All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and our first guest on the show today is Peter Serto.
He is editorial assistant with the Institute for Policy Studies, does research for RightWeb, yay, a project monitoring militarist advocacy in the United States, and is a contributor to Foreign Policy in Focus, where he, that's fpif.org, you know, Jon Pfeffer and them.
The new piece is US government finally catching up with MEK boosters like Ed Rendell.
This is cross-posted from IPS Special Projects' RightWeb militarist monitor site.
Welcome to the show, Peter.
How are you doing?
I'm doing very well.
How are you today?
I'm doing great.
Welcome to the show.
I yelled yay when I said RightWeb because I love RightWeb, and I've been looking at RightWeb since 2003, I guess, maybe four, but anyway, they have the best profiles, and you might think that liberals or progressives would just maybe have a site called RightWeb that would just profile every Republican that you don't like or something, but no, no, no, it's very specifically all about the neocons, the war party, as best as anybody could define them, and there's individual profiles and profiles of all of the different think tanks and the Olin and Bradley foundations that bankroll them all and just everything, and if people just go and look at the individual profiles at RightWeb.org, you would learn so much about the history of the 21st century so far.
It'll just blow your mind, and so I'm glad I had the opportunity to say that since you are an editorial assistant with that project.
It is a fascinating and extremely important thing that you've got there.
Well, thank you very much for your very kind words.
One small correction, the URL is RightWeb.irc-online.org.
Oh, yeah, that's why I always just Google it.
RightWeb, one word, and it'll come right up.
And you can Google virtually any leading neoconservative.
Google the name and RightWeb, and you can pull up our profile.
So, all right, now let's talk about the MEK, and now I guess the audience of this show is pretty familiar with this communist terrorist cult that used to work for the Ayatollah and then Saddam Hussein and then Donald Rumsfeld, and now for Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama, too.
They try to deny it, but come on.
But what's really important is the American politics end of this discussion right now, and that is all of the very influential people who got paid off to provide material support to this communist terrorist cult.
According to General McInerney, so that they can be used as terrorists, they must be removed from the terrorist list so that we can provide them more aid and use them to blow up more things inside Iran.
And so something's changed, though, in terms of could it possibly be law enforcement that the same kind of anti-terrorism laws that are twisted way beyond proportion and reason and the Bill of Rights that have been used against helpless, lawyerless Muslims in America could actually be used against a former governor or former CIA directors or former generals like are representing the MEK, starting with Ed Rendell.
What is going on here?
Your guess is as good as mine.
These are prosecutions that would, or investigations, I should say, would take place under the Street Act, which was one particular provision of which held up under Holter v.
Humanitarian Law, which was a Supreme Court ruling upholding the right of the executive branch to prosecute individuals or groups for essentially as little as speech advocating for a prescribed terrorist organization, if it can be shown that they did it in concert with the group.
The only people prosecuted under the statute so far have been people who make YouTube postings that are either in praise of alleged terrorists or overly critical of U.S.
-born policy and human rights groups that have worked with prescribed organizations to help them file human rights claims with the United Nations.
So I have no idea why the Treasury Department is moving on this now.
I don't know if they have some lead that says this money definitely came from someplace unsavory.
They will not comment on it at all, but it is very surprising to me.
Well, there are so many different angles to go here.
I guess, first of all, do we have any indications that any of these people, and we're talking about James Woolsey and Michael Hayden and Howard Dean and Fran Townsend and some very influential political appointees, elected officials, Rudy Giuliani, do we have any indications that they have done any other work for the Mujahideen-e-Khalq other than giving speeches, like say, for example, some consulting work or anything like that?
Anything that you could actually, if you didn't want to sacrifice the First Amendment, but you did want to see Rudy Giuliani in prison, say, for example, that you could actually get him on?
Nothing that I'm familiar with.
I don't know the extent of most of these people's activism.
I mean, there it is at this cutting edge is speaking agencies or potential speakers that are approached with a very easy pitch and a very high price tag for doing it.
If you look closely, that's almost their defense sometimes.
Well, they told me, they explained this issue to me, and I decided that I really believed them, so it doesn't matter about the money.
Not to mention they never return the checks.
But I'm not aware of anything besides giving speeches.
Some of the more hardcore policy advocacy done by groups like the Iran Policy Committee and Raymond Panter and Chuck Nash and that crowd, they're a little deeper in Capitol Hill, and there are lobbying shops that have former members of Congress on staff actually pushing this on the Hill in a very quiet, closed-door way.
But as far as I know, those groups haven't been investigated at all.
Now, I guess Rendell got all the attention because he leaked it to The Washington Times first.
But it's not, as you say, it's not him.
It's the people who hired him that are being investigated.
So the degree to which he's under investigation, we've got to assume that's the same for Tom Ridge and the rest of them.
No?
I mean, Rendell's the only one who spoke about it.
I think maybe Hugh Shelton may have left slide about something, but I don't know how many of these guys these speaking agencies represent.
Well, it's sort of like when AIPAC went straight to Andrea Mitchell and had her leak the FBI investigation into AIPAC in order to try to preempt any further investigations back in 2004.
Seemed like to me where Rendell said, hey, guess what, Mooney Times?
You know what I mean?
Which is funny, too, because he's a Democrat, this guy Rendell, but he goes straight to The Washington Times with his story because he knows they'll cover for him.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, they have Gaffney as a columnist and any kind of very active guy who writes for them.
I really should subscribe.
Frank Gaffney.
What a great way to start the morning.
All right.
Hold it right there, everybody.
It's Peter Serto from Foreign Policy in Focus.
We'll be right back after this talking about the Mujahideen cult, communist terrorist cult.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
We're talking with Peter Serto from Right Web and Foreign Policy in Focus.
FPIF.org.
And we're talking about this Treasury investigation into American sock puppets of the Iranian communist terrorist cult, the Mujahideen Iqalq.
And there's this report by Michael Isikoff in Newsweek where Louis Free and Hugh Shelton have had their records subpoenaed.
And I guess in the same sort of way I was mentioning before about how Rendell was like AIPAC in running to the media first to try to, you know, tattletale on himself first and control the story or whatever.
But another way that this reminds me of the AIPAC situation from 2004, Peter, is that when you have criminal investigations of people this powerful, generals and former FBI directors and people like that, then that's political.
That is not some cop wants to do this because the law is the law.
None of us, I don't think any of the 300 million Americans alive today believe in that mythology.
This is going on because somebody very powerful has decided to put a check on this Save the MEK movement and they're doing so by using the Treasury Department.
Am I reading that right or am I just way too much of a conspiracy kook or what?
I mean, there's a little bit of room for it.
On the one hand, opponents of the MEK designation have said from the beginning that MEK's designation was political, that the Clinton administration facilitated this to improve their relations with the reformist Iranian government of the 90s.
But if you like, I don't think the Obama administration particularly appreciates this kind of advocacy, particularly of the apparently stellar bipartisan cast, it is assumed, because while I think the Obama administration's policy towards Iran has been on balance very hawkish, I do think that ultimately they're looking to avoid an overt confrontation.
And if they have this pressure campaign going on to delist a group that the Obama administration itself, as hinted, has been involved in Israeli attacks on Iranian nuclear targets, I think that creates a lot of headaches that they don't want right now, at least not in an election year.
Still, it seems like the White House would just sort of let it be known that, hey everybody, lay off your pro-MEK stuff for a little while here, rather than just sending the Treasury.
Don't get me wrong, every single one of these people that I can think of who's going around being paid to give these speeches should all be in prison for other reasons anyway.
I'm not feeling sorry for them or defending them or anything like that.
I'm just amazed and astounded that anybody is talking about anything like a criminal investigation that comes anywhere near somebody like Louis Freeh, for example.
I mean, that's precisely what makes this so shocking.
I mean, if he robbed a store and they just had him on video, something like that maybe.
Or something political, like giving support to a terrorist group.
I can't believe what's going on here.
Yeah, and I don't know the extent to which the actual individuals are being investigated for potentially criminal actions in which they themselves could be culpable.
As you hinted before, the crux of the investigation, internally at least, could be on the groups that are providing the financing or the funding.
And then secondly, I would be shocked if any criminal convictions come out of this, of the speakers.
I think that if there is a real political motive, it is to throw a little bit of damp water on what previously appeared as a very easy and low-risk and lucrative way to make a lot of money as a recently retired public figure.
Right.
Well, I mean, these guys even traveled to France.
There's a great picture of Giuliani and the cult leader, Myron Rajavi, sitting at a table together and all this.
And it was, I guess, Peterson's work in the Christian Science Monitor where it was pretty clear at least some of these characters really had no idea who the MEK was or what was going on at all.
They'd pretty much bring that same know-nothing attitude that we all know and love from when they were in power to, you know, fronting for this group.
You know, hey, as far as I know, my agent said it was cool, so I was giving a speech, whatever.
I got paid.
It seemed to be okay.
But yeah, now their treasury is saying in this Isikoff piece that, you know, they want to know where's the money coming from.
Well, come on.
They know where the money's coming from.
They're tapping every bank account in the world.
They know where the money's coming from.
Yeah.
I'm sure that the actual crux of the investigation is, as I said, it's on where's the money coming from.
And if there's a discrete political motive, I think it is to discourage this as opposed to bring these guys in.
I don't think they have any real interest in doing that.
Right.
Yeah.
They couldn't possibly go that far.
But, well, I don't know.
So maybe this is sort of just maybe there was a real fight of some kind inside the government, and this is Hillary Clinton's or somebody's way of, you know, winning and just saying, look, we are definitely not delisting them, and this is how we're making our point with a big period at the end or something like that, you know?
And I think part of what it accomplishes, too, is it's – I mean, I believe that the general public is not particularly familiar with the MEK or this insider advocacy campaign on its behalf.
I think what this does in the public imagination is it delinks this human rights issue at the Ashraf encampment or potential human rights issue at Ashraf, which, you know, if better executed, could have been the Stop Kony of its age.
It delinks that from the issue that this is a prescribed terrorist organization.
It links these public figures with – it puts an association with them with a terrorist group, which I think can sully the well for everybody.
Well, and the real difference, I guess, is that if they're delisted now, maybe they can leave Iraq together instead of one at a time spread to the wind.
Is that basically the deal?
I mean, I don't know what they're specifically proposing to the extent that it's anything.
I think that the MEK itself has been a little bit resistant to being relocated or moved out of the country without getting delisted, because they recognize that the Ashraf issue is their media hook in the U.S.
That is – that's what pulls on the heartstrings, and they don't want to lose that.
So I don't know what – I think ostensibly they want the U.S. government to either facilitate the removal of the people living in the encampment or even provide them with means to defend themselves.
I don't know.
Yeah, in a war against Maliki's army?
Mm-hmm.
I mean, that's – the absurd thing about it is I think Ed Rendell and Tom Ridge have each used very similar words about the indignity of U.S.
-provided arms being used by a foreign government for some nefarious purpose.
And their particular complaint is the Maliki government's two incursions into the MEK camp, which killed a few dozen people.
But all the same, I have not heard them complain about the nefarious use of U.S. arms elsewhere in the region or the world.
Well, how come St. David Petraeus didn't have a great plan to take care of this three years ago?
What are they doing?
Now it's already the future.
It's 2012, and they didn't do anything about Camp Ashraf, and now they're gone.
I think the most benign reading is that that is just another casualty of an improvised occupation.
Yeah, one they hoped would last forever but didn't quite work out that way.
Yeah.
Well, now, also I think it's really important here that in this Times piece, the Washington Times piece, Rendell and Tom Ridge both just basically make a mockery out of the idea that there would be any sort of law that would apply to them.
Asked if it was legal or not, Ridge said it's a moot question.
Assuming there may be a question of legality, and we don't think there is, the bigger question is, does MEK belong on the list?
And here's a guy who is a governor who's the former head of Homeland Security.
I believe that maybe it was Rendell that I'm thinking of who said that he conducted his own legal review in which he determined that there's no way MEK should really be on the terrorist list, and therefore it was okay to give him speeches.
I don't know, he could have Googled beholder versus humanitarian law, but I don't know.
All that might be a little disingenuous.
Yeah, maybe just a little bit.
All right, well, very good.
I appreciate your time on the show today.
It's very good.
Thank you very much for having me, Scott.
Everybody, that's Peter Serto from Foreign Policy in Focus, fpif.org.
The article is US government finally catching up with MEK boosters like Ed Rendell, and you can find him at RightWeb, the Institute for Policy Studies.
We'll be right back.
