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" I still have trouble understanding why Gaffney did not go to the FBI or Secret Service over those staffers if he was so concerned. "

First, you persist in treating Grover like a kid and saying the parents or teachers should have done something to thwart his insistent bad behavior. Yo are much keener on this than on calling him on what he's done. You want to ignore everything you can, reshuffle every fact off the table and re-characterize and mispresent every argument until you can get back, in your mind, to some way removing the spotlight from the guy who was the intiator, enabler, defender and who continues to be the caller on behalf of these groups. It is not washing in Washington, and in increasinly large parts of the conservative movement and leadership. Perhaps you will figure it out in time to still make it across the finish line.

A) Why do you think Gaffney did'nt do this; and why do you assume there are not effects from such efforts?

B) The USSS et al issue has been answered several times. You can't have the answer you apparently want, so you ignore the right one: The USSS and the FBI don't vet political meetings. When they have tried, including in this admin., with Muslims, Rove has kicked their butts and Grover and Saffuri pointed to it as another example of racism and profiling of Muslims. Ditto with Gary Aldrich under the Clintons, as I already mentioned in trying to explain this to you. There are many other examples I could give. (You could google the Rove/AlArian one that is in Gaffney's piece, it was a national news story , including the national network evening news).

C) For the umpteenth time, what Gaffney said was that these folks were consistently exercising bad judgment by letting in the "bad" guys, and only the "bad" guys (nothing about being traitors or security risks).

Nb, Norquist and Saffuri say that no other Muslims (i.e., Shia, Sufi, syncretic and moderate, etc. or, put another way those who don't have money and an organized mau-mau, and are not part of the Saffuri. Norquist faction) -- are legitimate Muslims, they won't get Karl the credit he's looking for, so don't let them in. So only the bad ones go in; exactly as Gaffney predicted. This proved to be a disaster.

When Gaffney and a host of others began reprising the record of the Awads, Alamoudis, Saffuris, AlArians, Grover would hear none of it, called any and all "racists" and took it public. (Honestly, what does this tell you about his hubris, his power trip and his temperament to throw such charges around, against honorable people as he's just gotten the franchise for DC from Jesse Jackson?)

If you are a major figure in town like Gaffney, as big in National Security as Grover is in taxes, not to mention much senior -- and Grover calls you a racist and bigot, that, folks, is a big deal. Moreover, when Grover and Rove refuse to hear that it is a bad policy and is getting us bound up with the wrong people, there is no inside or quiet alternative left. Many efforts were made privately and quietly, by the way.

Rove actually told a reporter "Well, Al Arian hasn't been indicted yet" -- back in the day. Now first, that is hardly the threshold we expect for WH engagement and second, this is because Rove's trusted guy on all this, Grover, has assured him that all this complaining about AlArian,and the rest, has been going on for years and is just driven by racist and bigots and Likud agents. Rove bought it, Sami and Alamoudi got arrested, other likely soon wiil be. Grover finds it impossible to admit mistakes and is not a research/homework kind of guy -- he would much rather use his power to blast people, call them names, lock them out and push ahead with his folly. This shoot-the-messenger, circle-the-wagons approach is well-known to this White House and to Grover -- and so the stage was set for the mess we're in. Both Grover and Rove bought their own propaganda. Always a deadly thing.

IN DC, when you are a trusted confidant, you go out and bring the people in that you want to and you have considerable leeway. People don't have time to check you people's policy backgrounds, they expect you to do that. Grover chose the wrong people to run this under him impramatur, starting with Saffuri, and all of them were beholden to, and likely anyway, to follow the direction of the people paying them ---Alamoudi, and the same terror-connected entities that he shared offices with, and that funded Al Arian, etc. These, after all, were people Saffuri had worked with for over a decade -- his closeness to them made manifestly evident in their provision of the start-up money for the Insitute.

If a 13 year old visited the websites of these organizations, anytime in the 1980s, 1990's and 'til today even -- one would find immediately that they are not remotely moderate, free market, or pro-US; quite to the contrary. Go do this yourself, or simply read the profiles of the groups from the congressional record, or wherever. They hate America, they teach women in separate rooms with one way glass,

What some of you don't seem to understand is that political and policy vetting is not a law enforcement function. What we are dealing with here is little different in type, than a Nixon staffer bringing someone, or a group, repeatedly into the WH who oppose the war and support campus peace demonstrations. To do advocate such things is not a crime, to bring people into the WH who do so is not a crime. It IS appallingly bad judgement.

Now, where it gets tricky is when you know that these people are also funded by the NVA or Moscow or some Soviet-front UN peace charity, some of which are also paying you, and you still take them into the WH, and you don't tell anyone who they really are or why you are bringing them here or who paid for it. It is the kind of thing that happens when someone is appointed by the President and then begins assigning NEA and AARP people to advisory boards in his/her agency, etc. Bad judgement, somethign the Gaffney of that topic/issue cone would be expected to raise a stink about and try to stop. And just as often the answer comes back, that we have to let that person run the agency, or there are some equities with some Senator or voting bloc, and so one is told that one has to just grind your teeth.

For some dedicated people, like Gaffney, who is known for getting things done when everyone says it can't be -- the only option if you believe you are right, much less if it is proven indeed to be a problem in the course of events (as it is here), is to keep pushing anyway you can, hoping to out the problem sufficiently, and choke it off earlier, under your team's control, before it blows up or the Dems get it and blow it up in a less felicitous manner.

By the way, for you Rove admirers, his decision, overwhelmingly opposed by conservatives and the military,to close Vieques firing range in PR, was driven solely by political calculations and lobbyists for PR. We ended up losing a vital element of pre-deployment training to a bunch of leftist protestors because Rove, who knows nothing at all about national security -- looks at everything as politics. Not everything is political. But if that's all you know, then it is -- The old hammer and nail.

"To be very blunt, the "national security professionals" are acting very unprofessional." This is so unfounded and off the mark that it jsut doesn't merit a response. You really should lay off this kind of thing, and the "agendas" crap and deal with the facts. The facts outlast any agenda.

This week on Unspun...

Makes you think twice (and three or four times) about the "moderates" allowed to represent the rest. An overly informative, and not undepressing, work.

In other words, post-reading Mr. Timmerman's first-hand research, it's a bad week to have seen this article.

I have no opinion either way in regards to Mr. Norquist, he most certainly may be (most hopefully) an innocent dupe. But any cavalier attitude in regards to an Islamic 5th column in America can only be based on ignorance or willful blindness.

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You have not exactly convinced me YOU are to be believed.

If I think someone is acting like part of a fifth column, or doing the sort of things Norquist is ACCUSED of doing, then I don't go public, I go the FBI and keep at it until someone takes it seriously.

You expect me to believe that George W. Bush's White House is as cavalier about who meets the President as Bill Clintons? For all intents and purposes, your claims about Rove are just that. Never mind what David Frum observed in his time at the White House (as his book points out).

I'm going to be very blunt. I think that the concerns about judgement/national security are only part of the equation. I think that part of this is taking down some folks they don't like.

It is obvious that certain conservatives do not care for Karl Rove or Grover Norquist. They seek to have them discredited for whatever reason - I suspect it is mostly ideological differences motivating this, and that is part of the "bad judgement" that is being railed against.

And if it is bad judgement, why go public? Why create a public split with these public allegations?

It is obvious Rove and Norquist are not liked and that they are seen as part of the problem. I do not think that is sufficient grounds for such a campaign, and I question the motives of those who seek to continue this campaign aaginst Norquist.