This news story is something so rare that I can’t think of even a single other example of it: mainstream media space given to a figure vilified by the Leftist establishment, to rebut that establishment’s charges. Usually the media presents the defamation of the hard-Left Southern Poverty Law Center and the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations as if it were objective, unimpeachable fact. Ordinarily, no mainstream media reporter ever asks why the word of such organizations should be taken as gospel, and no dissenting voices challenging those organizations ever appear. But in this NOLA.com/Times Picayune piece, JR Ball allows former FBI agent John Guandolo space to rebut the SPLC/CAIR charges, and to explain what these organizations are really all about. If the establishment media did this regularly, the influence of both of these unsavory and dishonest groups would vanish in a matter of weeks.
“Louisiana anti-jihad seminar leader fires back at critics, takes aim at Southern Poverty Law Center,” by JR Ball, NOLA.com, March 4, 2017:
Declaring that the Southern Poverty Law Center is giving aid to a terrorist organization, John Guandolo, a former FBI agent and founder of a consulting group focused on the jihadi movement, strongly took issue with those raising concerns about an upcoming law enforcement seminar that his Understand the Threat organization will host in Alexandria. Billed as “understanding and investigating the jihad movement,” the three-day program, scheduled March 7-9 at the Bentley Hotel, is sponsored by the Rapides Parish district attorney’s office.
The event received little public attention until Wednesday (March 1) when the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., took to social media to protest the seminar and Guandolo, a former counter-terrorism specialist who resigned from the FBI in 2008. Among other stains on his record: While working on the federal investigation of U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, D-New Orleans, Guandolo was having an affair with a key witness against the congressman.
The posts, asserting that Guandolo “often” targets and vilifies mainstream Muslim leaders in his presentations, were quickly — and widely — shared and debated. Heidi Beirich, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project director, said Guandolo “is a known Islamophobe, and his misinformation adds fuel to the hateful environment targeting Muslim community members.”
Guandolo, who did not respond to an earlier interview request, sent a statement to The Times-Picayune following the publication of an earlier story.
“The Southern Poverty Law Center is giving direct aid and comfort to Hamas which is a terrorist organization,” Guandolo, founder of Understanding the Threat, wrote in his emailed response. “The leader of the SPLC is aware the Council on American Islamic relations [sic] (CAIR) is a Hamas organization because he sat next to (Understanding the Truth Vice President) Chris Gaubatz at a Senate hearing where (he) spoke about it.”(Gaubatz) spent six months undercover (at CAIR) where he retrieved over 12,000 documents indicating (CAIR) is directly involved in fraud, sedition and terrorism. So we can only assume SPLC is intentionally supporting a terrorist organization in violation of U.S. law.”…
. . . . . . .EDITOR’S NOTE: An earlier version of this story called Understanding the Threat anti-Islamic; that is an allegation made by the Southern Poverty Law Center against Guandolo….