Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is being lambasted for pointing out that Huma Abedin, a top aide of Sec. of State Clinton, has familial ties to the radical Muslim Brotherhood movement.
Even members of her own party are attacking her for her statement about Abedin. The Republican onslaught against Bachmann began with Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ.) statement on the Senate floor Wednesday, saying she had made “sinister accusations.”
The background of this contraversy is as follows.
On June 12, 2012, Congressional Representatives Michele Bachmann, Louie Gohmert, Trent Franks, Lynn Westmoreland, and Tom Rooney sent letters to the Inspectors General (IGs) at the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, and State and the Office of the Director of National Security (ODNI) seeking information about the influence exerted by the Muslim Brotherhood, a hostile foreign power, inside the U.S. government and especially the Intelligence Community.
As Diana West noted in her 19 July column, there is ample cause for alarm, because, over the last couple of decades, the most senior levels of this country’s national security leadership increasingly have turned for advice to members of an organization openly dedicated to “destroying Western civilization from within” in order that “God's religion is made victorious over all other religions.”
Furthermore, the Supreme Guide of that organization, Mohamed Badi’, declared war on the United States in September 2010.
That was about five months before the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, told Congress that the Muslim Brotherhood was a “largely secular organization” that had “eschewed violence.” It was about nine months before Secretary of State Hillary Clinton conferred diplomatic recognition on it. And it was about 18 mos. before Mohammed Morsi claimed the Egyptian presidency in June 2012, with substantial support both visible and behind the scenes from the Obama administration. During the campaign, Morsi, who is a veteran Brother, led massive crowds in chants vowing to take Jerusalem away from the Jews by jihad and suicide bombing. It’s on You Tube. So is the mid-July 2012 film showing Secretary of State Clinton’s motorcade in Cairo being taunted with chants of “Monica, Monica” as demonstrators threw shoes and tomatoes at her entourage.
Rep. Bachmann knows why the Egyptian people feel betrayed by Clinton and the Obama administration: it’s because they’ve put the power of the U.S. government behind the Muslim Brotherhood, the self-proclaimed enemy of America, Egypt, and genuine democracy everywhere. Rep. Bachmann also knows how the erstwhile leader of the free world got to the point where oppressed people like the democratic, liberal, and secular voices in Egypt no longer see America as their champion but rather as the ally of Islamic tyranny.
Bachmann and her four congressional colleagues understand that U.S. foreign policy that presently supports the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood with its commitment to Islamic law (shariah) did not abandon defense of equality, protection of minorities, and the rights of every individual to freedom of belief and speech overnight. They know it was a process of “civilization jihad,” as defined so carefully by the Brotherhood in the 1991 “Explanatory Memorandum on the Strategic Goal for the Brotherhood in North America” which was presented as evidence by the Justice Department in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation HAMAS terror funding trial. They also know because they’ve studied the 10-part online course about the Muslim Brotherhood created by Frank Gaffney and the Center for Security Policy. And as a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), Rep. Bachmann also understands how the Brotherhood’s sophisticated, hostile influence operations have infiltrated every agency and department of America’s national security infrastructure.
When the U.S. Intelligence Community Director gets sent to Capitol Hill with notes that say the Muslim Brotherhood is “secular” (and then actually reads them) and the Secretary of State seems oblivious to the fact that the leader of the organization to which she’s just granted diplomatic recognition literally declared war on the U.S., there is something more drastically wrong in Washington, D.C. than mere political correctness. “Influence operations” are the deliberately targeted activities of intelligence organizations intended to affect the perceptions and behavior of leaders, groups, and populations. The key to changing an enemy’s strategy, operations, and tactics is getting inside his decision-making loop. This the Muslim Brotherhood has succeeded in doing in a massive way.
The operations began decades ago but shifted into high gear after 9/11, when counterterrorism “experts” realized they had no idea how we’d been taken by such surprise nor why. Unfortunately, when officials sought advice about al-Qa’eda and its jihadist motivations, those best prepared to take advantage of the ignorance and panic were the intelligence operatives of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.
Their myriad groups were already in place, having penetrated deep into America’s academic, government, media, military, national security, and social fabric over the course of decades. The first thing they did together with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) was gain control of counterterrorism language. Not later than 2004, an organization called “True Speak,” whose advisors included the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), the Muslim Students Association (MSA) and Yousef al-Qaradawi (the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leader) began promoting a lexicon to the Intelligence Community that avoided words like “jihad” – even though the 9/11 Commission Report that same year used “jihad” more than 100 times and “Islam” over 300 times.
Over the next few years, every major U.S. national security and counterterrorism document was purged of any inference that the incubator of Islamic terrorism is Islamic doctrine, law, and scripture. By 2012, U.S. government training courses about Islam had removed instructors and material that accurately identified the Islamic jihadist enemy or connected that enemy with the actual source of his inspiration: shariah Islam. Officially stripped of their ability to know and name the jihadist enemy, national security officials increasingly fell under the spreading influence of Muslim Brotherhood front groups and their message that “Islam means peace,” the Brotherhood is “moderate,” and the only enemy is al-Qa’eda with its kinetic terrorism.
Official contacts with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood began as early as 2007 in Cairo. By the time Barack Obama was running for president in 2008 on a platform that included “outreach” to the Muslim world, America’s national defenses against the stealth jihad were crumbling. Obama staffers were talking to HAMAS even before the election, and affiliates of HAMAS’s parent organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, were soon appointed to key advisory positions, working closely with the National Security Council (NSC), and even ensconced in the White House.
Huma Abedin's mother, Saleha, connected to the Muslim BrotherhoodIn January 2009, a young Muslim intern named Huma Abedin was appointed Deputy Chief of Staff to Hillary Clinton, the new Secretary of State. Somehow the usual security clearance regulations pertaining to clearing someone with immediate family members living abroad who are involved in activities such as attempting to influence or overthrow the government of the U.S. must have been overlooked for Ms. Abedin, because as Rep. Bachmann appropriately noted in her letter to the State Department, she has/had at least three immediate family members (her late father, mother, and brother) “connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations.”
As detailed in this letter, important U.S. domestic and foreign policy decisions supported by Secretary Clinton over the last 3 years have proven enormously favorable to the Muslim Brotherhood, both domestically and abroad. Not least of these have been the involvement of the Clinton State Department in the OIC’s Istanbul Process, whose stated objective is to criminalize the criticism of Islam, and the wholesale U.S. backing for the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power across North Africa and the Middle East. Such developments are deeply inimical to the national security interests of the U.S. and our allies (especially Israel) and it is not only appropriate, but incumbent upon Congressional oversight committees, to question the potential for undue influence from individuals and groups intent on “destroying Western civilization from within.”
The folly of not taking our enemies at their word has already claimed too many victims, as the FBI report describing how the FBI failed to stop Maj. Nidal Hassan before the Ft. Hood jihad massacre out of political correctness demonstrates. Reps. Bachmann, Gohmert, Franks, Westmoreland, and Rooney deserve our admiration and support for their courageous leadership in the fight against the Muslim Brotherhood.
