Frank Gaffney’s Latest Conspiracy: Herman Cain Actually Met With A ‘Prominent Muslim Brotherhood’ Group

By Scott Keyes/Think Progress

Last week, Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain met with Muslim leaders outside Washington, DC in alaudable attempt to make amends for the Islamophobic positions that had come to characterize his candidacy. Cain had previously declared he will not appoint Muslims in his administration — he later backtracked and said he would only require a special loyalty oath from Muslim appointees — and argued that Americans have the right to ban mosques.

However, not everyone was pleased with the former pizza executive’s recent move.

Last weekend, ThinkProgress spoke with Frank Gaffney, a conservative conspiracy theorist who nevertheless enjoys outsized influence on the right. The Center for Security Policy president had a unique take on the matter: Herman Cain had actually been meeting with the Muslim Brotherhood.

According to Gaffney, the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) Center, where Cain met with Muslim leaders last Wednesday, is “a prominent Muslim Brotherhood apparatus in Washington DC.” The Center’s Imam, Mohamed Magid, is actually, says Gaffney, “the president of the largest Muslim Brotherhood front in the United States”:

KEYES: Where would you say Herman Cain’s at now?

GAFFNEY: I only saw one press report of it, and it sounded as if some of what you just described was said by people, Muslim Brotherhood people frankly, with whom he was meeting rather than the candidate himself. [...]

KEYES: Those were Muslim Brotherhood people that he was meeting with?

GAFFNEY: Oh yeah. The ADAMS Center is a prominent Muslim Brotherhood apparatus in Washington DC. It’s one of the most aggressive proponents of its agenda in the city. [...] Specifically, meeting with Mohamed Magid who is the president of the largest Muslim Brotherhood front in the United States, who happens also to be the Imam at the ADAMS Center. It’s one of those things, it’s a very problematic departure from what I think had been a generally sensible… I don’t agree everything he has said and some of the positions he has taken, but I think generally speaking he’s been forthright in raising a concern that I think is warranted. And if in fact he’s now changed his position in ways that are being reported, that’s even more troubling than if he was spending time with Muslim Brothers.

Watch it:

Such a charge would be shocking, were it not made by a man who says the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the federal government and CIA chief David Petraeus is submissive to Sharia law.

Cain joins a long list of prominent figures that Gaffney accuses of working with the Muslim Brotherhood, including CPAC, Grover Norquist, David Petraeus, the federal government, and Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan.

Despite Gaffney’s outlandish beliefs, he remains an extraordinarily influential figure on the right. Members of Congress regularly appear on his radio show, Secure Freedom Radio. He is anadvisor and close friend to Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. And along with a small group of like-minded conservatives, Gaffney has turned Islamophobia into an industry.

With his latest accusation against Herman Cain, Gaffney is well on his way to becoming the 2011 version of Rudy Giuliani. Gaffney’s every utterance now boils down to “a noun, a verb, and ‘Muslim Brotherhood.’”

Exclusive: Frank Gaffney Was Barred From Participating In CPAC, So He Invented A Reason To ‘Boycott’ It

By Alex Seitz-Wald

Frank Gaffney has been a leading figure in the neoconservative movement for over two decades, having served in the Reagan Pentagon and founded a national security think tank. But Gaffney was absent from the panels and podiums at the year’s biggest conservative conference, CPAC, despite having spoken at the annual event held this weekend for the past 15 years. Gaffney hadvowed to boycott the conference this year because, he claimed, it had been infiltrated by Islamic extremists. Specifically, he pointed to Grover Norquist, the influential anti-tax activist, and Suhail Kahn, who directed Muslims outreach efforts for the Bush White House. He accuses the two of being moles for the Muslim Brotherhood. However, ThinkProgress has learned that Gaffney was actually prohibited from participating in CPAC — disinvited from speaking this year by conference organizers fed up with his increasingly vicious attacks on fellow conservative leaders. Indeed, Gaffney appears to have invented the entire theory about the Muslim Brotherhood infiltrating CPAC as a pretext to explain his absence from the event.

A source close to conference organizers told ThinkProgress that Gaffney was “specifically not to be invited” to speak at the conference this year because CPAC Chairman David Keene and other conservatives were “sick of him” attacking other conservatives. “The whole boycott thing was just to save face,” the source said. (Gaffney did show up to CPAC to conduct some interviews, including one with ThinkProgress, but did not participate in any official capacity).

Keene confirmed to ThinkProgress that “we weren’t going to invite him to speak this year,” but said, “we didn’t announce or tell him that.” In a statement provided by a spokesperson, Keene had some strong words for Gaffney, saying he has become “obsessed with his weird belief that anyone who doesn’t agree with him on everything all the time” is either “ignorant” or “dupes of the nation’s enemies” (full statement after the jump):

Having said that, we didn’t announce or tell him that we weren’t going to invite him to speak this year. We covered the issues in which he is interested (and which interest many of our registrants) and we did manage to do so without him. I do know that he attended CPAC and made his views known to as many as would listen through the talk shows on radio row.

The simple fact is that while Frank Gaffney did yeoman work on issues like missile defense in years passed, he has become personally and tiresomely obsessed with his weird belief that anyone who doesn’t agree with him on everything all the time or treat him with the respect and deference he believes is his due, must be either ignorant of the dangers we face or, in extreme case, dupes of the nation’s enemies.

The CPAC issue is just part of “a larger pattern” with Gaffney that goes back several years, the source told ThinkProgress. Since Gaffney began his public attacks on Norquist and Kahn shortly after September 11th, he has allegedly been reprimanded by a number of prominent conservatives or his attacks, such as the leadership of the secretive Council for National Policy and the late Paul Weyrich, a co-founder of the Heritage Foundation. Several years ago, he also became “the only person to have ever been kicked out” of Norquist’s famous Wednesday Meeting strategy sessions with conservative leaders. Gaffney and Norquist used to be friends and sit next to each other at the well-attended gatherings, the source said, but Noquist barred Gaffney “in writing” several years ago, sending a letter announcing Gaffney’s exile to over 100 regular attendees.

The theory that the Muslim Brotherhood had infiltrated the conservative movement is ridiculous on its face, but it now seems clear that is was merely a convenient fabrication to protect Gaffney’s ego. Nonetheless, Gaffney’s invention has taken hold in the paranoid right. Conservative blogger Pam Geller, who has close ties to Gaffney, pushed the theory at CPAC while Fox News host Glenn Beck advanced it on his radio show today. A CPAC panel involving Kahn even devolved into an ugly shouting matchSaturday.

Gaffney has “never ever tried to get the truth,” the source said, “and even if he finds the truth, he just keeps going” — “I really think he just raises so much money off this stuff that he really doesn’t care.” Indeed, Gaffney made nearly $300,000 in 2008 from his think tank, according to IRS documents. The organization, which appears to have few paid officers, brought in over $4 million in contributions that year.

Frank Gaffney has often spoken at CPAC in the past, but has never been a co-sponsor. For years he has argued that his organization hasn’t had the resources to officially participate, but that his message is so important that he should be included. Hundreds of people vie to speak at CPAC and while we don’t limit our invitations to those who are suggested by the more than a hundred participating groups, we give some priority to their suggestions and we are, frankly, rather skeptical of folks who claim that they are the only person who knows anything worthwhile on the topics we cover.

Last year, Gaffney complained because he was not given the microphone in the main ballroom and that as a consequence of his not receiving the attention he thinks he deserves, we had virtually ignored the threat of terrorism and militant Islam. This charge was made in spite of the fact that speakers from former Vice President Dick Cheney to former UN Ambassador John Bolton and perhaps a dozen other speakers addressed themselves to the issue.

It was an ironic position for him to take as at the same time he was taking it, former Congressman and ACU Chairman Mickey Edwards was charging that we paid too much attention to these issues and are, in fact, obsessed by them.

Having said that, we didn’t announce or tell him that we weren’t going to invite him to speak this year. We covered the issues in which he is interested (and which interest many of our registrants)and we did manage to do so without him. I do know that he attended CPAC and made his views known to as many as would listen through the talk shows on radio row.

The simple fact is that while Frank Gaffney did yeoman work on issues like missile defense in years passed, he has become personally and tiresomely obsessed with his weird belief that anyone who doesn’t agree with him on everything all the time or treat him with the respect and deference he believes is his due, must be either ignorant of the dangers we face or, in extreme case, dupes of the nation’s enemies.