Speaking of CAIR, here is part 2 of Steven Emerson’s absorbing and all-important exposé of that sinister organization: “Funding Ties With HLF and Foreign Donors Show CAIR’s True Agenda,” from IPT News:
(Part II of our series on CAIR can be found here: http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/110.pdf)
Summary: The Council on American-Islamic Relation (CAIR)’s financing over the years challenges its self-description as a benevolent group out to protect the civil rights of the Muslim community in the United States.
The clichéd admonition to “follow the money” gives a clear picture of the group’s actual role as an enabler for organizations linked by the U.S. government to Islamic terrorism, prominently including the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF).
Indeed it shows a two-way flow of support both to and from HLF, which since has been named as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Organization and indicted on charges of providing material support to Hamas. Our examination of CAIR focuses today on its finances.
· HLF made a $5,000 donation to the then-newly formed CAIR as early as 1994. Apparently sensitive to the impact public disclosure of their group’s funding by HLF could have, CAIR’s leaders repeatedly denied any such connection.
Asked during a 2003 civil deposition, “Did they [HLF] give you any money to help start CAIR?” Omar Ahmed, one of its incorporators, flatly responded, “No.” CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad echoed that position in testimony prepared for a September 10, 2003 Senate hearing, declaring, “Our organization did not receive any seed money from HLFRD.”
After IPT produced a copy of HLF’s $5,000 check at the hearing, however, Awad acknowledged in supplemental testimony that CAIR had, indeed, received money from the group. Explaining, “CAIR is a nonprofit, grassroots organization. Our only source of income is through donations and the amount in question was a donation like any other,” he added in mitigation that the “relatively small donation” had come seven years before the Justice Department froze HLF’s assets.
· CAIR, in turn, repeatedly co-sponsored fundraisers for the Hamas-linked organization. Such funding appeals were made in 1999, ostensibly to help refugees forced to flee Kosovo, and again in 2000, at a time when the U.S. Agency for International Development already had announced plans to terminate HLF’s USAID registration on grounds that it was “contrary to the national defense and foreign policy interest of the United States.”
But those appeals were trumped by a further solicitation soon after the murderous attacks of 9/11. CAIR’s website, advising readers “what you can do for the victims of the WTC (World Trade Center) and Pentagon attacks,” urged them to donate to charities that included HLF….
CAIR gets Saudi cash, too. Read it all.