Frank Gaffney

Last week, Frank Gaffney spoke to Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) to discuss immigration reform and the government’s response to the Boston Marathon attack. Gohmert, who has cited the bombing as a reason to oppose comprehensive immigration reform, told Gaffney that “millions” of immigrants will be “rushing in” over the border if Congress is poised to pass legislation that includes a pathway to citizenship.

He even said that President Obama is “not going to ever secure the border” until Congress gives legal status to people who will “vote Democrat.”

It is time to slow down and make sure we do things properly so that we don’t bring in and legalize millions of people who will come rushing in as soon as there is a bill before the borders can be secured they’ll come rushing in. Instead we’ll have the President say, ‘gee I’m going to hold my doing my job for ransom, you either give me all these people that I think will vote Democrat and make them legal so they can vote Democrat or I’m not going to ever secure the border.’ That’s ridiculous. We all ought to stand firm. You secure the border so only legal people can come in and then we’ll have a deal done in a week, no more than a month.

While addressing the FBI’s work in Boston, Gohmert said that it was “amazing” that the FBI was able to do any investigative work at all because, according to Gohmert, they are being advised by “Muslim Brotherhood members.”

He said that the Obama administration is promoting “radical Islam” and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and in the US, maintaining that “Muslim Brotherhood advisers” have made it “virtually impossible to properly and adequately investigate and defend this country.”

The FBI did an amazing job, really terrific job, considering as how they virtually and figuratively bound their own hands and blindfolded themselves while they are trying to investigate something involving radical Islamists. We know that most Muslims are moderate; I continue to have people approach me that I’ve never seen or met that identify themselves as being from Egypt, some still having family there and some not, and pointing out that we’re helping the wrong people, you’re helping the radicals, you’re helping the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt would you please stop, you’re hurting those of us who don’t want radical Islam running our country, we want our Egypt back. But that’s what we’ve been doing.

The FBI, on the same token, they have brought as you know what the Dallas federal court and the fifth circuit court of appeals identified as the two largest Muslim Brotherhood front organizations in America, CAIR and ISNA, and so you know they have been working with them, they have been advised by CAIR. They finally suspended their so-called partnership with CAIR but you have Muslim Brotherhood members who have advised the FBI and have been telling them things that just simply make it virtually impossible to properly and adequately investigate and defend this country. The job they did was really amazing considering the fact that they have purged their lexicon of any words that Muslim Brotherhood advisers have told them that they find offensive.

Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy dedicated his Washington Times column today to a letter demanding another investigation into the attack at the US Mission in Benghazi. The letter relies on debunked conspiracy theories and Gaffney amusingly argues that “this is not an effort to settle political scores:

It has been nearly eight months since jihadists attacked U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed, and many more were badly injured. That is pretty much all we know for sure about an incident that has let’s face it been subjected to the most comprehensive and successful cover-up in modern political history.

Now, 700 heroic special operations veterans have written an open letter to Congress calling for the creation of a new investigative committee to establish the truth. They want to know, in particular, why warriors like them weren’t allowed to aid our countrymen in their hour of need.

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This is not an effort to settle political scores. Neither the Democrats who run the Senate nor Republicans who run the House have conducted the needed “full accounting.” What is required is more than just a postmortem on a national security debacle, however.

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As one of the SOF community’s most revered leaders in both war and peace retired Army Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin, put it recently: “I have seen men take great risks to save a fellow warrior. I have even seen men die trying to do so. The lack of accountability regarding the Benghazi event disturbs me greatly and bears the earmarks of a cover-up.

“America is entitled to a full accounting of this egregious attack on our people with some explanation as to why there was no effort to save the Americans in [Benghazi] or at least to recover their bodies before they fell into Libyan hands. Our Congress has yet to fulfill its responsibility to provide a complete analysis of the attack or to provide answers as to what exactly happened. A bipartisan special committee is needed to determine the truth about Benghazi.”

The leader of the group which issued the letter, Larry Bailey, is a longtime Obama critic and an unapologetic birther.

But that isn’t a problem for Gaffney, as he too is a birther.

As for Boykin, the former general and current vice president of the far-right Family Research Council initially claimed that David Petraues resigned his position at the CIA not as a result of his affair but because he was about to expose Obama, who was blackmailing him, for “covering up” the Benghazi incident and “reached a point where he was unwilling to continue spouting the party line [on Benghazi] to the American public and continuing to breach his own integrity.”

Of course, that never happened and Boykin was completely wrong.

But that is one of Boykin’s tamer conspiracy theories, as he also believes that Obama won the election as a result of a plot by an international “cabal” led by George Soros and is creating a paramilitary force through the health care reform law to take control of America.

• Bryan Fischer says "the fact that we are in court at all [on DOMA and Prop 8] is already a defeat for the Constitution and the American principle of self-governance."
• Frank Gaffney opposes the nomination of Thomas Perez to become the Secretary of Labor because Perez once hugged a Muslim.
• Larry Klayman is suing the City Pages of Minnesota and Phoenix New Times, "charging that they defamed him by stating falsely that he inappropriately touched his children."
• Russell Moore will replace Richard Land as president of the Southern Baptist Commission's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
• Finally, this is the title of a segment from Glenn Beck's radio program today: "Is Joe Biden drunk a lot?"

Appearing on Frank Gaffney’s Secure Freedom Radio yesterday, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) argued that President Obama should emulate President Reagan’s policy of arming “the enemy of our enemy.” This tactic, of course, led the U.S. to arm the combatants in Afghanistan led by Osama bin Laden and the notorious Contras of Nicaragua.

The congressman even agreed with Gaffney when he made the egregious claim that the Obama administration wants to “prop up” the Iranian regime.

Rohrabacher also suggested that the US should arm the Mujahedeen-e Khlaq (People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran), which last year was delisted as a foreign terror organization. Gaffney’s CSP has criticized the MEK as being a “pro-Saddam Hussein group” and noted its record of violence.

Rohrabacher: In order to accomplish what we need to have accomplished in Iran is regime change and we haven’t gone down anything in that direction and we—

Gaffney: Arguably to the contrary, we’ve been helping prop up the regime in the face of a lot of opposition at home.

Rohrabacher: Well that’s it. With the opposition at home we should be supporting all of those people within Iran who are enemies of the mullah regime. I just came back from a congressional delegation to Central Asia and we met with leaders of the MEK who are an anti-Mullah group and they are controversial to some people but the bottom line is they are actually fighting the mullahs, the mullah regime. We should be indiscriminately working with those groups that want to eliminate the mullah regime and hopefully will replace it with a democratic government. I support for example the Baloch, there are six million Balochis in the southern part of Iran, they are Sunnis I might add, and they are persecuted by these mullahs and I have been doing everything I can to support the insurgency and the independence of Balochistan. There are several groups, there are Kurds in Iran. We have not done anything to actually support the enemy of our enemies unlike Reagan which ended the Cold War because he supported the enemy of our enemies rather than deploy American troops everywhere.

For decades, the Right has attempted to discredit Hillary Clinton with attacks ranging from the disturbing (killing people) to the bizarre (killing cats). But after serving four years as Secretary of State, Clinton is leaving office with sky-high approval ratings. Before she steps down on Friday, we decided to look back on some of the most extreme and befuddling accusations she has faced from the far-right during her term as the nation’s top diplomat.

1. Clinton Engineered Benghazi Cover-Up

While the official report on the U.S. mission in Benghazi found multiple security and management breakdowns that Clinton had already taken responsibility for, many on the right claimed that she actually was behind a massive cover-up. Several Republican politicians and conservative commentators said that the Obama administration withheld military assistance while watching a live feed of the attack. The State Department’s Accountability Review Board report debunked the right-wing conspiracy theories, but that didn’t stop Fox News and conservative talk show hosts from reporting them as fact and arguing that the administration used the attack in Benghazi to pass blasphemy laws protecting Islam.

As the Right’s claims about Benghazi continued to unravel, they shifted to baselessly asserting that the administration manufactured the Petraeus affair in order to preserve the alleged cover-up and that Clinton faked a concussion and blood clot to get out of testifying about the incident. When she did testify, she faced redundant and ill-informed questions from Republicans like Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson, who skipped a classified briefing on the incident, and Kentucky senator Rand Paul, who admitted he had no proof to back up his claim that the Benghazi mission was used to send arms to Syrian rebels.

2. Clinton Supports the Muslim Brotherhood

Latching onto rumors that emerged on the far-right fringe, Rep. Michele Bachmann sought to spark a McCarthyite investigation that accused Clinton’s deputy chief of staff of acting as a Muslim Brotherhood spy. Bachmann insisted that “there has been deep penetration in the halls of our United States government by the Muslim Brotherhood,” and along with a handful of Republican colleagues, made allegations that Clinton aide Huma Abedin was working on behalf of the group.

Of course, Bachmann couldn’t substantiate her claims and literally ran away from a reporter when asked about them. Even Republican leaders criticized Bachmann for starting the witch hunt. But her unfounded claims took off in the conservative media, which was more than happy to paint Clinton and Obama as secret Islamist sympathizers, and eventually caused trouble overseas .

3. Clinton Loves Sharia

Anti-Clinton conspiracy theorists claim that her supposed Muslim Brotherhood sympathies have turned her into a covert advocate of Sharia law. Bachmann said that Clinton was working “to take away the free speech rights of the American people” and “our right of free speech and expression, religious practice, freedom of assembly, freedom of the printing press” in order to “empower the Islamists.”

Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy claimed that Clinton had accepted “submission to the stealthy Islamist effort to enforce in this country the supremacist doctrine known as shariah” and the Family Research Council’s Jerry Boykin said the administration had shown “support for the infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood into our government.” Rick Joyner, the televangelist who has worked closely with Gaffney and Boykin, was left wondering why Clinton was “advocating” Sharia:

4. LGBT Rights Advocacy Will Destroy America

While the Right’s Benghazi, Muslim Brotherhood and Sharia law claims didn’t hold water, they at least got one thing right: Clinton acted as a champion for LGBT equality while leading the State Department. The Religious Right fumed at her work on behalf of gay rights and exploded in anger following a speech in Geneva in which she defended the rights of LGBT people and called for the decriminalization of LGBT status.

Liberty University’s Mat Staver warned that Clinton was backing a “radical sexual anarchist agenda” while Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention said that Clinton’s support of “sexual paganization” would bring about God’s judgment on America. Pat Robertson reacted to Clinton’s speech by warning that God may destroy the U.S.

5. Clinton Opposes Religious Freedom

All of the conspiracy theories and accusations seem to come together in an attempt to smear Clinton as an enemy of religious freedom. Conservatives argued that she was using both gay rights and Sharia law to undercut Christianity and religious freedoms. Focus on the Family founder James Dobson and Family Research Council president Tony Perkins maintained that Clinton was trying to subvert the freedom of religion by using the term “freedom of worship,” even though the Obama administration frequently uses the phrase “freedom of religion” and President Bush talked about the “freedom of worship” without receiving a similar outcry from social conservatives.

At the Values Voters Summit, phony “ex-terrorist” Kamal Saleem even warned that Clinton was planning to “shut down” churches and synagogues this month. Since Clinton serves just one more day at the job, she better speed up with her diabolical plans!

The Center for Security Policy’s Frank Gaffney and National Review columnist Andy McCarthy were unimpressed with President Obama’s second inaugural address, despite all its references to the Constitution and the Founding Fathers. On yesterday’s edition of Secure Freedom Radio, McCarthy told Gaffney that the president is “taking out a contract on the Constitution as we know it.” Gaffney responded that the president “wrapped himself in a sort of nostalgia for the Constitution” while in fact being “rather contemptuous of it.”

McCarthy: I think what Obama’s trying to do -- and a lot of us who followed his career warned about this back in 2007, 2008 -- is really consummate the ambition of FDR to change the very nation of the American system, and certainly to change the nature of our constitutional framework from a charter of negative liberties, which is the protection of the American people against the adhesions and the extreme maneuvers of government, to basically a contract of the have-nots against the haves with government as the intermediary for demanding what government must do for people. With the big problem with that being, number one, what is your license to take from me, which is certainly not what the country was founded on. And number two, enough is never enough with the left. So even if you were to institute such a system it quickly becomes unsustainable.

Gaffney: Yeah, I take it you don’t mean “contract” in the sense of “taking out a contract” on somebody, but it certainly sounds as though that might be the gist.

McCarthy: It’s certainly taking out a contract, it’s taking out a contract on the Constitution as we know it.

Gaffney: Yeah. Even as we talked about with Dr. Paul Kengor earlier, and even as he wrapped himself in sort of nostalgia for the Constitution, he certainly showed himself to be rather contemptuous of it.

Frank Gaffney hosted Andrew McCarthy of the National Review yesterday on Secure Freedom Radio where he warned that People For the American Way is “promoting the Islamist agenda in the attack on Michele Bachmann” and should really be called the “People For the Islamist Way.”

PFAW recently delivered a petition opposing Bachmann’s reappointment to the House Intelligence Committee due to her long history of making extremist claims including her recent charge that Muslim Brotherhood agents have “penetrated” the U.S. government, a conspiracy that Gaffney helped concoct.

McCarthy joined Gaffney to defend the Minnesota congresswoman, who smeared Muslim-Americans in government including Hillary Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin, and once again argue that Bachmann is the real victim. He said that PFAW and other progressive groups have “decided to ‘bork’” Bachmann “because she has been so effective.” Gaffney said that the petition was part of the “red-green axis” that exists “between the left and the Islamists.”

Apparently, the PFAW-Islamist conspiracy must go all the way to the top of the Republican Party as Speaker John Boehner; Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC); House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security Subcommittee Chair Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) have all strongly denounced Bachmann’s allegations.

Gaffney: Let’s start with a woman that I think we both admire, who has been vilified in both Democratic and Republican circles, shamefully, for having had the courage to speak the truth about a problem that you have documented, most especially involving the woman that I guess caused so much controversy when Michele Bachmann and four of her colleagues asked the perfectly reasonable question: how did Huma Abedin with her ties to the Muslim Brotherhood get a security clearance and what influence is she having on policy? Give us your read on the fact that the so-called People For the American Way and I must say it sounds much more like it’s the People For the Islamist Way is up to when they try through a very substantially subscribed-to petition to have Michele Bachmann thrown off the Intelligence Committee in the House?

McCarthy: Well it seems to me Frank that it means that Michele has irritated all the right people who ought to be irritated. The American people ought to understand since we’re talking about People For the American Way that that organization is a contrivance of a far-left television icon of the 1970s and 80s named Norman Lear who was instrumental in the slander of Judge Robert Bork, so much of a slander that Judge Bork’s name became a verb in our modern lexicon and Michele Bachmann is the latest person that the left has decided to ‘bork’ because she has been so effective and because she’s been a staunch defender of American national security.

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Gaffney: Andy McCarthy you have also drilled down in your writings about the axis, some call it the red-green axis, between the left and the Islamists. This certainly seems to be a prime example of it as you say with Norman Lear’s background and the role that they are playing and in this instance promoting the Islamist agenda in the attack on Michele Bachmann.

Frank Gaffney appeared on The Janet Mefferd Show yesterday to warn that President Obama’s Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel is not only “a guy who cannot be all that concerned about the men and women in uniform” but also a “shill” for Iran. Gaffney, whose anti-Muslim activism is so extreme that it has even drawn the ire of many Republican groups, told Mefferd that Hagel is acting just like an Iranian spy.

“You couldn’t find a guy who has been more active in terms of promoting the interests of Iran at the expense of the United States than Chuck Hagel other than somebody who is actually an Iranian agent,” Gaffney said, “I’m not suggesting that he is, I don’t know, but I certainly think that’s the point of comparison here because it’s almost that full-throated.”

Mefferd: Obviously people have been talking about Chuck Hagel and his anti-Israel position; he also has a lot of interest in disarming us, doesn’t he?

Gaffney: He is a man who served in the military with distinction in Vietnam, by virtue of that I think many, including veterans groups, have been inclined to think he’ll be a formidable ally of the men and women in uniform. I think that’s anything but the case. To be frank about it, a guy who believes that you can further eviscerate the funding for the Defense Department suggests to me he’s a guy who cannot be all that concerned about the men and women in uniform because it ensures that they will not have the wherewithal that they require to protect us. That’s obviously not good for us but it isn’t going to be very safe or healthy for them either as they go into war without that kit.

Mefferd: Right and you would think that Iran getting excited about Chuck Hagel’s nomination would tip off a few people that this is probably not in the best interest of the United States to have Chuck Hagel in this job.

Gaffney: He’s earned the support of the Iranian regime. I have to say, over many years he has shilled for them it seems at just about every turn. He has objected to sanctions, I guess there have been one or two votes where he played along with it, but mostly he’s been objecting to it certainly since he left the Senate. He has categorically rejected the idea that we might have to use military force to prevent the sort of threat that I believe is now imminent in terms of a nuclear armed Iran. He has been exceedingly aggressive in promoting the idea that we need to engage with them on essentially whatever terms they demand. In other words, you couldn’t find a guy who has been more active in terms of promoting the interests of Iran at the expense of the United States than Chuck Hagel other than somebody who is actually an Iranian agent. I’m not suggesting that he is, I don’t know, but I certainly think that’s the point of comparison here because it’s almost that full-throated.

It is always fascinating to watch far-right activists claim that Muslims should be stripped of their First Amendment rights while denouncing the Obama administration for allegedly trying to undermine the freedom of religion all in the same breath.

Take, for example, Frank Gaffney, who testified in a Tennessee court on behalf of a group that tried to ban a mosque by arguing that Islam is not be protected under the First Amendment. He spoke with Eagle Forum head Phyllis Schlafly yesterday about Obama, whom Gaffney thinks is likely a secret Muslim, about his purported “assaults” on religious freedom.

After Schlafly named a series of lawsuits (most of which had no connection to the Obama administration) that she says prove Obama is hostile to the First Amendment, Gaffney asserted that Obama is not only trying to impose a “secularist agenda” but also champion “unalloyed efforts to promote Islamism.” He argued that Obama has a “profound affinity for” Islamism and asked Schlafly how that squares with his secularism.

Schlafly, however, couldn’t come up with a coherent answer besides arguing that Obama is wrong for saying that “we are not a Christian nation” since that’s “what the founding fathers were saying all the time.”

Gaffney: These seem sort of like small and unconnected assaults, but one of the places where we see and you write very powerfully about, this coming to ahead as you say, is the exception to his secularist agenda, which seems to be President Obama’s profound affinity for and I would argue unalloyed efforts to promote Islamism. Tell us what that’s about and how that’s translating into further problematic behavior with respect to our religious freedoms.

Schlafly: Well my book, No Higher Power, shows how he is trying to completely secularize our country but he is giving a pass to Islam. You find that he doesn’t attack Islam and he went over to one of those countries and announced that we are not a Christian nation, but America is a Christian nation, look at all of our founding documents and what the founding fathers were saying all the time and the very beginning. It is very peculiar the way he gives a pass to Islam.

Maybe Schlafly and Gaffney can read Thomas Jefferson’s autobiography where he explicitly states that Muslims have religious freedom and no religion has a privileged status, or see the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli negotiated by George Washington and ratified unanimously under John Adams which reads in part:

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility [sic], of Mussulmen [Muslims]; and, as the said States never have entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.