The Agent: The Truth Behind the Anti-Muslim Campaign in America

By Dr. Ahmed Yousef and Caroline F. Keeble, USAR Publishing Group Inc., 1999, 120 pp. List: $10.*

Reviewed by Richard H. Curtiss

*Normally this magazine waits to review a book until it is in the AET Book Club catalog. However, in this case, the United Association for Studies and Research. P.O. Box 1210, Annandale, VA has given us permission to reprint in full an updated version of the foreword (written by Richard Curtiss) to this important book. The book’s first edition is available from the publisher at $10 per copy. We hope, after the book’s second printing, to include it in the AET Book Club catalog, as well.

Writer Steven Abram Emerson burst into American public consciousness by leveling alarming charges in a 1994 film, shown by many public television stations, entitled “Jihad in America.” The film made sensational allegations that a sinister network of foreign terrorists had insinuated itself into America’s rapidly expanding Muslim community. Emerson charged that the various components of this network not only were raising funds for Palestinians resisting Israeli forces in the West Bank, Gaza and southern Lebanon, but also were planning deadly acts of murder and sabotage within the United States itself.

For the very few Americans familiar with the embryonic national Islamic organizations and their leaders in theUnited States, and who could understand the Arabic words being spoken in the clips of speeches and songs at public meetings of those groups, the charges were ludicrous. Even the clips of more militant speeches made to Islamic groups overseas were taken out of context. They dated back to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan rather than any contemporary “holy war” against the West as implied by Emerson.

But the vast majority of Americans who knew few, if any, Muslims, and had never heard of any of these organizations, had little reason to disbelieve the inflammatory charges, particularly because they were made in a video carried without disclaimers by the normally reliable public television network.

Initially, therefore, such charges by Emerson, a “terrorism expert” who seemingly had no first-hand familiarity with any Middle Eastern country or language except Israel and Hebrew, and a “journalist” who had never studied journalism, were given some credence by two major events that preceded the showing of his film. These were the World Trade Center bombing in which six Americans were killed on Feb. 26,1993 in New York City, and a conspiracy to bomb the United Nations building and FBI headquarters in Manhattan along with the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, which was aborted by arrests of the plotters in New York and New Jersey in June 1993.

The mysterious Middle Easterner, Ramzi Ahmad Yousef, who planned and directed the World Trade Center bombing and escaped to launch other largely unsuccessful terrorist initiatives in the Far East before he was captured in Pakistan and tried in the United States, seemed to conform with Emerson’s warnings. And although other homegrown American “terrorism experts,” some of whom, like Emerson, had Israeli connections, did not echo the most sensational of Emerson’s charges regarding Muslims, they seemed to observe a kind of professional solidarity in not ridiculing Emerson’s allegations either.

Ultimately, Emerson’s hyperactive attempts to draw more media attention to himself brought about his professional undoing. Immediately after the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995, he implied on both CBS and CNN that it was the work of Muslims, even though the perpetrator, Tim McVeigh, a U.S. Army veteran with neither Muslim nor Middle Eastern connections, was caught within days largely because a loose license plate on his getaway car caught a state trooper’s attention.

Similarly, after Paris-bound TWA Flight 800 exploded off Long Island in July 1996, Emerson said in media statements he was “confident” and had “no doubt whatsoever” that the plane was brought down by a bomb and suggested to Reuters that it could be the work of “the permanent floating [Islamic] military international.” But after a painstaking investigation involving dredging up the aircraft, piece by piece by piece, from the sea floor, the FBI and FAA ascribed the explosion not to a bomb or a missile but to an accidental electrical spark that ignited fumes in an empty fuel tank.

His own unprofessional deportment had largely discredited Emerson before this study was prepared. But this study revealshow Emerson achieved sufficient media credibility to have his astonishing and, as it turned out, poorly documented film accepted by public television.

For example, both before and after he prepared the film many of Emerson’s articles were printed in The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly and, particularly, by the U.S. News and World Report, where he was employed from 1985 to 1989. The New Republic is owned by pro-Israel activist Morton Peretz. The other two are owned by extremely pro-Israel real estate investor Morton Zuckerman.

Very recently, Zuckerman added the New York Daily News to his media empire after previous efforts to purchase it were interrupted by the mysterious death of British media mogul Robert Maxwell, who had long-standing ties to the Mossad, Israel’s CIA, according to Mossad defector Victor Ostrovsky. The death of Maxwell, who was having trouble putting together the newspaper’s purchase price and who already apparently had looted his company’s employee pension funds, resulted from a nighttime fall overboard a few hours after his personal yacht, on which he was the sole passenger, made a brief stop in the Canary Islands. Ostrovsky described Maxwell’s death as a Mossad assassination.

Emerson also served as a free-lance reporter for CNN andpublished articles in The New York Times Magazine, the Arizona Republic, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Wall Street Journal (which still occasionally publishes his articles), and various Jewish publications. This study points out that in writing for mainstream publications Emerson is careful to be politically correct by acknowledging that the “terrorists” of whom he writes are deviating from the teachings of Islam, while he drops such disclaimers in writing for journals which share his alarmist views.

Emerson’s articles all seem to imply that the “terrorists” he studies are motivated by a profound but generalized hatred of the West, and particularly of America. He does not acknowledge the much more widely held view that what unifies such activists is fury at the Israeli occupation of all of Palestine, and that their anger at the United States is a direct result of its virtually unconditional and unquestioning support for successive Israeli governments.

This study also documents the sources of funding not only for Emerson’s efforts, but also for those of other anti-Islamic and pro-Israel media endeavors. Contrary to my own initial expectations, none of the publicly acknowledged funding sources seem directly connected to Israel, nor even to the so-called “neoconservatives” who do have such connections and sympathies.

Such “neoconservatives” initially identified themselves as “conservatives who voted for Franklin D. Roosevelt.” My own observation is that, virtually without exception, those who identify themselves as “neoconservatives” are nearly full-time apologists for Israel whose abandonment of liberal causes and views resultedfrom their insistence on maintaining sufficient U.S. military strength to intervene, when necessary, to defend Israel.

Instead some of the funding for Emerson comes from foundations publicly associated with the extreme U.S. right wing. Upon closer examination, however, it appears that some of the same foundations in the past funded studies that sought to document ties between secular Arab extremists and terrorists and the Soviet Union, raising legitimate questions as to whether their primary concerns were to alert Americans to threats to the United States from the Soviet Union, or to arouse American opposition to left-leaning Arab extremists who threatened Israel.

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which provided $100,000 for Emerson’s “Jihad in America,”also has funded a study by Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Affairs, a think tank spun off by directors of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Israel’s principal Washington, DC lobby. Further, this same foundation has also provided grants to the Foreign Policy Research Institute of Philadelphia, then headed by Daniel Pipes and an associate, Khaled Duran, who also was Emerson’s collaborator producing “Jihad in America.”

Whether the grants from such foundations to apologists for Israel or Muslimbashers like Pipes, Emerson, and Duran come from overt sympathizers with Israel among the foundation officers or directors (as seems to be the case with the Bradley Foundation) or from “anxious for Armageddon” Christian fundamentalists (sharing the beliefs of Jerry Falwell or Pat Roberts), or both, cannot be documented with certainty. What this study does document, however, are names of these foundations and of some of the other books, films, and studies they have funded.

Other such foundationsbesides the Bradley Foundation include the Olin Foundation, which gave Emerson $20,000 in 1993 for a proposed book on Mohammad’s Army: the Rise of Islamic Fundamentalism, Richard Mellon Scaife, whose Carthage Foundation helped fund Emerson’s “Jihad in America” film, and the Smith Richardson Foundation.

This study points out that all of these foundations also support Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy. Since Gaffney’s organization consistently attacked and sought to undermine peace efforts between Israel’s Labor government and Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority, this indicates that at least some persons making the grants for all of these groups understand clearly that their funds are being used to support extreme right-wing Israeli causes and undermine land-for-peace proponents in Israel.

Lest there be any doubt where Gaffney is coming from, as this study points out, his board of directors includes former AIPAC director Morris J. Amitay. Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy also receives funding from the Irving I. Moskowitz Foundation. Moskowitz has funded real estate takeovers in East Jerusalem by Israeli extremists such as Ariel Sharon and is funding Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem’s Ras Al-Amoud neighborhood where Palestinians are being evicted and their residences are being demolished.

Something in Common

Moskowitz also funded and was present for the 1997 opening of the tunnel along the foundations of the Haram Al-Sharif, the thirdmost holy place in Islam, which set off extremely bloody fighting between Israeli troops and protesting Palestinians and eventually also involved armed intervention against the Israeli forces by Palestinian Authority police. If the above-named foundations all have Gaffney’s organization in common, some of the other organizations which benefit from their grants also are eye-openers. According to the study, Richard Mellon Scaife bankrolls the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Carthage Foundation, and the Align Foundation which, in turn, provide grants for the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the American Spectator, and Accuracy in Media (AIM).

Together with the Scaife foundations, the Smith Richardson Foundation and the Bradley and Olin Foundations are, according to this study, often called the “four sisters of conservative philanthropy.” This study also names the Adolph Coors Foundation, which supports conservative think tanks, and the Koch Family Foundation as following “similar funding patterns for conservative and libertarian causes.”

Other pro-Israel or anti-Muslim American and anti-Arab American efforts funded by these foundations provide further disturbing evidence that some of their efforts have little to do with conservative American causes, and much to do with Israeli extremism.

For example, the Bradley Foundation funded Robert Kaplan’s widely publicized book, The Arabists: The Romance of an American Elite, whose message seemed to be to dismiss critics within the State Department of the long-standing pro-Israel tilt in U.S. foreign policy as, at best, eccentrics and at worst anti-Semites. Kaplan received Olin and Smith Richardson foundation funding for other book projects.

The study reports that The Program on National Security Affairs of Dr. Samuel Huntington, originator of much-discussed predictions of a bloody “Clash of Civilizations” between Islam and the West, received $200,000 from the Bradley Foundation in 1990 and, allegedly, $2.5 million in Olin funds.

Similarly, the pro-Israel and anti-Arab Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia received between 1990 and 1994, while it was directed by Pipes, an annual grant of $75,000 from Scaife, half a million dollars from Bradley, $60,000 from Olin and nearly $300,000 from Smith Richardson.

In the same vein, the Institute for International Studies in Washington, DC, which publishes Khalid Duran’s journal, Trans-State Islam, received in 1993 and 1994 $235,000 from the Bradley, Olin and Smith Richardson Foundations.

Just as this study documents the similar funding patterns for pro-Israel projects by the major foundations named above, and the maze of subsidiary foundations they support, it names other journalists and scholarswho allegedly have assisted with pro-Israel projects initiated by Emerson, Pipes, and Duran. Among these are prominent Orientalist scholar Bernard Lewis (whose son, Michael, has been the longtime head of AIPAC’s opposition research department), Patrick Clawson, who formerly was associated with Pipes’ Foreign Policy Research Institute and now is associated with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, nationally syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, and Barry Rubin, an American writer now living in Israel.

It could be argued that just as Emerson’s 15 minutes of media fame seem to have passed, other propagandists named in this study may also lose their mainstream media access as their motives are exposed. Similarly, the foundations funding them may lose their credibility as the bias in their donation patterns is revealed. Unfortunately, however, the general public rarely is aware of the source of funding for such “experts” and their studies, and new names and faces undoubtedly will appear to partake of the same tainted grants.

Meanwhile, in addition to being the witting or unwitting catalysts for hundreds of attacks on innocent Muslim Americans and their property in many parts of the United States, Emerson and his ilk already have done lasting damage to the credibility of the United States and its legal system.

For example, arrests by Israeli authorities on trumped-up charges of American citizens of Palestinian extraction who are visiting their families in the Holy Land are becoming increasingly frequent. In most cases these Arab Americans are subjected to torture until they “confess” to whatever crimes they allegedly have committed. Israel is the only country in the world where the use of torture—which it calls “mild physical coercion”—to obtain confessions not only is practiced but actually is codified in Israeli law.

Some of these American citizens presently are serving long prison sentences on the basis of such coerced confessions. While U.S. consular officials in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem eventually obtain access to detained Americans, the Emerson accusations may have contributed to an almost unconscious atmosphere of “where there’s smoke there’s fire” that may reduce the zeal of such American officials to protect the rights of U.S. citizens.

Even more corrosive of constitutional rights enjoyed by all American citizens is the anti-terrorism and effective death penalty act. This law was passed by Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996 in the wake of terrorist bombings and after videotapes of “Jihad in America”had been circulated to all 435 members of the House of Representatives at Carthage Foundation expense. It permits the use of secret evidence in deportation hearings against resident aliens in the United States who have not yet obtained U.S. citizenship.

Several legal residents of the U.S. have languished for as long as three years in prison in various parts of the United States on charges which neither they nor their lawyers are allowed to see, and which are leveled by persons whose identity neither they nor their lawyers are allowed to learn. Such a law, which undoubtedly will be repealed or amended at some future time when sanity prevails, could have been passed only under the conditions of near hysteria that prevailed after the bombings of the ’90s, further whipped up by Emerson’s charges.

Since few Americans are aware of the violations of constitutional rights being suffered by resident aliens in the United States, this study fills an urgent need. It exposes how and at whose behest such abridgments of U.S. freedom have come about.

Another result of the activitiesof people like Steven Emerson is the Freedom from Religious Persecution Act. Its primary instigator is Michael Horowitz who, like Emerson, is Jewish, although the act’s ostensible purpose is to enact sanctions against countries where Christian minorities suffer discrimination. The act has been criticized by the National Council of Churches, the U.S. State Department, and representatives of such Christian minorities in non-Christian countries as the Copts of Egypt.

Nevertheless, the act was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on May 14, 1998. It professes concern about Christians in China and Muslim countries but, revealingly, makes no mention whatsoever of Israeli persecution of the Christians of Palestine, whose leaders would welcome and have specifically solicited such U.S. concern.

Interestingly, in the Atlantic Monthly Horowitz is quoted as paying tribute to, in his words, a “handful of people” who, he says, began “the whole transformation of Conservative philosophy.” Those he names are Richard Larry, grant director for the Sarah Scaife Foundation; Michael Joyce, grant director for the Olin Foundation; and Leslie Lenkowsky, “who once controlled grant awards for the Smith Richardson Foundation.” It is significant that he names no individual from the Bradley Foundation, whose primary purpose seems to be the funding of American projects in support of Israel.

Among American Muslims, many of whom are highly trained professionals, it has become almost a cliché to fault their U.S. brethren as a whole for lack of concern for their own civil rights and inattention to detail except in matters directly pertaining to individual educational and career advancement.

Whether or not such charges have been justified in the past, this study by a small Islamic think tank in the U.S. national capital area is an obvious, and welcome, exception to any such generalizations. It provides a detailed examination of one of the most persistent defamers of American Muslims, as individuals and as a community.

This exposé includes a careful documentation of the media outlets that have made themselves available to Steven Emerson and his associates. Even more revealing, and valuable, is the listing of the foundations which support Steven Emerson and the writers and scholars who share his agenda.

It is this writer’s hope that some of the directors, trustees, and executives of these foundations will be as profoundly surprised and disturbed as I have been at this exposure of donation patterns common among supposedly conservative U.S. foundations which conform with Israeli objectives and not with the American national interests these foundations profess to defend and uphold.

While I have no doubt that the government of Israel can always find ways to make available funds for activities in the United States similar to those of Emerson and his associates, I hope that as a result of the revelations in this study there will be no more funding for such profoundly un-American, even anti-American, activities from at least some of the foundations cited by the authors of this study.

Richard H. Curtiss is the executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.