Yesterday, Philip Haney, a former Department of Homeland Security analyst who has become a prominent right-wing anti-Islam activist since retiring, spoke at a conference in Washington, D.C., organized by the anti-Muslim group ACT for America.
Near the end of his remarks, Haney took questions from the audience, including one from a woman who asked his thoughts about Abdulrahman Alharbi, a student from Saudi Arabia who was injured in the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, who she said she thought “had something to do with the marathon bombing.”
The questioner may have gotten this idea from Glenn Beck. Alharbi was briefly considered to be a person of interest in the early part of the investigation, but was quickly cleared by investigators, but that didn’t stop Beck from repeatedly asserting on his radio and television programs that Alharbi was really an Al Qaeda “control agent” and the “money man” who financed and orchestrated the terrorist attack.
Alharbi is now suing Beck for defamation and, earlier this month, a federal judge ruled that Beck would have to reveal the identities of the confidential sources upon whom his network relied in leveling these accusations against Alharbi so that Alharbi’s legal team can depose them. Beck is refusing to do so and during Haney’s response to the question about the bombing, he made a somewhat cryptic remark regarding that particular issue.
Haney accused former Department of Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano of lying to Congress about Alharbi and decried the lawsuit against Beck, calling it an effort to impose Sharia on America.
“[Alharbi] is suing Glenn Beck right now,” Haney said. “This is an intrusion of Sharia law—slander or defamation – ghiba, which is a capital offense—through the auspices of the Saudi government against an American citizen. The judge just ruled on the 10th of August that he has to disclose his confidential sources. Well, who might that be?”
After that rather revealing remark, Haney wondered why “a foreign government or a foreign national [has] any standing in America to sue an American citizen,” complaining that he, Haney, was a victim of “invisible shrapnel because when Janet Napolitano lied to Congress, she set off a third bomb and she shredded the lives of a lot of people.”
