{"id":3873,"date":"2011-09-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-03T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/2011\/09\/03\/buying-your-way-off-the-us-terrorist-list\/"},"modified":"2021-01-21T19:07:45","modified_gmt":"2021-01-21T15:37:45","slug":"buying-your-way-off-the-us-terrorist-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/posts\/3873","title":{"rendered":"Buying Your Way Off The US Terrorist List"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK\/MKO) has been designated a terrorist organization since 1997 when the Clinton administration put the MEK on the State Department&rsquo;s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The Bush administration added two alleged MEK front organizations to the State Department&rsquo;s terrorist list in 2003.<\/p>\n<p> The MEK is currently engaged in an extensive campaign to get delisted, and a decision by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is due shortly . The MEK is spending the big bucks to influence that decision.<\/p>\n<p> Private jets to speaking engagements and fees that range from $25,000 to $100,000 have gone to a wide political spectra of speakers: <\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div>Lee Hamilton, former co-chair of the 9\/11 Commission; former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, Howard Dean, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee; Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York; Michael Mukasey, the former US attorney general; Andrew Card, former White House chief of staff under George W. Bush; Tom Ridge, the former US homeland security chief; Bill Richardson, the former secretary of Energy; Gen. Peter Pace, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Wesley Clark, the former Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO; James Jones, President Obama&rsquo;s former national security adviser; Gen. Anthony Zinni, the former commander of CENTCOM; former CIA chiefs James Woolsey, Porter Goss, and Michael Hayden; Louis Freeh, former FBI director; Gen. James Conway, former Commandant of the Marine Corps; and P.J. Crowley, the former US State Dept. spokesman.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>That list is depressing. That these people would sell their names and reputations is shameful. The speaking fees are paid by local Iranian-American groups and contracts specifically state that &ldquo;We are not a front organization for the MEK,&rdquo; in a crude effort to skirt US laws regarding the support of terrorist organizations.<\/p>\n<p> David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown, argues that via Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, &ldquo;such speech could contribute to the group&rsquo;s &lsquo;legitimacy&rsquo; and thus increase its ability to obtain support elsewhere that could be turned to terrorist ends.&rdquo; In Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, Chief Justice Roberts writes: <\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div>The statute reaches only material support coordinated with or under the direction of a designated foreign terrorist organization. Independent advocacy that might be viewed as promoting the group&rsquo;s legitimacy is not covered.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>However, the speakers are not independent advocates.<\/p>\n<p> In an article for National Review Online, Michael B. Mukasey, Tom Ridge, and Rudolph W. Giuliani wrote that the MEK was not a terrorist group without mentioning that they are paid agents of the MEK. The authors credit the MEK with supplying &ldquo;valuable intelligence.&rdquo; This claim deals with Iran&rsquo;s undeclared uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz. However, senior U.S. national-security officials say that all the major revelations regarding nuclear advances in Iran were reported in classified form&ndash;and from other sources&ndash;to U.S. policymakers before MEK made them public. Others claim that the Natanz information was funneled through MEK by Israel, who has a long history of supporting and funding MEK.[..]<\/p>\n<p> Newsweek correspondent Maziar Bahari, who was jailed in Iran amid the unrest that followed the country&rsquo;s contentious 2009 presidential election, believes the move could have damaging implications&hellip;<\/p>\n<p> by David Drumm (Nal), Jonathan turley<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The MEK\/MKO\/PMOI is spending the big bucks to influence that decision.Private jets to speaking engagements and fees that range from $25,000 to $100,000 have gone to a wide political spectra of speakers..That these people would sell their names and reputations is shameful. The speaking fees are paid by local Iranian-American groups and contracts specifically state that \u201cWe are not a front organization for the MEK,\u201d in a crude effort to skirt US laws regarding the support of terrorist organizations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":-1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[642,15,20],"module":[81],"ctype":[17],"blog":[109],"class_list":["post-3873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mujahedin-khalq-organizations-propaganda-system","tag-paid-advocacy-for-mko","tag-hypocrisy_mko","tag-third-view-mek","module-article","ctype-story","blog-western-bloggers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3873"},{"taxonomy":"module","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/module?post=3873"},{"taxonomy":"ctype","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctype?post=3873"},{"taxonomy":"blog","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog?post=3873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}