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"Yet Norquist is the only targeted as a "Fifth Columnist", and there seems to be a constant effort by Gaffney to portray him as such. It is only fair to ask cui bono (who benefits) if Norquist is taken down, and to try to ascertain possible motives."

Try to stick to facts not motives, less diving in needed. Gaffney and other national-security minded writers who have come out on this issue (no major conservative writers have defended Norquist)think the President and the country will benefit if the Islamists are replaced in favor by non-Islamist Muslims. Gaffney et al are not out to "take down" Grover- that is a red herring. Rather, as Gaffney carefully recounts doing, to raise some obvious questions about this aspect of Norquist's operation and either convince him to desist or convince the Admin et al to stop dealing with Norquist on that issue.

RE effects: 1)The exlusive "franchise" afforded to the Islamists versus normative, moderate or syncretic (pic your nomenclature) Muslims misprepresents American Islam (that's whay these groups are all foreign controlled and funded, as is Grover's own Islamic Institute, by the way) 2) it intimidates and thus accelerates the takeover of the latter moderate community 3) It thus provides a Base (hence "Fifth Column" as you'll recall it derviation from the Spanish Civil War) for recruitment, training and fundraising/ remittance. The Govt. has successfully brought a number of cases since 9/11 wherein mosques, charities, foundations and hawalas have raised, in single edifices, as much as $20 million that has then roundtripped to terrorists groups abroad, including Al Qaeda. 4) The Base allows greater opportunity for infiltration of the US systems (Govt, private) -- there are many cases related to this as well,ranging from the military and intelligence entities, to the prison system to airports administration & support services and others that are classified or not yet public. 5) If you are a 3rd year case agent looking at money laundering schemes at an Islamic center and, courtesy of Norquist, you then see the head of that Center or its controlling body standing next to the President or the FBI Director, it has a chilling effect on your decision to ask up the nine layers of bosses for a wiretap or warrant or whatever. (A related example: Four people who figure in Gaffney's article, and who are Islamists, some of whom are very closely tied to terror cases already, have testified in federal court as character witnesses for Norquist bud Sami Al Arian, (alleged, jailed worldwide head of the Shura council of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad) -- all of them invoked -- as their bona fides as to why the judge should listen to their appeal for Sami to be let out on bond -- the fact that they had been advising the White House, lecturing to the White Hosue Fellows Program, serving as contract imams for the Defense Department, etc. So: Saudi-funded wahhabi agents use Norquist'afforded access to get themselves positions and titles they then use to try to sping one of their own from a life sentence for terror. ) How's that for effects. I have a few dozen others, but I don't have the time. You can follow the idea and research it yourself. But this does not have to do with "getting Grover" -- it has to do with stopping this kind of access in a time of war.

The COngressional 9/11 investigation and most others of its ilk (hearings, etc.) have been very clear about the timidity of US law enforcement and how the Church and Pike committees, COINTELPRO and other experiences, coupled with the extreme PC culture in the agencies has created an atomsphere where nobody wants to look at what needs to be looked at, be forward leaning, etc. --al this particualry in regard to Islamists entities, etc.

The cover story on Sauds and Global Terror in the current USNEWS and the NY Times article on redesigning US domestic intelligence and analysis (James Risen, ...Intelligence Overhaul, Dec 9, 2003) both go into this in detail, both regarding past failures to get ahead of 9/11, and post9/11 failures to remediate. You can figure the rest out from here, if you really want to know the answers to the questions you posed relative to the existence or effects of a fifth column and why, by extension, any enabler should be dissuaded or otherwise removed.