National Security Professionals Challenge ACU on Muslim Brotherhood Operations Against the Right

Washington, D.C.: In the wake of the ominous announcement last week by the State and Homeland Security Departments that they are no longer going to enforce statutory prohibitions on granting asylum to individuals who have provided “limited” material support to terrorists, two proponents of such policies have been called to account.

Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and an individual with longstanding family and personal ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, Suhail Khan, are the subject of a letter to leaders of the American Conservative Union (ACU) signed by ten influential national security practitioners. The signers include: former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former Clinton Director of Central Intelligence R. James Woolsey, former Congressman Allen West, former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy, former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Lieutenant General William “Jerry” Boykin and former Pentagon Inspector General Joseph Schmitz.

The joint letter [PDF] transmits a Statement of Facts that responds to, and challenges, representations made concerning Messrs. Norquist and Khan in an exculpatory memorandum to the ACU Board written in September 2011 by one of its members, attorney Cleta Mitchell.  The ACU Board was moved on the basis of those representations to endorse Norquist and Khan, both of whom serve as members.

The Center for Security Policy facilitated the compilation of the forty-five pages listing eighty-seven rigorously documented facts and fifty-five endnotes.  Its President, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. was the subject of the Mitchell memo that claimed on the basis of “fairly substantial due diligence” to have found no basis for Mr. Gaffney’s longstanding charges that both Messrs. Norquist and Khan have enabled Muslim Brotherhood influence operations directed at the conservative movement and Republican Party.

Upon the release of the letter to Ms. Mitchell and the rest of the ACU leadership, Mr. Gaffney observed: “The signers of this letter with its attached Statement of Facts have afforded the Board of the American Conservative Union, the conservative movement as a whole and the Republican Party of which they are important parts an opportunity to address afresh a problem many have chosen to ignore – and, thereby, allowed to continue.  These accomplished national security practitioners have rendered yet another service to their country and the cause of liberty.  It is deeply appreciated.”