In November 2011 a large group of interested people met in Baghdad to discuss the seemingly intractable problem of how to dismantle the Mohjahedin-e Khalq foreign terrorist group and remove the members from the country. At the behest of families of the individuals trapped inside Camp Ashraf, the GOI agreed to proceed in a way that would avoid violent confrontation. Iraq’s Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari announced later, “We will refuse them the satisfaction of becoming martyrs on our soil”. The Governor of Diyala, the military head of Diyala province and other authorities all went the extra mile to prevent the MEK from killing more hostages and blaming the Iraqis for it.
Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the UN which would allow more time and give oversight of the eviction process to the UN and to representatives of the EU and US.
The Iraqis have kept their side of bargain – the deadline for the MEK’s departure was extended and negotiations were facilitated to persuade the MEK to cooperate in a move from Camp Ashraf to Camp Liberty where the UNHCR would be able to assess each individual for refugee status. (Remember that no external body, including the GOI, has been able to freely access the inside of Camp Ashraf since the fall of Saddam Hussein.) The first 800 individuals have now moved and another 800 are lined up to move over the next few days in two groups of 400. The MEK leader has not been able to exploit the situation and kill any hostages. The GOI has control of the situation.
UNAMI has been rigorous in its supervision of the move and, by enforcing its own rules and regulations has not allowed propaganda to overshadow activities at either camp. Facilities at the new camp were approved by UN inspectors, the ICRC has been involved and behind the scene EU and US special advisors have been keeping a watchful eye on events. The MEK has ‘character assassinated’ UNAMI and its officials, and others, in the media but UNAMI has not been diverted by the efforts of the MEK and their backers.
But one pernicious factor which has actively impeded proper progress in this task has been the support given to the MEK by Israelis and US Neoconservatives whose clear intent is to politicise what is essentially a humanitarian situation. The MEK is a well-honed tool in the hands of these ideologues and is used to incite hatred against Iran and Iraq among ignorant and lazy political communities. The MEK is far too valuable for them to allow it to disappear. Most recently, the MEK has been used by Mossad to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists.
This being so will make it even more difficult for UNAMI to transfer them to third countries. This ruthless use of the MEK as a mercenary terrorist force has a direct impact on the situation of the hostages trapped in the camp; their future becomes all the more uncertain.
But then, it has been all along, the clear intention of the MEK’s paymasters to keep the MEK intact as a terrorist entity in Iraq, in total disregard for the human beings involved.
If it wasn’t because of the backing of Israel and the Neoconservatives, Rajavi would have had no choice but to open the doors of his closed totalitarian group and allow the individuals trapped inside to walk free. That is the aim of everyone on the ground working to resolve the situation in Iraq. In this respect it is no less the responsibility of the US Government to work with the international community to dismantle this terrorist group and rescue the hostages.
But while the rest of the world is genuinely working toward a peaceful end to the camp and the release and resettlement of the hostages, it appears Secretary of State Clinton is somewhat ambiguous in her dealing with the situation.
Based on a legal ruling, Clinton must make a decision by the end of March whether the State Department remove the MEK from its terrorism list or not. Presenting this as leverage she has introduced a unilateral condition to the MEK’s removal from Iraq; if the MEK cooperate with UNAMI and the Government of Iraq, she has indicated, we will remove them from the US terrorism list. But cooperation with UNAMI is a legal obligation rather than an optional choice for the MEK. So what is really behind this position?
On the surface this would appear as though the USG is prepared to do a political deal to get the MEK to leave Iraq (and in doing so gain credit with the Iraqi government). It is as though the MEK were a far distant uncontrollable threat to US security which needs careful handling to bring it under control before dismantling it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Everything that the MEK’s western owners can do is being done to help the MEK’s leader keep the doors to the camp closed, to keep the hostages inside and to deny them contact with their families – even though this is against all humanitarian, moral or indeed criminal law.
By talking about the terrorism list rather than talking about what is happening in Iraq Clinton is bowing to this pressure. Certainly if UNAMI is allowed to do its job properly – with the support of all the international community – there will not be an organisation left to be listed or not listed. By invoking the US terrorism list, the actual script appears to be whether the MEK can be more useful listed as terrorists or if they are not regarded as terrorists. This false choice disguises the real intent of its proponents which is to keep the group intact as a terrorist group so it can be rearmed and used.
Secretary Clinton, indeed the whole government of America, needs to unhitch the politically charged consideration of the MEK’s inclusion in the US terrorism list from the very real humanitarian situation in Iraq. If the USG’s intention is really to deal properly with this terrorist group, it should reassert the humanitarian focus of American policy toward the MEK and unequivocally support the dismantlement process in Iraq.
GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s foreign policy team claimed last month that they’ve been working hard at brining the former Massachusetts governor up to speed on global affairs. 
But his ignorance about what has become a lightening rod issue among the foreign policy community raises questions about their work.
As of December, as shown in a YouTube video that has eluded widespread attention, Mitt Romney claimed to not know anything about the Mojahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), a controversial, exiled Iranian group listed by the State Department as a “foreign terrorist organization.” Asked during a campaign appearance about the group, Romney said he’d never heard of the group and asked what they were. Told of the MEK’s status, Romney asked indignantly, “Why would you think that I support a — you said it’s a terrorist group?”
As the questioner informed Romney, one of Romney’s foreign policy advisers — former Ambassador Mitchell Reiss — has been active in the very public, well-financed campaign to get the MEK off the terror list. Romney then replied:
I’ll take a look at the issue. I’m not familiar with that particular group, or that effort on the part of any of my team.
It might seem like a small and obscure issue, but the MEK has attracted much attention, including paid speeches by top American politicians and former officials here and in Europe, and multiple full-page newspaper adverts. Another Romney backer, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, has advocated forcefully on behalf of the MEK. More recently, NBC News did a long report on the group’s ties to terror activity in Iran. And the Treasury Department recently announced that it is investigating payments to prominent former American government officials to speak in support of the MEK.
Beyond the public attention, the Romney campaign has been engaged in the MEK issue well before his professed ignorance in December. Romney may not have been aware of it, but Reiss’s advocacy for the MEK was used by neoconservatives in the Romney camp to marginalize Reiss.
In a November GOP debate, Romney spoke of using Iranian “insurgent” groups. (The MEK is by far the best organized militant group opposed to the Islamic Republic.) The remark prompted the conservative Daily Caller website to make a number of inquiries to the campaign that went unanswered, and wrote that the campaign wouldn’t “clarify whether he was referring to the MEK, and what his position is on the organization.”
Now that three months have passed, Romney should make clear his grasp of MEK issues — which involve not only matters of Iran and Iraq policy, but also issues of terrorism — and stake out a position on the group. (HT: Matt Duss)
By Ali Gharib
Give Ed Rendell a break.
Yes, the Treasury Department is investigating the speaking fees received by the former Pennsylvania governor on behalf of an Iranian exile group that’s on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations. Rendell told the New York Times he had received about $150,000 for seven or eight speeches that called for taking the Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MEK, off the list (even though he clearly knew little about the 
organization).
But why is Treasury targeting only Rendell? There’s an astonishing list of high-level former officials – from both parties – who’ve embraced the MEK cause, for which they’ve collected big bucks, along with trips to pro-MEK conferences in Brussels, London, Berlin, and Paris.
And why have so many prominent men linked their names to an outfit with such a shady, and cultish, reputation – a group that has killed Americans and done dirty work for Saddam Hussein?
The MEK is lobbying hard for the State Department to take it off the terrorist list. (A decision is supposed to be made by the end of March.) It has won support, on the Democratic side, from former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, former U.S. Sen. Robert Torricelli, and retired Gen. James Jones, President Obama’s first national security adviser. And of course, Rendell.
As for Republicans, boosters include former CIA Directors James Woolsey (a big backer of the Iraq war) and Porter J. Goss; former FBI Director Louis Freeh; former Attorney General Michael Mukasey; former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani; and President George W. Bush’s first homeland security chief, former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge. Never mind that Bush renewed the MEK’s terrorist designation four times.
Add to the list a number of retired generals, along with John Bolton, foreign-policy adviser to Newt Gingrich, and Mitchell Reiss, who advises Mitt Romney.
What were they all thinking?
Maybe it was the money. Or perhaps they were conned by an incredible MEK lobbying effort carried out through a series of front groups. That effort lavished money on prime-time TV, and full-page newspaper ads, which portray the MEK as a democratic group leading the fight for Iran regime change.
Apparently none of these pooh-bahs ever asked about the source of their honoraria. "Nobody has ever been able to figure out where the money comes from," says Iran expert Barbara Slavin, the Washington correspondent for al-Monitor.com, a new website on the Mideast. Rumors abound that funds come from Gulf countries opposed to Iran, or from Israel, which reportedly has close contacts with the MEK, or from Iranian exiles.
Nor do MEK boosters appear to have researched the group’s violent history, which should have been well-known to many of them.
The group began as a Marxist-Islamist group supporting Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei; it killed six Americans in the 1970s. In the 1980s, having broken with the Tehran regime, it sought refuge in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The Iraqi leader used MEK forces to attack Iran in a brutal war that lasted a decade, and to kill rebellious Kurds and Shiites.
For that reason, the MEK is despised inside Iraq, where U.S. officials are trying to resettle 2,800 remaining MEK fighters. The Iraqis want to evict them from their base at Camp Ashraf.
More critically, the group is also despised inside Iran. "In the eyes of the Iranians, they embedded with the enemy. They were traitors," says Iran expert Vali Nasr. They are regarded likewise across the Iranian political spectrum. The idea that the group has vast support inside Iran is simply untrue.
When Ridge labeled the MEK the "most effective opposition movement" of the Iranian people, he was talking nonsense, a sad commentary on what he didn’t learn as homeland security chief. Moreover, the MEK reportedly operates like a cult, forcing members into celibacy and exacting total obedience to the MEK’s leader, the Paris-based Maryam Rajavi.
All that may not matter to some MEK boosters, like Giuliani. He recently declared on Fox News that the MEK should be named Time Magazine "person of the year." His reason: According to an NBC-News report, the group was trained by Israel’s Mossad to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists. The MEK was also reportedly used by Israel to leak intelligence about a secret Iranian nuclear facility.
What Giuliani and other advocates ignore is that – whatever the MEK’s role in covert activities – the group does not have the support of the Iranian people. Delisting it may permit it to lobby more openly for support from gullible backers. It may help those who are seeking an exile group to tout as the vehicle for Iran regime change. (Does no one remember the saga of the Pentagon’s favorite Iraqi exile, Ahmed Chalabi?)
But delisting the MEK won’t help pro-democracy forces in Tehran. Nor will it help curb Iran’s nuclear program.
Ed Rendell should have known better than to support this group of exiles. But so should a lot of former U.S. officials with far less excuse for being so blind.
Trudy Rubin, Philly.com
Speaking firms representing ex-FBI Director Louis Freeh and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Hugh Shelton have received federal subpoenas as part of an expanding 
investigation into the source of payments to former top government officials who have publicly advocated removing an Iranian dissident group from the State Department list of terrorist groups, three sources familiar with the investigation told NBC News.
The investigation, being conducted by the Treasury Department, is focused on whether the former officials may have received funding, directly or indirectly, from the People’s Mujahedin of 
Iran, or MEK, thereby violating longstanding federal law barring financial dealings with terrorist groups. The sources, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity, said that speaking fees given to the former officials total hundreds of thousands of dollars.
"This is about finding out where the money is coming from," an Obama administration official familiar with the probe said. "This has been a source of enormous concern for a long time now. You have to ask the question, whether this is a prima facie case of material support for terrorism."
Freeh and Shelton are among 40 former senior U.S. government officials who have participated in a public lobbying campaign – including appearing at overseas conferences and speaking at public rallies – aimed at persuading the U.S. government to remove the MEK from the terror list.
First-class flights
Many of the speakers have received fees of about $30,000 or more per talk and first-class flights to European capitals, according to two sources familiar with the arrangements.
Edward Rendell, a former Pennsylvania governor and ex-Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, whose speaking firm also received a subpoena, has received $160,000 over the past year for appearing at about seven conferences and rallies, including some in Paris, Brussels and Geneva, according to his office. (Rendell is a contributor to MSNBC TV.)
The former officials have said they were told the fees came from wealthy American and foreign supporters of the MEK, not the group itself — and they resent any suggestion they are abetting a terrorist group.
"We’re all pretty miffed," Shelton told NBC News. "None of us involved in this would say a good word about anyone suspected of being a terrorist." But Shelton said that he’s "pretty passionate" that the MEK represents a legitimate resistance group fighting to overthrow "America’s number one enemy" — the Iranian government.
In a statement Friday, Hossein Abedini, a spokesman for the MEK,also denied the group has ever “paid senior former U.S. officials or any other dignitary in the U.S.”
“This is an utter lie and there is not even a scintilla of truth to it,” Abedini said. “The MEK, as the legitimate opposition to the clerical regime, enjoys international recognition in Europe and the U.S. The objective of this failed propaganda is to weaken the widespread public support of the members of Congress, officials and scores of U.S. generals for … revoking of the illegitimate and unjust terror listing of the MEK.”
Shelton said that he was informed by Keppler Speakers, the agency that handles his speaking engagements, that it had been subpoenaed for records of talks he has given over the past year at conferences and rallies sponsored by the MEK. He said Freeh told him that Greater Talent Network, the firm that handles the former FBI director’s speaking engagements, also received a subpoena.
Freeh did not respond to requests for comment. (A Keppler executive also did not respond. Reached by phone, Tom Marcosson, an executive vice president of Greater Talent, declined to comment.)
But Rendell told NBC News that he received an email this week from Freeh’s office alerting him and more than three dozen other former senior officials that subpoenas were being issued by the Treasury Department Office of Foreign Assets Control. The email asked that the former senior officials contact Freeh and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey. Freeh and Mukasey, who have been among the leaders in the campaign to "delist" the MEK, are hiring a lawyer to represent all former senior officials caught up in the investigation, the email from Freeh’s office said, according to Rendell.
John Sullivan, a spokesman for the Treasury Department, said the department does not comment on "potential" investigations. But he added in an email: "The MEK is a designated terrorist group, therefore U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with or providing services to this group. The Treasury Department takes sanctions enforcement seriously and routinely investigates potential violations of sanctions law."
It is unclear how far Treasury Department officials intend to push the probe — or why they chose to launch it now, more than a year after the lobbying campaign began. But NBC News has obtained one possible clue: A small Pennsylvania-based speakers firm called Speakers Access wrote an email in September inviting a Washington based national security expert to speak at a conference in Geneva, Switzerland "on behalf of our client, National Council of Resistance of Iran, Foreign Affairs Committee." The National Council of Resistance is considered by the Treasury Department to be one of the "aliases" of the MEK and is itself designated as a terror group.
‘Mistake’
The email was later turned over to the FBI and other U.S. officials. The Speakers Access executive who wrote the email, who asked not to be identified, said the email was a "mistake" and that the client was actually another organization — "the Committee for Human Rights in Iran," which is not on the terror list but which has the same contact in Paris as the National Council of Resistance of Iran.
The executive said Speakers Access has since ceased any dealings with either group and turned over all its records on the matter after receiving a Treasury Department subpoena months ago.
The investigation comes at a time of intense internal debate about the MEK, in part spurred by assertions it could prove a useful ally in pressuring the Iranian government to suspend its nuclear program. NBC News reported recently that MEK operatives, trained by the Israeli Mossad, are believed by some U.S. intelligence officials to have been involved in the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists — a report that the group has denied as "absolutely false."
Israel teams with terror group to kill Iran’s nuclear scientists, U.S. officials say
U.S. officials say that the MEK has a long history of terrorist acts, including bombings and assassinations, against Iranian leaders during the 1980s and that at least six Americans died in such attacks. The group — which was once allied with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein — is also viewed warily because of the slavish devotion of its followers to its Paris based leader, Maryan Rajavi.
"The MEK has a crazy edge to it," said Michael Leiter, former director of the National Counter-Terrorism Center and an NBC News consultant. "It always struck me as a cult as much as a terrorist group."
But the group’s supporters say it has long since publicly renounced violence and that Rajavi has proclaimed the group’s adherence to democratic principles. "They want the mullahs out of Iran and they want to replace them with a constitution based on the Declaration of Independence," said Shelton.
The group has also generated sympathy over the plight of its followers at Camp Ashraf, a paramilitary camp on the Iran-Iraq border, where they have been detained – and until recently protected – by the U.S military since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. U.S. officials have been seeking the group’s cooperation to resettle the estimated 2,500 remaining MEK members at Camp Ashraf to a new facility near the Baghdad airport, where they can be processed by the United Nations as refugees and resettled elsewhere.
But the process has stalled – in part over disputes about the conditions of transfer – and MEK advocates say they fear the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, at Iran’s urging, may move in to slaughter the group’s members. "This could be a humanitarian disaster," said Rendell.
Rendell said that there have been weekly conference calls among a "core group" of former U.S. senior officials participating in the lobbying campaign, organized by Freeh, to talk about ways to prod the State Department to remove the MEK from the terror list and protect its followers at Camp Ashraf. He identified this group as including former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, former Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean and Mukasey — all of whom have publicly spoken out on behalf of the MEK and spoken at its rallies.
Officials act as middle men
These weekly conference calls have also turned into back channel negotiations over the Camp Ashraf issue. In recent weeks, Rendell said, State Department Ambassador Daniel Fried, the special envoy for detainee issues, has joined the phone calls, urging the pro-MEK "core" members to pass along messages to MEK leaders in Paris, Rendell said.
"The core group talks to Freeh every week," he said. "It’s Ridge, myself, Dean, Freeh, Mukasey. Shelton has joined us on occasion. … We were the ones that Fried asked to communicate with the MEK, telling them, ‘This is the best deal you’re going to get.’ He will say, ‘Listen, you guys have to persuade the MEK to do this. Tell them, OK, tell Paris, they have to persuade the people to get on the buses (at Camp Ashraf.) We then communicate [with the MEK]."
Fried declined comment. But a senior State Department official confirmed his participation in the calls as a means of communicating with MEK leaders in Paris — something U.S. officials are barred from doing — in order to work out a "peaceful" resolution over the conflict over Camp Ashraf.
Rendell said that he and other members of the core group have met with Rajavi in Paris and sent emails to her chief deputy, Farzin Hashemi, passing along Fried’s messages. "The bottom line is, we all believe we are protecting people," he said.
But the bottom line for some U.S. officials is that the former government officials participating in the pro-MEK campaign are being paid handsomely for promoting a dubious cause sponsored by an officially designated terrorist group. Despite the public lobbying campaign, there is still deep suspicion about the MEK and its motives — and concerns that once its members leave Camp Ashraf, many of its followers will return to terrorism, said one senior official speaking on condition of anonymity.
"It’s extraordinary that so many distinguished public servants would shill for a group that has American blood on its hands," the official said.
By Michael Isikoff , National investigative correspondent
The foreign policy and national security challenges posed by Iran have perplexed consecutive U.S. presidential administrations for decades. From the hostage crisis to state sponsorship of 
terrorism to nuclear programs, the myriad challenges have rarely provided any easy answers. One of the few clear issues pertaining to America’s Iran policy has been its designation of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) as a terrorist organization.
For nearly two decades and four presidential administrations, yearly reviews of the MEK’s terrorist designation have reconfirmed its rightful place on this dubious list of 50 unsavory groups — most recently in January of this year.
Despite this, a massive lobbying push to delist the MEK has been raging inside the beltway for the past year, producing two troubling results. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told U.S. lawmakers that a decision on the MEK’s terrorist designation is pending in part to see if the group peacefully relocates to a new, less contentious location in Iraq. Shortly thereafter, the Washington, D.C. court of appeals ordered the U.S. government to respond to a petition on the MEK’s terrorist designation by March 26 — less than two weeks from today.
My organization, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), has been at the forefront of a diverse, uncompensated coalition of former government officials, analysts and scholars calling for the MEK to remain a designated foreign terrorist organization.
To date, I have personally remained silent on the issue in my public commentary in an effort to protect my former colleagues serving in the State Department’s Office of Iranian Affairs. My views are identical to theirs.
However, I can no longer remain silent. We are fast approaching a point of no return regarding the MEK’s terrorist designation, and my government is running the risk of making a disastrous mistake.
Allow me to explain.
Not one of my former State Department colleagues — zero — support de-listing the MEK. Their determination is not based on personal preference or policy ramifications. Rather, the facts of the case are indisputable.
Since NIAC launched its information campaign on the MEK nearly one year ago, I have been in close and continuing contact with the State Department. They are bewildered by the freedom of movement that a designated terrorist organization enjoys on Capitol Hill; disgusted by former U.S. government officials willing to make a quick buck by shilling for the MEK; and exasperated by senior-level political appointees who have allowed partisan politics to trump making an otherwise obvious decision that was not controversial a few short years ago.
A bit of context tells the real story.
In both 2006 and 2007, I helped review the MEK’s terrorist designation. I worked with my colleagues in government to review documentation dating from the 1970s to the present, and it was swiftly determined that the MEK’s terrorist designation remained warranted. This was during the Bush administration — which had an openly stated policy of regime change — and before neoconservative political appointees began jumping ship en masse toward late 2007.
The facts were so indisputable that nearly zero debate took place inside the State Department. Only a few neoconservatives pushed to use the MEK as a pressure point against the Iranian government. Yet despite their countless Iran policy blunders, most neoconservatives in the Bush administration were unequivocal that a terrorist group is a terrorist group.
When presidential administrations change, political appointees cycle in and out of government. Career public servants — which constitute the vast majority of State Department officials — transcend elections. Many of the same officials I worked with to reconfirm the MEK’s terrorist designation in 2006 and 2007 continue to serve in the Obama administration. The same evidence also remains in place.
If anything, the U.S. government now has more evidence to warrant a swift confirmation of the MEK’s terrorist designation. Obama administration officials recently confirmed to NBC News that the MEK is being armed, trained and funded by the Israeli government to murder Iranian scientists. This type of activity — politically motivated assassinations — is squarely within the U.S. government definition of terrorism that is used when designating foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs).
So, why we have reached this critical stage? Because even in the post-September 11th era, there has been lax enforcement of existing laws pertaining to FTOs. An illegal presence on Capitol Hill has allowed the MEK to build a disconcerting degree of political pressure vis-à-vis the Obama administration. Consistent inaction by the administration has exacerbated the problem. Only recently have they started to enforce the law, with former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell subpoenaed by the Treasury Department for his paid speeches in support of the MEK. This is a step in the right direction, and more subpoenas will surely follow — but is it too little too late?
It doesn’t have to be. Let me be clear: The requisite evidence to legally maintain the MEK’s terrorist designation is both ample and indisputable.
As one of the appeals court judges wrote in her ruling, "the classified portion of the administrative record provides "substantial support" for [the Secretary of State’s] determination that the PMOI [MEK] either continues to engage in terrorism or terrorist activity or retains the capability and intent to do so."
The reasoning why the Obama administration has not publicly released this evidence is simple: releasing such information could compromise and damages sources; hamper future intelligence gathering; and jeopardize legal proceedings against alleged criminals involved in the case. This runs the risk of rendering U.S. national security less effective. A similar justification was used by the Obama administration when it withheld much of its collected evidence in the alleged Iranian government plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Washington.
Secretary Clinton telling lawmakers that a decision on the MEK’s terrorist designation is pending in part to see if the group relocates is tantamount to an admission that the decision has nothing to do with whether or not the MEK is a terrorist organization. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
Simply put, it is unacceptable to delist a designated FTO in return for them agreeing to relocate. So long as the MEK’s organizational structure remains in place, it legally remains a terrorist organization — regardless of where its base is located. Furthermore, the precedent set by such a mistake would be an unmitigated disaster for the U.S. Does America want to open the door for other terrorist organizations to spend millions of dollars on lobbying to get off the terrorist list?
It’s time for the Obama administration to stop playing politics and start enforcing the law. Secretary Clinton and other senior-level officials may not hold their positions one year from now, but many of my former colleagues at the State Department will be left to clean up the mess. Political appointees and Congress must stop politicizing the MEK’s terrorist designation, and instead let career public servants do their job. This is how they can best uphold the law in pursuit of America’s national security interests.
Reza Marashi is director of research at the National Iranian American Council and a former Iran desk officer at the U.S. State Department.
By Reza Marashi
Allegations come as international community is working to remove group from secret Iraqi hideout
Former chairman, joint chiefs of staff General Hugh Shelton attends the Symposium to mark the 
33rd Anniversary of the Iranian Revolution at The Waldorf-Astoria on February 11, 2012.
Among those caught in the investigation of about 40 people and subpoenaed by the Treasury Department are former FBI Director Louis Freeh and the former Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Hugh Shelton, the sources said.
The investigation is looking into whether the former officials received hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees from the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, or MEK, which would violate federal law which bars financial transactions with groups on the State Department’s list.
When asked about the allegations, Shelton told NBC that he and the other officials were "pretty miffed."
"None of us involved in this would say a good word about anyone suspected of being a terrorist," he said
He added that he supports MEK though, which he told NBC is a legitimate resistance group fighting to overthrow the government in Iran, a country he referred to as "America’s number one enemy".
But the group, which found itself on the State Department’s list after allegedly killing six Americans in the 1970s, carried out a series of bombings and assassinations against the Iranian regime in the 1980s and was also a big supporter of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. After Hussein’s death, they were accused of being a thorn in the side of Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government as they tried to mend ties with Iran.
Sources told NBC that former government officials received fees of more than $30,000 a talk and were flown first class to Europe. The officials claimed that they were told the fees came from wealthy Americans or foreign supporters of the group — but not the group itself.
Many of the speaking arrangements were made through speaking booking firms, according to the report.
"This is about finding out where the money is coming from," an Obama administration official familiar with the probe said. "This has been a source of enormous concern for a long time now. You have to ask the question, whether this is a prima facie case of material support for terrorism."
Though the MEK has lobbied for years to get off of the State Department’s list, experts say they were too dependent on the whims of their Paris-based leadership and are known to change strategies, motives and endgames without warning.
There’s no guarantee, experts warned NBC, that they won’t return to terrorism without warning.
"It’s extraordinary that so many distinguished public servants would shill for a group that has American blood on its hands," one senior official told the network.
The subpoenas come only days after Foreign Policy magazine reported that the multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign on behalf of (and paid for by) the MEK has hurt an international effort to move the group from a secretive hideout on the Iraqi-Iranian border to a new home — to avoid a bloody clash with the Iraqi military.
The Iraqi military has entered the hideout two times before, resulting in bloody clashes.
The U.N. and State Department’s efforts have been made increasingly difficult as a result of the advocates, FP reported.
“This is hard enough without paid advocates making it worse,” one official told the magazine
Nina Mandell, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Policy of spending lavish money for organizational achievements is a top priority within MKO
The gravy train on which some prominent Americans rode seems to be perforce halted in an 
outstation. The US Treasury Department appears to have begun an inquiry to see whether the speaking fees paid by Mojahedin Khalq Organization MKO to its American advocates who have spoken on its behalf are illegal. In an earlier report by The Washington Times, Edward G. Rendell, the former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania and an outspoken supporter of MKO, has been subpoenaed by the Treasury Department. He is asked to turn over information on his relationship with the designated terrorist group. Of course, Mr. Rendell is only one among the long list of former officials, including former directors of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and many more, who have accepted fees to speak on behalf of MKO in Paris and Geneva as well as appearing in online videos and participating in arranged rallies. Mr. Rendell asserts that he has been paid between $150,000 to $160,000 for seven or eight speeches in support of MKO and calling for its removal from the terrorist list.
And it is not the first and will not be the last time that the media expose such scandals and it did not come as a shock for many of those who are privy to the ploys and crafts of the terrorist group. But the importance lays in the fact that it is the first time the Treasury Department reacts and summons an advocate to probe into the case.
For years, the conferences held in European countries as well as expensive newspaper and television advertisements have been organized by MKO’s alias and advocacy groups in the United States, one of which to name is the Iranian-American Community of Northern California. MKO has set a big table of dollars for anyone who cannot resist easy money in exchange to scarify his/er reputation and only to voice the words dictated to him. The spell of the received money and luxurious, expenses-paid trips being broken, few of these loyalists and backers seem to have faith in the nonsenses they publicized and then begin to look for justification of advocacy for the group. In a voice mail message left with the Inquirer Mr. Rendell stated: “I got involved because they asked me. I did extensive research and I looked at the other people who were involved and they were generals and former elected officials. I had great confidence in them”. By these words, one might doubt the legitimacy and efficiency of these personalities in holding sensitive past government posts and policy makings.
The truth many are unconscious is that MKO is an excellent master of crafting slogans to win the hearts of pro-democratic politicians, parliamentarians and activists. It fills their minds with buzzwords like “liberty”, “human rights”, “democracy” “women” and the like to convince them that it is struggling to advocate democracy for Iran and Iranian people. And of course, few of these bipartisan are acquainted with or have accurately studied about its past terrorist careers, crimes and atrocities not only against Iranian people but also against Americans in Pahlavi’s reign and the Iraqi people in Saddam’s dictatorial era.
Frankly speaking, the policy of spending lavish money for organizational achievements is an adopted top priority within MKO and all ranking commanders are fully briefed on the issue. Once in 2007 Mehdi Abrishamchi, Maryam Rajavi’s ex-husband, in a direct TV program stated that “let me tell you frankly that so far as it concerns us [MKO], we never let any of the organization’s political projects come to a halt for financial restrictions”. The dilemma MKO is facing at the time being for sure requires great expenses to designate quota of jobs to be done and words to be voiced by the high-profile European and American supporters. And the offered Euros and dollars are so beguiling that hardly any of them dare to resist.
Sattar Orangi, Mojahedin.ws, March 16, 2012
http://www.mojahedin.ws/en/?p=15829
The Obama administration and top former officials are reportedly violating federal law by offering support to the Iranian Mujahedin-e Khalq , a notorious Islamic-Communist terror group that has 
murdered senior American personnel and is officially designated a “foreign terrorist organization” by the U.S. State Department.
The U.S. government is, among other support measures, currently helping to relocate members of the MEK to a former American military base in Iraq. It is also assisting the group to settle around the world as refugees in a controversial deal brokered with help from the new Iraqi regime and the United Nations.
Outraged critics called the administration’s support for the terrorist group an act of “high treason” and “overt criminality.” But paid lobbyists, including politicians and top U.S. officials, have been waging an intense propaganda campaign on behalf of the MEK.
Incredibly, the organization’s supporters claim the transfer of MEK members to the former American base is unacceptable. The terror group’s leadership and its allies are demanding that members either be allowed to stay where they are or be relocated near the Jordanian border instead.
Several thousand members of the group had been living for decades near the Iranian border in Iraq’s “Camp Ashraf,” which analysts and officials have described as a militarized "cult" compound. And from 2003 until recently, the terror group was there under the protection of American forces.
The protection agreement with the U.S. government came after the group lost its former protector, Saddam Hussein, in the wake of the American invasion. Now, however, U.S. forces are officially out of Iraq and the new regime is supposed to be in charge.
Iraqi officials have recently tried — unsuccessfully — to evict the terror organization’s members from the camp. The efforts resulted in bloodshed, according to news reports. But the process of moving them finally began last month and is now well underway.
In an alleged bid to avoid further confrontations between the terror group and the new regime ruling Iraq, months of negotiations between the UN and American and Iraqi officials resulted in a plan to transfer the MEK members temporarily to “Camp Liberty,”[TTL] a former U.S. military base near Baghdad.
The terror group and its prominent American lobbyists, however, are crying foul, describing the former American installation — which was certified by the UN — as a sort of “substandard” prison. And an international controversy of sorts about the issue is growing.
The MEK, also known as the People’s Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI), was founded in a bizarre effort to blend economic Marxism with the values and beliefs of Islam — and impose the system by force. The group also helped Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini during the Islamic revolution that overthrew the U.S. government-backed Shah of Iran. But the warm relations soured soon after that.
America and capitalism have historically been the organization’s primary enemies. Violence and terror, meanwhile, were the means used to wage war. But after a series of terror attacks within Iran left top officials and hundreds of others dead, the Iranian regime unleashed a crackdown — attempting to dismantle the terrorist network once and for all.
The MEK was eventually designated a foreign terrorist organization in 1997 under the Clinton administration. But in recent years, the terror group has toned down its anti-American rhetoric and adopted a friendlier public-relations approach — spending millions of dollars on lobbyists and even dabbling in politics. Supporters hope to have the U.S. terror designation dropped eventually.
The group’s history, however, includes assassinations of more than a few senior U.S. military personnel, terror attacks on American installations, murder of civilians, and much more. Iranians and Iraqis have been victimized even more frequently.
The designated terrorist organization once fought alongside Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s forces too, collaborating with the tyrant against the Iranian regime in the Iran-Iraq war. It even helped Hussein to quash domestic dissidents within Iraq as well.
Iraqis and Iranians, of course, remember the MEK’s partnership with the former despot in suppressing uprisings by rebel groups and slaughtering Iranians. And the bitter memories have led to growing hostility against the terror group among Iraq’s new rulers.
Since Hussein was overthrown by U.S. forces, the new government in Iraq has also become increasingly close to the Islamic regime in Iran. So, a conflict has erupted over the status of MEK members living inside Iraq as officials demand that Camp Ashraf be permanently shut down.
In recent weeks, convoys comprised of several hundred MEK members each have started arriving at Camp Liberty [Temporary Transit Location] from the group’s previous paramilitary compound near Iran. The second group of about 400 arrived last week. And thousands more are expected in the not-too-distant future.
Meanwhile, U.S. taxpayers are reportedly paying to improve the terror organization’s new temporary residence while the UN works to shuttle them out the country. According to news reports, the MEK members are supposed to be processed at Camp Liberty[TTL] as they await UN-sponsored relocation to other countries as refugees.
But the group’s leaders and their well-paid Western lobbyists have asked for Iraqi law enforcement and security personnel to be expelled from the camp while demanding upgrades to the facilities. And they have found sympathetic supporters around the world.
The Islamo-Marxist terror organization — which much of the press now identifies as a group of “dissidents,” “exiles,” and “refugees” — has especially found favor among advocates of war and regime change in Iran. Numerous reports and experts say the U.S. and Israeli governments have actually been working directly with the group for years, in violation of federal laws, to assassinate Iranian scientists, gather intelligence, and even carry out terror attacks on various targets.
But of course, Obama administration officials would hardly be the first to violate U.S. laws — which the Supreme Court upheld at the government’s request — by supporting the designated terror organization. Top neo-conservatives such as former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and ex-Attorney General Michael Mukasey have been lobbying feverishly on behalf of the group too, along with a broad roster of former politicians and U.S. officials.
Former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, ex-Homeland Security boss Tom Ridge, former FBI chief Louis Freeh, ex-CIA Director Porter Goss, former National Security Advisor Gen. James Jones, former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, and many other prominent Americans have joined the battle to aid the MEK as well. So have officials throughout Europe.
And over the last few months, a strange brouhaha has erupted between the Obama administration and the MEK’s highly placed roster of vocal lobbyists. Instead of focusing on the fact that it is a serious breach of federal law to provide virtually any form of support to a designated terrorist organization, former U.S. officials are alleging — very loudly, even purchasing full page ads in major newspapers — that the federal government is not doing enough to coddle the terrorists.
An article in Foreign Policy, citing an anonymous Obama administration official working on the issue, reported that the terror group is actually trashing Camp Liberty itself in a bid to make conditions appear worse than they are. The official also said the MEK’s high-profile U.S. lobbying activities are making it more difficult — potentially even dangerous — for the Obama administration to properly help the terrorists reach “good solutions.”
“We have a plan that has a chance to work and the Iraqis want it to work,” the administration source was quoted as saying. “Whether the MEK wants a resolution or wants a confrontation is something we’re still debating. It’s that bad."
Apparently investigators with the U.S. Treasury Department’s terror branch have started to probe at least one former official for accepting the terrorist group’s money in exchange for lobbying. Former Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell said recently that he received a subpoena seeking documents related to his ties with the MEK.
A Treasury spokesman refused to either confirm or deny that the department was investigating. “But the MEK is a designated terrorist group, therefore U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with or providing services to this group,” the spokesman was quoted as saying by the Washington Times, which broke the story on March 9.
As part of the covert war on Iran, the U.S. and Israeli governments have reportedly been arming, training, and funding the MEK for years — as well as other known terror groups such as the al-Qaeda affiliate known as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) during the recent “regime change” in Libya. And providing support to a designated foreign terrorist organization remains a serious crime, punishable by steep fines and long prison sentences. Whether anyone will be held accountable, however, remains to be seen.
by Alex Newman , The New American
The People’s Mujahedin of Iran, aka MEK, has long been designated as a terrorist group by the State Department. However, it was removed from the EU’s terrorist list in 2009, and there’s 
considerable controversy over whether MEK should continue to receive that designation from the United States. Today the group claims to be nonviolent and to represent a "parliament-in-exile" opposed to the current Iranian regime.
Nonetheless, it does in fact remain an officially designated terrorist organization in the United States, and providing material support for a designated terrorist group is illegal. As Glenn Greenwald points out today:
In June, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its 6-3 ruling in the case of Holder v. Humanitarian Law. In that case, the Court upheld the Obama DOJ’s very broad interpretation of the statute that criminalizes the providing of “material support” to groups formally designated by the State Department as Terrorist organizations. The five-judge conservative bloc (along with Justice Stevens) held that pure political speech could be permissibly criminalized as “material support for Terrorism” consistent with the First Amendment if the “advocacy [is] performed in coordination with, or at the direction of, a foreign terrorist organization” (emphasis added). In other words, pure political advocacy in support of a designated Terrorist group could be prosecuted as a felony—punishable with 15 years in prison—if the advocacy is coordinated with that group.
You may think this was a bad ruling. But a ruling it is, and it’s the law of the land. And yet, a large cast of worthies, including Rudy Giuliani, Howard Dean, Michael Mukasey, Ed Rendell, Andy Card, Lee Hamilton, Tom Ridge, Bill Richardson, Wesley Clark, Michael Hayden, John Bolton, Louis Freeh, and Fran Townsend have actively lobbied for MEK and have apparently done it in coordination with MEK’s leadership.
So shouldn’t this be against the law? Glenn, in particular, calls out Townsend, former Homeland Security Advisor under George Bush, who was a vocal supporter of the Humanitarian Law ruling. She actively supports MEK, yet appears to be under no threat of prosecution from the Obama Justice Department. Glenn again:
An NBC News report from Richard Engel and Robert Windrem in February claimed that it was MEK which perpetrated the string of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists, and that the Terrorist group “is financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service” (MEK denied the report).
….Even the dissenters in Humanitarian Law argued that the First Amendment would allow “material support” prosecution “when the defendant knows or intends that those activities will assist the organization’s unlawful terrorist actions.” A reasonable argument could certainly be advanced that, in light of these recent reports about MEK’s Terrorism, one who takes money from the group and then advocates for its removal from the Terrorist list “knows or intends that those activities will assist the organization’s unlawful terrorist actions”: a prosecutable offense even under the dissent’s far more limited view of the statute.
Discuss! Is support for MEK allowed because (a) their patrons are VIPs, not random Muslim schmoes, (b) MEK’s allegedly lethal activities are aimed at Iran, which everyone thinks is wink-wink-nudge-nudge just fine, or (c) because there’s some legitimate legal issue that distinguishes what Townsend and Rendell are doing from other cases of material support that have been prosecuted in recent years? I’d be genuinely curious to hear the other side of this argument.
By Kevin Drum , Mother Jones
We now have an extraordinary situation that reveals the impunity with which political elites commit the most egregious crimes, as well as the special privileges to which they explicitly 
believe they — and they alone — are entitled. That a large bipartisan cast of Washington officials got caught being paid substantial sums of money by an Iranian dissident group that is legally designated by the U.S. Government as a Terrorist organization, and then meeting with and advocating on behalf of that Terrorist group, is very significant for several reasons. New developments over the last week make it all the more telling. Just behold the truly amazing set of facts that have arisen:
In June, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its 6-3 ruling in the case of Holder v. Humanitarian Law. In that case, the Court upheld the Obama DOJ’s very broad interpretation of the statute that criminalizes the providing of “material support” to groups formally designated by the State Department as Terrorist organizations. The five-judge conservative bloc (along with Justice Stevens) held that pure political speech could be permissibly criminalized as “material support for Terrorism” consistent with the First Amendment if the “advocacy [is] performed in coordination with, or at the direction of, a foreign terrorist organization” (emphasis added). In other words, pure political advocacy in support of a designated Terrorist group could be prosecuted as a felony — punishable with 15 years in prison — if the advocacy is coordinated with that group.
This ruling was one of the most severe erosions of free speech rights in decades because, as Justice Breyer (joined by Ginsberg and Sotomayor) pointed out in dissent, “all the activities” at issue, which the DOJ’s interpretation would criminalize, “involve the communication and advocacy of political ideas and lawful means of achieving political ends.” The dissent added that the DOJ’s broad interpretation of the statute “gravely and without adequate justification injure[s] interests of the kind the First Amendment protects.” As Georgetown Law Professor David Cole, who represented the plaintiffs, explained, this was literally “the first time ever” that “the Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment permits the criminalization of pure speech advocating lawful, nonviolent activity.” Thus, “the court rule[d] that speech advocating only lawful, nonviolent activity can be made a crime, and that any coordination with a blacklisted group can land a citizen in prison for 15 years.” Then-Solicitor-General Elena Kagan argued the winning Obama DOJ position before the Court.
Whatever one’s views are on this ruling, it is now binding law. To advocate on behalf of a designated Terrorist group constitutes the felony of “providing material support” if that advocacy is coordinated with the group.
Like most assaults on the Constitution in the name of Terrorism during the Obama presidency, criticism of that Court decision was rare in establishment circles (that’s because Republicans consistently support such assaults while Democrats are reluctant to criticize them under Obama). On the day the Humanitarian Law decision was released, CNN‘s Wolf Blitzer interviewed Fran Townsend, George Bush’s Homeland Security Advisor and now-CNN analyst, and Townsend hailed the decision as “a tremendous win for not only the United States but for the current administration.” Here’s how that discussion went:
BLITZER: There is a related case involved that the Supreme Court came out with today and I want to talk to you about this. The Supreme Court ruling today in the fight against terrorism . . . .The 6-3 decision by the Supreme Court, the justices rejecting the arguments that the law threatens the constitutional right of free speech. You read the decision, 6-3, only three of the Democratic appointed justices decided they didn’t like this. They were the minority. But the majority was pretty firm in saying that if you go ahead and express what is called material support for a known terrorist group, you could go to jail for that.
TOWNSEND: This is a tremendous win for not only the United States but for the current administration. It’s interesting, Wolf, Elena Kagan the current Supreme Court nominee argued in favor of upholding this law. This is an important tool the government uses to convict those, to charge and convict, potentially convict those who provide money, recruits, propaganda, to terrorist organizations, but are not what we call people who actually blow things up or pull the trigger.
BLITZER: So it’s a major decision, a 6-3 decision by the Supreme Court. If you’re thinking about even voicing support for a terrorist group, don’t do it because the government can come down hard on you and the Supreme Court said the government has every right to do so.
TOWNSEND: It is more than just voicing support, Wolf. It is actually the notion of providing material support, significant material support.
BLITZER: But they’re saying that if material support, they’re defining as expressing support or giving advice or whatever to that organization.
TOWNSEND: That’s right. But it could be technical advice, bomb-building advice, fundraising.
So Fran Townsend lavishly praised this decision — one that, as Blitzer put it, means that “If you’re thinking about even voicing support for a terrorist group, don’t do it because the government can come down hard on you.” And while Townsend was right that the decision requires “more than just voicing support” for the Terrorist group, the Court was crystal clear that such voicing of support, standing alone, can be prosecuted if it is done in coordination with the group (“the term ’service’ [] cover[s] advocacy performed in coordination with, or at the direction of, a foreign terrorist organization“).
But look at what is happening now to Fran Townsend and many of her fellow political elites. In August of last year, The Christian Science Monitor‘s Scott Peterson published a detailed exposé about “a high-powered array of former top American officials” who have received “tens of thousands of dollars” from a designated Terrorist organization – the Iranian dissident group Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) — and then met with its leaders, attended its meetings, and/or publicly advocated on its behalf. That group includes Rudy Giuliani, Howard Dean, Michael Mukasey, Ed Rendell, Andy Card, Lee Hamilton, Tom Ridge, Bill Richardson, Wesley Clark, Michael Hayden, John Bolton, Louis Freeh — and Fran Townsend. This is how it works:
Former US officials taking part in MEK-linked events told the Monitor or confirmed publicly that they received substantial fees, paid by local Iranian-American groups to speaker bureaus that handle their public appearances.
The State Dept. official, who is familiar with the speech contracts, explains the mechanism: “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.”
As but one example, Rendell, the former Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania and current MSNBC contributor, was paid $20,000 for a 10- minute speech before a MEK gathering, and has been a stalwart advocate of the group ever since.
Even for official Washington, where elite crimes are tolerated as a matter of course, this level of what appears to be overt criminality — taking large amounts of money from a designated Terrorist group, appearing before its meetings, meeting with its leaders, then advocating on its behalf — is too much to completely overlook. The Washington Times reported on Friday that the Treasury Department’s counter-Terrorism division is investigating speaking fees paid to former Gov. Rendell, who, the article notes, has “become among [MEK’s] most vocal advocates.” According to Rendell, “investigators have subpoenaed records related to payments he has accepted for public speaking engagements” for MEK. As the article put it, ”some observers have raised questions about the legality of accepting payment in exchange for providing assistance or services to a listed terrorist group.” Beyond the “material support” crime, engaging in such transactions with designated Terrorist groups is independently prohibited by federal law:
David Cole, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, noted that “any group that’s on the list is also, by definition, on the Treasury Department’s list for specially designated global terrorists.”
“Anyone in the United States is prohibited from engaging in any transaction with such an entity,” he said.
While Mr. Cole stressed his personal belief that individuals have a “First Amendment right to speak out freely” for an organization like the MEK, he said that “it is a crime to engage in any transaction, which would certainly include getting paid to do public relations for them.“
Rendell has a lot of company in the commission of what very well may be these serious crimes — including the very same Fran Townsend who cheered the Humanitarian Law decision that could be her undoing. After someone on Twitter wrote to her this weekend to say that she should be prosecuted (and “put in GITMO indefinitely”) for her “material support” of MEK, this is how — with the waving American flag as her chosen background — she defended herself in reply:
How reprehensible is the conduct of Fran Townsend here? Just two years ago, she went on CNN to celebrate a Supreme Court decision that rejected First Amendment claims of free speech and free association in order to rule that anyone — most often Muslims — can be prosecuted under the “material support” statute simply for advocacy for a Terrorist group that is coordinated with the group. And yet, the minute Fran Townsend gets caught doing exactly that — not just out of conviction but also because she’s being paid by that Terrorist group — she suddenly invokes the very same Constitutional rights whose erosions she cheered when it came to the prosecution of others. Now that her own liberty is at stake by virtue of getting caught being on the dole from a Terrorist group, she suddenly insists that the First Amendment allows her to engage in this behavior: exactly the argument that Humanitarian Law rejected, with her gushing approval on CNN (“a tremendous win for not only the United States but for the current administration“; This is an important tool the government uses to convict those . . . who provide [] propaganda, to terrorist organizations”).”
What is particularly repellent about all of this is not the supreme hypocrisy and self-interested provincialism of Fran Townsend. That’s all just par for the course. What’s infuriating is that there are large numbers of people — almost always Muslims — who have been prosecuted and are now in prison for providing “material support” to Terrorist groups for doing far less than Fran Townsend and her fellow cast of bipartisan ex-officials have done with and on behalf of MEK. In fact, the U.S. Government has been (under the administration in which Townsend worked) and still is (under the administration Rendell supports) continuously prosecuting Muslims for providing “material support” for Terrorist groups based on their pure speech, all while Fran Townsend, Ed Rendell and company have said nothing or, worse, supported the legal interpretations that justified these prosecutions.
The last time I wrote about these individuals’ material support for MEK, I highlighted just a few of those cases:
A Staten Island satellite TV salesman in 2009 was sentenced to five years in federal prison merely for including a Hezbollah TV channel as part of the satellite package he sold to customers;
a Massachusetts resident, Tarek Mehanna, is being prosecuted now ”for posting pro-jihadist material on the internet”;
a 24-year-old Pakistani legal resident living in Virginia, Jubair Ahmad, was indicted last September for uploading a 5-minute video to YouTube that was highly critical of U.S. actions in the Muslim world, an allegedly criminal act simply because prosecutors claim he discussed the video in advance with the son of a leader of a designated Terrorist organization (Lashkar-e-Tayyiba);
a Saudi Arabian graduate student, Sami Omar al-Hussayen, was prosecuted simply for maintaining a website with links “to groups that praised suicide bombings in Chechnya and in Israel” and “jihadist” sites that solicited donations for extremist groups (he was ultimately acquitted); and,
last July, a 22-year-old former Penn State student and son of an instructor at the school, Emerson Winfield Begolly, was indicted for — in the FBI’s words — “repeatedly using the Internet to promote violent jihad against Americans” by posting comments on a “jihadist” Internet forum including “a comment online that praised the shootings” at a Marine Corps base, action which former Obama lawyer Marty Lederman said ”does not at first glance appear to be different from the sort of advocacy of unlawful conduct that is entitled to substantial First Amendment protection.”
Yet we have the most well-connected national security and military officials in Washington doing far more than all of that right out in the open — they’re receiving large payments from a Terrorist group, meeting with its leaders, attending their meetings, and then advocating for them in very public forums; Howard Dean, after getting paid by the group, actually called for MEK’s leader to be recognized as the legitimate President of Iran – and so far none have been prosecuted or even indicted. The Treasury Department investigation must at least scare them. Thus, like most authoritarians, Fran Townsend suddenly discovers the importance of the very political liberties she’s helped assault now that those Constitutional protections are necessary to protect herself from prosecution. It reminds me quite a bit of how former Democratic Rep. Jane Harman — one of the most reliable advocates for Bush’s illegal spying program — suddenly started sounding like a life-long, outraged ACLU member as soon as it was revealed that her own private communications were legally surveilled by the U.S. Government.
One can reasonably debate whether MEK actually belongs on the list of Terrorist organizations (the same is true for several other groups on that list). But as a criminal matter, that debate is irrelevant. The law criminalizes the providing of material support to any group on that list, and it is not a defense to argue after one gets caught that the group should be removed.
Moreover, the argument that MEK does not belong on the Terrorist list — always a dubious claim — has suffered a serious blow in the last couple of months. An NBC News report from Richard Engel and Robert Windrem in February claimed that it was MEK which perpetrated the string of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists, and that the Terrorist group “is financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service” (MEK denied the report). If true, it means that MEK continues to perpetrate definitive acts of Terrorism: using bombs and guns to kill civilian scientists and severely injure their wives. Yet Townsend, Rendell, Dean, Giuliani and other well-paid friends continue to be outspoken advocates of the group. Even the dissenters in Humanitarian Law argued that the First Amendment would allow “material support” prosecution “when the defendant knows or intends that those activities will assist the organization’s unlawful terrorist actions.” A reasonable argument could certainly be advanced that, in light of these recent reports about MEK’s Terrorism, one who takes money from the group and then advocates for its removal from the Terrorist list “knows or intends that those activities will assist the organization’s unlawful terrorist actions”: a prosecutable offense even under the dissent’s far more limited view of the statute.
But whatever else is true, the activities of Townsend, Rendell, Dean, Giuliani and the rest of MEK’s paid shills are providing more than enough “material support” to be prosecuted under the Humanitarian Law decision and other statutes. They’re providing more substantial “material support” to this Terrorist group than many people — usually vulnerable, powerless Muslims — who are currently imprisoned for that crime. It’s nice that Fran Townsend suddenly discovered the virtues of free speech and free association guarantees, but under the laws she and so many others like her have helped implement and defend, there is a very strong case to make that her conduct and those of these other well-connected advocates for this Terrorist group is squarely within the realm of serious criminal behavior.
Glenn Greenwald,