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Frontpage’s Interview guest today is Paul Sperry (sperry@sperryfiles.com), a Washington, D.C.-based investigative journalist, Investor’s Business Daily veteran, Hoover Institution media fellow and author of the blockbuster new book, Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington (Nelson Current, 2005).”
FP: Paul Sperry, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Sperry: Thanks, it’s a pleasure.FP: What inspired you to write Infiltration?
Sperry: My children. I wrote it in the hopes that my kids and their kids won’t have to live under terror alerts. Washington hasn’t leveled with us about the full scope and depth of the Islamic threat not only inside America but inside the government, just as it hasn’t leveled with us about the true nature of Islam. We’ve been lulled into a false sense of security, and we’re just inviting another 9/11. So I wrote this book to expose the elaborate fraud that’s been orchestrated by our leaders in the Washington establishment and the leaders in the Muslim establishment, who are playing us all for suckers. Infiltration is 350 pages of cold hard politically incorrect facts the American people haven’t heard since 9/11 and deserve to hear without the PC spin from Washington. At first some will feel mugged by the truth, but then it will make you hustle-proof about the Islamic threat, which is my goal — to simply arm you with the facts. And unlike The 9/11 Report, I name names and hold people accountable, from Norman “No Profiling” Mineta and his civil-rights lawyer Sam Podberesky to Democratic congressman John Conyers to GOP powerbroker Grover Norquist. This is the 9/11 Report the 9/11 Commission was afraid to publish.
FP: Can you tell us a bit about how Islamic extremists disguise themselves as “moderates” and infiltrate our institutions?
Sperry: Well, we all know about the Muslim leaders who talk a good patriotic game and get into the White House, including those who have gone from the White House to the Big House like Abdurahman Alamoudi, who publicly condemned terrorism and privately complained to Muslim audiences that bin Laden hadn’t killed enough Americans; and Ali al-Timimi, the supposedly peace-loving and respected religious leader who’s now on trial here for inciting anti-American violence and praising the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster as a “good omen” for Islam. But it’s much more than that. It’s about Islamic spying and espionage, something Washington has yet to come to grips with in this war.
FP: So spies and agents for the terrorist enemy have actually penetrated our government?
Sperry: Absolutely. In fact, they’ve infiltrated every security agency from the FBI to the Pentagon to the prison system, which is the top recruiting ground for al-Qaida right now, and they’ve also worked their way into the public school system. But let’s just take the FBI. Remember how after 9/11 we hired Arab and Muslim translators to clear the huge backlog of Al-Qaida chatter?
FP: Yeah, the same backlog where clues to the next planned attack may be buried.
Sperry: Right. Well some of them have sold us out. Case agents I talked to say they can’t trust these guys. They say some have tipped off targets of terror investigations, while others are holding back key information from case agents they’re working with — who are completely at their mercy because they don’t speak Arabic and these other tongues. The Muslim translators are claiming the information is “NOT PERTINENT” to their investigations when in fact it is. They’ve also had a problem with laptops with classified al-Qaida information disappearing from that translation unit at FBI’s Washington field office. It’s a mess there, a veritable Muslim “mole house,” as one bureau source put it. Some devout Muslims in the unit have gotten so cocky they’re actually demanding separate potties from the “infidel” agents so they won’t get dirty sitting on the same toilets. Others go around the language squad saying America had 9/11 coming to it because of our pro-Israel policies. It’s outrageous, it’s flat-out betrayal, and these are the people who are supposed to be protecting us from another 9/11.
FP: What’s headquarters doing about it?
Sperry: Putting the infidel agents through Muslim sensitivity training while promoting the Muslims who threaten to sue for discrimination. Go figure.
FP: So this is also a story, basically then, of the Left’s agenda running amok in DC right?
Sperry: And how. You’d think PC would have died out with the last flames at Ground Zero, but it’s still alive and well here in Washington. I cite a number of examples of how various security agencies are committing politically correct suicide in the section of the book called IN ALLAH WE TRUST, but the FBI is the most egregious example. Director Bob Mueller is so politically correct he’s cut a deal with Muslim pressure groups to never use “Islamic” and “terrorism” in the same sentence. Muslim leaders don’t want the link made for obvious reasons, and he’s gone along with their whitewashing. But Mueller’s own agents feel demoralized by his pandering. They wonder how they can defeat Islamic terrorists when their own boss can’t even talk honestly about what’s motivating them.
FP: Why isn’t the White House cracking down on Mueller?
Sperry: Because the president has made the same pledge to never describe terrorism as Islamic — you’ll never hear him say “Islamic terrorism” either. Mueller’s just taking his cue from the Oval Office. The tone is set from the top. The president never fails to remind us Islam is a “religion of peace” and one that we have to “respect.” He even suggested at the last inaugural that the Qur’an is somehow part of our American heritage and culture.
FP: Tell us what conclusions you have reached from your study of Islam.
Sperry: It is a religion of peace — for Muslims. Everyone else is marked for punishment, as I explain in the chapter “Top 10 Myths of Islam,” which your readers should read if they read no other chapter in Infiltration. Their holy book reads like a manual of war, and I’ve read two translations of it, including all the footnotes and commentary by Abdullah Yusuf Ali, the most widely respected Sunni translator and interpreter. Another big lie we hear told out of Washington is that the Muslim terrorists are “perverting” the teachings of the Quran, as if they haven’t read their holy book. No, they’ve memorized it, and they’re getting all this terrible stuff right out of it — the violent jihad, self-immolation, even the beheadings we’ve seen in Iraq — it’s all right there in the Qur’an. It’s our leaders in Washington prosecuting this war on Islamic terror who haven’t read the Qur’an, violating the first principle of war — know thy enemy and what motives him.
FP: Well Mr. Sperry, the bottom line is that we must also be shrewd. It would be absurd and self-destructive of us to wage war on the religion of Islam. That means going to war with 1 billion people, and this is foolish because there are surely many enlightened Muslims who are not interested in terrorism or extremism.
I am not saying that we ignore what is in the Qur’an and put our heads in the sand. We need to be honest with ourselves about the violent teachings within Islam and the consequences of those teachings. But there are many Muslims who subordinate those teachings for the larger goal of peace — and those Muslims are our priceless allies. There are many Muslim groups, such as The Free Muslims Against Terrorism and the new one, The Center for Islamic Pluralism, that are committed to moderation and patriotism — and they want to join us in our battle against terrorism. It would be simply insane if we were to ostracize these Muslims and not work with them against the Islamist enemy. And it would be self-defeating for us to see all Muslims as enemies. That is what bin Laden and al Zarqawi want us to do. We need to be smarter than that.
Sperry: Please don’t misunderstand, I’m not arguing for a “war on Islam” at all, and I have never, never said “all Muslims” are the enemy! In fact, many are my personal friends. Anyone who knows me, knows I’m not part of the my-God-is-bigger-than-your-God crowd. Nor am I condemning Islam. I’m simply documenting how terrorists are getting their ideas straight out of the Qur’an. I’m neither a social advocate or a political activist but a cold-eyed journalist who refuses to varnish up the facts. And I’m fully aware there are many quietists even among orthodox Sunni Muslims who embrace the fundamentals of the Qur’an including violent jihad. And I agree with you that there are genuinely moderate and peaceful sects within Islam, such as the Sufi sect, and genuinely moderate and peaceful Muslim leaders like Sheikh Hisham Kabbani, who happens to be a Sufi Muslim.
Unfortunately they represent the minority of the Muslim establishment in America that has ready access to power and influence in Washington. Unfortunately, the Saudi-sponsored Sunni leaders currently monopolize Muslim leadership in America, and the unpleasant truth is, they represent the Muslim establishment in America today. They are the pillars in the Muslim community. Even as some have been carted off to jail for supporting terrorism, they have only grown in stature within the Muslim community, as members of Saudi-controlled Wahhabi mosques (which make up the majority of mosques in America) hold them up as political martyrs in some kind of “Zionist conspiracy,” while completely ignoring their evil deeds — even their own confessions to those deeds, in some cases! By ignoring these unpleasant facts to socially engineer a kind of rose-colored outcome ignores reality and merely mainstreams and legitimizes orthodox Sunni Islam (Wahhabism) in America, which merely gives the enemy cover and protection from due scrutiny.
FP: Fair enough, I am just saying that it is crucial for us to support and work with Muslims who are genuinely against terror and extremism.
Now having said that, yes, naturally, as you point out, there is a dark side of Islam. In Infiltration you point to all the tricks that many apologists use to try to cover this up. You call them “white lies.” Can you give us some examples?
Sperry: Muslim leaders play an elaborate word game to hide the dark side of Islam to gain wider acceptance in Washington. They condemn all acts of “terrorism against innocent people,” but they don’t necessarily view Americans or Israelis as “innocent” or acts of violence against us as “terrorism.” Many secretly view it simply as justice. You’ll never hear them condemn “all acts of violence against non-Muslims.” So you have to carefully parse their words — they’re very slick. They also try to peddle this silly notion that jihad means internal struggle against sin — such as quitting smoking — and not warfare. And that the beheadings we’ve seen in Iraq aren’t even remotely justified by the Quran. Both claims are demonstrably false, as I document in the “Top 10 Myths of Islam.” If you are confused about the true meaning of the Qur’an, this chapter will be a real eye-opener for you.
FP: So yes, while we must support moderate and patriotic Muslims, we cannot deny that there is a serious problem in the Muslim community. . . .
Sperry: Make no mistake: INFILTRATION exposes terrorists and the people who support terrorists, who just happen to be in the Muslim community. Not the Italian community. Not the Sikh community. The Muslim community. No one wants to heap scorn on Muslims, but the unpleasant truth is they gave far more aid and comfort to the hijackers than Washington let on. They got help in seven mosques coast to coast, and some Muslims helped them even though they knew what they were up to. Some of the hijackers were welcomed and wined and dined as if they were celebrities. If we keep sweeping these unpleasant truths under the politically correct carpet, we’re just inviting another 9/11. We have to penetrate the terror support network that just happens to be operating within the Muslim community, and permanently dismantle it.FP: Didn’t the FBI just leak an internal report saying they couldn’t find any evidence of al-Qaida sleeper cells in America?
Sperry: Yeah, and that’s also what they said before 9/11. Fact is, they don’t really know because they’re not letting agents look hard enough in the Muslim community and mosques — they’re putting them through Muslim sensitivity training instead. One FBI veteran says our knowledge of what’s really going on in the Muslim community is a 20 on a scale of 100. But here’s what we do know: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind, was caught with a notebook full of U.S. zip codes, and he’s not talking about them. He’ll talk about everything else but that. Investigators think he’s protecting sleeper cells for a future 9/11. So we have to get to them before they get to us. Unfortunately the FBI appears to be more concerned about offending Muslim groups than infiltrating them. So while they’re doing a damn good job of penetrating our institutions and culture, we’ve hardly made a dent in theirs.
FP: There is also a problem with Muslim groups refusing to cooperate with authorities. Tell us about that.
Sperry: In public, many Muslim groups say they are cooperating with the law, but behind the scenes they’re circulating CDs in mosques right here in Washington telling Muslims not to cooperate with the FBI — under any circumstances. Like I said, these Muslim leaders talk a good game, but they don’t have our best interests at heart, and that’s well-documented in my book. Some of these same pillars of the Muslim community have privately called for overturning our system of government, replacing the Constitution with the Qur’an as the highest authority in the land. They’ve also circulated a secret Islamic spy charter that directs their agents to infiltrate sensitive intelligence agencies by taking jobs and ingratiating themselves with officials in those agencies with the object of stealing our secrets and influencing policy for the bad guys.
And what do you know, paid lobbyists for some of these leaders have landed jobs in the White House and Department of Homeland Security — with Top Secret clearance. One who lobbied for Alamoudi and against antiterror tools for law enforcement, according to lobbying records I uncovered, is now in charge of all federal government contracting. His name is David Hossein Safavian, and he was confirmed despite failing to disclose ties to Alamoudi. Your readers can view his lobbying records as well as myriad other government documents, some classified, at the book’s companion website: http://www.sperryfiles.com/. Another former Alamoudi associate, Faisal Gill, is working in intelligence at DHS. He also failed to disclose his past ties, which at a minimum raises serious suspicions.
FP: I am usually very suspicious of conspiracy theory. Are you suggesting some kind of conspiracy?
Sperry: Looking more and more like conspiracy to infiltrate the government and, at the most benign level, run influence operations against it. The interlocking directorships in these suspect Muslim lobby groups, charities and mosques like Dar al-Hijrah, the 9/11 mosque here, is alarming. They’re all connected to each other, and all connected to the Muslim Brotherhood or Hamas or Islamic Jihad or al-Qaida. It’s a syndicate, a Muslim mafia, and law enforcement is only starting to get their arms around it. The base of their operations is in Northern Virginia, where I live — right in the shadow of the nation’s capital. I call it The Wahhabi Corridor, and your readers can take a visual tour of it by clicking on: http://www.sperryfiles.com/corridor.shtml
FP: What sources did you use to gather all of this startling information?
Sperry: Mostly federal law enforcement. I conducted exclusive interviews with some two dozen counterterrorism veterans at the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and U.S. military intelligence, most of whom are frustrated by the stubborn PC in Washington that has hamstrung their efforts to penetrate the terror support syndicate inside America. Many of the agents are quoted by name in the book. My findings are also supported by some 50 highly sensitive U.S. government documents, some classified Top Secret, from DHS and other agencies. And many are posted on the companion website, http://www.sperryfiles.com. And of course I also gleaned information from unsealed federal court records.
FP: What can you tell us about Islamist infiltration in the military?
Sperry: I dedicate a whole chapter to “The Fifth Column” inside our armed forces. They’ve been stealing al-Qaida secrets from Gitmo, and turning around and spying for Syria and Egypt. Even the Muslim chaplains are a problem, since many are hardcore Wahhabists who were stocked by Alamoudi, one of the godfathers of the Muslim mafia in America who’s now behind bars for plotting terror. And these chaplains are counseling our Muslim soldiers, who now number close to 20,000. They’re filling their heads with all sorts of hateful garbage, turning them against the country they’re supposed to serve and protect. It’s a story of traitors run amok, although clearly many Muslims have served honorably.
FP: What about the prisons?
Sperry: This is a powder keg waiting to explode. Investigators tell me it’s the top recruiting ground for al-Qaida right now as it tries to lower its Arab profile. Al-Qaida sympathizers have landed jobs as Muslim chaplains, and are converting scores of black inmates to Islam. One federal chaplain — Warith Deen Umar — praised the 9/11 hijackers and told inmates America is a legitimate target of jihad. He preached hatred toward Jews and Christians, yet still received glowing evaluations from Washington, which is blind to this threat within the prison system. I also found out a sweet old nun — “Sister Sue” VanBaalen — is running the federal chaplaincy program, and the Islamist “scholars” she relies on to recruit Muslim chaplains have got her completely snowed.
FP: You say their sympathizers and agents have infiltrated American classrooms? What do you mean?
Sperry: Parents would be shocked to know that Muslim consultants on the Saudi government payroll have been teaching their kids about Islam in the public schools as part of world history units on religion. They’re writing lesson plans promoting Islam by instructing kids to recite prayers and verses from the Quran on prayer rugs. They’re covering up all of Islam’s ugly warts, including violent jihad, while denigrating Christianity. The textbook units on Islam they’re editing are so slick they glamorize the faith, and the worry is they’ll inspire future “American Talibans” — or worse, kids like Abu Ali, President Bush’s would-be assassin, who graduated from the same Saudi Islamic academy where the nation’s top public-school consultant on Islamic studies taught social studies. Her name is Susan L. Douglass, but don’t be fooled by her WASP-sounding name. She’s a devout Muslim activist, and her husband, Usama Amer, still teaches at the school, which teaches students to hate Jews and Christians. It’s located right across the Potomac from DC.
FP: So in historical perspective, compare the Islamist threat with the “Red Menace.”
Sperry: It’s worse than the communist threat. Bad as the Cold war threat was, the communists never attacked us. And their spies were atheists who were relatively easy to distrust, easy to bribe over to our side. But we’re now dealing with religious zealots — the Green Menace, green being the color of Islam — who are not only passionate in their hatred for us, but are using our religious tolerance as cover to infiltrate our security agencies and steal our secrets as agents and sympathizers for the bad guys. They’re using our tolerances and freedoms against us. They operate with virtual political and religious immunity, and are therefore much harder than the Red spies to ferret out. They are the perfect enemy. Washington needs to wake up to this new spy threat. It’s not just about fighting terrorists anymore. It’s also about fighting their spies and sympathizers.
FP: In your book, you show how the Left aids the Islamist enemy in our nation. Can you shed some light on this phenomenon?
Sperry: Absolutely, take Georgetown University professor John Esposito for example. He’s a leading apologist for Islam who has sung the praises of Hamas, even after it was officially designated a terrorist organization. He claims we are a “Judeo-Christian-Islamic” nation. After 9/11, he went on CNN and insisted that Islam was tolerant of other religions, even claiming that Muslims and Christians share common beliefs. As proof, he offered that the mother Mary is mentioned more often in the Qur’an than in the New Testament. While it is, he was using a cynical trick to mainstream a violent, intolerant faith. The only reason Mary is cited more is to brand Christ as a mere mortal in the Muslim mind. Christ is referred to exclusively in the text of the Qur’an as “Jesus, son of Mary,” and never “Jesus, son of God,” which would be blasphemous to Allah, as the Qur’an states. If anything, the literary distinction points up how different the two faiths are. But Esposito is counting on us not reading the Qur’an for ourselves and just taking his word. Why would a Catholic professor want to mainstream Islam? Because he and his center are bankrolled by a Saudi-tied Palestinian businessman, as I detail in the chapter, “Interfaith Phoniness.” That’s his sugar daddy, and therein lies his bias.
FP: Islamism extinguishes women’s rights, gay rights, minority rights and all democratic rights one could imagine. These are supposed to be at the core of leftist values. Why is the Left having a love affair with an entity that extinguishes everything that it supposedly holds dear?
Sperry: Because they want to continue worshiping at the altar of cultural diversity. The Left has never met a culture or religion it didn’t like, no matter how extreme, violent or anathema to our way of life, even one that uses the civil liberties the Left holds dear against us to gain a bigger foothold in our culture with the hopes of one day denying us those same liberties. Islamists secretly want to Islamize America, which as you say would extinguish women’s rights, gay rights, minority rights and the rights of all minority religions to flourish like we’re letting Islam flourish right now. And even faced with the threat of another mass-scale attack, the lefties would rather protect their claim to the mantle of tolerance for tolerance sake than their own country.
But it’s not just the left that won’t wake up to the threat. Republican Paul Findley wrote a book about Islam that reads like an endless love letter. Two of the Muslim leaders he lionizes on the cover — Alamoudi and Sami al-Arian — are now behind bars on terror charges! (Findley told me he only regrets putting Alamoudi, a confessed terror conspirator, on the cover.) Then there’s GOP operative Grover Norquist, an agent of influence for Islamists in Washington, as I detail in Infiltration and support through several alarming documents posted on sperryfiles.com. Because he’s best pals with Karl Rove, he’s getting to place bad people in the White House, DHS, the Transportation Department, and other key sensitive agencies in the war on terror. And he and his partner — Palestinian activist and former Alamoudi deputy Khaled Saffuri — are getting the president to legitimize Islam by placing pro-Islam political messages in his speeches. Bush is the first president to mention “mosques” and the “Quran” in inaugural addresses. The stated goal of their Islamic Institute, which got seed money from Alamoudi, is to promote Muslim activists to positions of power.
FP: Why do you suppose Washington’s premiere anti-tax lobbyist is suddenly so passionate about lobbying for Islamist interests?
Sperry: He’s marrying a Muslim, and when I asked Norquist if he himself has converted to Islam, he brushed the question off as too “personal.”
FP: So let’s return to Islam for a moment. Do you believe that there exists a “moderate” Islam?
Sperry: Sure, it’s called Sufism, which follows the principles of a special form of Islamic mysticism. Unfortunately that’s not the main sect of Islam. The main sect is Sunnism, which follows the fundamentals of the Qur’an, including violent jihad. It’s most orthodox strain is Wahhabism, which is really just Islam in practice as prescribed by the Qur’an. Osama bin Laden is a Wahhabist, and Osama bin Laden is a very good Muslim — a model one, in fact, and one of the most devout in the 1400 years of Islam.
FP: Well, once again, while we must be honest and realistic about these realities, we must simultaneously support Muslims who hold out the promise that Islam can be reformed and join the modern, democratic world.So, overall, what can we do about the Islamist threat that you pinpoint?
Sperry: I offer a number of solutions in the back of the book, in the Afterword, but for starters we need to be smarter about who we hire to help us fight this war on Islamic terror. We need to do a better job of screening Muslim translators to ensure their loyalty. And we need to stop cutting corners on their background checks — duh — but you wouldn’t believe the people we’ve given Top Secret/SCI clearance to since 9/11. Read “The Mole House” chapter for details — I name names. And instead of circling the wagons to avoid another embarrassing spy scandal so soon after the Hanssen case, the FBI needs to do a major damage assessment to see which (not if) counterterror and counterespionage programs have been compromised. In the meantime, Washington should offer Arabic scholarships to college kids to help grow the pool of non-Muslim linguists both the FBI and Pentagon can recruit from.
FP: What about these Muslim pressure groups that form a protective shield around militant Islam?
Sperry: Yes, for Heaven’s sake, sever all official ties to the Council on American-Islamic Relations and other terror-linked groups. We’re just legitimizing and providing the enemy cover and protection by continuing to allow them a forum. Yet the FBI director has included CAIR in permanent working groups on Muslim rights, where they’re allowed to mau-mau the FBI about its investigations of terror suspects in the Muslim community. Hello?! This is a group that’s had terrorists on its payroll! And not only that, my investigation found that CAIR is bankrolled by two Arab governments tied to the Taliban and 9/11, yet it claims it gets no foreign support. In fact, the United Arab Emirates actually holds the deed to CAIR’s headquarters located here in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol, as documented in the chapter, “The Dark Lair of CAIR.” Your readers can check out the deed on sperryfiles.com. So you can’t trust what CAIR says — so why is anyone in Washington still listening to it, let alone letting it lecture us about how to run our terrorism investigations? And why in the world are we letting CAIR, a group trying to Islamize the American workplace, partner up with the EEOC to solicit discrimination lawsuits from Muslims? That’s right, EEOC has even sent its lawyers into mosques to solicit workplace-bias complaints, as detailed in the chapter, “Wudu in the Restroom.”
FP: But what can we as citizens do?
Sperry: You recall the NIMBY movement — Not In My Backyard? Well, we need to apply it to the Islamic threat. Find out what kind of Islamic schools and mosques are being developed in your neighborhood. Check out the trustees, the preachers, the teachers. Are they Islamists? Are there any terrorist connections? Pull the county land records. Do Saudi-backed entities such as the North American Islamic Trust own the deed? Are any of the trustees members of the Muslim American Society, the U.S. front for the notorious Muslim Brotherhood? If so, lobby the local zoning boards to block their development. This is a hardline Wahhabi mosque that may serve as a base of operations for the bad guys. Arm yourself and your neighbors with the facts, and fight. Organize. Contact your local media. If protesting doesn’t work, use local ordinances to block them.
Does the proposed minaret exceed height restrictions? Will the parking plan cause traffic congestion? Is the drainage plan to code? What textbooks are used at the schools? Alert the state accreditation boards. Also, notify local law enforcement and the FBI of any suspicious activity at the mosque or school. Are preachers inciting violence? For instance, there’s
