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.
