Posted on 09/19/2002 8:10:38 AM PDT by Freemeorkillme
TORRICELLI'S TERROR LIST FRIENDS
By Kenneth R. Timmerman
The recent campaign finance scandals have focused attention on the mysterious role foreign money has come to play in American politics. So what is one to say about a U.S. senator who openly accepts campaign money from a group the State Department calls terrorists?
Robert Torricelli has never had a reputation for impeccable probity. During his stint on the House Intelligence Committee he was several times accused of publishing classified intelligence information to suit his own political agenda. In 1996, he ran a bitter, mud-slinging campaign to win the U.S. Senate seat in New Jersey vacated by Democrat Bill Bradley. But now a TAS investigation has learned that in his thirst for campaign dollars Torricelli has regularly sought and received contributions from foreign nationals who are members of an international terrorist group and has promoted their cause with President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.
Torricelli makes no bones of his ties to the group, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), also known as the People's Mujahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI). Indeed, he has actively promoted the group with other members of Congress, despite repeated warnings from the State Department about its terrorist activities, which include the killing of American servicemen in Iran in the 1970's, and participation in the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in November 1979. Under a new law, the State Department on October 8 designated thirty groups as international terrorist organizations, making it illegal for them to raise funds in the United States and denying their representatives U.S. visas. One of those groups was Torricelli's buddies, the People's Mujahedin Organization of Iran.
The State Department action has "opened the doors for the FBI and Treasury to investigate MEK fundraising activities in the United States," a State Department official told TAS. Many Iranian-Americans have complained of being harassed by the group in its quest for funds, and have identified a variety of "charities" and front companies it uses for these purposes. TAS has learned that the FBI had the group under investigation for eight years in the 1980's for a variety of criminal offenses, but was taken off the case following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Intense lobbying from Congress played a part in the decision, FBI sources say, but so did a growing need to focus FBI resources on possible Iraqi terrorist activities in the U.S.
While the Mujahedin claims to oppose the ruling clerics in Tehran, they took part in the 1978-79 Iranian Revolution, helped round up and execute supporters of the former Shah, and actively backed the seizure of the U.S. embassy. In 1981 the group's leader, Massoud Rajavi, called for the expulsion of Iranian Jews from the army and for special restrictions to be placed on Jewish businesses in Iran. After splitting with the regime in June 1981, the Mujahedin migrated to Iraq and fought side by side with Iraqi troops during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. Their embrace of Saddam Hussein -- who provided the MEK with weapons and training camps -- won them the contempt of most Iranians, who today view the group as little more than Iraqi collaborators. Most recently, the group has helped Saddam Hussein in military operations against Iraqi Kurds in northern Iraq.
The MEK is vowing to take the State Department to court over its action, and it has turned to Torricelli for help. A Torricelli spokesperson, Sue Harvey, told TAS that the senator wrote to President Clinton shortly after the State Department designation to ask him to take the group off the terrorism list. Why all the solicitude for a terrorist group close to Saddam Hussein? As with many things in the Clinton camp, the answer is money. Over the past three years, the MEK and its supporters have given Torricelli $136,000 in precious "hard money," according to Federal Elections Commission records. They also kicked in $23,000 in soft money to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), which helped Torricelli in his successful Senate bid.
Torricelli has stood by these supporters. In his House days, he sponsored more than a half-dozen resolutions and letters of support for the organization, which he circulated among his colleagues for their signatures. In keeping with the MEK's tactics, the support letters began with rousing condemnations of human rights violations in Iran and the terrorist record of the regime. Only near the bottom (or in one case, in a separate statement that was not always included with the cover letter) was the group mentioned -- hyped as a "democratic alternative" to the Tehran regime. Said an aide to a congressman who signed such a letter in 1995: "Who wouldn't have signed a letter calling on the President of the United States to take harsher measures against Iranian state-sponsored terrorism? This is an apple pie issue." One embarrassed signer, Virginia Democrat James Moran, later issued a public retraction, explaining he'd been tricked into signing the letter "under false pretenses" and that "it was never my intention to endorse or promote the National Council of Resistance of Iran, or the Iranian Community of Virginia, as they identified themselves to me."
Torricelli has not been the only recipient of Mujahedin largesse. Indeed, information collected from FEC records as well as from Iranian exiles and U.S. counter-intelligence officials suggests that the group ran a coordinated effort to win political favors. In the past three years it donated more than $215,000 to six members of Congress who have urged U.S. support for the group and its political fronts -- including the National Council of Resistance (NCR), which maintains a significant Washington presence.
But according to the Mujahedin themselves, Torricelli has done more than just sponsor congressional letters on their behalf. In a Persian-language press release issued from their European office outside Paris on October 23, the group claimed that Torricelli had introduced three of their members to President Clinton at a DSCC fundraiser in Washington on October 21. According to the statement, Torricelli took them over to the president's table, where they asked Clinton "to be more firm against the religious dictatorship in Iran" and to overturn the State Department ban.
While the White House confirmed that the president attended the DSCC event, it had no immediate comment on the alleged meeting with the Iranians. But Torricelli spokesperson Sue Harvey immediately denied the Mujahedin's version of events. "Senator Torricelli did not invite members of the People's Mujahedin Organization of Iran to this dinner," Harvey told TAS. "And Senator Torricelli did not introduce any Mujahedin members to the president."
As it happens, only a few months earlier, at a Labor Party conference in Britain, an MEK member posed with two beaming "friends," prime minister Tony Blair and foreign secretary Robin Cook. After the Mujahedin published the photograph in their Persian-language weekly, Iran Zamin, claiming Blair's support for their cause (which Blair fiercely denied), the British government declared the group's co-leader, Maryam Rajavi, "undesirable" and barred her from entering Britain. Expelled from France in June 1996, Mrs. Rajavi was trying to establish residence in Britain, rather than return to Baghdad where her husband and his Mujahedin have their biggest base of support.
Certainly Torricelli didn't have to be tricked. Of the three Mujahedin representatives who attended the October 21 dinner, Alireza Jaafarzadeh and Hedayat Mostowfi were well known to Torricelli and his staff as official representatives of the group's National Council of Resistance front, while the third, Mona Samsani, is affiliated with the MEK's women's organization. The trio was also well known to the DSCC. A committee spokesman told TAS that all three were "past contributors to the DSCC and are on our mailing list," and so would have been invited to the dinner as a matter of course. In a Clintonian dodge, Sue Harvey said that Torricelli could not have introduced the Mujahedin to Clinton "for the simple reason that the senator had left the pre-dinner reception before the president arrived." But she also acknowledged that Torricelli introduced Clinton "at the main event" -- precisely where the Mujahedin claim their own introductions took place.
This is an excerpt of "Torricelli's Terrorist List Friends" from the January 1998 issue of The American Spectator.
Kenneth R. Timmerman, a frequent contributor to TAS, is the publisher of Iran Brief.
It's time to take back the Senate folks. Terror-celli-ties need to be exposed nationally and quickly. He is currently loosing in his bid for re-election to keep his NJ Senate seat against conservative candidate Doug Forrester and we'd like to help him out the door firm kick in the pants. This information could really help swing the jewish vote here further against Torture-celli, a strategy that seemed to pay off against McKinney and Hillard.
It's now late September and time to really ramp up the FReeping nation wide. The elections grow near.
FMOKM
OK, who are the other 5?
In sum, when you cut Torch, the elitist millionaire, a fellow traveller bleeds all over you.
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