This vicious little hit piece is a textbook example of how the bought-and-paid-for establishment propaganda media defames freedom fighters and mainstreams allies and enablers of jihad terrorists. Much more below.
“CIA Director A ‘Secret Muslim’? Anti-Islam Conspiracy-Theorist Group Set To Speak At Virginia Law Enforcement Event,” by Jason Le Miere, International Business Times, October 25, 2016:
The Muslim community has reacted with anger after the sheriff’s office of Greene County, Virginia, announced plans to host a seminar on the alleged threat posed by Muslims. The event, scheduled for Nov. 5, will also feature a representative of a group led by former FBI agent and conspiracy theorist John Guandolo who has claimed that CIA Director John Brennan is a “secret Muslim” who has acted as an agent for the Saudi Arabian government.
IBT “journalist” Jason Le Miere presents Guandolo’s charge that Brennan is a Muslim as if it were self-evidently false, the raving of a “conspiracy theorist.” On what basis? Has Brennan ever denied being a Muslim? No. Does Guandolo have any basis for saying so? He says it was widely known when he was in the FBI that Brennan had converted while serving in Saudi Arabia. Is that inherently implausible? No. Is it widely known that there is a top intelligence official in the Obama Administration’s CIA who has converted to Islam? Yes. It was reported in none other than the Washington Post in 2012. Why couldn’t it be Brennan? The movie Zero Dark Thirty about the killing of Osama bin Laden, for which the moviemakers gained access to classified material (the Obama administration was criticized for making it available to them) featured a top counter-terror official who strongly resembled Brennan and was shown performing Muslim prayers. Were the filmmakers hinting at something they knew? Did Le Miere speak to Brennan? If he did, he doesn’t mention it in the article. What is much more likely is that Le Miere didn’t speak to Brennan, and has no idea whether or not he is a Muslim, but since Brennan hasn’t said anything one way or the other about the charge, he uses it to portray Guandolo as a “conspiracy theorist.” (You can see the video of my interview with Guandolo, in which he discusses this charge, here.)
Greene County Sheriff Steven Smith posted on Facebook this past weekend that his office would be sponsoring a seminar for residents titled “Understanding the Threat, a very interesting and informative class on the Muslim religion.”
Following a backlash, Smith has since apologized for the wording of the original post and changed the title of the seminar to “Understanding the Jihadi Threat.”
“It’s not to say all Muslims are bad,” Smith told local station CBS19. “We’re not saying that at all and when the post first came out, I apologize for the way it was worded, it didn’t have Jihad in there, it does now. People that know me here in Greene County know I’m not like that. It’s just an educational tool.”
On Tuesday, Smith held an impromptu poll on his Facebook page asking the residents of Greene County to decide whether the event should still go ahead. Just a few minutes latest he wrote, “The seminar is on.”…
But the proposed presence of Guandolo’s group, as well as Suzanne Shattuck, a local activist who has called for the deportation of all Muslims who are “Sharia-adherent,” has drawn condemnation from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization.
In a letter to Smith, CAIR Department to Monitor and Combat Islamophobia Director Corey Taylor [sic!] called for the sheriff’s office to drop the seminar.
The hapless lackey Le Miere can’t even get the names of his masters right. It’s Saylor, not Taylor. No need to thank me, Corey.
“Everyone, even anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant bigots, have the First Amendment right to spew their hatred and conspiracy theories, but that bigotry should not have the implicit endorsement of a law enforcement agency,” the letter read. “Let these individuals pay for their own private speaking venue and be ignored, as they deserve.”
“The sponsorship of this event by the sheriff’s office sends the message to members of the local Muslim community that they may not be protected against the growing number of hate incidents targeting Muslims nationwide due to rising Islamophobia.”
The objective of this hateful and hysterical rhetoric is to stigmatize and demonize any honest discussion of how Islamic jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and supremacism, and to promote a spurious association between such a discussion and supposed “hate incidents targeting Muslims,” although no connection has ever been established. The obvious goal is to make it impossible to examine the motivating ideology of jihad terrorists, which would allow them to advance unhindered and unopposed.
The United States, which is home to 3.3 million Muslims, has in recent months seen anti-Muslim hate crimes rise to their highest levels since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Le Miere’s link goes to a New York Times story; here is Hugh Fitzgerald’s surgical evisceration of that story.
Guandolo, who has also stated that Muslims “do not have a First Amendment right to do anything,” resigned from the FBI in 2008 ahead of an investigation for misconduct. Since then, he has toured the country speaking to citizens and at anti-terrorism training seminars given to law enforcement agencies.
Last week he also spoke at a high school in northern Minnesota. When CAIR similarly protested his appearance, Guandolo alleged the organization has ties to Palestinian militant group Hamas.
“Guandolo alleged” — as if he made it up. In reality, the FBI and the Justice Department have affirmed CAIR’s ties to Hamas. But Le Miere either doesn’t know that or doesn’t care. He has, of course, no business calling himself a “journalist” or working for something that claims to be a news outlet. But these days, he is just another cog in the Soros-funded hard-Left propaganda machine.