Posted on 09/20/2002 2:27:05 PM PDT by Politico2
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Insight on the News - Daily Insight Torricelli's Terrorist-List Friends By Kenneth R. Timmerman
Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) is facing what could be the toughest election campaign of his life, embroiled in a series of campaign-finance scandals that Republican challenger Douglas Forrester skillfully has exploited. The real surprise in this campaign is not Torricelli's sleazy New Jersey politics or his relationship to David Chang, the businessman who has admitted in court to making illegal campaign contributions to the "Torch" [see "Taking on 'The Torch,'" Sept. 23]. It has come from revelations, first aired by the American Spectator magazine in 1998 and picked up by the Forrester campaign, that Torricelli took more than $136,000 in hard campaign contributions from members and supporters of a group of thugs in the pay of Saddam Hussein. Torricelli's friends are known as the People's Mujahedin Organization of Iran, or MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq). They want to overthrow the ruling clerics in Iran and replace them with an even-more radical Islamic-Marxist regime. The State Department has accused them of murdering Americans in Iran in the 1970s and, more recently, of carrying out dirty work for Saddam against legitimate antiregime groups in Iraq. By no rational accounting can they be called America's friends. An FBI penetration agent who trained at the group's bases inside Iraq tells Insight the MEK also has helped Saddam hide weapons of mass destruction from U.N. weapons inspectors. Iraqi opposition sources in London claim that at Saddam's command the MEK recently provided sanctuary to top al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who managed to escape from Afghanistan and flee across Iran under a false identity. Torricelli insists that he has never been duped by the group and that the violence they advocate will be necessary to overthrow the ruling clerics in Iran. During a Sept. 12 debate with Forrester, the senator continued to defend his support for the MEK. Torricelli claimed erroneously that all the money he had taken in campaign contributions from members and supporters of the group had arrived before the MEK was blacklisted by the State Department. A Torricelli spokesman, Ken Snyder, ate those words the next day, noting that the Senator "misspoke in the heat of the moment." Over a three-year period from 1993-1996, Torricelli took $136,000 in precious hard money from known MEK members and supporters, according to Federal Election Commission records. His MEK supporters also kicked in $23,000 in soft money to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), which helped Torricelli in his successful U.S. Senate bid in 1996. In exchange, Torricelli became the group's most outspoken champion on Capitol Hill at a time when the State Department had placed it on its blacklist of international terrorist organizations. Perhaps Torricelli was just cynical and figured the "anything-goes" morality of the Clinton administration would excuse his own campaign-finance lapses. But on June 21, 1994, just after the State Department officially designated the MEK as an international terrorist organization, Torricelli wrote to then-assistant secretary of state Robert Pelletreau, requesting that the State Department "consult" with the MEK. Two weeks after his letter was sent, top MEK members Shahriar Kiamanesh, Fazeleh Rassouli and Mansoureh Zamani paid him back with another round of contributions that resulted in 11 checks -- each for $1,000 -- which his campaign logged in on July 5, 1994. A similar pattern -- letters of support by Torricelli to U.S. government agencies, followed by campaign contributions from MEK supporters to Torricelli -- continued for several years. As the American Spectator wrote in its initial article, "Many of these contributions are likely to be outright illegal, since they were made directly by members of a foreign organization as part of a campaign to influence U.S. policy." The FBI long has tracked MEK activitives in the United States, launching a penetration of the group, known as Operation Suture, in the late 1980s. During the last two years, the FBI has broken up several rings of MEK document-forgers and smugglers operating in the United States. Despite this, the group continued to operate a public-relations bureau out of the National Press Building in Washington, as well as numerous front companies posing as computer-service and communications companies in Fairfax and Loudon counties in Virginia. Kenneth R. Timmerman is a senior writer for Insight magazine.
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NJ, it's time to put out the Torch!
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
I was wondering why. Now I know. there had to be something after the senate ruling to make him drop lower. This or something else as bad must be the reason.
The polls I saw say that if 100 percent of the undecided votes went to the Torch he would still lose by 4 points. Yet hundreds of elections show that undecided votes drop for the challenger by a ratio of 2 to 1.
The Torch is toast.
When they call it his toughest campaign the implication is that the Torch can still win it. From the polls I've seen there is zero way the Torch can win. He doesn't even have a chance to lose small. He is going down big time.
Works for me.
It's time to put out the Torch!
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Jamais reculez á tyrannie un pouce!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! Never give an inch to tyranny!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Torricelli viewed as Dems' most vulnerable Senate incumbent... Developing...
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