Robert Spencer: McCarthyism and Mohamed Elibiary

In PJ Media this morning I discuss the truth about yet another one of the people Michele Bachmann is alleged to have falsely accused: Mohamed Elibiary.

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and four other representatives are now being accused of McCarthyism over the letter they sent to defense, diplomatic, intelligence, and law-enforcement agencies asking them to investigate Muslim Brotherhood infiltration in the U.S. government. The implication is that Bachmann, like McCarthy (at least according to liberal myth), hurled false accusations damaging to the careers and livelihoods of innocent people. What no one is bothering to establish, however, is that the allegations are actually false, much less that they will damage anyone’s career.
The questions swirling around Department of Homeland Security official Mohamed Elibiary are a case in point. Bachmann’s letter to DHS’s inspector general states that Elibiary has “extensive ties to the Muslim Brotherhood” and “sympathy for Islamist causes,” and accuses him of “gain(ing) access to classified documents.”

Last week, Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX), one of the signers of the letters asking for investigation of Muslim Brotherhood infiltration, asked Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano about Elibiary. Gohmert put this question to Napolitano: “Are you saying before this Congress right now, that as secretary of Homeland Security, that it is a lie that Mohamed Elibiary downloaded material from a classified website using the secret security clearance you gave him? Are you saying that’s a lie?”

Napolitano responded: “I’m saying that is inaccurate. That is correct.” But when Gohmert pressed her on what was inaccurate about it, Napolitano began talking about prejudice against Muslims, and then said: “I’m saying that he … as far as I know … he did not download classified documents.” Gohmert saw through that immediately, responding: “One of the games that gets played by some people who come up here and testify is that they have somebody not provide them with adequate information so that they can come in her and say ‘so far as I know,’ ‘not to my knowledge,’ that kind of thing, and they obscure the truth.” Then he asked Napolitano: “Has Elibiary’s status on Homeland Security Advisory Council changed?” Napolitano said that it had not.

Thus it is clear that Elibiary has not suffered any career difficulties because of these allegations. It is also clear that as long as Barack Obama remains president, he will not. Napolitano, in fact, was anxious to protect him, parrying Gohmert’s questions and only reluctantly giving him straight answers.

So where is the McCarthyism? Is it that the allegations against Elibiary are self-evidently false?

Not by a long shot. Napolitano did not refute investigative journalist Patrick Poole’s findings, reported at PJ Media last year. Poole noted that “Elibiary may have been given access to a sensitive database of state and local intelligence reports, and then allegedly shopped some of those materials to a media outlet.” According to Poole, Elibiary approached “a left-leaning media outlet” with reports marked For Official Use Only that he said demonstrated rampant “Islamophobia” in the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS). The media outlet declined to do a story, but what was Elibiary doing shopping the Official Use Only documents in the first place?

There is more.

He didn't know! He didn't know!

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9 Comments

| Leave a comment

London Jim | July 23, 2012 4:12 AM | Reply

Obamaism is inverted McCarthyism. .it's the bibles and the guns he's after, with a helping hand from his Islamic lobbyists.

Guy Macher | July 23, 2012 4:19 AM | Reply

The problem for libtards is that Joe McCarthy was right as the documents released after the fall of the USSR made clear.

Cole | July 23, 2012 5:16 AM | Reply

'Islamophobia' is a useful tool !!

You don't actually have to answer the question - you must only assert that the allegation is 'Islamophobic' - and in that lies the answer to the question and the maligning of those carrying out the investigation.

A little too convenient!!

Next they would be telling us it would be in Muslims best interest if the US had a Supreme Leader - with a different set of laws to everyone else.

Of course - only the 'Islamophobes' would oppose this!!

joeblough | July 23, 2012 8:55 AM | Reply

1) McCarthy was right. There were LOTS of communist operatives and sympathizers in the gov't. Plenty of research, publicly available, went into proving this since his time.

2) The term witch hunt implies that the accused is accused of an IMAGINARY crime -- witchcraft.

And all this material is being thrown around to distract from the question of whether the people under discussion are supporters of jihad and Islamic Supremacism -- which they in fact, very evidently are.

The left cannot afford to allow blatantly obvious facts to even be viewed, much less considered. So they are doing their damndest to change the subject.

I watched the Gohmert/Napolitano video. It was plain as day that Napolitano was shifting the discussion from the subject of what she knew or didn't know about Elibiary, to a discussion of whether or not Gohmert was antagonistic toward Muslims. She damn near succeeded to, although Gohmert ultimately held his ground and maintained focus.

It's what they do.

They want dominance at any cost. So they mess with your mind.

And they count on YOUR good manners to restrain you from saying what is needed.

ApolloSpeaks | July 23, 2012 12:42 PM | Reply

WHAT IS MCCARTHYISM?: THEN AND NOW

McCarthyism in the 1950s was the persecution of Leftists suspected of being Communist spys who were always falsely accused and innocent not because they broke any laws but because social justice, morality and history were on their side.

Now in the 21st century McCarthyism is the persecution of innocent Moslems suspected of being jihadi spys for the Moslem Brotherhood and other Islamic organizations that want justice for Moslems and to bring peace to the world.

Islofob IS-1 replied to comment from joeblough | July 23, 2012 12:53 PM | Reply

Another great post.

I take issue with the one word above, "were", remove that, and make it "ARE", and the truth is exposed.

That is the front that is hidden from the view of the public, just ask Allen West.

London Jim replied to comment from ApolloSpeaks | July 23, 2012 1:40 PM | Reply

Did you miss the /sarc tag Apollo ?

LemonLime | July 23, 2012 3:04 PM | Reply

Anti-"McCarthyism" precisely exemplifies the way that the PC paradigm influences its important offshoot, PC MC.

It has been politically correct for decades to assume, without sufficient evidence, that McCarthy was simultaneously a buffoonish hick and a dangerous bigot and that the Ism he spawned was based simultaneously on irrational paranoia of enemies and a devious plan to manufacture those enemies -- or at least to whip up and exploit the general fear of them in order to maneuver political machinations and gain power. As Diana West has pointed out, the recent study by M. Stanton Evans on McCarthy, Blacklisted by History, would be a good place to start to restore the truth behind the revisionist myth that has been constructed.

http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2188/SOS-Save-Our-Adults.aspx

And now, look how easy it is to vilify someone -- like Bachmann and her precious few colleagues -- with the label "McCarthyism", since it is just axiomatically assumed by the vast majority (including conservatives) that McCarthy must have been maliciously exaggerating and that we in that era, being typical Americans, went too far in our paranoia about imagined enemies (who, as Evans' book documents, were all too real) -- just as we are doing currently about Muslims.

J replied to comment from ApolloSpeaks | July 24, 2012 3:38 AM | Reply

"Moslem Brotherhood and other Islamic organizations that want justice for Moslems and to bring peace to the world" ...through WORLD CALIPHATE... Right???

You little helper of sinister Napolitano.

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Books by Robert Spencer

The Muslim Brotherhood in America, by Robert Spencer

Islamophobia: Thoughtcrime of the Totalitarian Future

Muslim Persecution of Christians, by Robert Spencer

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