Excerpt:
This week, a three-day conference hosted by the CIA on "homegrown radicalization" was supposed to have taken place at CIA headquarters. It did not. The conference was abruptly canceled -- or, softening the blow, "postponed." Question: Did pressure from what we might (and should) call a certain "homegrown radical" group -- the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) -- make this happen?
Here is what we know.
On Monday, July 18, CAIR issued a press release headlined: "CAIR Asks CIA to Drop Islamophobic Trainer." It revealed that CAIR national executive director Nihad Awad wrote a letter to now-former CIA director Leon Panetta to that effect. The rest of the release is more opaque. In referencing an NPR report that slammed one counterterrorism trainer by name, former FBI agent John Guandolo, for "allegedly smearing" an "Ohio Muslim" in a presentation, CAIR noted that an entirely different trainer, unnamed, was "scheduled to hold a similar session in August for the CIA." (Full disclosure: Guandolo and I are among 19 co-authors of "Shariah: the Threat to America.") The August CIA "session" appears to be the driver of both the CAIR release and letter asking the CIA, as the headline put it, to "Drop Islamophobic Trainer."