Center for Security Policy

During an appearance on The Janet Mefferd Show this week, Frank Gaffney of the far-right Center for Security Policy argued that the Obama administration has a “determination to pursue what amounts to the Sharia blasphemy agenda of our enemies” by “suppressing freedom of expression in this country.” Gaffney was referring to the arrest of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the man behind the anti-Islam film “The Innocence of Muslims.”

Of course, Nakoula was not arrested for his role in the film but for violating his probation stemming from a 2010 bank fraud conviction. Gaffney also maintained that “he is the only person who has thus far been incarcerated as a result of this [Benghazi] episode,” even though just over a week ago a suspect in the attack was arrested in Libya and late last year suspects were arrested in Egypt and Tunisia.

Mefferd: What about Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the filmmaker who last we heard is still in jail, what are we to make of that, the fact that he blasphemed Islam so-called and is still in jail.

Gaffney: Well this is a critically important point, Janet; he is the only person who has thus far been incarcerated as a result of this episode. And more to the point, what we have now is growing evidence of the Obama administration’s willingness and indeed determination to pursue what amounts to the Sharia blasphemy agenda of our enemies, that is to say suppressing freedom of expression in this country which is our constitutional right, which is a scandal further.

Glenn Beck isn’t the only one promoting an unhinged conspiracy theory about John Brennan, President Obama’s pick to lead the CIA. A number of Religious Right and anti-Muslim activists are also wondering if Brennan is a secret agent of the Saudi government.

The source of the smear against Brennan is former FBI agent John Guandolo, who has made a career out of warning about the alleged implementation of Sharia law in the U.S. and asserting that Muslims “do not have a First Amendment right to do anything.” For Guandolo, making completely unsubstantiated accusations is nothing new:

In 2011, he asserted that a Muslim college professor in Ohio was working with terrorists even though the same professor played a key role in counterterrorism efforts and the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and other members of the intelligence community all called Guandolo’s claim unfounded.

But his accusation about Brennan has been quickly picked up by former congressman Fred Grandy of the Center for Security Policy and Sandy Rios of the American Family Association, who seemed to accept it with little scrutiny. Grandy and Rios also were some of the first people to allege that Hillary Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin — among other U.S. government officials — are Muslim Brotherhood agents.

Grandy: The influence of Islam as a religion among top intelligence authorities in this country is not limited to John Brennan. Whether or not that influenced his political determinations probably has more to do not so much with Islam but to what degree has been cooped by Saudi authorities. It seems to me that you can practice Islam but still be an American citizen and loyal to the Constitution if you’re an officer in the CIA, but what we don’t know whether or not that conversion might have been instigated by Saudi authorities who then used it to perhaps remold his thinking vis-à-vis the Saudis, the Qataris and others who are allies of the United States but the principal funders and underwriters of terrorism around the world.

Rios: Well I think the proof is in the pudding. When he redefines jihad to mean something that it doesn’t mean, to water it down; when he rewrites the training manuals for our law enforcement, for those that would protect the United States; it’s all very, very frightening and suspicious to me. And wasn’t it John Brennan who calls Jerusalem, ‘Quds’?

Grandy: He has referred to Jerusalem as Al-Quds which of course is the Muslim name for it.

AFA spokesman Bryan Fischer also floated Guandolo’s accusation against Brennan.

Fischer: How in the world can this guy [Obama] be up nine points in national defense? He wants a guy to be the director of the CIA who may be a Muslim covert. There’s a highly-placed source, I can’t verify this because it’s only come from one source but John Brennan who President Obama wants to be his CIA director, there’s a well-placed source that says everybody understands in the intelligence community that he converted to Islam when he was on an overseas assignment. He’s allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to infiltrate his administration.

So, is Guandolo a reliable source of information?

If you believe Guandolo’s story, the former agent was pushed out of the FBI as part of a Muslim Brotherhood plot and is now informing Americans about how the group has successfully infiltrated the U.S. government.

But the news reports beg to differ, reporting that Guandolo stepped down after it was discovered that he had a sexual relationship with the star witness in the corruption case against former Rep. William Jefferson.

Guandolo, “who is married and who unsuccessfully solicited a $75,000 donation for an anti-terrorism group from a wealthy witness in the Jefferson case with whom he was having an affair,” resigned from the FBI in 2008 “after superiors found a list he wrote of his sexual conquests with agents and a confidential source.”

But a total lack of credibility has never stopped someone from being treated as an “expert” in right-wing circles, and Guandolo’s influence is further proof that conservatives will believe just about anything to advance their anti-Muslim and anti-Obama paranoia.

The last few years have been tough on Elaine Donnelly, as the Phyllis Schlafly protégé appears to have lost the battle over her group’s two main priorities: maintaining the ban on openly gay service members and excluding women from combat positions. Donnelly, the head of the Center for Military Readiness, appeared on Secure Freedom Radio last week with Frank Gaffney to demand that Congress intervene and block the Obama administration from permitting women to serve in combat.

She predicted that “lives are lost” if women have the opportunity to serve in such units, which she arged would make the military’s mission “more difficult [and] more dangerous.” “This is the political agenda of the President,” Donnelly said, “we see the outgoing Secretary of Defense planting on the Pentagon the flag of feminism right next to the LGBT gay activist flag.”

Gaffney: What does it mean for the war fighting capabilities of the United States that we are relaxing the standards or we are enabling people who will not be able to meet them to get access to and become part of the military cadre?

Donnelly: When you complicate matters in infantry battalions you make life and missions there more difficult, more dangerous, bottom line: lives are lost. There is no excuse for doing this. We know that women are promoted at rates equal to or faster than men and it’s been that way for decades. This is the political agenda of the President that is being imposed on the one institution or the one organization that he can order as Commander-in-Chief and everybody has to salute and make it work. That includes the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, they are going along with this even though they have not disclosed the results of the marine tests. Now if the marine tests supported the goal of women being in the infantry, don’t you think we would’ve heard about it by now? Instead, we see the outgoing Secretary of Defense planting on the Pentagon the flag of feminism right next to the LGBT gay activist flag. These people are in charge of the Pentagon unless Congress intervenes and Congress has the responsibility to intervene. Under the Constitution, Congress makes policy, not the President, not the Joint Chiefs and certainly the field commanders who will have to implement these diversity metrics in order to get promoted.

On Monday, People For the American Way delivered a petition with 178,000 signatures to House Speaker John Boehner calling for the removal of Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Bachmann, one of Congress’ leading purveyors of conspiracy theories, earned rebukes from Boehner and others last year when she accused several Muslim-American government employees, include top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, of being secret agents of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The petition, to put it mildly, hit a nerve among Bachmann’s allies in the anti-Muslim Right. FrontPageMag, an online outfit led by David Horowitz, has published a full three articles defending Bachmann and accusing PFAW of “smearing” the “vindicated” Bachmann by launching an “all-out war” on her.  In one article, Robert Spencer of JihadWatch argues, “If they really had any genuine concern for the American way, instead of calling for her removal from the Intelligence committee, the People for the American Way would be calling for Bachmann to be appointed to chair that committee.”

Yesterday, Horowitz launched his own petition, titled, ironically, “Stop the Witch Hunt Against Rep. Bachmann.”

Horowitz and Spencer aren’t the only ones coming to Bachmann’s defense. The Center for Security Policy’s Frank Gaffney, who was the source of the bulk of Bachmann’s accusations against Abedin, and conservative columnist Diana West discussed the petition on Wednesday’s edition of Secure Freedom Radio. People For the American Way, Gaffney suggested, is part of the “Red-Green Axis” and should be called instead “People For the Islamist Way”:

Gaffney: I wanted to turn to a woman who has probably understood this jihadist enterprise, most especially the civilization jihadist element of it, that is to say the so-called non-violent -- actually pre-violent form -- that we’ve talked about in the book that you contributed marvelously to, Sharia: The Threat to America, namely Michele Bachmann. She has been savaged now for almost a year for having actually raised an alarm about some of this. What’s going on with her at the moment and what should our listeners be thinking about it and doing?

West: Well, you have People For the American Way, a leftist advocacy group, actually putting together a petition asking to have Speaker John Boehner to remove Michele Bachmann from the House Intelligence Committee. Now this actually all ties in to what we were talking about already because FOX has also savaged Michele Bachmann, specifically going back to last summer when she and a few of her colleagues were raising questions about Muslim Brotherhood penetration into the United States government. Specifically, one of the cause celebre was the perhaps penetration, her question of the secretary of state’s office with her top aide being Huma Abedin, who we’ve spoken about before. And this is one of these…

Gaffney: Closely tied to the Muslim Brotherhood.

West: Correct.

…

Gaffney: I think what we’re really getting at here is Michele Bachmann is being vilified for having exposed some of that influence operation, penetration problem and she should be, if anything, lauded for it, not taken to task by the Red-Green Axis, as they call it, doing business under the form of People For the Islamist Way.

Frank Gaffney is demonstrating once again why even an increasing number of Republicans aren’t taking him seriously anymore, as he is attacking President Obama’s nominee to head the CIA for speaking Arabic. In his Washington Times column today, Gaffney said that counterterrorism adviser John Brennan’s knowledge of Arabic and past role as CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia are actually negatives and reveal his terrorist sympathies. Gaffney also took issue with Brennan’s resistance to using the term “jihad” and argued that Brennan is “the single most important enabler of the Islamic supremacists’ agenda in government today” as he “has helped legitimate, empower, fund, arm and embolden them abroad, and embraced and appeased them here at home.”

Mr. Brennan is a textbook example of a U.S. official who has “gone native.” He speaks Arabic and was formerly the top CIA officer in Saudi Arabia. He has shown himself to be deeply sympathetic to Islamists — for example, excusing and dissembling about their commitment to jihad and the necessity of not offending them.

After President Obama himself, Mr. Brennan is, arguably, the single most important enabler of the Islamic supremacists’ agenda in government today. In his role as homeland security adviser to the president — a position that does not require Senate confirmation and that he was given as a consolation prize when it became clear that he might not be confirmable as CIA director back in 2009 — Mr. Brennan has helped legitimate, empower, fund, arm and embolden them abroad, and embraced and appeased them here at home.

Of particular concern is the fact that Mr. Brennan has presided over the policy of engaging the Muslim Brotherhood, which has consequently been portrayed by a politicized intelligence community as “largely secular” and “eschewing violence”; the shredding of training briefings and the proscribing of trainers that might upset Muslims by telling the truth about Shariah and the jihad it commands; the penetration of U.S. agencies by Muslim Brotherhood-associated individuals as employees or senior advisers; and misrepresentations to Congress about the true, jihadist character of the attack that killed four Americans in Benghazi this past Sept. 11.

…

Ordinarily, a president should be given wide latitude by the Senate to appoint those he wants to staff his administration. This is no ordinary time, though, and this is no ordinary president or administration. The circumstances are such that a Team Obama that is pursuing so dangerous a policy course must be challenged and impeded, not encouraged and abetted.

The Senate’s constitutional responsibility to confirm senior executive branch appointees is one of the few it hasn’t compromised or allowed the president to expropriate. It must exercise its authority to assure “quality control” with respect to his picks for top national security Cabinet posts.

Indeed, the fact that Mr. Obama seeks not one or two but three individuals who share his determination to achieve the radical and dangerous national security transformation he seeks in his second term demands that senators defy him. After all, should the Senate fail to object to this trajectory by rigorously debating and defeating any — and preferably all — of these problematic choices, its members risk not only allowing but becoming party to the realization of a world without America.

Conservative columnist Diana West returned to Frank Gaffney’s show, Secure Freedom Radio, where the two agreed that President Obama is going to gut the Constitution in order to bring about a “dictatorship.” Gaffney pointed to an op-ed by Louis Michael Seidman which criticized the Constitution’s “archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions,” and then connected Seidman to…Obama. How you might ask? Well, they are both constitutional law professors, Gaffney explains, so they must share the same views on the suitability of the Constitution in today’s society and both support “a kind of post-constitutionalism.”

West agreed with Gaffney’s claim that Obama is putting Seidman’s take on the Constitution into practice and went on to argue that he is undermining the rule of law and promoting “totalitarianism.” Gaffney also warned that “freedom of speech” is “very much on the line.”

Gaffney: There’s a kind of betrayal being proposed at the moment, it’s been quite formally now advanced in the form of a column that’s getting a lot of attention but less formally it seems to be the practice of the Obama administration, a kind of post-constitutionalism. Louis Michael Seidman who is a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University, the profession that of course our President had prior to entering public life at the University of Chicago, it was entitled back in December 30, 2012, “Let’s Give Up on the Constitution.” Do you think, Diana West, that’s in fact what we are doing now increasingly in the government of the United States under President Barack Obama?

West: Yes, I do. I think that this is another evolution that has been a long time coming; this is not a brand new development. However, the boldness and the frontal assault of such a notion is going to increasingly gain currency and what we are actually doing is watching the disillusion of rule of law and the increasing elevation of the rule of men, by men I mean women as well, but in terms of a rule of a person who is not bound by the law. This leads to dictatorship, it leads to totalitarianism, it leads to the end of liberty. It’s a terrible development and it’s dire. I can’t overstate the seriousness of this notion gaining currency, particularly in law schools. This is a tremendous threat and unless our legislators, unless our pundits, our people, our town halls, our tea parties get involved in such a matter it is going to sweep us over.

Gaffney: Not least, and this is an area I know you’re following very closely Diana West and we will discuss with you again in the weeks to come in 2013, the effect on some of our most fundamental freedoms. For example, freedom of speech, the ability to have this kind of conversation where it might give offense to Muslims, is very much on the line.

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) appeared on conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney’s show yesterday where they railed against President Obama over his speech at the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Symposium. Gaffney claimed that Obama was practicing “national security fraud” and is “misleading the American people” by heralding new efforts to curtail the proliferation of nuclear weapons, while Inhofe said that the dream of Obama and the far-left is to disband the military altogether. “The far-left doesn’t think we need a military to start with, they really don’t,” Inhofe told Gaffney, “They would never say that but they do believe that.”

Listen:

Gaffney: I just have to ask you about this. President Obama made a statement yesterday that just is stunning. He said to a group of nuclear disarmament enthusiasts: ‘We’re moving closer to the future we seek. A future where these weapons never threaten our children again. A future where we know the security and peace of a world without nuclear weapons.’ Senator, I suggest to you that represents national security fraud. I just wonder, knowing what you do about the proliferation of nuclear weapons not just in Iran but the buildup by the Chinese that have just tested a new long-range missile from mobile launchers capable of reaching this country, what on earth is the president doing misleading the American people?

Inhofe: I think that you and I have a problem. We don’t stop and realize that we are dealing with people—the far-left doesn’t think we need a military to start with, they really don’t. You’ve heard me say this before, they really believe if all countries would just stand in a circle and unilaterally disarm and hold hands then all threats would go away, they believe that. They would never say that but they do believe that.

The Center for Security Policy’s Frank Gaffney dedicated Wednesday’s edition of Secure Freedom Radio to discussing the Benghazi attack and the resignation of Gen. David Petreaus with leaders of the anti-Muslim Right. He spoke first with conservative columnist Diana West, who in October claimed that the Benghazi attack was a “fortunate event” because it brought attention to the Obama administration’s “supporting jihad.”

West – who explored similar ground in a WorldNetDaily column yesterday -- told Gaffney that Petreaus’ extramarital affair was “apiece” with the entire philosophy behind the counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, claiming that American troops are now being ordered to “revere the Koran” and “look the other way” at “polygamy, pederasty, abuse of dogs.”

“I’m not surprised to see the men who prosecuted this doctrine, Gen. Petraeus, Gen. Allen, and who else, we don’t even know how many others, showing such immoral leadership and such corruption of their own personal lives,” she said.

West: In a sense, we live in a COIN [counterinsurgency] world, because I think the doctrine that Christopher Stevens and the Bush administration and of course the Obama administration was pushing was this notion, if you do enough to please the Islamic world you can work with them. But in that process, you become part of the submission. You adopt so much of the Islamic worldview that you lose your own. And I think the counterinsurgency doctrine exemplifies this with guns. It’s a matter of appeasing Islamic masters, of satisfying Islamic norms in order, the idea is to win them over to your side. But you no longer have a side once you’ve given over freedom of speech, which the military essentially gave over in ordering men to revere the Koran and never speak ill of it, once you give over the notion of outrage over polygamy, pederasty, abuse of dogs, which the military institutionalizes in forcing our men to look the other way at these behaviors, which are norms in Afghanistan. You have given away yourself, you no longer have yourself, and as these men come home when these attitudes towards corruption – everything in Afghanistan is done with money, you know jizya, the amounts of, your persuading people to do things not because you’re right or according to the law, but because you pay them, these things are going to seep back into our society. And this tolerance of polygamy, pederasty, etc. is going to seep back in. These are dangerous things, we’re no longer ourselves.
…

West: The notion of protecting the populations of Iraq and Afghanistan, which is at the heart of COIN, over protecting American forces in the field, I believe is an immoral doctrine. And I’m not surprised to see the men who prosecuted this doctrine, Gen. Petraeus, Gen. Allen, and who else, we don’t even know how many others, showing such immoral leadership and such corruption of their own personal lives. I don’t think it’s far afield, I think it’s all apiece of a larger philosophy.

Gaffney: Symptomatic of a larger problem, one I think that those of us who revere the military and its place in our society as our defenders must take very much to heart.

Elsewhere in the program, Gaffney spoke with author Andy Bostom, who claimed that President Obama has adopted what he sees as the West’s “cultural self-loathing.” Gaffney agreed, adding that “it really speaks to the psychology of this guy… this hostility to the United States.”

Bostom: I think we’re coming to a phase in the West where this sort of cultural self-loathing. Our engagement now in these wars, the way we’ve conducted them, may be the apotheosis of this trend, this completely self-destructive self-loathing. And our president seems to have totally bought into this mentality that somehow, you know, all the ills of the world are due to western attacks, to hegemony and colonial…and this is all the detritus of the colonial empire, and we are a guilty people, we are a guilty civilization, and he is actualizing policies, it seems to me, based on this mindset. And al Qaeda’s a great example. On the one hand, they aren’t even Muslims, according to our president and his advisors, they’re some sort of vague manifestation of extremism that has nothing to do with Islam, that has nothing to do with Muslims, that’s a sui generis phenomenon or something, but we are incalculably wrong in almost everything we do.

Gaffney: That’s such a telling insight, Andy Bostom. It really speaks to the psychology of this guy, and we’ll be speaking momentarily with Dr. Paul Kengor about his sort of upbringing and influences that may have helped shape this hostility to the United States. But to the extent that it really is translating now into fundamentally misunderstanding the danger that’s being posed to us and therefore making absolutely impossible our success in contending with it, it really is a disaster of the first order and something that I pray we will have members of Congress addressing in the course of these hearings starting this week.

David Horowitz talked to Frank Gaffney today on Secure Freedom Radio about what to expect in President Obama’s second term, where Horowitz warned that while the government through health care reform can “control your health, now they’re going to control your environment.” He said that the movement for environmental protection is America’s “biggest threat” because it is working with Obama to impose government “control over everybody’s life” under the excuse of preventing climate change, “the chimera of the left.” He even brought up the debunked claim that Obama will enforce a light switch tax.

The far-right author demanded that Republicans read his book Radicals: Portraits of a Destructive Passion and learn that Obama is following the playbook of Saul Alinsky. Horowitz details how Saul Alinsky came up with the absolutely novel idea that politicians should make compromises, try to pass their policy agenda when they can and run negative advertisements against their opponents.

Horowitz also seems to be under the impression that Romney did not respond to any of the negative ads against him and did not go negative against Obama. “Character assassination is the middle name of every Democratic political operative,” Horowitz maintained, “What is wrong with Republicans that they don’t understand that this is a war? And the other side is playing for keeps.”

Horowitz: Alinsky advised, do what’s possible, not your ideal, make compromises, which Obama has done and he’s turned off some of the left because of it. SO he’s going to continue to fund the left with taxpayer money, that’s a given, that’s where the Stimulus money went, it went to the unions, he’s going to fund the unions. He’s going to pursue this other chimera of the left, the climate change, because it means control over energy policies. They actually want to control when you turn on your light switch, they want to tax you for the energy that you use. I have to tell you, this is the biggest threat, that environmental movement. That’s the powerful movement because it means control over everybody’s life. They won Obamacare and control your health, now they’re going to control your environment.

Gaffney: And energy. David, what would you recommend to the loyal opposition as to what it should be doing to contend with this radical and his agenda for the next four years?

Horowitz: Read my book. The big problem here is conservatives understand policy issues very well, they’re wonks like Paul Ryan. Romney by the way could have won this election if he had made Rubio his vice presidential candidate, as much as I admire Paul Ryan, it was Rubio we should’ve picked for the politics of it. But the main thing is you have to understand your enemy, it’s not good enough to do the policy, people never get to hear the policies. Romney never appeared to half the electorate, what appeared were all those negative campaign ads and that’s just what politics is about. You have got to understand how dedicated and vicious your opponents are. Stop calling them liberals and hopefully some people will read my book because my book is portraits of threes people so you understand who they are.

Gaffney: Right. One of the things that just jumps off of the pages is something that we saw play out, right out of Saul Alinsky’s playbook, I think it was “Rules for Radicals #11,” in which he said, select a target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it. If that wasn’t the script for taking down Mitt Romney I don’t know what was. Horowitz: Yes. Character assassination is the middle name of every Democratic political operative, and everybody who is a conservative knows it, we’ve all been victims of it. It’s not a secret, everybody said, everybody said, this will be the dirtiest campaign ever and Obama has nothing to run on, he has to demonize Romney. And when he did that, did the Romney campaign respond? No. What is wrong with Republicans that they don’t understand that this is a war?

Gaffney: They have to read your book, that’s for sure.

Horowitz: And the other side is playing for keeps.