Late in November I wrote an article entitled, “Poster Boy for ‘Islamophobia’ Tries to Join ISIS.” It was about Saadiq Long, a Muslim from the U.S. who had become a darling of the Left and Hamas-linked CAIR for being on the No-Fly List and unable to return to the U.S. He was on the No-Fly List for no reason at all, you see, and so was an illustration of how the U.S. authorities had fallen prey to “Islamophobia.”
But then, as investigative journalist Patrick Poole discovered, Long was arrested in Turkey as part of an Islamic State cell. It was on the basis of his piece that I wrote my article. Glenn Greenwald, who has for years been an eager ally of the Muslim victimhood industry, and has unapologetically worked with Hamas-linked CAIR, subsequently published a lengthy piece claiming that Poole’s was a “fabrication.”
Here David Steinberg of PJ Media responds to Greenwald, and leaves his “fabrication” claim a smoking ruin. This is an extraordinary piece that lays bare the full extent of Greenwald’s dishonest spin and subtle concealing of the truth.
“Glenn Greenwald of ‘The Intercept’ Throws a Hail Mary Against PJ Media,” by David Steinberg, PJ Media, December 11, 2015:
On Thursday, Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept published a several thousand-word article titled “A Muslim American Veteran Was Widely Smeared With a Fabricated Story About ISIS Charges.” Within the article, Greenwald made the serious accusation that PJ Media “fabricated” details of our November 24 article titled “MSNBC’s ‘No-Fly List Is Islamophobia’ Poster Boy Arrested in Turkey as Part of ISIS Cell.”
Our article referred to the arrest last month of Saadiq Long, who two years ago was held up by Greenwald as an example to further his argument that the U.S. Government arbitrarily places Muslim Americans on the no-fly list.
Wrote national security correspondent Patrick Poole back in November within the article in question:
A man, who just two years ago was the poster boy for the far-Left media’s attacks against the U.S. government’s no-fly list for “unfairly” targeting Muslims, finds himself and several family members sitting in a Turkish prison — arrested earlier this month near the Turkey-Syria border as members of an ISIS cell.It’s a long way from 2013 when Saadiq Long’s cause was being championed by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, Glenn Greenwald, and Mother Jones, and was being represented by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) terror front.
Yesterday, Greenwald — presumably looking to clear himself of possibly being had by his supposed victim — wrote this of our article:
[T]he story is entirely false: a fabrication. Neither Long nor his wife or daughter have been arrested on charges that he joined ISIS. He faces no criminal charges of any kind in Turkey.Instead, he and his family are being detained at the Geri Gonderme Merkezi deportation center in Erzurum, Turkey, evidently because he was placed years ago by the U.S. on its no-fly list. And the U.S. Embassy in Ankara has been working continually with Long’s family to secure his release, and, if he chooses, his return to the U.S.
After revisiting our reporting and reconfirming the evidence we obtained, we can only read the tea leaves in his article to ascertain whether he actually got his hands on the same evidence we did. Because the evidence reads just as Poole reported it: Long, his wife, and his child were arrested inside Turkey, near the Syria border, as part of an ISIS cell.
We can think of two possibilities as to why Greenwald chose to write his article unequivocally accusing us of fabricating a story when he appears to agree with, if not all, then most of it. Maybe Greenwald either a) was not able to view the evidence we received, and instead trusted the words of Long’s lawyer — Gadeir Abbas, former staff attorney for Muslim Brotherhood offshoot CAIR — enough to attack us with them; or b) maybe Greenwald did view the material, but instead gambled that he could clear himself by implying Abbas’ defense tactic is the actual reported circumstance of the incident.
Giving Greenwald the benefit of the doubt as a journalist, we’ll go with “b.” We can’t be sure, but the remainder of his article’s numerous internally inconsistent claims and misleading passages lead us towards that conclusion.
Keep reading, folks, its [sic] truly extraordinary. A close examination of Greenwald’s phrasing shows just how far he was willing to take his readers down the rabbit hole to smear us.
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Reread Greenwald’s two paragraphs above, and compare them to Poole’s article. Greenwald’s wording is extremely misleading on a pivotal point he should be experienced enough to grasp, so we can only presume the wording was deliberate:
Neither Long nor his wife or daughter have been arrested on charges that he joined ISIS. He faces no criminal charges of any kind in Turkey.
Greenwald is correct — but he is correct because all he did was restate Poole’s reporting from a different angle. Poole never wrote that Long currently “faces charges that he joined ISIS,” or that Long currently faces “criminal charges.”
Poole actually only wrote that Long and his family had been arrested in Turkey as part of an ISIS cell, which we again confirmed yesterday.
No charges have been filed as of this writing. They are still in custody as of this writing.
Greenwald continues with this strawman sleight-of-hand, as he gathers two anonymous sources (note that Greenwald attacked Poole for using an anonymous source) to shoot down this claim of “charges” that no one but Greenwald ever mentioned:
A press officer with the Bureau of Consular Affairs, who asked to be identified only as “a State Department official,” contradicted the Pajamas Media claim. “We are aware of Mr. Long’s case and are providing consular assistance. At this time, we are not aware that he has been formally charged with a crime,” the official told The Intercept.The Turkish government would not comment on the record, but a Turkish source with substantial connections to law enforcement agencies in Gaziantep also told The Intercept that Long has not been arrested, but is merely being held for deportation.
We are in full agreement with the unnamed State Department official, as Poole never reported that any charges have been filed. Despite Greenwald’s use of the word “contradicted,” the statement does not contradict anything — besides the words Greenwald falsely attributed to Poole.
As for the Bureau of Consular Affiars, this morning we received the below email from it. It opened our eyes as to how Greenwald was trying to build the illusion that he was offering information he did not actually receive.
The Bureau’s email to us says they are aware of reports Long was “arrested,” and cannot comment further:
This email challenges Greenwald’s unequivocal claim that Long was “detained,” or “held,” and that the Bureau was Greenwald’s source for this information. Read closer: Greenwald doesn’t actually write that, he just made it appear as if he did. He says that the Bureau contradicts Poole, but he then offers no evidence that the Bureau said such a thing, and there is a very good reason as to why he didn’t:
A press officer with the Bureau of Consular Affairs, who asked to be identified only as “a State Department official,” contradicted the Pajamas Media claim. “We are aware of Mr. Long’s case and are providing consular assistance. At this time, we are not aware that he has been formally charged with a crime,” the official told The Intercept.
The Bureau statement to Greenwald does not provide the information Greenwald claims it does in the first sentence. Poole never said that Long had been “charged,” and the Bureau never says that Long was “detained” and not “arrested.”
This is because the Bureau is not legally allowed to have provided this information to Greenwald. In a phone call, the Bureau specifically told PJ Media today that their email to us intentionally did not confirm or deny anything, because doing so would violate Long’s privacy rights.
Greenwald made it seem as if the Bureau was his source, and that their information contradicted Poole. It doesn’t — and they would never have given it to him, anyway. So Greenwald never actually wrote what he said he was about to, he just made it appear as if he did….
Please go read Greenwald’s entire piece.
You will find that — after clearing aside the wordplay — the only source who actually says with no equivocation that Saadiq was detained because of the no-fly list …
… is Saadiq’s lawyer, formerly of the Muslim Brotherhood-aligned CAIR.
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As Poole stated on November 24, we again report to you that Saadiq Long and his family were arrested as part of an ISIS cell along the Turkey/Syria border per U.S. and Turkish officials who confirmed the arrest to us.
And we think Greenwald knows this, too.
We do not care about his smears of PJ Media. We wrote all of this to respond to his description of career homeland security professional Patrick Poole as “a professional anti-Muslim activist.”
It seems that in Greenwald’s worldview, those opposed to his leftist slant on global affairs couldn’t possibly be anything but a lesser breed of soul. In reality, Poole has spent his life keeping all Americans safe — be they Muslim or otherwise — by tracking down the truth and disseminating it to our country’s residents and decision-makers.
If folks like Greenwald pursued truth rather than narrative, he’d find that Poole’s career of warnings, had they been urgently heeded instead of being denigrated as bigotry by people like Glenn, might have saved many lives in Paris and San Bernardino. Yet here we are….
Read the rest here.