By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

By refusing to investigate the Al Gore/Al Jazeera deal, it would appear that Capitol Hill “conservatives” like Republican Reps. Michael McCaul, Steve Scalise, and Paul Broun are adopting the view that we have nothing to fear from the global jihad and its instruments of propaganda being positioned on U.S. soil.

This view finds support from Scott McConnell, writing in Patrick J. Buchanan’s magazine, The American Conservative, who says there should be no “national loyalty oath” for a new cable channel in America and that the transaction is “welcome news.”

Al Jazeera is the voice of the Muslim Brotherhood and the various terrorist groups it has spawned, including al Qaeda and Hamas.

In all seriousness, McConnell calls the sale of Al Gore’s Current TV to the Al Jazeera channel a “public service.”

In an endorsement of the deal, McConnell writes that the channel, which he admits is “Qatar government-funded,” can be “quite good.” However, he admits, “I don’t watch it often.”

He fails to point out the elementary fact that there is no freedom of the press or speech in Qatar.

Unfortunately, this is the kind of uninformed commentary that we have seen all too often in regard to the Al Jazeera deal. It is significant that a self-described “conservative” would adopt this view and that a magazine called “The American Conservative” would publish such nonsense.

During the Cold War, Patrick Buchanan, who served as President Reagan’s White House communications director, was an anti-communist who combatted and helped expose Soviet disinformation and propaganda activities. But in the face of the global jihad, such defenses are apparently being dropped. Indeed, Buchanan has himself been featured in a sympathetic light on Al Jazeera, discussing why he opposes U.S. military intervention in the Middle East.

This is, of course, a legitimate conservative point of view, even if going on Al Jazeera is not the proper place to make such an argument. But McConnell’s idea that Al Jazeera somehow has a right to enter the U.S. media market without scrutiny is not supported by the evidence.

There is no “national loyalty oath” for a cable channel. But there are various laws that are supposed to apply to this transaction which are being ignored. These include the Foreign Agents Registration Act, Federal Communications Commission rules, and the review process of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S.

But the basic hurdle that the channel cannot overcome, based on the evidence of its collaboration with al Qaeda, is that it provides material support to terrorism and, therefore, cannot legally operate on American soil. The Hezbollah TV station Al Manar was outlawed in the U.S. on this basis.

If there is some doubt as to Al Jazeera’s relationship with al Qaeda, then Congressional hearings can set the record straight.

Even if the deal was legitimate and had received the necessary approval, there is every reason in the world for true conservatives to oppose the channel’s entry into the U.S. on the grounds that it spews propaganda which can misinform, mislead, and inspire violence.

There is nothing much we can do about foreign propaganda that is based overseas. But allowing our enemies to operate on the U.S. mainland is a prescription for The Suicide of the West, which is the name of a book by James Burnham I read growing up and which I know is familiar to Pat Buchanan.

For some reason, however, there are some conservatives today who don’t regard the global jihad to be as menacing as Soviet communism.

For those in denial, take some time to look at the case of Lars Hedegaard, the Danish journalist, who was almost killed on Tuesday by a jihadist. I met him at Pamela Geller’s 9/11 conference in New York City last year. He had been prosecuted in Denmark for thought crimes against Islam, in a court battle that went on for two years and eventually saw an acquittal on charges of racism and “hate speech.”

As I pointed out in an article about the event, what is happening in Europe is coming to the United States, as the Obama Administration openly sides with global Islam against our God-given First Amendment right of free speech.

That First Amendment does not give Al Jazeera the “right” to operate on U.S. soil, especially when the evidence implicates the channel in violence and terrorism against Americans.

We cannot lose our rights on the pretext that our sworn enemies deserve them more than we do.

McConnell writes enthusiastically about how, “two years ago, when much of the world was riveted by Al Jazeera’s coverage of the Egyptian revolution,” without noting the purpose of the coverage and what has transpired since then.

In her article, “Al Jazeera: Non-Arabs Should Not Be Fooled,” Najat Fawzy AlSaied writes that, “The Emir of Qatar, an absolute ruler, and Al Jazeera, have not covered the ‘Arab Spring’ to advance democracy, but to support the Muslim Brotherhood, which is aligned with the Qatari regime. Al Jazeera has as its chief goal Muslim Brotherhood domination.”

She adds, “Early in the ‘Arab Spring,’ in Egypt and other countries, Al Jazeera promoted the Muslim fundamentalists. Regarding Syria, Al Jazeera publicizes the demands for power by jihadists.”

However, McConnell seems blind to what is happening right before his eyes in Egypt and the rest of the Middle East and the role that Al Jazeera is playing in it.

Those being fooled today include people like Scott McConnell. During the Cold War they were called dupes.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected].

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Rep. Steve Scalise, a Republican from Louisiana who is the new chairman of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), believes Al Jazeera has a First Amendment right to expand its broadcasts in the United States and that a congressional investigation of Al Gore’s deal with the channel is not warranted.

Scalise, a self-described “staunch conservative,” is the new chairman of the RSC, which is the “caucus of House conservatives.” His action makes it increasingly unlikely that the House will exercise any oversight of Al Gore’s controversial sale of his Current TV channel to the mouthpiece of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The buyer is the Middle Eastern regime of Qatar, which owns Al Jazeera. The Qatar regime advertises itself as “America’s Strongest Partner in the Gulf” but has supported terrorist groups such as al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas. Osama bin Laden aide and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is currently in U.S. custody in Guantanamo Bay for acts of terrorism, lived and worked in Qatar but was allowed to leave for Pakistan as U.S. authorities were trying to apprehend him, according to the report of the 9/11 commission.

In Pakistan, Mohammed planned 9/11 and decapitated Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped while investigating the al-Qaeda networks in the Middle East.

Sarah E. Makin, Director of Conservative Coalitions and State Outreach at the House Republican Study Committee, told this journalist on Tuesday afternoon that she received an explanation of Scalise’s position on the Al Jazeera deal after consulting with aides to the congressman.

Conservatives had been asking Scalise to support an investigation on the grounds that a foreign-funded channel based in the Middle East, with a reputation for airing terrorist propaganda, should be examined for its ties to terrorist groups.

Foreigners are entitled to First Amendment protections in the United States, except when they run afoul of existing laws and engage in criminal or terrorist activities.

By offering the First Amendment excuse in favor of the deal, Scalise is ignoring the evidence that Al Jazeera is not a legitimate news operation but rather a conduit for propaganda from terrorist groups, with whom it has intimate and ongoing relations.

In the United States, it is against the law to provide material support to terrorists, with “material support” defined as including expert advice or assistance and communications equipment.

In World War II, Tokyo Rose and Axis Sally broadcast their anti-American diatribes from overseas and were apprehended by U.S. authorities after the war and sent to prison for treason. In the more shocking Al Jazeera case, the U.S. is officially still at war with global terrorism, but Al Gore is giving the channel a base of operations on American soil with access to 40-50 million homes.

Although it will be called “Al Jazeera America,” the channel will still be totally controlled and funded by the government of Qatar, which doesn’t permit freedom of the press in its own country.

Existing federal law requires that foreign propaganda broadcasts in the U.S. be labeled as such, a provision of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) that the Obama Administration has decided to ignore.

Independent television producer Jerry Kenney has filed complaints over the non-enforcement of the FARA law, as well as violations of Federal Communications Commission rules that have given Al Jazeera access to taxpayer-funded public television stations.

Despite these outstanding legal questions, Scalise, the top conservative leader in the House, doesn’t even want an investigation of the deal. “Who got to him?” is the question being asked by conservatives.

It is a known fact that Big Oil interests in the U.S.-Qatar Business Council are very powerful on Capitol Hill, and that the regime and/or Al Jazeera have used expensive public relations firms to lobby Congress and the federal government, and manipulate the press. These firms include Barbour Griffith Rogers, Fenton Communications, and Qorvis Communications.

Another law being ignored in the Al Jazeera case is CFIUS, named for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. When the Chinese bought AMC movie theaters last year, they went through CFIUS. Al Jazeera has decided, apparently with the acquiescence of the Obama Administration, that it can ignore the law.

In 2006, members of Congress from both political parties, including then-Senator Barack Obama, objected to a company based in the Arab state of Dubai operating U.S. ports. Public criticism forced the company to drop the deal.

Al Jazeera’s ties to al Qaeda are highlighted in the new film, “Zero Dark Thirty,” where the plot involves the CIA locating Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in part by examining his courier’s proximity to an Al Jazeera office, where terrorist tapes were dropped off for worldwide distribution.

After 9/11, the terrorist attacks on America that claimed almost 3,000 American lives, Al Jazeera correspondent Tayseer Alouni conducted an interview with bin Laden in which he denied being involved in terrorism. Alouni was later convicted of being a courier for bin Laden and al Qaeda.

In his book, Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-first Century, Philip Bobbitt described how, in the 2004 case of the kidnapping and murder of Margaret Hassan, a humanitarian aid worker in Iraq whose captivity was taped by an Islamist group, Al Jazeera “appears to have carefully screened and edited the tapes to protect the deteriorating image of the Iraqi insurgency.” He wrote that Al Jazeera “moved from being passive collaborators in achieving the political objectives of torture to acting as editorial advisors for the terrorists.”

More recently, Al Jazeera ran a story about the “gentle” al Qaeda terrorists in Mali who kidnapped and killed three Americans.

Another major concern about Al Jazeera’s presence in the U.S. is the danger of inciting home grown terrorism.

Dr. Judea Pearl, father of the slain journalist Daniel Pearl, has been committed to increasing understanding with the Arab/Muslim world, but he recognizes that Al Jazeera does not contribute to real dialogue. He supports an investigation of Al Gore’s deal with Al Jazeera.

His statement supporting an investigation was included in a letter to Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and reads as follows:

“A decade of watching over its programs has left me no doubt: Al Jazeera is the main propaganda machine of the Muslim Brotherhood. Posing as a benign alternative communication medium, Al Jazeera choreographs a world stage in which the West is a perennial villain, Hamas is the ultimate role model, and entire societies are dehumanized to a lower form of life, stripped of any mark of dignity or empathy. While refraining from explicit incitement to violence, Al Jazeera weaves the ideological structure and combustible angers from which Jihadi recruits eventually emerge.”

McCaul received this letter, signed by media critics, journalists, academics, and national security and Middle East experts, on January 9. He has yet to respond.

The Scalise response to calls for an investigation may shed light on McCaul’s striking failure to act against the Al Jazeera deal. It appears to some observers that Republican leaders in the House have made a conscious decision to let the deal go through without a peep of protest.

Another House member who has decided to do nothing is Rep. Paul Broun, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee preparing to run for the U.S. Senate from Georgia as a strong conservative.

Friends of Broun have asked him to take a stand against Al Jazeera but he has told them that his staff doesn’t want him to.

Critics of the deal say that if Congress won’t do its job and prevent the emergence of this homeland security threat, the American people will pressure the cable and satellite providers and the advertisers.

The cable and satellite providers of Current TV/Al Jazeera America currently include Comcast, DirecTV, Dish Network, Verizon FiOS and AT&T U-verse.

• If you wish to protest his wrong-headed position in favor of a “hands off” approach to the Al Gore deal with Al Jazeera, Scalise and the House Republican Study Committee can be contacted at (202) 226-9717.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected].