of the answers to these questions, it’s obvious that the MEK incident ranks high on the disgust factor.

September 26, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Taming the Crocodile: Reasons to Doubt U.S. Decision to De-List MEK

The New York Times, among other news organizations, published a remarkable story over the weekend: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has purportedly sent to Congress a classified letter indicating her intent to remove the Mujaheddin-e-Khalq organization (MEK or MKO) from the list of designated terrorist organizations. (The English spelling of the organization is inconsistent, and is sometimes seen as Mojahedin-e Khalq or other variants. It is also sometimes referred to as the People’s Mujaheddin Organization of Iran (PMOI).) Taming the Crocodile: Reasons to Doubt U.S. Decision to De-List MEK

Such a list is authorized by Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1189. That section of law was inserted into the INA in early 1996 after a variety of terrorism-related outrages in the years preceding the amendment, such as the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. Members, associates, and affiliates of listed organizations are subject to criminal prosecution for material support of a terrorist organization and also to deportation and exclusion from the United States.

The first list was published in the Federal Register some months after Section 219 came into being, and the MEK was among the first organizations to be listed, in 1997.

The MEK was a Marxist organization formed to oppose the regime of the Shah of Iran — and the United States, which supported the Shah in ways both obvious and covert. From the start, violence formed a part of its strategy and tactics, as is evident even from their organizational logo, which depicts a raised arm bearing a rifle crossed with a sickle.

During the 1970s, leading up to the Shah’s deposition, MEK operatives engaged in, and claimed credit for, a series of bombings and assassinations that included six Americans, some of whom were military officers posted to Iran in a diplomatic capacity. The violence was calculated to destabilize society and undermine the regime. Imagine their surprise then, when the Iranian revolution in 1979 gave birth to a hardline Islamic Republic that had no use for godless communists. Forced to flee the country, the MEK made a devil’s bargain for sanctuary — the devil in this case being embodied by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. From the safety of Iraq, they engaged in a series of cross-border violent acts against the ayatollahs; no doubt Saddam derived great pleasure in using the MEK to figuratively shove his thumb into the eye of his regional nemesis.

MEK cadres even fought on the side of Iraq during the long-enduring and shockingly murderous Iran-Iraq war from 1980-1988, in which over half a million soldiers and civilians from both sides were killed.

But that was not all they did; apparently there were other strings attached to their Faustian bargain with Saddam. Many credible human rights groups, analysts, and scholars believe that they also acted as a kind of mercenary killing force on the regime’s behalf in Saddam’s brutal campaigns against suspect domestic ethnic groups — the Kurds in the north of Iraq, and the Shi’a "marsh Arabs" in the coastal waterways of south Iraq — and even of viciously abusing the organization’s own dissident members.

The MEK claims to have abandoned violence and disarmed in the early 2000s. This appears to have occurred about the same time that the U.S. military was engaged in "shock and awe" carpet bombing preparatory to invading Iraq and, ultimately, disarming the Baathist regime’s military. Looked at from this perspective, the MEK’s claim of disarmament appears to be necessity draped in virtue’s clothing and nothing more. What choice did they have, post-invasion, faced with overwhelming American military force?

According to the Christian Science Monitor, in 2004 — substantially after the MEK "change of heart" — the FBI reported, using "data corroborated by French and German wiretaps — that MEK cells in the United States, Europe, and Camp Ashraf were ‘actively … planning and executing acts of terrorism.’"

How did they manage to stage this coup of being "de-listed"? The answer seems to lie in three things we in modern American society are all too familiar with: a savvy intermingling of

•money,
•litigiousness,
•politics, and
•public relations
First came the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) — a front group that appears to have the same function that Sinn Fein did when the Irish Republican Army was most active (and violent). You know the type, populated by men and women in business suits, speaking in well-modulated tones, sounding like the voice of reason. The NCRI also took advantage of a provision in Section 219 that permits filing of a federal lawsuit to have an organization removed from the list. They did so. As late as 2009, the State Department’s own filings in the case to sustain the listing asserted that the MEK had trained women at Ashraf to conduct suicide attacks in the Iraqi city of Karbala, holy to Iraqi and Iranian practitioners of Shi’a Islam.

So why has this happened?

The NCRI, with a strong presence in our nation’s capital, has relentlessly raised funds, which it was smart enough to use to hire well-paid, politically connected public relations consultants, including former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former national security adviser James Jones, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, and Rudolph Giuliani. (Remember him? The man-who-would-be-president and mayor of New York City during the nation’s most significant terrorist attack.) Some prominent members of Congress have also stood behind the MEK. The Christian Science Monitor published a 10-page special report in August 2011 outlining the big names of both political parties (and the big money) involved in this burnishing of the group’s reputation. It is well worth taking the time to read the report, which serves as both primer and indictment on the corrupting influence of money on even such fundamental matters as our national security interests.

It would seem that big money and big influence are having their way. Of course, there is the added benefit that, just as with Saddam, there is that extra little bit of satisfaction at kidney punching the Islamic Republic by de-listing the MEK. And who knows what additional shadowy deals have been struck? The organization has exhibited a surprising ability to survive and even prosper in the worst circumstances, and has of course also shown its willingness to engage in devil’s bargains. But is it worth it to the United States?

I have serious misgivings about the current course of action. This is a bloody-minded, bloody-handed organization with a past history of assassination and involvement in ethnic cleansing, murder, and human rights abuses on a large scale.

Does the United States really think it can adopt its own extremist organization, domesticated and house-trained like a well-mannered pet to be used against Iran, without consequence? That’s the equivalent of trying to tame a crocodile. Treat it as kindly as you like, feed it choice chicken carcasses daily, and even give it exclusive access to your backyard pool. There is every reason to believe that, sooner or later, when you reach your hand out to pat that ugly snout, it’s going to snap down and sever it from your wrist. It’s in the beast’s nature.

By W.D. Reasoner,

September 26, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

MEK Still Isn’t OK

The group is set to be taken off the foreign terrorist organization list, but it remains an unwelcome bedfellow on the Iran issue.

This past Friday, the State Department announced that it will remove the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK)—a fringe Iranian dissident group that has been criticized for its cultish practices—from its list of terrorist groups. The State Department may have satisfied a court-imposed deadline and could help the group’s members escape their current stateless limbo, but the decision will enable the MEK to put more effort into pushing the United States toward war with Iran in its campaign to become the new government in Tehran.

The court’s deadline comes from a lawsuit brought by the MEK arguing that its designation as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO)—which it has held since 1997—is no longer appropriate because it claims to have abandoned violence in 2002; in 2003, when its members in Iraq were disarmed by the U.S. military, the group signed documents promising to use only peaceful means of protest to advocate for its goals. In June, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit gave Secretary of State Hillary Clinton until October 1 to decide whether the group still belonged on the list or the court would delist the group.

Whether the MEK still belongs on the FTO list presents a legal question. If it has abandoned violence—including the capability and intent to commit terrorism—then perhaps it’s earned removal. The group’s many critics point to rumors that the MEK has been collaborating with the American and Israeli militaries and intelligence services (for example, here). But the FTO statute counts only terrorism or terrorist activity that “threatens the security of United States nationals or the national security of the United States”; even if unsubstantiated rumors about MEK’s collaboration with the U.S. military are true, they would not qualify the MEK for FTO status under the statute. This highlights the problem: The law as written gives a pass to groups whose activities are viewed as useful to the United States, just as it could fail to apply to unsavory groups that do not pose a danger to the country.

Aside from highlighting problems with the way U.S. law classifies terrorist organizations, the MEK decision creates a few practical problems. First, though, let’s look at two potential benefits. The Iraqi government wants the MEK out of the country—in part because it is close to the Tehran regime and in part because Iraqi Kurds and Shias despise the MEK for helping Saddam Hussein suppress their uprisings after the 1991 Gulf War. Iraq has demonstrated an unwillingness to respect its responsibility under international law to protect people who are essentially refugees; Iraqi security forces killed some 49 members during clashes with the group after the United States turned responsibility of Camp Ashraf over to the Iraqi government in 2009. The MEK can’t just be sent home to Iran because it is a crime to be a member of the group there. They need to go somewhere else, but no country was willing to welcome MEK members so long as the group was on the U.S.’s FTO list, and the MEK wouldn’t cooperate in the resettlement process until the State Department held out the carrot of delisting. This decision brings some hope, however limited and tenuous, that they may be able to find new, permanent homes, bringing an end to their stateless limbo.

Should members be resettled, another possible humanitarian benefit of the decision could be that they might then be able to engage with the wider world, and some might even consider leaving the cult. This is particularly relevant to the 70 percent or so of the group’s membership who joined after the MEK allied itself with Saddam Hussein, lost its support in Iran, transformed into a highly insular organization, and took up deceptive recruitment practices.

Those are the potential benefits. Now we turn to the problems with the decision. In light of the unprecedented lobbying effort made to get the MEK delisted, in which prominent former officials received tens of thousands of dollars to speak on the group’s behalf, it looks highly politicized. The MEK will make it look like delisting was a symbol of U.S. approbation. With regards to our complicated relationship with Iran, Tehran will see the decision as—in the words of CIA veteran and Georgetown University professor Paul Pillar—“one more indication that the United States is interested only in hostility and pressure toward the Islamic Republic, rather than coming to terms with it.” Some fear that it will undermine American credibility as a force for democracy in Iran (to the extent that the U.S. has such credibility).

The most significant concern is how it will unleash the MEK to further ratchet up the probability of violent conflict with Iran. As I have written here and here, the MEK has had two major goals: an immediate one of getting off the FTO list and a long-term one of taking power in Tehran (it already has a “parliament in exile” and a “president-elect” in its National Council of Resistance of Iran). Now that it has accomplished its short-term goal of getting off the list, it can focus on its core objective.

If the MEK were really what it claims to be—“the largest peaceful, secular, pro-democratic Iranian dissident group” and it didn’t need our help—we wouldn’t need to worry much. But it’s not. The MEK has almost no support among the Iranian people, who vilify the group for signing up with Saddam Hussein, killing Iranians, and then becoming a cult—or see it as a joke. There are only two ways that the MEK could achieve its goal: money or arms. Both options would likely involve the United States, and it is hard to imagine the MEK getting into power by money alone.

The MEK has been pumping up fears of Iran for years. I don’t want to discount the risks of Iran building a nuclear weapon someday, but the MEK plays up the issue for its own uses. The MEK will continue to encourage fear of Iran on Capitol Hill, maintain its ongoing public-relations campaign that promotes wildly exaggerated fears of Iran among the American public, and likely offer its services as a proxy-force ally against Iran, as it has for years.

We should worry that removing the MEK from the FTO list will open the door to a repeat in Iran of what we experienced in Iraq thanks to the embrace of Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress. It started with us funding the Iraqi émigré banker-turned-politician, and it ended with us invading Iraq and putting him in charge of the interim governing council. Even if it was just a relatively small bunch of neocons in the Bush administration and Congress who bought Chalabi’s rosy picture of having huge support in Iraq and a ready-made government, it wasn’t as if the rest of Congress or the media put a stop to their push for war. It was more like full speed ahead.

To limit the damage from its decision, the State Department needs to make it powerfully clear that the United States does not support the MEK. That will take a lot of work, because the MEK will flaunt the delisting.

More important, the U.S. government should not engage with the MEK going forward. Congress should ignore the group. Some officials will inevitably think that working with the MEK makes sense or is convenient. They will be wrong. The White House should consider making it policy for the government not to fund, employ, or otherwise collaborate with the group. The MEK is not our ally. Its interests are its own, not ours. The State Department’s decision may be legally sound, and it’s good to help MEK members find a new home, but when it comes to American policy, the group is not to be trusted. To quote Ambassador John Limbert, former embassy hostage and the first deputy assistant secretary of state for Iran, the MEK has “a very dubious history and a similarly dubious present.” Let’s have nothing to do with its dubious future.

By Jeremiah Goulka ,Prospect.org

September 26, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Money Talks: The Mujahideen-e-Khalq Episode

Money Talks: The Mujahideen-e-Khalq Episode as the Fundamental Display of Washington Lobbying Power

If you want to understand how things get done in Washington, perhaps the best lesson of the year comes from the State Department’s decision late Friday to remove the Iranian exile group Mujahideen-e-Khalq from the official list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The MEK never really lessened the activities that got it listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in the first place; in fact, they have intensified inside Iran. No, their path to de-listing came simply from buying off practically every prominent figure in Washington and rallying DC opinion to their side. It didn’t hurt also that the object of their terrorist activities happens to be a foreign country we don’t like.

But truly, the MEK went about securing their de-listing the way an oil company would secure a subsidy in an energy bill or the way a developer would secure an earmark for a new road near one of their land holdings. They just bought a bunch of lobbyists, spending millions of dollars to change their public image. And it paid off.

The campaign to bury the MEK’s bloody history of bombings and assassinations that killed American businessmen, Iranian politicians and thousands of civilians, and to portray it as a loyal US ally against the Islamic government in Tehran has seen large sums of money directed at three principal targets: members of Congress, Washington lobby groups and influential former officials.

Prominent among the members of Congress who have received fund is Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the chair of the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee. She has accepted at least $20,000 in donations from Iranian American groups or their leaders to her political campaign fund.

Other recipients include Congressman Bob Filner, who was twice flown to address pro-MEK events in France and has pushed resolutions resolutions in the House of Representatives calling for the group to be unbanned. More than $14,000 in expenses for Filner’s Paris trips were met by the head of an Iranian American group who also paid close to $1m to a Washington lobby firm working to get the MEK unbanned.

A Texas Congressman, Ted Poe, received thousands of dollars in donations from the head of a pro-MEK group in his state at a time when he was a regular speaker on behalf of its unbanning at events across the US, describing the organisation as the ticket to regime change in Iran.

It goes on and on, with money funneled to members of both parties, and lobbyists hired from the ranks of former elected officials on both sides as well. Luminaries like Ed Rendell, Howard Dean, Bill Richardson, Tom Ridge, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani and more were all paid to extol the virtues of the MEK. Big time lobby shops like DLA Piper, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, and DiGenova & Toensing took $1.5 million in the last year alone to work on lawmakers and the State Department to get the de-listing. Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Hugh Shelton, former FBI Director Louis Freeh, former national security advisor James Jones and more all took MEK money and praised the organization. MEK also paid members of the Beltway media to further their efforts. Virtually everyone with a name in Washington got some piece of the action.

MEK got its money for this high-scale lobbying effort from the Iranian exile community, which has as its goal the overthrow of the current government in Iran. Their old benefactor was Saddam Hussein, who had exactly the same goal. Basically Saddam kept this group of militants on the border with Iran as his personal strike force, and George W. Bush cited the sheltering of the MEK as one of the reasons for the need to invade Iraq. All that history was forgotten when the money started flowing.

The subtext for this is that the MEK found it so easy as a known terrorist group to toss money at everyone in Washington and find purchase because their goals to overthrow Iran’s government lines up with what would be termed “pro-Israel” policies. You’re allowed to engage in terrorism, then, as long as you do it against an enemy of the United States, and in the best interest of an ally of the United States.

Glenn Greenwald takes five lessons from this episode, all of them worthwhile. Note in particular the parallels between DC establishment advocacy for a Muslim terrorist organization and the type of advocacy for other terrorist groups, which will get you prosecuted and thrown in jail faster than you can say “My Speaker’s Bureau fee is $25,000.” There’s also this:

The US government did not even pretend that terrorism had anything to do with its decision as to whether MEK should be de-listed. Instead, they used the carrot of de-listing, and the threat of remaining on the list, to pressure MEK leaders to adhere to US demands to abandon their camp in Iraq. But what does adhering to this US demand have to do with terrorism? Nothing. This list has nothing to do with terrorism. It is simply a way the US rewards those who comply with its dictates and punishes those who refuse.

I think the biggest lesson is that it exposes this industry of ex-elected officials and hangers-on in Washington that form a shadow government with tremendous power, which they use in service to whoever hires them. The lobbyist class around these former policymakers makes them in many ways stronger than when they were allegedly setting policy in the first place. This way, they can actually write the legislation instead of taking dictation about it.

By: David Dayen ,Firedoglake.com

September 25, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

The Hypocrisy and Looming Danger of De-Listing MEK

The Obama administration’s decision to remove the Iranian cult Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) from the State Department’s list of officially designated terrorist groups was a long time coming. But The Hypocrisy and Looming Danger of De-Listing MEK no single act by the administration so crystalizes the hypocrisy and recklessness of US postures towards Iran.

The MEK has a long history of terrorist activity going back to the 1970s and has the goal of overthrowing the Iranian government. Because of this goal, there has been a big money push by many influential people in Washington to get the group de-listed, presumably to make it eligible for US funding to act against the Iranian regime.

Please ignore the fact that these political elites that received payments from the MEK in order to advocate on their behalf appear to be in violation of laws prohibiting material support for “terrorists.” Also ignore the fact that George W. Bush included Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorists like MEK in his propaganda justifying the invasion of Iraq in 2003. “Iraq shelters terrorist groups including the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization,” reads a document in the archives of the White House’s website, “which has used terrorist violence against Iran and in the 1970s was responsible for killing several US military personnel and US civilians.” As recently as 2007, a State Department report warned that the MEK, retains “the capacity and will” to attack “Europe, the Middle East, the United States, Canada, and beyond.”

As Glenn Greenwald pointed out yesterday, whether the MEK is still an officially designated “terrorist” group has exactly zero to do with whether or not they carry out terrorism:

The history of the US list of designated terrorist organizations, and its close cousin list of state sponsors of terrorism, is simple: a country or group goes on the list when they use violence to impede US interests, and they are then taken off the list when they start to use exactly the same violence to advance US interests. The terrorist list is not a list of terrorists; it’s a list of states and groups which use their power to defy US dictates rather than adhere to them.

This was also exemplified earlier this month when the Obama administration decided to officially designate the Haqqani network a terrorist organization. The Haqqanis are a branch of the Taliban that launches attacks on occupying forces in Afghanistan. The Reagan administration funneled money and weapons to Islamic fighters in Afghanistan against the Soviets in 1980s. Back then, the Haqqani network were freedom fighters. Now the US says they’re officially terrorists.

And as Greenwald explains, “Saddam was put on it when he allied with the Soviets in the early 1980s, then was taken off when the US wanted to arm and fund him against Iran in the mid-1980s, then he was put back on in the early 1990s when the US wanted to attack him.”

Aside from the clear-as-day hypocrisy of this list, the decision to de-list MEK will have deleterious effects for US policy towards Iran. The Obama administration has stubbornly refused to reciprocate to Iranian concessions in the international negotiations over their nuclear program and has imposed harsh economic sanctions. The two things the administration had going for it was the fact that it was pretty clear to the world that they were blocking an immediate Israeli strike and also that negotiations are continuing, probably in an attempt to deal with it more freely after the US presidential elections. But now that the US has de-listed MEK and opened up the potential for more direct support of the group, which argues for the overthrow of the Iranian regime, how can the administration claim its policy is one of engagement and negotiations as opposed to subversion and aggression?

As Paul Pillar wrote yesterday:

The regime in Tehran will tacitly welcome this move (while publicly denouncing it) because it helps to discredit the political opposition in Iran—a fact not lost on members of the Green Movement, who want nothing to do with the MEK. The MEK certainly is not a credible vehicle for regime change in Iran because it has almost no public support there. Meanwhile, the Iranian regime will read the move as another indication that the United States intends only to use subversion and violence against it rather than reaching any deals with it.

So why de-list the MEK? The only credible answer is that the US aims to undermine the Iranian regime. And even though MEK has virtually zero support in Iran, and despite the embarrassing history the US has of aiding dissident groups in rival countries, Washington seems to view the MEK as instrumental in undermining Tehran. Furthermore, according to US officials, Israel has supported and is supporting the MEK to carry out terrorism in Iran and targeting Iranian nuclear scientists for assassination. Pillar says it might have been nice to mention this when the State Department was de-listing MEK, “But that, of course, would have required the politically inconvenient act of publicly addressing Israeli terrorism.” Better to just de-list MEK than to have Israel supporting an officially designated terrorist group.

MEK’s de-listing very well might come along with increased Israeli support for them…and increased US support.

By John Glaser

September 25, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Once a terrorist, not always a terrorist

The State Department’s removal of Iranian dissident group MEK from terrorist list draws wide criticism

On Friday, the State Department removed Iranian exile group MEK (Mujahedin-e-Khalq) from its list of foreign terrorist organizations. Over the weekend, commentators responded to the news with skepticism over the motives, procedures, political maneuvers and payoffs that seem to determine which groups do or do not count as terrorists.

MEK, Iranian dissidents who lost a power struggle with Ayatollah Khomenei supporters in the years following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, relocated to Iraq and established allegiances with Saddam Hussein. For 15 years the group has been listed among foreign terrorist organizations by the State Department. Although considered cultish by many, MEK has preserved and fostered strong U.S. ties, especially among a handful of conservatives, who share the group’s desire to overthrow Iran’s government. Both Republicans and Democrats have received substantial fees to talk at MEK events, while advocating in Washington on the group’s behalf.

As Joshua Keating at Foreign Policy noted Monday, there is reason for cynicism about the declassification “after the group [MEK] waged a years-long PR, lobbying, and advertising campaign, paying political VIPs including Rudy Giuliani, Howard Dean, Tom Ridge, and Ed Rendell tens of thousands of dollars to endorse their cause.” Keating adds, however, that MEK have indeed not carried out a terrorist attack in years, but, going by the language of the Patriot Act alone, many more groups aside from MEK should then be removed from the terrorist list too.

Salon’s old friend Glenn Greenwald was less generous than Keating in a Guardian comment piece Sunday. He calls U.S. dealings with MEK a “scam,” which “more vividly illustrates the rot and corruption at the heart of America’s D.C.-based political culture than almost any episode [he] can recall.”

In an extensive, important post noting key takeaways from the episode, Greenwald argues:

The NYU scholar Remi Brulin has exhaustively detailed the rank game-playing that has taken place with this list: Saddam was put on it when he allied with the Soviets in the early 1980s, then was taken off when the US wanted to arm and fund him against Iran in the mid-1980s, then he was put back on in the early 1990s when the US wanted to attack him.

And now, with the MEK, we have a group that, at least according to some reports, appears to have intensified its terrorism, and yet they are removed from the list. Why? Because now they are aligned against the prime enemy of the US and Israel – and working closely with those two nations – and are therefore, magically, no longer “terrorists.”

By Natasha Lennard

September 25, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

The Mistaken Decision to De-List the MEK

Paul Pillar’s response to the de-listing of the MEK is exactly right:

No good will come out of this subversion of the terrorist group list with regard to conditions in Iran, the behavior or standing of the Iranian regime, the values with which the United States is associated, or anything else. The regime in Tehran will tacitly welcome this move (while publicly denouncing it) because it helps to discredit the political opposition in Iran—a fact not lost on members of the Green Movement, who want nothing to do with the MEK. The MEK certainly is not a credible vehicle for regime change in Iran because it has almost no public support there. Meanwhile, the Iranian regime will read the move as another indication that the United States intends only to use subversion and violence against it rather than reaching any deals with it.

What may make this decision even more damaging over the long term for U.S.-Iranian relations The Mistaken Decision to De-List the MEK is that most Iranians loathe the MEK. De-listing the group is a mistake in its own right, but it is especially foolish because it does nothing but generate ill will from Iranians regardless of their views of the regime. Iranians will understandably consider the decision to remove the terrorist designation from the group as an insult, and many will take it as further proof of enduring American hostility towards Iran and Iranians and not just towards the current government.

It’s important to note that the decision by itself does not mean that the U.S. is supporting the MEK or aligning our government with the group, but it will likely be perceived that way. We shouldn’t discount the possibility that the decision to remove them from the FTO list will be exploited by the same pro-MEK advocates in the U.S. that lobbied for them until now. If they are removed from the FTO list now, it will probably be just a matter of time before Iran hawks begin agitating for funding, training, and eventually arming them to use against the Iranian government.

One of the standard, completely false talking points these advocates repeated was that the MEK was a democratic movement and the “main” Iranian opposition group. Many ex-officials, retired officers, and has-been politicians disgraced themselves with their fawning expressions of admiration for Maryam Rajavi. Leaving aside the de-listing decision for a moment, the conduct of these Americans and the absurd claims they made on behalf of a horrible political cult reflect just how corrupting and deluding anti-Iranian hawkishness can be. It shouldn’t be forgotten that these people went far beyond advocating on behalf of people at Camp Ashraf or arguing for de-listing. They were actively shilling for a monstrous, fanatical movement as if it were the legitimate representative of the Iranian people. That is something that shouldn’t be forgotten, nor should it be forgotten that several of the people speaking in support of this group serve in some capacity as advisers to the Republican presidential nominee.

By Daniel Larison

September 25, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Iranian Cult Is No Longer Officially a Terrorist Group!

Washington’s favorite Iranian terrorist group has likely won. By a forthcoming edict of the State Department, you can now no longer call the Mujahideen-e Khalq — formerly Saddam Hussein’s proxies against the Iranian regime — a terrorist organization. Erasing its status as a cult is a different story.

The State Department is set to remove what everyone simply calls the MEK from its list of terrorist groups, in advance of a court-imposed deadline for a decision. That will leave the organization free to fundraise and operate without attracting the attention of the FBI. The impact on U.S.-Iranian relations may be marginal, but the symbolism is enormous: As tensions with Iran over its nuclear program remain high, the Obama administration is wiping away the stigma from a cultish group that wants to overthrow the Iranian regime so badly it has attacked Iranian and other civilians to advance its agenda. And it comes after a long and deep-pocketed lobbying effort attracted a host of Washington politicos to advocate for the group.

“The delisting of the MEK, following a well-funded political lobby campaign, creates the dangerous impression that it is possible for terrorist organizations to buy their way off the [terrorism] list,” says Mila Johns of the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.

The MEK’s questionable practices extend beyond attacks on Iranian civilians. In a 2004 New York Times Magazine story, Elizabeth Rubin documented the group’s cult-like behavior. “Every morning and night, the kids, beginning as young as 1 and 2, had to stand before a poster of Massoud and Maryam, salute them and shout praises to them,” a former member told Rubin, referring to the “husband-and-wife cult” of leaders Massoud and Maryam Rajavi. Life in the MEK, Rubin reported, means enforced celibacy and public confessions of sexual desires. “Mujahedeen members have no access to newspapers or radio or television,” Rubin wrote, “other than what is fed them.”

Originally founded as a student organization in the 1960s to overthrow the Shah, the MEK attacked Western targets in pre-revolutionary Iran, and their victims included three U.S. Army officers. But they fell out of step with the Islamic radicals that took control of Iran in 1979, and turned their weapons on the new regime. Saddam Hussein became their sponsor during the Iran-Iraq war, yet the leadership moved to Paris. For over a decade, the MEK carried out bombings and hijackings on regime targets inside and outside Iran, including an audacious April 1992 coordinated raid on 13 Iranian diplomatic facilities around the world. The State Department listed them as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 1997.

But it’s been years since the MEK attempted a terrorist attack. Most of its operations have centered around endearing itself to the U.S. by portraying itself as an advocate for a democratic Iran, a source of information on Iran’s nuclear program and an implacable enemy of Washington’s Tehran enemies. It turned over its weapons at a training camp in Iraq after the U.S. invasion that until recently was a de facto U.S. protectorate called Camp Ashraf. In Washington, supporters have spent years and millions of dollars waging a lobbying campaign to remove the group’s terrorist status, holding rallies outside of Congress and slathering the sides of buses with pro-MEK posters.

The sources of that money remain undisclosed. But it purchased prominent D.C. lobbying firms like Akin Gump and advocates like Reagan administration veteran Victoria Toensing. And it got an odd collection of supporters, from former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani on the right to former Vermont Governor Howard Dean on the left, plus retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, ex-CIA director Michael Hayden, ex-FBI director Louis Freeh, ex-Obama national security adviser James Jones and a host of other notables.

The Iranian government, having been on the receiving end of MEK attacks, thinks the group still plans violence against it. Accordingly, some consider the MEK a diplomatic obstacle to resolving the Iranian nuclear question. The MEK also has support among U.S. Legislature who want to see the U.S. take a more bellicose turn toward Iran, so it’s possible that the group will rocket from the terrorist list to the halls of Congress.

Chances are, the State Department decision will merely entrench the impasse between Washington and Tehran. “I don’t think the world really looks that much different after the MEK delisting,” says Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “U.S.-Iran relations will remain hostile, and the MEK will remain a fringe cult with very limited appeal among Iranians.”

Byy Spencer Ackerman ,Danger Room

Danger Room senior reporter Spencer Ackerman recently won the 2012 National Magazine Award for Reporting in Digital Media.

September 25, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

Five lessons from the de-listing of MEK as a terrorist group

A separate justice system for American Muslims, the US embrace of terrorism, and other key political facts are highlighted

The Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), or People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, is an Iranian dissident group that has been formally designated for the last 15 years by the US State Department as a "foreign terrorist organization". When the Bush administration sought to justify its attack on Iraq in 2003 by accusing Saddam Hussein of being a sponsor of "international terrorism", one of its prime examples was Iraq’s "sheltering" of the MEK. Its inclusion on the terrorist list has meant that it is a felony to provide any "material support" to that group.

Nonetheless, a large group of prominent former US government officials from both political parties has spent the last several years receiving substantial sums of cash to give speeches to the MEK, and have then become vocal, relentless advocates for the group, specifically for removing them from the terrorist list. Last year, the Christian Science Monitor thoroughly described "these former high-ranking US officials – who represent the full political spectrum – [who] have been paid tens of thousands of dollars to speak in support of the MEK." They include Democrats Howard Dean, Ed Rendell, Wesley Clark, Bill Richardson, and Lee Hamilton, and Republicans Rudy Giuliani, Fran Townsend, Tom Ridge, Michael Mukasey, and Andrew Card. Other prominent voices outside government, such as Alan Dershowitz and Elie Wiesel, have been enlisted to the cause and are steadfast MEK advocates.

Money has also been paid to journalists such as The Washington Post’s Carl Bernstein and the Chicago Tribune’s Clarence Page. Townsend is a CNN contributor and Rendell is an MSNBC contributor, yet those MEK payments are rarely, if ever, disclosed by those media outlets when featuring those contributors (indeed, Townsend can go on CNN to opine on Iran, even urging that its alleged conduct be viewed as "an act for war", with no disclosure whatsoever during the segment of her MEK payments). Quoting a State Department official, CSM detailed how the scheme works:

"’Your speech agent calls, and says you get $20,000 to speak for 20 minutes. They will send a private jet, you get $25,000 more when you are done, and they will send a team to brief you on what to say.’ . . . The contracts can range up to $100,000 and include several appearances."

On Friday, the Guardian’s Washington reporter Chris McGreal added substantial information about the recipients of the funding and, especially, its sources. As he put it, the pro-MEK campaign "has seen large sums of money directed at three principal targets: members of Congress, Washington lobby groups and influential former officials", including the GOP Congressman who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Rogers.

What makes this effort all the more extraordinary are the reports that MEK has actually intensified its terrorist and other military activities over the last couple of years. In February, NBC News reported, citing US officials, that "deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by [MEK]" as it is "financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service". While the MEK denies involvement, the Iranian government has echoed these US officials in insisting that the group was responsible for those assassinations. NBC also cited "unconfirmed reports in the Israeli press and elsewhere that Israel and the MEK were involved in a Nov. 12 explosion that destroyed the Iranian missile research and development site at Bin Kaneh, 30 miles outside Tehran".

In April, the New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh reported that the US itself has for years provided extensive training to MEK operatives, on US soil (in other words, the US government provided exactly the "material support" for a designated terror group which the law criminalizes). Hersh cited numerous officials for the claim that "some American-supported covert operations continue in Iran today." The MEK’s prime goal is the removal of Iran’s government.

Despite these reports that the MEK has been engaged in terrorism and other military aggression against Iran – or, more accurately: likely because of them – it was announced on Friday the US State Department will remove MEK from its list of terrorist organizations. This event is completely unsurprising. In May, I noted the emergence of reports that the State Department would do so imminently.

Because this MEK scam more vividly illustrates the rot and corruption at the heart of America’s DC-based political culture than almost any episode I can recall, I’ve written numerous times about it. But now that the de-listing is all but official, it is worthwhile to take note of the five clear lessons it teaches:

Lesson One: There is a separate justice system in the US for Muslim Americans.
The past decade has seen numerous "material support" prosecutions of US Muslims for the most trivial and incidental contacts with designated terror groups. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that any Muslim who gets with sneezing distance of such a group is subject to prosecution. Indeed, as I documented last week, many of them have been prosecuted even for core First Amendment activities: political advocacy deemed supportive of such groups.

When they’re convicted – and marginalized Muslims, usually poor and powerless, almost always are – they typically are not only consigned to prison for decades, but are placed in America’s most oppressive and restrictive prison units. As a result, many law-abiding Muslim Americans have become petrified of donating money to Muslim charities or even speaking out against perceived injustices out of fear – the well-grounded fear – that they will be accused of materially supporting a terror group. This is all part of the pervasive climate of fear in which many American Muslims live.

Yet here we have a glittering, bipartisan cast of former US officials and other prominent Americans who are swimming in cash as they advocate on behalf of a designated terrorist organization. After receiving their cash, Howard Dean and Rudy Giuliani met with MEK leaders, and Dean actually declared that the group’s leader should be recognized by the west as President of Iran. That is exactly the type of coordinated messaging with a terrorist group with the supreme court found, in its 2010 Humanitarian Law v. Holder ruling, could, consistent with the First Amendment, lead to prosecution for "material support of terrorism" (ironically, numerous MEK shills, including CNN’s Townsend, praised the supreme court for its broad reading of that statute when they thought, correctly, that it was being applied to Muslims).

Yet other than a reported Treasury Department investigation several months ago to determine the source of Ed Rendell’s MEK speaking fees – an investigation that seems to have gone nowhere – there has been no repercussions whatsoever from this extensive support given by these DC luminaries to this designated terror group. Now that MEK will be removed from the terror list, there almost certainly never will be any consequences (as a legal matter, the de-listing should have no impact on the possible criminality of this MEK support: the fact that a group is subsequently removed from the list does not retroactively legalize the providing of material support when it was on the list).

In sum, there are numerous American Muslims sitting in prison for years for far less substantial interactions with terror groups than this bipartisan group of former officials gave to MEK. This is what New York Times Editorial Page Editor Andrew Rosenthal meant when he wrote back in March that the 9/11 attacks have "led to what’s essentially a separate justice system for Muslims". The converse is equally true: America’s political elites can engage in the most egregious offenses – torture, illegal eavesdropping, money-driven material support for a terror group – with complete impunity.

Lesson Two: The US government is not opposed to terrorism; it favors it.
The history of the US list of designated terrorist organizations, and its close cousin list of state sponsors of terrorism, is simple: a country or group goes on the list when they use violence to impede US interests, and they are then taken off the list when they start to use exactly the same violence to advance US interests. The terrorist list is not a list of terrorists; it’s a list of states and groups which use their power to defy US dictates rather than adhere to them.

"Since when did murdering unarmed civilians (and, in some instances, members of their families as well) on public streets in the middle of a heavily populated urban area (Tehran) not meet even the US government’s own professed standard for terrorism?"

They answered their own question: "We have seen too many times over the years just how cynically American administrations have manipulated these designations, adding and removing organizations and countries for reasons that have little or nothing to do with designees’ actual involvement in terrorist activity." In other words, the best and most efficient way to be removed from the list is to start engaging in terrorism for and in conjunction with the US and its allies (i.e. Israel) rather than against them.

Lesson Three: "Terrorism" remains the most meaningless, and thus the most manipulated, term in political discourse.
The US government did not even pretend that terrorism had anything to do with its decision as to whether MEK should be de-listed. Instead, they used the carrot of de-listing, and the threat of remaining on the list, to pressure MEK leaders to adhere to US demands to abandon their camp in Iraq. But what does adhering to this US demand have to do with terrorism? Nothing. This list has nothing to do with terrorism. It is simply a way the US rewards those who comply with its dictates and punishes those who refuse.

Terrorism, at least in its applied sense, means little other than: violence used by enemies of the US and its allies. Violence used by the US and its allies (including stateless groups) can never be terrorism, no matter how heinous and criminal.

Lesson Four: Legalized influence-peddling within both parties is what drives DC.
MEK achieved its goal by doing more than merely changing the beneficiaries of its actions from Saddam to the US and Israel. It also found a way – how it did so remains a mystery – to funnel millions of dollars into the bank accounts of key ex-officials from both parties, a bipartisan list of DC lobbyist firms, and several key journalists. In other words, it achieved its policy aims the same way most groups in DC do: by buying influence within both parties, and paying influence-peddlers who parlay their political celebrity into personal riches.

So pervasive is this scam that most people have become utterly numb to it (that’s because people are willing to acquiesce to most evils when they become perceived as common; that acquiescence is often justified as worldly sophistication). As a result, there was no pretense here to hide these sleazy transactions. The very idea that Ed Rendell suddenly woke up one day and developed an overnight, never-before-seen passion for the MEK and Iran policy is just laughable. But the former Pennsylvania governor is a key advocate to enlist – he remains well connected within the Democratic Party and now has an important platform on MSNBC – so on the payroll he went.

Once the bipartisan list of DC officials receiving cash from MEK became known, it became almost impossible to imagine any outcome other than this one. As one person tweeted after reading this State Department decision: any American billionaire could easily have his birthday declared a national holiday by simply spreading the cash around enough to DC political and media figures on a bipartisan basis.

Lesson Five: there is aggression between the US and Iran, but it’s generally not from Iran.
Over the last decade, the US has had Iran almost entirely encircled, thanks in part – only in part – to large-scale ground invasions of the nations on its eastern and western borders. Some combination of Israel and the US have launched cyberwarfare at the Iranians, murdered their civilian scientists, and caused explosions on its soil. The American president and the Israeli government continuously and publicly threaten to use force against them.

And now, the US has taken a key step in ensuring that a group devoted to the overthrow of the regime, a group that sided with Saddam in his war against Iran, is able to receive funding and otherwise be fully admitted into the precincts of international respectability. Just imagine if Iran took steps to legitimize an American rebel group that has long been devoted to the overthrow of the US government and which has a long history of serious violence on US soil.

Not just the Iranian government, but also most of its citizens, are likely to perceive this de-listing as exactly what it is: yet another act of aggression toward their nation. As the Christian Science Monitor said of the group, it is "widely despised inside Iran". But the US has now officially offered a clear gesture of legitimization, if not support, for this group, one that only exacerbates the war-threatening tensions between the two nations.

UPDATE
Several commenters have raised questions about the motives of Dershowitz and Wiesel in supporting MEK. While motives can never be known with certainty – one can attempt only to make inferences based on conduct and circumstances – it was the JTA, the self-described "global news service of the Jewish people", which reported their involvement, and they suggested the motive was not any receipt of money but rather MEK’s alignment with Israel:

"The names on the growing list of influential American advocates to de-list the Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MEK — known in English as the National Council of Resistance of Iran — suggest an effort to give the bid a pro-Israel imprimatur. . . .

"On the record, the people involved insist there is no Israel element to what they say is a humanitarian endeavor to remove the movement’s followers from danger.

"’I don’t see any Israel issue at all,’ Dershowitz told JTA in an interview, instead casting it in terms of Hillel’s dictum, ‘If I am only for myself, who am I?’

"Off the record, however, figures close to the campaign use another ancient Middle Eastern dictum to describe the involvement of supporters of Israel: ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’"

"A source close to the effort to bring pro-Israel voices into the initiative cited reports that Israel has allied with the MEK, which reportedly maintains agents in Iran and in the past has published details of Iran’s nuclear weapons program."

A separate JTA article reporting on the de-listing noted that "Iranian Americans sympathetic to the plight of MEK enlisted the support of a number of pro-Israel figures, including Nobel Peace laureate and Holocaust memoirist Elie Wiesel; Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz; and Irwin Cotler, the former Canadian justice minister." The original sentence has been clarified to reflect this report.

By Glenn Greenwald

September 24, 2012 0 comments

Mujahedin Khalq; A proxy force

When is a terrorist no longer a terrorist?

Question: When is a terrorist a terrorist?
Answer: When the US government says so.

When the Mujhadeen in Afghanistan were assassinating members of their government and the Russian troops dispatched to support it, they were, in Washington’s view, freedom fighters, even as their enemies branded them terrorists.

When they turned against an Afghan government imposed by the United States or revolted against a US invasion, they were once again branded terrorists.

When armed groups battling Gadaffy’s govermment were supported by NATO, they were called freedom fighters. When some recently and allegedly turned violently against the United States which is now dominating Libyan politics, they are once again castigated as terrorists.

And now, the United States Government through a decision by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has decided that the Iranian group Mujahedeen Khalq, or People’s Mujahedeen, that had been on the US State Department’s terrorist list for years, ha now been taken off the list.

That means they will no longer face financial and legal sanctions.

One day they were feared terrorists, the next day they were not. The "bad guys" became "good guys" with the swipe of a pen.

The New York Times says this feat was accomplished through what it describes as an "extraordinary" lobbying effort costing millions over many years.

Reports the Times: "The group, known as the M.E.K., carried out terrorist attacks in the 1970s and 1980s, first against the government of the Shah of Iran and later against the clerical rulers who overthrew him. Several Americans were among those killed. In the 1980s, it allied with Saddam Hussein, who permitted it to operate from Camp Ashraf.

But by most accounts, the M.E.K. has not carried out violent attacks for many years. While it is described by some critics as cult-like and unpopular with Iranians both inside and outside the country, the group has been able to gather large crowds at rallies in the United States and Europe to press its bid to reverse the United States’ terrorist designation, imposed in 1997."

The decision comes just before an October 1 cut off date ordered by a Federal appeals court

US News explains: "As recently as 2007, a State Department report warned that the M.E.K., retains "the capacity and will" to attack "Europe, the Middle East, the United States, Canada, and beyond.

The M.E.K., which calls for an overthrow of the Iranian government and is considered by many Iranians to be a cult, once fought for Saddam Hussein and in the 1970s was responsible for bombings, attempted plane hijackings, and political assassinations. It was listed as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997.

If the State Department does decide to delist M.E.K., whose name means "People’s Holy Warriors of Iran," it will be with the blessing of dozens of congressmen."

No less than 99 members of Congress–Democrats and Republican alike–signed to a Congressional resolution to take the "holy warriors" off the list.

Just last week at a rally in Paris, none other than former House speaker and hyper conservative Republican presidential candidate New Gingrich, now scurrying to pay off his campaign debts, was caught on camera bowing to the French based movement’s leader Maryam Rajavi.

Top lobbying firms have been paid high fees for rounding up support for M.E.K

US News explains: "Victoria Toensing of DiGenova & Toensing, a lobbying shop famous for its involvement in the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal, was paid $110,000 in 2011 to lobby for the resolution. The firm Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld dedicated five lobbyists to getting signatures for the resolution, and was paid $100,000 in 2012 and $290,000 in 2011 to do so. Paul Marcone and Association similarly lobbied for the resolution, and received $5,000 in 2010 and $5,000 in 2011 for its efforts."

Glenn Greenwald has reported on Salon, "That close association on the part of numerous Washington officials with a Terrorist organization has led to a formal federal investigation of those officials,,,, paid MEK shill Howard Dean (a former Democratic liberal presidential candiate) 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."

The Pro-publica not for profit media organization has also revealed that a very prominent liberal journalist known for his Watergate reporting was paid to speak up for M.E.K

"On a Saturday afternoon last February, journalist Carl Bernstein got up on stage at the grand ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan and delivered a speech questioning the listing of an obscure Iranian group called the Mujahadin-e Khalq (MEK) on the U.S. government list of officially designated foreign terrorist organizations.

The speech, before a crowd an organizer put at 1,500, made Bernstein one of the few journalists who has appeared at events in a years-long campaign by MEK supporters to free the group from the official terrorist label and the legal sanctions that come with it. He told ProPublica that he was paid $12,000 for the appearance but that, "I was not there as an advocate."

Bernstein told the crowd that, "I come here as an advocate of the best obtainable version of the truth" and as "someone who believes in basic human rights and their inalienable status." He also challenged the State Department, saying that if the agency "has evidence that the MEK is a terrorist organization, have a show-cause hearing in court, let them prove it."

Listening to the talk was a bi-partisan group of prominent pols including ex-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former congressman Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, and former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.

This is a line up that is hard to rent, much less buy, but M.E.K and its well connected lobbyists have shown how money makes things happen in Washington.

It shows how porous is the terrorism issue too. It is subject to changes in political fashions, and how little the media knows or remembers and how open it is to being influenced by insiders, especially when there’s money to be paid for a few hours work.

It also shows the politics of provocation in action, part of a larger strategy of escalating tensions. The tactics range from sending a naval armada to menace Iran, perhaps in hopes of staging a contemporary "Tokin Gulf" incident in which any Iranian defensive maneuver –or attack by "militants" could be projected as an act of aggression justifying air strikes and drone attacks.

Even the decision to refuse visas to Iranians coming to a UN meeting seems part of the same strategy designed to show critics in Israel, and Republicans that the US is ready to get tough.
The delisting of an Iranian terror group fits right in to an approach that could lead to a "October Surprise" designed to get voters to rally behind the flag and their Commander in Chief.

By Danny Schechter

September 24, 2012 0 comments

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