At PJM,
terrorism researcher Patrick Poole reports
that Mohamed Elibiary, an appointee on President
Obama’s Homeland Security Advisory Council, is in hot
water with the Texas Department of Public Safety
(TDPS). The issue is whether Elibiary used his
privileged access to a state law-enforcement database
to acquire intelligence reports and then tried to shop
them to the media, urging that they showed rampant
“Islamophobia” at TDPS under Governor Rick Perry.
Poole says no story was published because, according
to one press source, there was “nothing remotely
resembling Islamophobia” in the leaked reports. The
source told Poole, “I think [Elibiary] was hoping we
would bite and not give it too much of a look in light
of other media outfits jumping on the Islamophobia
bandwagon.”
The Islamophobia bandwagon was the subject of my column
last weekend. Seems there are plenty of Islamists and
Leftists climbing aboard.
Elibiary, you’ll no doubt be stunned to learn, was
also on the Obama DHS’s working group on “countering
violent extremism.” That’s the brain-trust that helped
devise the new Obama
counterterrorism strategy I outlined (here
and here)
a few weeks back — the one that envisions having
law-enforcement pare back their intelligence-gathering
activities and take their marching orders from
“community partners.” I call the new strategy “factophobia.”
As noted by Poole
and the Investigative
Project on Terrorism, Elibiary’s history
includes an appearance at a conference honoring
Ayatollah Khomeini; condemning the Justice
Department’s successful prosecution of a
Hamas-financing conspiracy designed by the Muslim
Brotherhood (the Holy Land Foundation case);
praise for Brotherhood theorist Sayyid Qutb; and an
aggressive email exchange with Rod Dreher in 2006
(when Dreher, at the Dallas Morning News,
countered Elibiary’s praise for Qutb), in which
Elibiary reportedly called Dreher “a Klansman without
a hood” [ACM: I think that means "Islamophobe"]
and warned him: “Treat people as inferiors and you can
expect someone to put a banana in your exhaust pipe or
something.”
Who better could President Obama possibly choose to
help formulate counterterrorism strategy? Actually,
once you read the strategy, I think you’ll agree that
he made a perfect choice.
PJMedia:
Texas Department of Public Safety officials are
asking questions following a report that Department of
Homeland Security Advisory Council member
Mohamed Elibiary may have been given access to a
sensitive database of state and local intelligence
reports, and then allegedly shopped some of those
materials to a media outlet. He allegedly used the
documents to claim the department was promoting
“Islamophobia” — claims that the media outlet
ultimately rejected. They declined to do the story.
Earlier today, I received confirmation from a
left-leaning media outlet that Elibiary had recently
approached them asking to do a story attacking Texas
DPS:
Yes, he approached us and gave us some reports
marked FOUO [For Official Use Only] that he said
showed a pattern of Islamophobia at the department.
He emphasized that some of the regional fusion
centers were shut down a few years ago after the
ACLU complained that they were targeting Muslim
civil rights groups and said that this was being
directed by [Texas Gov.] Rick Perry.
We looked at the reports and they weren’t as he had
billed them to us. They seem to be pretty
straightforward, nothing remotely resembling
Islamophobia that we saw. I think he was hoping we
would bite and not give it too much of a look in
light of the other media outfits jumping on the
Islamophobia bandwagon.
I asked if there was any sense of his possible
motivation:
Oh, self-promotion definitely. It was clear up
front that he wanted to be a quoted source in the
story. We’ve used him as an unnamed source in
previous stories. There’s nothing unusual or
unseemly about that because officials do it all the
time, but this was the first time he approached us
with documents. Honestly, if they had been what he
represented them as we would have probably run with
the story. But we looked at them and saw this was a
partisan hatchet job that could blow back on us so
we passed on it.
In light of these allegations, I spoke today with
Texas DPS Director Steve McCraw. He confirmed that
Elibiary has access to the Homeland
Security State and Local Intelligence Community of
Interest (HS SLIC) database, which contains
hundreds of thousands of intelligence reports and
products that are intended for intelligence sharing
between law enforcement agencies.
(Full disclosure: I gave a briefing in April 2010 to
the TX DPS on historical terror incidents and terror
connections to Texas. I’ve also been critical
of Elibiary’s involvement with DHS considering his
past extremist statements and activities.)
I asked Director McCraw if he knew whether Elibiary
had access to TX DPS reports on the HS SLIC, to which
he replied:
We know that he has accessed DPS documents and
downloaded them.
McCraw stated that he will be requesting that DHS
conduct an investigation to determine whether or not
Elibiary improperly handled any sensitive intelligence
products, and said that he will reserve judgment until
an investigation is complete. He added:
If in fact this happened we will be extremely
disappointed in him. We’ve worked with him and other
groups to get their comments regarding a wide range
of issue in order to be inclusive.
In fact, Elibiary received his first official
position serving on the TX DPS Advisory Board and
leveraged that position into his current positions
with DHS and the National Counterterrorism Center.
Elibiary was appointed
to the Homeland Security Advisory Council in October
2010.
I asked Director McCraw about the nature of their
work product:
We do have a process in place that ensures the
quality of our product going all the way to our
assistant director of intelligence and
counterterrorism. Our training of employees has been
extensive and adheres to all Department of Justice
and Homeland Security privacy and civil liberties
policies. The ACLU was involved in our process for
establishing the fusion center statute passed by the
state legislature.
I asked about the potential impact of a security
breach that has been alleged to have occurred in this
instance:
This system allows intelligence agencies to share
products. These products are meant to be for
official use only and anyone working for the
Department of Homeland Security attempting to use it
in any other way undermines the efficacy of the
program. If DHS has cleared somebody for access we
have no questions, but if they violate the
confidentiality of the system it has a chilling
impact on sharing information, and that’s the last
thing we need.
Following these interviews, I contacted both Mohamed
Elibiary and the Department of Homeland Security
asking for comment. At present I have not received a
response from Elibiary, but I did speak with DHS
spokesman Chris Ortman, who immediately demanded to
know who my source was.
When I explained that I had become aware of
Elibiary’s alleged approach to the media organization
from a third party and directly contacted that
publication for comment (which they gave under the
condition of anonymity) and began reading the quotes I
had been given, Ortman immediately interrupted and
expressed skepticism:
In all my eight years working in media I have never
heard of such a situation where a third party
contacts a reporter at one outlet and tells them
that another news outlet has spiked a story.
Mr. Ortman is significantly out of touch regarding
this; it is likely a daily occurrence at a number of
outlets.
When I directly asked Ortman about who gave Mohamed
Elibiary access to the HS SLIC system, he abruptly
ended the conversation and said he would need to call
me back. After more than an hour wait and knowing from
other sources that senior aides for DHS Secretary
Napolitano had been fully briefed late last night on
the matter and that the story is quickly leaking out,
we are publishing what we have so far.
We’ll bring you any additional details, including any
further comment from Elibiary or DHS on this story.
