Wolf Howling: Hesham Islam

Monday, February 11, 2008

Hesham Islam, Exposed As A Member of the Muslim Brotherhood, To Resign From Pentagon Post

This is a horrific scandal that exposes inexcusable ignorance and security shortfalls in our government. That Hesham Islam, an individual with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, was able to get a senior job in the Pentagon with Top Secret security clearance is a very serious lapse in security. That he was then successful in muddying the waters on the Salafi and Khomeinist threats, influence the government towards an alignment with the very forces that seek to destroy us, and force the firing of another government expert on radical Islamic doctrine is a direct result of the failure of our government to name and define the enemy we face. This is precisely within the ambit of that which I warned about when I wrote a few weeks ago, What You Don't Know Could Kill You.

For those who do not know it, the Muslim Brotherhood is a “Salafi jihadist organization” and the precursor to al Qaeda (Walid Phares, Future Jihad, p. 64-65). The Muslim Brotherhood is ideologically the same as al Qaeda as to its beliefs and goals. It differs only in method.

This today from WND:

In a stunning turn of events, a high-level Muslim military aide blamed for costing an intelligence contractor his job will step down from his own Pentagon post, WND has learned.

Meanwhile, his rival, Maj. Stephen Coughlin, a leading authority on Islamic war doctrine, may stay in the Pentagon, moving from the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the office of the secretary of defense. However, sources say a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey is trying to block his new contract.

The top Pentagon aide, Egyptian-born Hesham H. Islam, came under a cloud of suspicion after reports raised doubt about his resume and contacts he had made with radical Muslims. He is expected to leave the government next month, officials say.
Islam and Coughlin recently quarreled over intelligence briefings Coughlin presented showing a close connection between the religion of Islam and terrorism. Coughlin's contract with the Joint Chiefs, which ends in March, was not renewed.

But as a result of the ensuing firestorm that played out in the conservative press – led by Washington Times Pentagon reporter Bill Gertz – Islam was put under a microscope, and questions were raised regarding his background.

For example, Claudia Rosett of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies wrote a column challenging key claims in Islam's official biography. Within days, a Defense Department profile of Islam was removed from the department's website.

A Pentagon spokesman said it was "taken down in an attempt to reduce the rhetoric and the emotion surrounding this issue while we try to determine the facts."
A senior U.S. official says the life story Islam presented now appears sketchy.

"His resume didn't add up, and he knows it," the official said. "He's voluntarily leaving the government in March."

At the same time, a report by terror expert Steven Emerson revealed that Islam, as special assistant to the deputy secretary of defense, has scheduled at least two meetings in the Pentagon with Syrian-tied radicals – including a leading member of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood – in direct violation of U.S. policy.

As WND previously reported, FBI officials believe Islam is involved with the U.S. branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and is helping its front groups run "influence operations" against the U.S. government.

"He's a Muslim brother," an FBI official told WND. "He's a bad actor, and he's made other unreported nefarious contacts."

Islam has worked closely in the Pentagon with Muslim chaplain Abuhena M. Saifulislam, who as WND also previously reported, received his training at a radical Islamic school in Northern Virginia that was raided by federal authorities after 9/11.

Islam, whose son is active in the military, obtained one of the highest security clearances for classified information. Sources confirm he has sat in on Pentagon meetings in which intelligence clearance was restricted at the Top Secret/SCI (Sensitive Compartmented Information) level.

The Pentagon had no comment. And Islam, who has not been accused of any crimes, has refused interviews.

Emerson says Islam prescribed a steady diet of Muslim Brotherhood-connected outreach for his unwitting boss, deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England....
Pentagon insiders say Eric S. Edelman, undersecretary of defense for policy, has sought to stop the awarding of a new contract to Coughlin. Edelman served as ambassador to Turkey from 2003 to 2005.

Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., who co-chairs the House Anti-Terrorism Caucus, has been fighting to keep Coughlin in the Pentagon, where she says his blunt analysis of the Islamic enemy is sorely needed....

"I know that some people will refuse to admit there is a subversive movement going on here, but let me remind you that we have underestimated the will and capability of our enemy for more than 30 years," she added. "They are patient and determined to achieve their radical agenda."

Read the entire article. This is a scandal that our government should be investigating. Islam should never have passed a security screening. When his advice was to cashier an expert on radical Islam and to hold discussions with elements of the Muslim Brotherhood, everyone, and particularly everyone in government, should have understood the ramifications of those acts. That they occurred was only because our government has been grossly negligent in their failure to clearly define and identify the sources and organizations that President Bush still refers to under the euphanism of "radical Islam."

(H/T Villagers With Torches)

Interesting News - 1 February 2008

Behind Obama’s soaring rhetoric, his post-partisan promises, his Kennedyesque visions, lies . . . the member of Congress with the single most far left voting record of 2007.

I’ve been meaning to write on Obama a more, but each time I have readied the quill, I’ve found that Bookworm Room has expressed my thoughts in a post of her own and done so more eloquently then I could have. Do see her post on the Great Bloviator and this one, where she asks the very pertinent question in light of his voting record, What Will Obama Change?

Hillary is every bit the liberal that Obama is, and indeed, her socialist economic views could be disastrous. Beyond that, Victor David Hanson opines that whether the Democratic nominee is Clinton or Obama, their views are so dangerous and so far to the left that any conservative angst over McCain will disappear by midsummer. That said, there is a tremendous amount of huffing and puffing at the moment.

JoshuaPundit has pulled together some incisive punditry looking at the political lessons to be learned from the campaign to date.

Apparently, being a leftie is a genetic disease.

The Economist has a damning indictment of the performance of the U.S. intelligence community with the seditious NIE on Iran’s Nuclear Weapon’s Program which, as the Economist notes, was written even as "the enrichment machine spins on." You can read Reza Pahlavi thoughts on all of this here.

Also from the Economist: "Who would have thought that a friendless theocracy with a Holocaust-denying president, which hangs teenagers in public and stones women to death, could run diplomatic circles around America and its European allies? But Iran is doing just that. And it is doing so largely because of an extraordinary own goal by America's spies, the team behind the duff intelligence that brought you the Iraq war."

Red Alerts has a good post on the fallacy of grievance based terrorism.

Lionheart will be returning to the UK today. This is the blogger facing arrest for his criticism of Islam on his blog.

Who is Hesham Islam and why is he directing our DOD to make outreach efforts to the American chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood?

And why is our DNC appointing a radical Deobandi cleric, Imam Malik Mujahid to the DNC credentials committee? From LGF via Jawa Report.

I say we need to work with the locals to establish a Berkley Awakening Council.

Are we entering into a (hopefully) Little Ice Age?

Cat at Brits at Their Best discusses a point that I’ve made previously. The Britain of today now has a tyranny of Parliament. There are no substantive checks and balances within Britain’s current form of government. Cat discusses this within the historical irony of the first earl of Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, who established the first political party in order to fight against what he saw as the tyranny of the Crown. Now things have come full circle, with the majority party, Labour, exercising the powers of a tyrant.