Why Is The United States Funding & Training MEK Terrorists To Destabilize Iran?

This is a rip roaring heated discussion between three people about the MEK or Mujahedin-e Khalq. Glen Greenwald and the former State Dept guy make the guy from the Washington Institute look like the terror revisionist he is but in the end I say the easiest way to know if they're good or not is to see who supports MEK: Tom Ridge, Rudy Giuliani and John Bolton. These are the most venal money grubbing political snakes in the United States. It's not hard.

Since its creation in 1997 the US list of terrorist organisations has included the Iranian group, Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK).

"It is a criminal offence, a felony to have any transactions with this group, let alone to provide material support… if you coordinate advocacy on behalf of that group. There are lots of Muslims sitting in prison…for doing far less..." - Glenn Greenwald, a journalist and former civil rights lawyer

The group's supporters say they are Iran's democratic opposition, working for a nuclear-free Iran. But critics argue they have a violent history that dates back to the overthrow of Shah Reza Pahlavi.

Most members of the group now live in an Iraqi refugee camp.

Unlike other designated terrorist organisations, the MEK enjoys the support of many high-profile US officials, including Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor; John Bolton, the former US envoy to the UN; James Woolsey, the former CIA director; and Tom Ridge, the former secretary of Homeland Security.

They have travelled around the US and the world, giving speeches advocating the MEK's removal from the US terrorist list.

Below are excerpts from some of the speeches:

Tom Ridge: "They do not belong on the list. They're not a terrorist organisation. Take them off the list".

John Bolton: "I don't think that organisations should be put on that list for political purposes as the MEK was in 1997. I don't think organisations should be kept on that list as the MEK was in 2008 for political purposes. I think the facts should be allowed to fall where they may."

Rudy Giuliani: "We will stand up for them, we are with them as if we are in that camp with them today. Whatever they do to them, they do to us."

"The treasury should get to the bottom of finding out where the money is coming from. If this is being done in coordination with the MEK, a crime has been committed then somebody ought to be convicted...but I don't know if that's the case [here]." - Patrick Clawson, Iran analyst at the Washington Institute

Now the US Treasury Department has launched an inquiry into whether these officials are being paid by the MEK to speak, which would be a violation of US laws.

So why are so many high-ranking US politicians and former officials openly backing the MEK despite their designation as a terrorist group?

Is it even legal? And why has it taken so long for the US government to ask the same question?

Joining Inside Story Americas with Lisa Fletcher to discuss this are: Glenn Greenwald, a journalist and former civil rights lawyer; Reza Marashi, the research director at the National Iranian American Council; and Patrick Clawson, the research director and Iran analyst at the Washington Institute.

"When the MEK was put on the terrorist list in 1997 by Martin Indyk he said in his book 'we decided to put the MEK as a designated terrorist organisation not because they were pro- or anti-American but because they were [one] without a shadow of a doubt...'" Reza Marashi, research director at the National Iranian American Council

Who is MEK?

• Founded in 1965 by Islamic-Marxist students, the group helped to overthrow the Iranian government in 1979, prompting a clampdown following the revolution.
• Many members are refugees in both Iraq and France.
• Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi leader, used them for attacks against Iran and the Kurds.
• The US disarmed them following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which the MEK agreed to in exchange for protection.
• The US turned over MEK refugees to the Iraqi government in 2011.
• The group's leaders continue to live and operate in France.

Operation Paperclip - The CIA & Nazi Laundering

I was listening to Mike Ruppert describing the Nazi CIA connection to CIA drug trafficking yesterday (Klaus Barbie was moved to Boliva) and as this Project Paperclip video turned up buried deep in Youtube due to poor tagging I thought I'd post it. Technically it was the CIA forerunner the OSS (Overseas Strategic Services) who laundered thousands of Nazis into the US or embedded in Europe in the Operation Gladio I posted about the other day.

Strategically it was a huge mistake as short term pragmatism took over long term vision and so the often held observation that Germany lost the war but the Nazis just took it elsewhere is accurate. There's no discussion even today within the United States as to what the long term vision is. There's lots of self congratulatory finest country in the world hollowness but while that comes from the executive while describing the organised crime unit known as the CIA it's hard to give these words any credence whatsoever.

The Constitution worshippers fail to notice that the US has never lived up to its most basic ideals. Freedom for all men. That never was or will be the case and the US is facing impending imperial collapse. This will be a healthy thing for the many people who care about the people in this country.

Conversations With John Judge - Part Two

John Judge's mother was the highest paid female in the Department of Defence at the Pentagon. I consider him a real insider of Washington D.C where he has lived all his life. For this reason it is all the more remarkable he has been able to rise above the simulacrum and diagnose the reality.

This is Part two of the couple of interviews that I commenced a few days ago. 

I'm quite picky about who I listen to and so I like them erudite, witty, able to laugh and capable of deeper analysis with interesting commentary. 

John Judge is all this and more though his Pentagon attack analysis is provably ludicrous.