http://www.investigativeproject.org/article/629

by Steven Emerson
IPT News
March 28, 2008

(Note: To see today's complete dossier installment, click here: www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/116.pdf)

CAIR's soft spot for terrorists extends well beyond the Hamas connections documented in yesterday's installment in this comprehensive series on the group. Today we focus on its portrayal of virtually any law enforcement action against radical elements as an assault on all American Muslims.

· Days after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, CAIR-New York Executive Director Ghazi Khankan used an online chat with the Washington Post to launch a weeks-long campaign casting them as part of a conspiracy to discredit Muslims. Citing spurious evidence, he claimed that "many of the names of the terrorists are people impersonating innocent Muslims and Arabs."

CAIR pushed Khankan's misidentification theory in an October 2001 statement, speculating that three of the 19 suspected ‘hijackers' were still alive in the Middle East and asking, "Who is impersonating these three Muslim Arabs? Why are Muslim Arabs been (sic) implicated in this terrorism? And, who could ‘benefit' from this horrific tragedy?"

· CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper similarly hesitated to blame Al Qaeda. "We condemn the attacks on the buildings,'" he told Salon.com, adding, "If Osama bin Laden was behind it, we condemn him by name." Asked why he qualified the response, Salon.com reported, "Hooper said he resented the question."

· As late as June 2005, CAIR-Canada Advisory Board Member Jamal Badawi questioned responsibility for 9/11. Calling the attacks "un-Islamic" and declaring, "I strongly condemn" them, he told the Saudi Gazette it had not yet been confirmed who was actually behind the actions. And at an August 2005 "Know Your Rights" workshop sponsored by CAIR-San Diego, invited speaker Randall Hamud responded to an audience member's comment that there was "still no evidence that Muslims carried out 9/11" by saying, "Maybe a hundred years from now we'll find that out."

About Steve Emerson:

Jan/Feb 1999 Steven Emerson's Crusade: Why is a journalist pushing questionable stories from behind the scenes?
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1443
"The role Emerson played may at first seem perplexing. He presents himself as a journalist, yet he handed off what appeared to be a major story to rivals. A closer look at Emerson's career suggests his priority is not so much news as it is an unrelenting attack against Arabs and Muslims. From this perspective, his gambit with Khan seems easier to understand: Pakistan is a Muslim nation, while India's nuclear program has long been linked to Israel. As the Indian Express noted (6/29/98), Pakistani politicians were 'convinced that they were about to be attacked by India, possibly with Israeli assistance.'"

May 19, 2003 Withdraws Defamation Suit: "Terror" Slut Steve Emerson Eats Crow (Just for Starters)
http://www.counterpunch.org/emerson05192003.html
"The complaint centered on allegations reported by Sugg that two Associated Press reporters said Emerson gave them a document on terrorism supposedly from FBI files: "One reporter thought he'd seen the material before, and in checking found a paper Emerson had supplied earlier containing his own unsupported allegations. The two documents were almost identical, except that Emerson's authorship was deleted from the one purported to be from the FBI. 'It was really his work,' one reporter says. 'He sold it to us trying to make it look like a really interesting FBI document.'" (Weekly Planet, May 1998) In that same article, Sugg quoted AP reporter Richard Cole saying: "'We were not really clear on the origin of his [Emerson's] material.' Because of that, Cole recalls, much of Emerson's information was sliced from the series." (Cole was the lead writer of a 1997 AP series on terrorism.)"

July 2, 2007 The Master of Innuendo: Steve Emerson's Fantastic Obsession
http://www.counterpunch.org/safi07022007.html
"What would an investigative reporter turned director of a private intelligence operation, who is increasingly obsessed with proving that mainstream Muslim American organizations are radical, do when he fails to find evidence to support his obsession? Human decency and Ethical conduct dictate that he give up his obsession and admit that he was wrong. Steve Emerson, the director of the shadowy Investigative Project, thinks otherwise. Rather than doing the right thing and give up his bigoted endeavor, he decides to use fantasy to forge evidence and prolong his compulsive obsession."

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