March 29, 2024

It’s Time to Lift the ‘Terror Tag’ From Iranian Opposition Group MEK

FoxNews.com

As a retired Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, you could say I have a soft spot for a good crime story. Here’s one that would make anyone’s spine tingle: a secret U.S. government document emerges that asserts a friendly foreign organization is planning to conduct multiple terrorist attacks. Sounds like best-seller material. The only problem is that someone put this purely fictitious tale on the non-fiction shelf, with dangerous implications.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will soon announce a decision on a court-mandated review of the status of Iran’s main opposition movement, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq’s (MEK). The group was classified as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” (FTO) during the Clinton administration at the request of the Iranian government in a futile effort to placate the mullahs in Tehran whom Clinton believed were open to negotiations (the group had a violent past against the Iranian regime).

Today, the organization has strong bipartisan support in both the U.S. House and Senate. The poisonous “terror tag” has been removed by both the United Kingdom and the European Union years ago, yet it remains in place the United States, a naive and inhumane bit of leverage against the Iranian regime, who hate the idea of an organized democratic opposition.  

Meanwhile, the MEK has provided accurate intelligence to the U.S. regarding Iran’s nuclear weapons program and its deadly meddling in Iraq.  

U.S. counter-terrorism professionals—including the former heads of the FBI and the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff–are perplexed that an organization that has provided so much assistance to the United States still remains listed as an “FTO.” To many of us who have dedicated our lives to fighting terrorism, the removal of the MEK from the FTO list is as necessary as it is certain.

Enter the “document”.

With the State Department’s imminent decision, a number of detractors of the MEK have engaged in a last ditch campaign to hype a November 2004 document which they claim is an “FBI Report,” as evidence that the MEK was planning terrorist acts. I’ve seen the so-called “report.” I, myself, have written reports on terrorist organizations. And believe me, this amateurish collection of vague and unsubstantiated charges is no FBI “report.”

The document, known in FBI parlance as a “Letterhead Memorandum (LHM),” indicated the FBI was investigating individuals with ties to the MEK in a “criminal” investigation, not a “terrorism” investigation. It has no author and no FBI file number, making its validity highly questionable. After further examination, the LHM is actually comprised of two completely separate documents, pasted together.

The cover page of the LHM (dated November 2004) was prepared by the Los Angeles Office of the FBI as part of its criminal investigations about individuals with alleged ties with the MEK. 

In a recent article, Trita Parsi, an Iranian-American critic of the MEK, claims that the “FBI Report” finds that the MEK “continued to plan terrorist acts at least three years after they claimed to renounce terrorism.” But, there is nothing in the LHM that substantiates that claim as it focuses clearly on criminal matters — such as immigration smuggling by a number of Iranian nationals.

The LHM fails to make any reference to a single “terrorist” activity after 2001. And, some of the alleged incidents described as terrorism amount to nothing more than Iranian exiles pelting rotten eggs at Iranian regime officials on foreign trips. Incredibly, one of the examples and criteria of “past terrorist activities” is: “June 1981, the MEK began large scale protests against Khomeini.”

The second portion of the LHM, which appears to be clipped from a completely different document, is apparently meant to be a guide for agents to conduct field interviews. It begins by saying, “In anticipation of potential interviews of Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) members who are detained in Iraq, the following is a guide…that may prove helpful in interviews.” 

This document could not have been prepared in November 2004 because the “potential” interviews were actually already completed by that time (as mentioned earlier in the LHM). 

Roughly seven months before the document’s date, in May 2004, several different U.S. government agencies, including the Departments of State, Justice, Defense, Homeland Security and Treasury (as well as the CIA, the FBI, and the DIA), completed their interviews with the members of the MEK residing in Camp Ashraf, Iraq. As a result of these interviews, the U.S. government granted the MEK members at Camp Ashraf ‘protected persons’ status under the Fourth Geneva Convention after finding “no basis to charge any member of the group with the violation of American law,” according to the New York Times

The section in the LHM entitled “Current Terrorist Activity” refers to purported investigations of alleged “telephone calls” discussing “acts of terrorism.” If “telephone calls” were used as justification to label “terrorist activity” the LHM would have been labeled “SECRET” or “Terrorism Investigation” versus “Criminal Investigation.” 

Citing a Canadian newspaper, the Ottawa Citizen, the LHM charges that Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction were being hidden in Camp Ashraf, the besieged home of the MEK in Iraq. However, ten years after the invasion of Iraq, no weapons of mass destruction have been discovered anywhere in Iraq, let alone at Camp Ashraf.

The very existence of a public FBI LHM is suspect; the FBI and intelligences agencies are not known for providing investigative information to the public.

The MEK shares an important objective with the U.S.; to support democratic change in Iran that would bring human rights protection and freedom for its citizens. The MEK’s removal from the FTO list would show Western support for the Iranian people and their desire for freedom. Delisting the MEK would strengthen America’s hand in its complex relationship with Tehran and would be of material assistance in achieving U.S. regional and international goals of combating terrorism and halting the spread of nuclear weapons.

The MEK’s listing is, and has always been, about politics and not national security.  Louis Freeh, former director of the FBI said he and other former U.S. military, intelligence and diplomatic leaders would not have spoken in favor of the MEK “if there was some secret, classified magic bullet that legally or factually justified keeping this freedom fighting organization on the list. There is none.”

The FTO list is an important tool in combating terrorism, but its designations must stand to reason. If due process is completed in an impartial and objective manner and not influenced by the likes of an unsubstantiated, amateurish cut-and-paste job like the LHM, then it would lead to delisting the MEK.

Richard R. Schoeberl has over 16 years of counterintelligence, terrorism, and law enforcement experience. Mr. Schoeberl is a former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent where his experience ranged from service as a field agent to leadership responsibilities in executive positions at FBI Headquarters and the National Counterterrorism Center where he provided oversight to the United States international counterterrorism effort. Mr. Schoeberl held collateral duties in the FBI as an FBI Certified Instructor and a member of the FBI SWAT (Special Weapons And Tactics) program. 

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/08/22/its-time-to-lift-terror-tag-from-iranian-opposition-group-mek/#ixzz1VmbLdkEn

New Study Released by Iran Policy Committee

PRNewswire

Terror Tagging of an Iranian Opposition Organization

WASHINGTON, Aug. 22, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — On Thursday, 18 August 2011, the Iran Policy Committee (IPC) held a press conference at the National Press Club to launch its new study—Terror Tagging of an Iranian Opposition Organization.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110822/DC55349)

To determine whether there is credible evidence to sustain a valid terrorist designation, the IPC study analyzes State Department administrative records about the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MeK); the Department’s Country Reports on Terrorism; a declassified State Department summary of classified allegations; public electronic databases; and media at the time of alleged incidents. The goal is to infer credibility (reliability) of sources of allegations against the MeK and validity (reasonableness) of the MeK terrorist designation. The three databases are: U.S. National Counterterrorism Center Worldwide Incident Tracking System; U.S. Department of Homeland Security sponsored Global Terrorism Database, University of Maryland; U.S. supported RAND Database of Worldwide Terrorism Incidents.

Based on these sources, IPC President Professor Raymond Tanter stated the main finding of Terror Tagging as, “absence of evidence to support the conclusion that the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq engages in terrorist activities or terrorism, or has the capability and intent to do so.” Tanter added, “To be re-designated absent any terrorist activity or terrorism, the State Department has to demonstrate that the MeK has both the capability and intent to engage in terrorist activity or terrorism, and either threatens the national security of the United States or the security of U.S. nationals. So far, the State Department has failed these tests.”

Commenting on Terror Tagging, John Sano, former Central Intelligence Agency National Clandestine Service (formerly, the Directorate of Operations) first Deputy Director, said, “The Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security, (MOIS), has shaped the opinion of the MeK [Mujahedeen-e-Khalq] throughout the world.” Sano added that the MOIS planted, “false press reports about how the MeK was ‘responsible’ for… attempted airline bombings, hiding weapons of mass destruction, bombings in several cities, and training female suicide bombers.”

Sano added, “So, what the MOIS has been able to do is exploit vulnerabilities in our intelligence system.” Explaining why the Iranian MOIS plants stories in the press of potential threats faced by U.S. military commanders, Sano stated, “And then [the MOIS] goes to those individuals and says, ‘You know, that Camp Ashraf, they’re harboring suicide bombers. They’re training them, and that’s a threat.’ So now the military commanders on the scene have to worry about that [threat] as well.”

In addition, Sano said, “The next step needs to be, ‘Let’s fix the errors of the past. Let’s take them [the MeK] off the [terrorist] list, let’s move toward greater democratic ideals, and support the MeK.'” Sano closed by stating, “We continue to be puzzled as to why this relatively simple decision to delist the MeK has not been made.”

Explaining the puzzle of why the MeK continues to be designated contrary to the law and the facts, Professor Tanter said, “Because the State Department uses political more than legal criteria and historical circumstances, it continues to list the MeK as a terrorist organization.  Despite a favorable domestic political climate for delisting and overwhelming evidence against an international political justification, the State Department maintains the designation. Listing the MeK to curry favor with the Iranian regime is a triumph of hope over experience.”

Lt Gen Tom McInerney (Ret USAF), former assistant vice chief of staff, U.S. Air Force and co-chair of the Advisory Committee of the IPC, stated, “Empowering the Iranian people requires delisting the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MeK) from the terrorist list. So long as the MeK is on the list, it is limited in uncovering the Iranian regime’s strategy for hiding its nuclear weapons program.”

“Tehran’s nuclear weapons program includes secret operations hidden within a legitimate nuclear organization, which is ostensibly for peaceful purposes; a covert military command that operates the weapons program, including nuclear weapons technology purchases; and research centers as well as companies as front organizations for nuclear weapons work. Because of intelligence revelations of the MeK, we know these facts,” General McInerney added.

General McInerney concluded, “As a general, I am the last one who wants to fight another war. But if we continue our policy of appeasing Ahmadinejad, we are actually increasing the possibility of a major confrontation with Iran; we need to use all the resources that the opposition has so that we get the Ayatollahs preoccupied, not the MeK.”

Former Executive Director of Freedom House and IPC co-chair Bruce McColm stated, “The Iranian regime violates human rights and exports its radical ideology through international terrorism.” McColm added, “When faced with failing engagement and problematic military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, American policymakers need to empower the Iranian people by removing the MeK from the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organizations list.”

Created in January 2005, the IPC includes former U.S. Government officials from the White House, State Department, intelligence community, Congress, universities, and think tanks. 

SOURCE Iran Policy Committee

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-study-released-by-iran-policy-committee-128170228.html

Removing an Iranian Group From the U.S. Terror List

The New York Times

To the Editor:

An Iranian Cult and Its American Friends,” by Elizabeth Rubin (Sunday Review, Aug. 14), repeats unfounded allegations against the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran.

The People’s Mujahedeen, also known as MEK, never cooperated with Saddam Hussein in his crackdowns against Kurds and others, and the current Iraqi foreign minister has confirmed this. Such allegations are spread by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security to demonize the resistance.

Other than repeating the mullahs’ misinformation against the resistance by labeling it as a “cult,” the article does not mention any specific act of terrorism for which the group should remain designated by the United States State Department as a foreign terrorist organization.

Whether one is a terrorist can only be decided based on the facts, and in the case of the MEK, courts in Britain, the European Union and the United States have determined time and again that it isn’t involved in terrorism.

LORD CORBETT OF CASTLE VALE
Chairman
British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom
London, Aug. 14, 2011

The letter was signed by 39 other members of the committee.

To the Editor:

Elizabeth Rubin’s article on the MEK suggests that it deserves to remain on the State Department foreign terrorist organization list because of cultlike qualities that she observed when she visited its camp in 2003. Clearly, this is not the standard for designation as a terrorist group, with all the consequences that attach to such a label.

For that reason, the highest courts in Britain and the European Union have removed the MEK from their respective terrorist organization lists. And last year, the United States Court of Appeals in Washington chided the State Department for failing to provide proper evidence to warrant such a designation. The State Department has not yet responded.

The issue of who should rule Iran in the event its theocratic, terrorist mullahs can ever be replaced by a democratic regime is a question for the Iranian people to decide. It is not for the United States, as Ms. Rubin suggests, to prejudge who should contend for the support of the Iranian people in a free election.

ALLAN GERSON
Washington, Aug. 15, 2011

The writer is one of the lawyers representing the MEK in its efforts to be removed from the State Department list of foreign terrorist organizations.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/opinion/removing-an-iranian-opposition-group-from-the-us-terror-list.html

One That is Easily Deceived

THE HUFFIGNTON POST

In recent weeks, The New York Times has run a couple of articles hinting, if not stating outright, that those who have been speaking in support of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI/MEK), the leading organisation of Iranian dissidents, are dupes of the organisation. They label the MEK a “cult” and seek to persuade the State Department not to remove it from its list of terrorist organisations, a designation imposed in 1997.

That’s a pretty serious charge, considering that these are distinguished officials, including three former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the former commander of NATO, President Obama’s former national security adviser, a former FBI director, a former Attorney General, several former governors, two Directors of CIA, and U.S. ambassador to the UN, the former co-chairman of the 9/11 commission … it’s a long and impressive list. 

All dupes of a cult? Hard to believe, isn’t it?

I have a strong feeling that they aren’t the dupes, but perhaps the editors at The New York Times who seem to have bought the mullahs propaganda are.

On Sunday, August 14, the New York Times featured an opinion piece by Elizabeth Rubin headlined“An Iranian Cult and Its American Friends” which was clearly designed to dismiss those who support internal change in Iran.

And in July, the New York Times carried another story about the plight of 3,400 PMOI members at a place called Camp Ashraf, between Baghdad and the Iran border. When the U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq, these people voluntarily surrendered their weapons in exchange for protection under terms of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

But with U.S. forces scheduled to leave at the end of the year, they face a dismal future. Already, Iraqi forces doing the Iranian mullahs’ dirty work have attacked twice, the latest one being on April 8, killing dozens and wounding hundreds.

They’re desperately seeking to be relocated to another place. The State Department agrees but U.S. Ambassador Lawrence Butler, who the New York Times says has been meeting with the group, thinks that place should be somewhere else in Iraq. Some safety that would provide!

He also contends that those Americans speaking on behalf of the MEK are dupes; they’ve been paid for their appearances, he contends.

Again, who’s the dupe and who’s doing the duping?

Consider the individuals: Howard Dean, Bill Richardson, Gen. Wesley Clark, Lee Hamilton, Michael Mukasey, Louis Freeh, Tom Ridge …

All dupes? 

As well as 4,000 parliamentarians (including a large number of the members of the House of Commons and their peers in the UK) and more than 100 U.S. Congressmen both Democrats and Republicans who have called for the delisting of the MEK.

Also consider the judges across Europe and in the U.S. They have heard the PMOI’s arguments for delisting – and all have agreed.

Can they really be described as dupes?

In the EU and UK, the courts ordered these Iranian patriots to be removed from the list of terrorist organisations. In the UK the ruling was made by the Lord Chief Justice Philips.

In the U.S., the DC Circuit Court of Appeals agreed but did not have the power to act; only the State Department can do that. But the court urged Hillary Clinton to review the case, and suggested that she render a favorable ruling.

At meetings across Europe, tens of thousands of Iranian exiles and their supporters have rallied on behalf of the beleaguered Ashraf residents and in support of delisting the MEK. Speakers have included not only of the aforementioned officials but dozens of European parliamentarians and such human rights activist as Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel.

All dupes?

Who knows why Elizabeth Rubin has such animosity toward the MEK? She hasn’t been to Ashraf since 2003, cites incidents in the ’90s and has no current information about the organization. Yet, she has taken it upon herself to crusade against a group whose only interest is to create a democratic Iran free from the mullahs.

I cannot probe the inner recesses of her mind; I can only surmise what drives her. I don’t know if she herself is the dupe of a greater power. 
But I do know that those of us who support the MEK, pray for a solution to the Ashraf situation, and urge the State Department to loosen the fetters that bind, are not dupes.

We simply work for freedom, justice and democracy – in Iran and beyond. 

Could the leaders of the Iranian regime and their supporters make the same claim? By their actions shall you know them?

Tehran’s ‘Butler’ in Iraq

Uinted Press International

LONDON, Aug. 16 (UPI) — Unimaginable to say the least; recent remarks made by Ambassador Lawrence E. Butler, a top U.S. State Department official, about the status of 3,400 members of an Iranian opposition group taking refuge in Iraq has left him being labeled mockingly as “Tehran’s Butler.”

Outrage quickly spread in political circles, with many quite rightly appalled and in fact bemused that Butler, tasked with ensuring 3,400 members of the Mujahedin e Khalq are kept safe from an Iraqi government loyal to Tehran, took the opportunity in speaking to The New York Times to make disparaging comments about the group.

Not only do Butler’s comments play directly into the hands of the Iranian regime and, in fact, spout the misinformation that Tehran’s leadership spends millions to achieve, it unfortunately reiterates the belief of many that U.S. President Barack Obama remains clueless in ensuring Iraq makes its way to full democracy.

The culmination of what is being called the MEK saga in Iraq will tell us much about whether a future Iraq is gobbled up by Tehran quicksand, falling into the hands of an Iranian regime intent on setting up a satellite state or an Iraq which moves forward both in terms of democracy and economic development which has fallen foul of Iraq’s current corrupt leadership.

Based in Camp Ashraf, north of Baghdad, the MEK is Iran’s principle organized opposition group. At Iran’s behest, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered an armed attack on the camp in April leaving 36 residents dead and hundreds wounded.

To further cozy of the mullahs in Iran, Maliki has ordered the camp be shut down and the residents transferred to a prison camp entirely under his control elsewhere in Iraq.

To the residents, going there would be suicide. Butler has supported the plan.

To justify this humanitarian catastrophe-in-the-making, Butler spoke of attacks against U.S. personnel allegedly carried out by the MEK in the 1970s, the exact misinformation and falsities which the Iranian regime espouses to taint the image of the MEK.

His open attack on Iran’s brave democrats came even as evidence was being revealed by U.S. military commanders in Iraq of Tehran’s direct involvement in the recent deaths of a large number of U.S. soldiers. Iran-backed militias were behind the deaths of 12 U.S. soldiers while explosively formed projectiles and improvised rocket-assisted mortars supplied by Tehran were the cause of 14 U.S. deaths.

Butler, however, appeared more interested in regurgitating misinformation about the MEK than understanding the Iranian takeover in his backyard in Iraq, which is leading to numerous U.S. casualties each and every month.

Unfortunately this appears to be the clueless reality of foreign policy under President Obama, the shutting of one’s eyes to the realities in Iraq, hailing the mission as a success and using the plan to withdraw U.S. fighting battalions as a propaganda tool. If President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton do not comprehend the realities taking place in Iraq, what is left behind in Iraq could be considerably worse than that found on arrival in 2003.

Now in a strange turn of events, the status of the 3,400 members of the MEK will be the test of President Obama’s morality upon which he ran his presidential campaign.

The members of the MEK have been resident in Camp Ashraf in Iraq for more than 20 years. Having provided the residents with personal guarantees to protect them from threats posed by the Iranian regime, the U.S. authorities handed over control of Camp Ashraf to an Iraqi government whose loyalty to the Iranian regime was undoubted. In the two years that have followed some 50 residents have been killed, having been attacked in two separate military assaults on their homes by Iraqi forces, and more than 1,000 wounded.

Now the man tasked with ensuring more residents are not massacred by an Iraqi government, which has vowed to close the camp by the end of 2011 by any means, has spoken in defense of a proposal to move the residents to a new home inside Iraq under Maliki’s full control.

Once again senior U.S. and European parliamentarians have reacted with shock that Butler is forwarding a plan supported by the Iranian regime. This proposal has done little to shed the Tehran’s Butler image or the clueless nature of Obama’s leadership in Iraq.

It is high time President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton took note of the U.S. responsibilities in relation to Camp Ashraf while waking up to understand the realities in Iraq.

The United States has a clear legal, moral and humanitarian responsibility to protect the Camp Ashraf residents. This can easily be achieved with direct intervention in assisting the facilitation of the United Nations taking over control over the safety and security of the camp.

Once this is achieved and the residents are safe from further attack by an Iraqi regime loyal to Tehran, a European Parliament plan to voluntarily transfer the residents to third-party states where their safety can be guaranteed in the long term can be achieved.

Ambassador Butler and President Obama must see this as the only solution to the MEK saga and rid themselves of what is an embarrassing image.

(David Amess, a Conservative Member of the British Parliament, is a leading member of the British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom.)

(United Press International’s “Outside View” commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Analysis/Outside-View/2011/08/16/Outside-View-Tehrans-Butler-in-Iraq/UPI-56601313488532/#ixzz1VCF9xR3D

 

New Push For Resistance

The Washington Times (Embassy Row)

U.S. supporters of unarmed Iranian dissidents in Iraq are mounting a campaign to persuade the State Department to remove the exiles from its terrorist list and protect them from retaliation by pro-Iranian officials in Baghdad.

Prominent Iranian-American professors, doctors, scientists and scholars from Los Angeles to Miami last week appealed to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. They asked Mrs. Clinton to order her subordinates to comply with a year-old federal court ruling that ordered the State Department to justify keeping the Iranian resistance on the terrorist list.

On Monday, two top officials appointed by former President George W. Bush and one named by former President Bill Clinton accused the White House of “turning its back on the Iranian exile group whose network supplies key operational intelligence on the [Iranian] Mullahs’ Islamic nuclear bomb project.”

Allen Gerson, a former counsel to the U.S. delegation to the United Nations and now an attorney for the exiles defended his clients in an article on the Huffington Post, which carried an earlier article calling the resistance a terrorist group.

Members of Congress also are urging President Obama to appoint retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, a Democrat and former NATO commander, to serve as an envoy to the Iraqi government to negotiate the fate of 3,400 Iranian dissidents in Camp Ashraf, a compound about 40 miles from Baghdad.

Gen. Clark is among the former U.S. officials who support removing the resistance from the terrorist list.

The State Department has accused the resistance of terrorist acts for killing U.S. officials in the 1970s. The department also says it is preparing a response to the court order. President Clinton added the resistance to the terrorist list in 1997, when he was trying to open talks with the Iranian regime.

U.S. forces disarmed the resistance in 2003 after toppling the regime of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who had given the dissidents safe haven to undermine the Iranian regime.

The new campaign is the latest development in a growing effort to take the Iranian resistance off the list. Britain removed the dissidents from its terrorist list in 2008, and the European Union dropped the resistance from its list a year later. In April, French courts dismissed terrorism-related charges against resistance supporters, many of whom live in Paris.

Fifty-eight Iranian-Americans professionals last week appealed in a letter to Mrs. Clinton to remove the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) from the terrorist list.

“The continued designation of the PMOI is unfounded, unjust, inhumane and to the detriment of the Iranian-American community,” they said.

They noted that any U.S. citizen who aided the resistance in any way could face charges of supporting terrorism, and that the Iranian regime uses the U.S. terrorist designation as an excuse to arrest and execute domestic opponents.

They also warned that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is determined to shut the camp this year and move the residents to another location. They fear Mr. Maliki, in his efforts to build relations with Iran, could deport them to Tehran, where they would be executed. Iraqi forces repeatedly have attacked the residents of Camp Ashraf, killing dozens and injuring hundreds.

Former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey and former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge – both Bush appointees – and former FBI Director Louis Freeh – a Clinton appointee – defended the resistance in an article Monday on FoxNews.com.

They complained that the State Department has “slow-rolled” the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by taking more than a year to meet the court order and “infuriated the Congress.”

Writing in the Huffington Post last week, Mr. Gerson called the charge of terrorism “spurious.” He criticized an earlier article as a “mind-boggling attempt” to defame Mr. Mukasey, Mr. Ridge and Mr. Freeh for defending the resistance.

He said the earlier article “makes the sensational charge that the [resistance] is, indeed, a terrorist organization and that former top U.S. national security officials are willing to prostitute themselves by saying the opposite.”

Call Embassy Row at 202/636-3297 or email jmorrison@washington times.com. The column is published on Monday, Wednesday and Friday

Time for America to drop ‘terror’ tag on Iranian group

THE FINANCIAL TIMES

Sir, As an Iranian woman who has lost her husband for freedom and democracy in Iran and as the director of the Association of Anglo-Iranian Women in the UK, I was disappointed to see the article “Iran exile group should stay on terror list” (August 11) and the publication of an antagonistic statement by 37 so-called experts on Iran policy against the removal of the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran from the US foreign terrorist organisations list (FT.com, August 10).

The reason the PMOI was put on the terror lists has always been crystal clear. The west did it to appease the Iranian regime and in return Tehran would stop nuclear enrichment and stop sponsoring real terrorists such as Hamas and Hizbollah. Jack Straw who first placed the PMOI on the UK terror list has stated on various occasions that he did so when home secretary in return for Tehran stopping its support for terrorist groups. He also told the BBC in February 2006 that he did what was agreed but the Iranians never kept their promises!

The unfair terror tag was later removed both in the UK and the European Union by order of the courts. It is time for the US to do the same and side with millions of Iranians and their organised resistance movement led by the PMOI for democratic regime change in Iran.

Laila Jazayeri,

London W4, UK

American Credibility at Risk On Foreign Policy Front, Too

FoxNews.com

The Obama administration’s economic policy has suffered some recent highly publicized disasters. But the setbacks of “Obamanomics” should not obscure the administration’s equally critical foreign policy missteps toward Iran and Iraq that threaten to downgrade American credibility in yet another arena.

In particular, the White House seems to be turning its back on the Iranian exile group whose network supplies key operational intelligence on the Mullahs’ Islamic nuclear bomb project. This group – called the MEK – has pointed out the concealed sites of Iran’s nuclear enrichment that were otherwise unknown to the United States

Despite this, in a panicked haste to exit from Iraq, the Obama White House is abandoning the 3,400 members of the MEK – including young men, women and children – who are living in exile in a camp near Baghdad and intends to leave them to the indelicate mercy of Iraq’s new Shia prime minister, the Mullahs’ good friend Nouri al-Maliki. This is more than a local issue: the people of “Camp Ashraf,” as it is called, have relatives in the United States and Europe who care about their fate.

Until now, the MEK dissidents have lived in the Iraqi camp, 40 miles from Baghdad, with a guarantee of Geneva Convention status as “protected persons” – a promise made in writing by a United States general in 2004 after the MEK disarmed. But now, abandoning America’s solemn promise and undercutting the West’s fight against the Iranian nuclear breakout, the White House is acquiescing in the plans of Maliki to tilt towards Iran by sending the MEK dissidents to face death in the Iraqi desert.

The State Department recently sent a functionary to the camp whose diplomatic skills would have qualified him to sell beer for Al Capone in Prohibition-era Chicago. Accompanied by a New York Times reporter (who was given exclusive news access to the one-sided meeting by agreeing to pose as a member of the diplomatic staff), Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Lawrence Butler told the beleaguered Iranian exiles that “you only have me” and callously proposed that they should agree to be scattered in small groups around Iraq where they can be killed quietly and out of sight. This, U.S. ambassador James Jeffrey has helpfully added, would be a “a bit safer” than remaining in the Ashraf camp.

Only in the most macabre sense is that true. Rather than use American economic and diplomatic muscle with Baghdad, the Obama White House has meekly surrendered to Maliki’s ambitions. Maliki’s troops, trained by the United States and using American weapons and vehicles, recently made two deadly assaults against the unarmed residents of Camp Ashraf – the first in July 2009, and the most recent attack in March 2011, killing 34 and wounding hundreds of others, shooting them and running them down with armored vehicles.

The intended humiliation of U.S. power was evident; both attacks occurred during official visits to Iraq by then Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who murmured only mild words of concern. Attempts by members of Congress and the European Parliament to visit the camp after the attacks were defiantly rebuffed by Maliki.

The Obama administration is, of course, eager to complete a formal agreement with Prime Minister Maliki concerning the status of American troops remaining in Iraq after 2011. But the rush to please Maliki undermines the credibility of our promises around the world and is an affront to the sacrifices of countless U.S. service men and women who died for a free Iraq.

At the same time, as if to frame the stage for an imminent Srebrenica-styled slaughter, the Obama administration has failed for over a year to answer the challenge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The federal judges said that there was no evidence to sustain the State Department claim that the MEK should be listed as a “terrorist” group when the group has foresworn the use of violence. Rather than ending this inappropriate listing – as our European allies have – the State Department has slow-rolled the Court and infuriated the Congress.

The administration’s weak-kneed accommodation to the wishes of Prime Minister Maliki has little to show for it. Unique among all his neighbors, and in defiance of U.S. policy, Prime Minister Maliki has also openly supported Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in the slaughter of pro-democracy dissidents in Syrian towns such as Hama and Latakia. Malaki’s axis with Iran will help to destabilize the whole region.

The MEK, on the other hand, enjoys bipartisan support in both the House and Senate as a group that shares a key objective of American foreign policy – namely, changing Iranian nuclear policy and dislodging the radical rule of the Mullahs. As a matter of supporting their own American constituents who are heart-sick at the impending slaughter of family members at the camp, the Congress has also pressed an unresponsive administration to make sure that the Ashraf residents are not led like lambs to the butchery.

In evaluating the bona fides of the MEK movement and its public commitment to a democratic and liberal Iran, the American people and the Congress have never had the benefit of hearing from its charismatic Paris-based leader Mrs. Maryam Rajavi. She has not been permitted a visa to visit the United States. But perhaps the time has come for a first-ever Congressional “Skype” hearing – allowing Senators and Representatives to put directly the questions that administration skeptics have floated for an answer by this intelligent woman who has endorsed a liberal democratic future for Iraq.

The recent decision by Standard and Poor’s to downgrade America’s credit rating and subsequent stock market plunge are symptoms of a new loss of confidence in America’s ability to live up to its commitments – an assessment in no small measure caused by congressional rancor and stalemate. American credibility is equally at stake on the foreign policy front as the U.S. military mission in Iraq draws to a close.

But this time, Congress is united about what needs to be done. Unfortunately, the Obama administration seems not to be listening – and the result may be the further downgrading of American political credibility, with deadly and tragic consequences for the Ashraf residents and their U.S. families who relied on our word.

Michael B. Mukasey, a former federal judge, served as Attorney General of the United States from 2007-2009. Tom Ridge, a former governor of the state of Pennsylvania, served as the first Secretary of Homeland Security from 2003-2005, and is now president of Ridge Global. Louis Freeh, a former federal judge, served as the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 1993-2001, and is now senior managing partner of Freeh Sporkin & Sullivan.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/08/15/american-credibility-at-risk-on-foreign-policy-front-too/#ixzz1V79koavA

“All the News That’s Not Fit to Print”: USCCAR Condemns New York Times’ Malicious Hit-Piece

PRNewswire

WASHINGTON, Aug. 15, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The US Committee for Camp Ashraf Residents (USCCAR) deplores Elizabeth Rubin’s unfounded and malicious assertions against the main Iranian opposition movement, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK) and its 3400 members in Camp Ashraf in Iraq. The piece appeared in the Review and Outlook section of the Times on August 14. 

The latest in the venomous anti-MEK smear campaign by the pro-Tehran lobby inside the Beltway, the piece represents a desperate, albeit futile, attempt to block, in contravention of the Rule of law and the statutory requirements, the removal of the MEK from the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO).

At a time when Camp Ashraf residents are facing the specter of another slaughter at the hands of Nuri Al-Maliki, Ms. Rubin has provided fodder for Tehran and its Iraqi proxies to again attack and murder our loved ones there.

For a person who admittedly spent only a few hours in Camp Ashraf back in early 2003, and opted to use the notorious agents of Tehran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) as her source, Rubin’s shedding of crocodile tears for the residents of Camp Ashraf appears disingenuous given the absence of a mere criticism, let alone condemnation, of two deadly attacks on defenseless residents in July 2009 and April 2011, which Chairman John Kerry of Senate Foreign Relations Committee described as a massacre. 

By recycling the made-in-Tehran collection of lies and stale allegations, Rubin regurgitates what has been debunked repeatedly by the highest courts in the United Kingdom, the European Union and France. More significantly, U.S. military officers, who have collectively spent years in Camp Ashraf with MEK members, have gone on the record in U.S. Congress to refute these baseless allegations.

Rubin’s August 14 diatribe was preceded three weeks earlier by another New York Times hit-piece, which also demonized the leadership and rank-and-file at Camp Ashraf. It blamed our loved ones for not kowtowing to a plan of relocation to remote Iraqi detention camps – as insisted by a U.S. embassy official – which is tantamount to providing the Maliki government a license to murder. Members of U.S. Congress and thousands of their European counterparts as well as international human rights organizations have vehemently condemned this proposal. 

In breach of basic journalistic and professional standards and principles, the author of that story, Tim Arango, sat in on a confidential and sensitive discussion about the future of Camp Ashraf residents, falsely introducing himself as an Embassy staff member. Instead of publishing even a single one of the many letters to the editor by the MEK counsel, Camp Ashraf family members and Iranian Americans, The Times’ editors published Rubin’s piece without bothering to fact and source check the article.

This unethical and unprincipled modus operandi by a newspaper which boasts of printing “all the news that is fit to print,” only serves to pave the way for another massacre at Camp Ashraf.

SOURCE: U.S. Committee for Camp Ashraf Residents (USCCAR)

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/all-the-news-thats-not-fit-to-print-usccar-condemns-new-york-times-malicious-hit-piece-127752108.html

Secretary Clinton, Delist MEK

Lives of 3400 Iranian dissidents in Iraq are threatened; Secretary Clinton should listen to the voice of distinguished and well-respected top American officials
OfficialWire
12 August 2011

WASHINGTON, D.C. (USA) – A group of distinguished and well respected top American officials have spoken in support of delisting the Iranian opposition, Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK /PMOI), from the State Department FTO list. The campaign to counter the Iranian regime’s disinformation campaign to hamper the Iranian opposition seems to bother some lobby groups in Washington such as NIAC nowadays. 

The efforts are aimed at securing the safety of 3400 unarmed individuals, including 1000 women, in Camp Ashraf in Iraq, who are faced with a potential massacre at the hands of Iraqi forces under Iranian influence and pressure, especially after the year-end when US forces are due to leave Iraq. Each of the residents was recognized as Protected Persons by the US after they signed an agreement with the US military in 2004 to voluntarily surrender their arms in exchange for safety. The US protected the camp until 2009 and handed over control to the Iraqi government under the SOFA agreement (US-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement).

The camp has been attacked twice by Iraqi forces acting on behest of the Iranian government and 36 residents including 6 women have been massacred during the latest attack this April. Delisting MEK will deny the Iraqi authorities the justification to conduct another attack on the unarmed and peaceful camp where Iranian dissidents live, under pretext of countering terrorism.

The Iranian regime’s Washington-based lobby is targeting former top US officials from the full political spectrum who have worked for the Clinton, Bush and Obama Administrations, for making paid speeches during their visits to various venues to attend conferences organized by Iranian Americans and Iranian exiles this year, which is a common practice among former US officials. The Iran lobby hopes to confuse the issue by targeting the officials for speaking fees. It is a perfectly legal practice for a former official to make a paid speech for a cause he believes in. Many former officials including former US presidents, including Presidents Clinton and Bush, accept fees for their speeches after leaving office.

If these lobbyists are so concerned about and want to stop this practice, they should in fact address the way American politics is run.  It seems the pervasive message by these officials in support of the MEK has delivered a hard blow to the storyline promoted by the Iranian regime to cast the MEK as a terrorist organization despite the lack of any evidence to support the allegations. The UK removed the MEK from the list in 2008 and the EU in 2009 after courts found no evidence of terrorist action. It won no less than 22 battles in courts across Europe as it sought to be delisted there. The US Federal Court of Appeals, DC Circuit, ruled in June 2010 to remand the case to the Secretary of State after no evidence was found to support the designation by the court, strongly suggesting the Secretary should revoke the listing.

The designation was based on “classified” documents. These documents which lack any significant substance originate from the Iranian regime and propagate through its web-sites and the Iran lobby in Washington and ultimately end up in the State Department’s classified dossiers by low-level State Department employees of Iranian origin affiliated with NIAC who seem to have a serious conflict of interest. Reza Marashi, who today is Director of Research for NIAC, once served at the State Department’s Iran desk for 4 years until recently. Mr. Marashi has written several articles lambasting the MEK based on pure allegations and no proof. It is of serious concern that a group such as NIAC, known to have extensive links with Iranian officials, under investigation for misusing government funds in lobbying for Tehran, and accused of being an unregistered agent of the Iranian government would have so much influence in shaping US policy toward Iran and Iran’s main opposition force.

NIAC has launched a disinformation campaign in the US against the Iranian opposition MEK to bolster its ties with the Iranian regime. It has belittled the threat of the Iranian nuclear program, has lobbied against effective sanctions, and has encouraged US and Iran reconciliation in favor of Iran’s interests and contrary to the Iranian people and US national interests.

NIAC was formed in the US to seemingly advance Iranian-American civic participation. But in actuality it has worked to advance Iranian regime policy interests in Washington with slick campaigns. Hassan Daioleslam, an Iranian analyst familiar with NIAC’s activities, has linked NIAC to the Iranian regime with extensive research.

It seems the message that the Iran lobby wishes to convey is that US officials have spoken in support of delisting of MEK out of ignorance and only for the money, perhaps being bribed.

But a review of the list of former top US officials and their speeches makes this quite implausible. For example, Howard Dean who has made pro bono speeches as well in support of the MEK delisting, said, “We must change our position on the MEK and stop calling them a terrorist organization. They are not a terrorist organization, they have their own bill of rights, which is an extraordinary thing under the leadership of Maryam Rajavi, and we appreciate what she has done greatly,” in reference to a 10-point plan for future Iran that Rajavi, a leader of the NCRI has put forward.

The furor that the Iran lobby has been trying to whip up over the support of top US officials, is really a brazen attempt by Tehran’s lobby, and mainly NIAC, to intimidate public opinion and these well-respected foreign and security policy experts and to pressure them to back away from the views they have expressed.

What is shameful is the Iranian regime’s funding of these lobbies to oppose MEK. According to documents available on the Internet hundreds of thousands of dollars were paid out to lobbies such as NIAC to advocate Iranian regime’s propaganda in the US and publish articles in the media to that effect.

The main motivation behind the State Department’s listing was to curry favor with the mullahs. In September 2002, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs during the Clinton Administration, Martin Indyk, told Newsweek, “[There] was White House interest in opening up a dialogue with the Iranian government. Top Administration officials saw cracking down on the [MEK], which the Iranians had made clear they saw as a menace, as one way to do so.”

This is what John Sano (former Deputy Director of CIA for National Clandestine Service) had to say on this issue in a recent conference in Washington with the Camp Ashraf massacre back in April as an instance: “The situation in Camp Ashraf and the recent massacre which occurred there only three months ago, is the perfect example in terms of what the MOIS is able to do in attempting to shape world opinion. It has been their consistent maligning of the MEK as a subversive and terrorist organization. This is in direct contravention of the reports here in the United States and internationally that have provided the true story behind the massacre… and the reality of the MEK as peace loving, pro-democratic, nonviolent, organization seeking only to promote a system with freedom of speech, assembly, and political parties, as separation of church and state and gender equality.”

Circulating cheap hearsay such as the Mujahedin-e Khalq’s participation in the American Embassy’s seizure and calling for the execution of American hostages is nothing but distorting the truth.  Anyone familiar with events in Iran during the 1980s knows well that MEK never took part in the American embassy seizure.  On the contrary, the Iranian regime used the opportunity to fasten its grip on power and isolate progressive groups and the opposition including the MEK.

The Iran lobbies have argued that delisting the MEK would give the Iranian hard-line rulers more reason to clamp down on Iran’s internal opposition and the green movement. One can question this kind of irrelevant rhetoric to keep an organization unjustly in the FTO terror list. Is this the statutory legal requirement to keep an organization on the FTO terror list? The time has long passed to exploit legal measures to advance certain political goals. After all, the State Department FTO list is not meant to promote the green movement in Iran and elsewhere, rather it is intended to confront the terrorist threat against US interests. MEK has never been a threat to the US at any time.

However, events of past 14 years, the period the MEK has been kept on the FTO list have demonstrated the moral and political drawbacks of the MEK listing on the opposition inside Iran. The Iranian people have suffered the most brutal crack-down during the past decade and the Iranian regime has used the terrorist label against MEK to silence all voices of opposition inside Iran. Only in the past two years, following post-election protests, thousands have been arrested and hundreds have been executed or tortured, mainly affiliated with the MEK.

The NIAC and their usual roster of so-called experts claim that delisting the MEK will hurt the opposition inside Iran. Delisting of MEK, as the most organized and effective opposition against the Iranian dictatorship could, however, limit the Iranian rulers’ ability to suppress the opposition inside Iran under pretext of terrorism. The ramification of January 2009 delisting of MEK in Europe contributed extensively to the spread of the protests in June of 2009 following the fraudulent presidential elections in Iran.

If NIAC’s argument were to be true, then the MEK and the victims of the regime’s crimes are the source of the problem and not the Iranian dictatorship. Likewise, one can claim the Jews were responsible for their own deaths during the Nazi period and they would never have been massacred if they had not existed or had been kept isolated in their ghettos. This is of course preposterous.

The time has come for the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to ignore the vicious calls originating from Tehran and listen to the voices of conscious coming from former US officials with distinguished records of public service, and the Iranian people, and make the right decision to remove the MEK from the FTO list.

Klick here to sign the petition urging Hillary Clinton to delist MEK 

Joseph Omidvar is a scholar in Middle Eastern studies specializing in Iran policies.

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