I'm Scott Horton and our next guest on the show today is Scott Peterson from the Christian Science Monitor.
He has this incredible new piece, incredibly important too, Iranian group's big money push to get off U.S. terrorist list, it's at csmonitor.com.
Welcome to the show Scott, how are you?
Good, thank you.
Thanks very much for joining us today, appreciate it.
So listen, this is a very important article here.
It covers a great many things, but we're focusing on the MEK this week on the show.
A little bit of this is redundant from that, but the part that you get to, I think better than anyone so far anyway, is the money.
So I was hoping we could start the interview with maybe a brief rundown of the high-level famous name type politicians and former military men and so forth who are going around promoting the removal of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq from the terrorist list, and then maybe if we could talk about who's paying these gigantic five-figure speaking fees to get these men to prostitute themselves this way.
Right, well this is an extraordinary thing, because one of the reasons that I was drawn to do this story to start with is the fact that we have had so many top-level names of high-powered former American officials, and we're not talking about second- or third-tier people here.
We're talking about dozens of Americans, four-star generals among them, I mean in fact, you really won't find many three-star generals.
We're talking people like Wesley Clark, Hugh Shelton, people who were commanders, Anthony Zee, names you wouldn't necessarily expect would be taking up such a niche issue like this.
And of course, that's one of the reasons that drew us to this story, but we have several former CIA directors.
We have James Woolsey, for example, Porter Goss.
We've also got the FBI former director, Louis Freeh, so these are just some of the many people.
You've also got politicians, people like Howard Dean, people like Ed Rendell, former Pennsylvania governor, and people like this who've all lent their names to this campaign to take the MEK off the U.S. terrorism list.
It really is incredible.
Michael Hayden there, he's CIA director and a four-star, right?
Rudy Giuliani, he's the guy that has the copyright on September 11, 2001.
How could he be in with these people?
Not that they did it, but they're pretty much the same tactics, bombing civilians, right?
Well, this is, you know, and this is, I think, one of the points about the story that surprises most readers and is worth really noting, and that is that these are people who share the U.S. terrorism list along with Al-Qaeda, along with Hezbollah, along with Hamas.
I mean, nobody in Washington is arguing that Al-Qaeda should be off the terrorism list.
No one is accepting money to speak on behalf of them.
No one's lobbying for Al-Qaeda to be taken off.
And yet, the status of this organization is such that as a terrorist, as a foreign terrorist organization, as they are designated by the U.S. State Department, you know, they really are occupying the same territory, at least in terms of official U.S. government, you know, how they're qualified or how they're classified by the U.S. government.
But in this case, what we've got is there is a very large amount of money that is behind this delisting campaign.
It's a campaign that's been going on since the MEK was first listed in 1997, and that was a time, in fact, when the terrorism list first came into existence, and the MEK was one of the first organizations to be put on it.
But they've always had a large amount of money behind a delisting campaign.
It's just that what's surprising people now is the fact that we have a very, very explicit and high-level campaign.
They've never come close to what they've achieved now in terms of getting top-level people to advocate on their behalf.
Well, you know, I was reading to the audience earlier in the show today from the State Department's Country Reports on Terrorism, Chapter 6, and they have a quite extensive write-up here on the Mojahedin-e-Khalq, a paragraph explaining the numerous cases.
I forget the minimum number you said in your article of times that MEK operatives or members killed Americans in Iran, admittedly back in the 70s, but they basically, as you say also in the article, the FBI was saying just, what, 15 years ago or something, that they were still actively running terrorist plots out of California.
Well, as a matter of fact, I mean, that FBI conclusion came from 2004, so in fact, 7 years ago...
Oh, I'm sorry.
I was 94 somehow.
My mistake.
Right.
No.
2004, the FBI found that this organization was, and you can see it in the declassified report, that they were currently actively engaged in planning and executing terrorist attacks.
There have been other court filings.
The U.S. State Department, for example, made a court filing just last October in which they found a couple of things, one of which they said was a intelligence community assessment that the MEK still retained a willingness and an intent to engage in armed violence, and also in 2009, there was a U.S. government report done by the RAND Corporation.
It was paid for by the U.S. Department of Defense, and what they concluded, they also found that there had been, for example, the MEK, even though they have 3,400 people who are currently disarmed at Camp Ashraf in Iraq, that those people had routinely and regularly asked for their weapons to be returned as an organization, and I think one of the things that should be remembered, I mean, in terms of looking at the history of this group, is they say that they have renounced violence and that they have renounced terrorist tactics since 2001, and in those years, 2000 and 2001, they actually claimed responsibility for 350 separate attacks, most of those inside Iran, but this is an organization, since it was founded in the mid-1960s, that has embraced armed struggle and that has embraced violence, and one of the things that I do in the story is tabulate, you know, looking back at the history of this organization, and you're right to point out that there have been at least six and possibly seven American citizens who were assassinated by this organization in the 1970s in Iran.
Of course, that was a time when Iran was run by the pro-West Shah of Iran, so he was a U.S. ally.
There were many, many American advisors there, and this organization, along with most Iranian revolutionaries, was a very anti-American one, so it had a history of anti-American violence, and also, ideologically, as being a Marxist-Islamist group.
Now, today, they deny all of those claims.
They say it was an offshoot of the organization that actually assassinated Americans, but if you go back and look at the documentation and propaganda that they produced at the time, they really revel in that role of being one that was able to assassinate Americans.
I mean, you know, the entire large portion of some of the thinking behind the Iran's 1979 revolution, Islamic revolution, was that this was an anti-American act, an anti-imperial act, and yet, this was the only organization that actually targeted and assassinated Americans along the way.
They also supported and actively, back in 1979, captured the U.S. Embassy, which, of course, is an event that led to the incarceration of 52 American diplomats for 444 days, and they also actively tried to block any deal to get those people released, as a matter of fact.
So, these are also organizations that, for example, in the 1980s and 1990s, had no problem about making attacks against Iranian missions abroad, Iranian missions in various countries.
In one instance, in 1992, for example, they attacked, on a single day, 13 separate Iranian diplomatic missions in 10 different countries, which is an extraordinary act.
And in one case, in Ottawa, for example, the Iranian embassy there was attacked by 55 people carrying sticks and hammers.
That's what happened.
I mean, on American soil, at the Iranian mission at the U.N., that was taken over by five knife-wielding M.E.K. members, and these people basically chained the doors shut, took people hostage, and spray-painted and trashed the place before they left.
So, the question is, you know, has this organization changed today?
Has it been able to leave behind this history of violence that has always characterized it?
And a lot of people who I spoke to, analysts and those who know the M.E.K. best, say that, you know, they just can't trust that this organization's changed.
Well, there's a part in your article where you say, they always vociferously deny their occult and attack all of their critics as agents of the Ayatollah, and we've certainly been through that this week at Antiwar.com, no doubt.
All right, hold it right there, everybody.
We'll be right back with Scott Peterson from the Christian Science Monitor, this incredible new piece, Iran Group's Big Money Push to Get Off U.S. Terrorist List.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and I'm talking with Scott Peterson from the Christian Science Monitor about this important new piece, Iranian Group's Big Money Push to Get Off U.S. Terrorist List.
And so, I think the question still remains, where did the money come from, Scott, to pay Bill Richardson, James Jones, Peter Pace, Anthony Zinni, James Woolsey, Porter Goss, Michael Hayden, John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani, to show up at Mujahideen-e-Khalq events and give speeches?
How much are they making, and where is the money coming from?
The CIA?
The DOD?
Well, this is a very good question.
In fact, I've got to say, those very organizations, and also the U.S. government, are not clear themselves, or at least so they say, where this money is coming from.
And the kind of money we're talking about is not, this is not petty cash.
I mean, we're talking about $20,000, for example, that was paid to former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, who, for a 10-minute speech, and literally, this is a former U.S. official who knew nothing about the MEK, and he said so in one of the speeches that he gave.
I mean, many of these people are speaking several different times at several different events.
We've had upwards of perhaps 20 events like this that have been linked by, you know, MEK-linked events, where they have been, where basically speaker after speaker stands up, says that, by and large, most of them say that the MEK should be taken off the terrorism list.
They say that the 3,400 people at Camp Ah, who are disarmed MEK militants, should also be protected before the Iraqi government closes that camp at the end of this year.
So those are kind of their two main talking points, but they are getting paid very large sums of money, tens of thousands of dollars each to make these speeches.
And what's extraordinary is, you know, not only the volume of money, but kind of how carefully calibrated these events are.
And we hear that speech contracts come up, go up to as high as $100,000, depending on who you are, and also how many speeches you might make.
But that is a fee that can be paid per speech.
And someone like Ed Rendell is also someone who, as he stated, didn't know anything about the MEK before he received a call from their representatives or those who are MEK supporters on a Monday.
He sent back a message to, you know, via his representative in Washington.
This is how he described it in his speech.
He sent back a message saying, actually, I really don't think I, you know, I'm qualified to come.
I don't know hardly anything about this subject.
Those are his exact words.
And he said, but the message came back, no, no, we'd like you to join us for this event on Saturday.
So literally, in the space of six days, he became educated on this, as he described it.
And what happened was the MEK supporters sent him documentation.
They sent people to brief him on the subject, of course, all along the lines that they want in their talking points.
And lo and behold, having known nothing about this organization on Monday, by Saturday, he's stating two applause and, in fact, a standing ovation.
And on Monday, I'm going to be sending a letter to President Obama and to Secretary Clinton, speaking about how this is, talking about how it's critical that we help these people at Camp Ashcroft, how it's our American obligation to do so.
I mean, he's really kind of become a cheerleader in just the space of those several days.
So, but the question is, where does the money come from?
And we don't know.
And I'm not sure that anybody really fully knows where the money comes from.
Now, the people who organize these talks are, they go by various names.
They are stated, at least on paper, to be Iranian-American associations.
And often they have kind of a regional take.
For example, one of the big bankrollers of these particular events over the last few months has been the Iranian-American Organization of Northern California.
Now, this organization is one that has, you know, interesting, they say, and their director said, although he wouldn't speak to the monitor, but the director has been on the record saying that they are paying for these organizations.
They've also hired one of the most powerful law firms in Washington to lobby on their behalf to get the MEK delisted.
And this is an organization that, you know, that purports and presents itself as simply a group of concerned Iranian-Americans coming from Northern California.
But there are other organizations, for example, there's, I mean, tied up in these things.
One is the Iranian-American Community of Colorado.
Another one is the Iranian-American Community of Texas, or West Texas, in fact.
Another one from Missouri, which has been linked to paying for some of these events.
And the bottom line is that all of these organizations are the type of organizations that the U.S. State Department and also other, or law enforcement organizations in the United States, especially the FBI, have spent a lot of time dealing with, because these are organizations that they believe are shell organizations that are linked to the MEK.
If you go onto the websites of any of these organizations that have websites, almost all of them are singing the praises of the MEK leader, Miriam Rajavi.
They are showing transcripts and videos of these very speeches that we're talking about, and they're making a very big deal out of the fact that so many important Americans are stating that the MEK should be taken off the terrorism list.
Guys like Rudy Giuliani and others who, as you mentioned before, have got these kind of ironclad national security, you know, pedigrees.
And so you've got someone like Rudy Giuliani sitting down with Miriam Rajavi at an event in Paris, for example, singing her praises, singing the praises of the MEK, and basically saying that, you know, for paid events, you know, paid for by the speech, these are people who are basically advocating in the case of these organizations.
Well now, really, it's not just Rendell, it's throughout your whole article, it kind of bleeds through the paper-thin knowledge of the men giving these speeches, at least many of them, and I guess I just can't believe that James Jones and Anthony Zinni and Wesley Clark and, you know, John Bolton don't know what they're doing.
But some of these other people, it seems like their knowledge and their arguments are paper-thin.
Ah, they're good Democrats and whatever.
They're not even attempting to confront any of the accusations.
Well, people say about the MEK this, that, and the other, but that's not so.
They don't even have that.
They're just saying, yeah, come on, it's ridiculous, you know.
Giuliani says, let's have a Persian summer, like this'll just be, it's 2002 or 3, and we're just going to send in the Iraqi National Congress with Ahmed Chalabi and take over Iraq and it'll be fine, you know?
The comparison with Ahmed Chalabi and the INC in 2003 is a very, very apt one.
And this is where Iran analysts and specialists who know Iran, you know, because this is where they really take issue with these, you know, high-level, high-ranking Americans who, for their own, you know, who are obviously well-listened-to voices by Americans.
I mean, these are people who've been engaged in very important periods of time in the history of the United States and therefore many people listen to them.
So the fact that they are speaking, of course they're not experts on Iran, they're not experts on the MEK, and some of them have had almost no contact or understanding or experience with the MEK over these, you know, over their careers.
So they're not, of course, necessarily qualified to speak about this.
But what really shocks people who know Iran well and Iran specialists is that often these people, when they're speaking, equate the MEK with the opposition inside Iran.
And, of course, most Americans know what the opposition in Iran really looks like.
It's the Green Movement that pretty much emerged in 2009 after the election, basically the flawed election, re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Everyone remembers that for weeks and weeks there was violence on the streets, there was a big crackdown by the Basij and by the Revolutionary Guards to basically stamp out these protests, and it was a huge pro-democracy event that garnered the sympathy of people around the world.
So, the MEK played virtually no role in those events, and anyone who knows Iran knows that's true, because the MEK is widely despised inside Iran.
And this is one of the things that really piques those who actually, you know, know Iran, and when they hear people like, you know, Howard Dean and John Bolton and others speaking about, you know, kind of what Democrats and everything else the MEK is, I mean, the MEK, because they have no support inside Iran, are also, so analysts tell me and as I've been able to see for myself, having visited Iran a number of times, they have no resonance inside Iran, and there are reasons for that.
It's not just because people don't think that the MEK are good people, it's because the MEK's history has been such that when they left Iran in 1981, and this is after a period when they were engaged in many, many assassinations and attacks inside Iran, it was kind of an ideological civil war, if you will, going on in Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Now, they lost.
Their leader, Massoud Rajavi, had to flee, the entire organization fled, and were basically taken in by Saddam Hussein.
Now, Saddam Hussein gave them Camp Ashraf, and for many, many years, they were able to work as a large armed force inside Iraq, under the tutelage of Saddam Hussein.
There are videos of Saddam giving large suitcases of money to this organization, but there also is incontrovertible evidence that these people were used as an extra military force on behalf of Saddam.
So, they actually went into Iran and fought against their fellow Iranians during the Iran-Iraq War, the later stages of the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, and this is the final straw for many Iranians, who simply will not forgive them for turning their weapons against them.
Now, Scott, I'm sorry, we're up against the time wall here.
There's no way I can keep you one more segment, is there?
I mean, I've got a slight time arrangement here.
That's the only thing.
I was just expecting the two segments.
Right.
Okay, well, it's alright.
You know, if you need to go, it's fine.
I'm not trying to put you on the spot here or anything.
I know that you're short on time.
You must be.
Sure.
Alright, excellent.
Well, look, thank you so much for having me on.
Ah, thanks so much for your great work.
I read you often.
I hope we can do it again.
Oh, excellent.
Alright.
Good.
Alright, take care.
Thank you.
Well, thanks for pushing the story.
Very good of you.
Yeah, right on.
It's important.
Alright, thanks.
Okay, thanks.
Yep, take care.
