This is a cross post by Richard Bartholomew, from Bartholomew’s Notes
CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° has broadcast a two-part investigative report (here and here) on Walid Shoebat, the self-professed terror expert who last month spoke at a Homeland Security Conference in South Dakota. Shoebat, as is well-known, purports to be an ex-terrorist who spent time in prison in Israel after firebombing a bank for the PLO; however:
CNN’s Jerusalem bureau went to great lengths trying to verify Shoebat’s story. The Tel Aviv headquarters of Bank Leumi had no record of a firebombing at its now-demolished Bethlehem branch. Israeli police had no record of the bombing, and the prison where Shoebat says he was held “for a few weeks” for inciting anti-Israel demonstrations says it has no record of him being incarcerated there either.
Shoebat says he was never charged because he was a U.S. citizen.
Scepticism about Shoebat’s story has been around for a while – in 2008 Shoebat’s handler Keith Davies threatened to sue a blogger who had looked into Shoebat’s background, and a critical piece appeared soon after in the Jerusalem Post.
But even if Shoebat’s story is true, attempting to firebomb a bank for the PLO more than thirty years ago would hardly make Shoebat an expert on terrorism. When it comes to professional expertise in contemporary counter-terrorism – which can be the only valid basis for inviting him to speak at a Homeland Security conference – Shoebat exposes himself as amateurish and sloppy. CNN notes:
Shoebat also told the group there were 17 hijackers when there were 19. And perhaps more surprising from a man who bills himself as a terror expert, Shoebat said the Transportation Security Administration could have stopped them. The TSA wasn’t created until after the 9-11 attacks.
…During Shoebat’s presentation, he criticized Muslim organizations and told audience members to be leery of Muslim doctors, engineers, students and mosques.
“Now, we aren’t saying every single mosque is potential terrorist headquarters. But if you look at certain reports by the Hudson report, 80 percent of mosques they found pamphlets and education on jihad. So they’re in the mosque, the mosque in accordance to the Muslim brotherhood is the command post and center.”
The conservative Hudson Institute said it never issued such a report and has no idea why its name was invoked.
Shoebat doesn’t have any specialist inside information about how terrorists operate or think: instead, he uses his status as an ex-Muslim to offer lurid and often generalised warnings about the dangers of Islam and Muslim infiltration, based on familiar talking points from the paranoid right. Although he appears to have moderated his rhetoric slightly for the event in South Dakota, in other contexts Shoebat has claimed to know that Barack Obama is a Islamic terrorist:
Islam could not defeat us by destroying the twin towers. But they are able to defeat us by sneaking in their man.
Spreading himself even thinner, Shoebat also visits churches to explain how his Muslim background gives him special insight into how the Bible predicts the coming of a Muslim anti-Christ.
According to CNN, tax returns for Shoebat’s Forum for Middle East Understanding contain “very little information”:
In tax records filed by Davies, the Forum for Middle East Understanding reported 2009 earnings from speaking engagements, videos and book sales of more than $560,000. The documents are thin on specifics, and so is Shoebat.
“Basically, we are in information, and we do speaking and we do also helping Christians that are being persecuted in countries like Pakistan, and we help Christians that are suffering all throughout the Middle East,” he said. Asked how they do that, he said, “None of your business” — adding that disclosing details could endanger people he was trying to help in Islamic countries that have laws against blasphemy.
Shoebat’s claim to be helping Christians in Pakistan is a subject I’ve looked at a couple of times recently (here and here). He has created a separate organisation, called “Rescue Christians”, which has no apparent formal board structure or trustees. “Rescue Christians” purports to be protecting the families of Fanish Robert, Rashid and Sajid Emmanuel, and Qamar David: these are all high-profile cases in which men accused of blasphemy have either been murdered or have died in suspicious circumstances in custody. Despite international media attention, and lobbying by established groups such as Christian Solidarity Worldwide or International Christian Concern, I have not been able to find any independent reference to the involvement of “Rescue Christians”. And why does Shoebat require more secrecy than is the case for other Christian groups that work in this area, such as Open Doors or Release International?
The second segment also includes a remarkable encounter with Davies:
Walid said that you would be able to tell us about your advisory board. You guys said you have generals and other high-ranking officials.
Correct, yeah.
Can you tell us who they are?
Erm… off the top of my head, yes. Let me see. Erm… I’m trying to think. The name’s gone blank. It’ll come back to me in a second… Major General… err… [sigh]… La. I can’t remember name… Erm… Four-star… there’s a three star general at the Air Force… Irish name… Thomas… I usually know these off by heart…
Griffin says that Davies (who occasionally stops by my blog to post goading comments) eventually came up with the name of a pilot, who did not respond calls for confirmation. It seems bizarre that Davies found it so difficult to come up with any name – and that such names are not in the public domain anyway. If there really is a general involved with Shoebat’s advisory board, the most likely candidate would be Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin, a well-known Christian Right figure who spoke at an alternative Fort Hood Memorial event organised by Shoebat’s Forum For Middle East Understanding back in November (Robert Spencer was also a participant).
Public tax forms, CNN notes, name as board members Davies and Lance Silver, who is described as “a real-estate developer”. I looked at Silver – who has also been involved with the “Interfaith Taskforce for America and Israel” and the “America-Kurdistan Friendship League” (in the latter case alongside Jack Wheeler) back in 2008.
The CNN report ends with a statement from the federal Department of Homeland Security, which states that the DHS does not “tolerate” any programme “that relies on racial or ethnic profiling”.
Meanwhile, the Shoebat Foundation now has a fuller response on its website, disputing CNN’s account and alleging that CNN has worked secretly with “CAIR operatives” to carry out a “political assassination.” The response is difficult to follow, but the guts of it are that Griffin has lied about the checks he claims to have made into Shoebat’s terrorist background, and that Shoebat’s Palestinian relatives themselves have terror connections, which is why they lied to CNN about Shoebat not having been a terrorist. There are also further details about Shoebat’s purported past links to known terrorists.
The reply also claims that Shoebat’s name would not appear in Israeli records because he used his mother’s maiden name in his US passport. Shoebat claims that he couldn’t divulge these details to CNN because “CNN refused to offer privacy”; perhaps this is a genuine concern, but based on Shoebat’s statements and a bit of googling I was able to track down the name on the internet quite easily. So, once again, there is no reason why the “proofs” which Shoebat showed Daniel Pipes in 2006 should not be made public.
However, as I’ve written before: Shoebat’s back-story may or may not be true. The question of whether he’s an appropriate speaker at Homeland Security events can be assessed by looking at his statements, which are so excessive as to be absurd.