Framing Muslims and
Locking Up Their Money
by
Cynthia McKinney
"The government falsified evidence and broke the law while
spying on the Foundation."
Former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney delivered
the following remarks to a banquet for the Dallas Muslim Legal Fund of America.
What I want to talk to you about tonight, is why you must support the Muslim
Legal Fund of America even more now than ever before. I know there are
some big donors in here, but everyone must donate until you feel it. Then
you will know that you did something with your money. You will remember
this contribution. And soon enough, you will be glad you did.
That's because we haven't reached a point where human rights are respected in
this country. We haven't reached a point where justice rolls down like a
might stream in this country. And so, we must be prepared for times of
injustice, times of abuse, times of great pain and hurt.
To illustrate my point, I would like you to consider the case of a powerful and
famous organization. It had friends that lavished it with money and it
learned to use its resources to achieve its goals. Pretty soon, this
organization had a multimillion dollar budget. It became very powerful,
some said the largest of its kind in the country. Soon, the organization
became so effective that people began to take notice. People began to
wonder if the organization was really American, advancing American values, or
was in service to non-American or even anti-American goals? Eventually, the
organization became ensnared in our country's legal system and its supporters
were accused of criminal activity. In some cases even treason!
People were maligned, had their lives ruined, and some were even jailed.
"We
haven't reached a point where human rights are respected in this country."
Imagine, you've got large sums of money, foreign intrigue, political power, a
court battle, charges of treason, and nothing written in the newspapers at all
about the sordid mess. What's the difference between the Holy
Land Foundation and the organization I'm talking about?
For eight long years, the FBI watched the Holy Land Foundation with
surveillance that included illegal wiretaps. The government would have
had the jury believe that the supporters and the managers of the Holy Land
Foundation and just about every other Muslim organization in the United States
that was tied into the litigation was guilty of a crime. Millions of
dollars later, after wreaking fear and terror inside this country's Muslim
community, the jury told the government what the men and women whose lives were
on trial already knew. The charges leveled by the government could not
stand the jury's scrutiny. So why was the allegation even leveled in the
first place? Why did the press parrot the allegations without one moment
of questioning whether or not the government could have been as off in its
assessments of the Holy Land Foundation as it was in its estimates of pre-war
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction?
I would like to take a moment to follow the trail of another trial involving
the sale or give-away of U.S. national security secrets to a foreign
government; the name of that government is never mentioned; and the litigation
never pierces the American psyche due to an effective news blackout. News
of this is nowhere to be found while we know in detail the mental state of
Brittany Spears.
"Why did the press parrot the allegations without one
moment of questioning whether or not the government could have been so off in
its assessments of the Holy Land Foundation."
Consider for just a moment what is happening, though unpublicized, today. In
case number one, a Pentagon man is found with 83 top secret documents at his
home, some of them having been passed to American
Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) who then passed them to Israel -
known in the newspapers as Country A. The other case involves the outing
of a CIA agent who was tracking nuclear proliferation in the Middle East.
This is the case of Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, that saw
the chief of staff of the Vice President of the United States sentenced to
prison, only to be later pardoned by the President!
Interestingly, when George Bush came to the White House, he brought with him
Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and others. Perle would soon leave because
it was learned that he tried to use his position as head of the Defense Policy
Board to make money off the War on Terror. Feith, as head of the Office
of Special Plans, presided over the most ignominious period in the history of
the Pentagon, with it producing faked intelligence, stovepiping it to the White
House, and then to the American people and the U.S. Congress, sending our young
men and women into war in Iraq. Feith left the Pentagon as soon as the
investigation into Larry Franklin, his subordinate in his Office, started to
get hot. Larry Franklin is now in jail.
When Franklin met with two AIPAC operatives, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman,
what he didn't know was that every word was being recorded. Franklin,
Rosen, and Weissman formed a neat circle. Elliot Abrams at the National
Security Council, Dov Zakheim, Comptroller at the Pentagon, Doug Feith number
three at the Pentagon in its Office of Special Plans, and Paul Wolfowitz,
number two at the Pentagon, closed that circle.
"Perle and Feith were investigated by the FBI for passing
secret information to Israel."
Ex-CIA agent Phil Giraldi in "Kill the Messenger" confirms that both
Perle and Feith were investigated by the FBI for passing secret information to
Israel. He continues, "In no cases, were any of them
convicted. The prosecutions were dropped ... in my opinion because of political
pressure not to get into this kind of case that involves Israel and
espionage." Wolfowitz was under investigation for passing U.S.
secrets to Israel through AIPAC.
Spying inside the United States is not new.
In 2001, the FBI discovered new, "massive" Israeli spying operations in the
East Coast, including New York and New Jersey," and they began watching
Naor Gilon (at the Israeli Embassy), who eventually led them to Franklin.
In 1970 while working for a U.S. Senator, Richard Perle was caught by the FBI
giving classified information to Israel.
In 1985, the New York Times reports that the FBI is aware of at least a dozen
incidents in which classified information is transferred to Israel.
In 1987, the Wall Street Journal headlined that Israel's role in the
Iran-Contra scandal would not be investigated by Congress.
In 1993, the Anti-Defamation League is caught operating a massive spying
operation on critics of Israel, Arab-Americans, the San Francisco Labor
Council, ILWU Local 10, Oakland Educational Association, NAACP, Irish Northern
Aid, International Indian Treaty Council, the Asian Law Caucus and the San
Francisco police. Data collected was sent to Israel and in some cases to South
Africa. Pressure from certain organizations forces the city to drop the
criminal case, but the ADL settles a civil lawsuit for an undisclosed sum of
cash.
General Karen Kwiatkowski, who quit the Pentagon, wrote that during her time
there, Doug Feith gave the Israeli military access to the Pentagon without
signing in, in violation of security policy.
"Data collected was sent to Israel and in some cases to
South Africa."
And finally, Sibel Edmonds, who has a gag order on her, but she courageously is
now speaking, says that Patrick Fitzgerald will find more than just a few guys
spying for Israel if he conducts a real investigation. Sibel says that
it's basically the same people over and over again and the activities include
multi-billion dollar black-market nuclear sales to terrorists and unsavory
regimes. She says that the beauty of the larger case is that you can
start form any angle. If you start from the AIPAC angle, you wind up at
the same people. If you start from the Valerie Plame case, you end up
with the same people. The FBI probe of Pentagon intelligence activities
had as its target Doug Feith's Office of Special Plans. On her website,
Sibel Edmonds shows photographs of those involved. I went to her website
and I recognized the following photographs:
Retiring former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, retiring Member of
Congress Tom Lantos, and Pentagon and State Department officials.
Sibel concludes that the investigations were shut down in 2000 and in 2001
"because they ended up going to higher levels and involving maybe way too
many people, US persons. I'm talking about individuals who are breaking
the law, misusing the trust and abusing their power, and in some cases I would
even say engaging in treason."
Now in the face of all of this, why is it that we have to defend a young Muslim
girl, talented at running track, from being put off the team because she wants
to cover her body consistent with Islamic practice?
Why is it that Dennis Kucinich gets a visit from representatives of Nancy
Pelosi and AIPAC and they tell him that they will guarantee his reelection if
he drops his impeachment effort. That tells us, that at the end of the
day, AIPAC feels that it can guarantee someone a Congressional seat if the
AIPAC agenda is put forward. This exchange, recently made public, might
also tell us why impeachment is off the table.
"I'm talking about individuals who are breaking
the law, misusing the trust and abusing their power."