Now here IS a real suprise.....
Ashcroft’s Baghdad Connection
Why the attorney general and others in Washington have backed a
terror group with ties to Iraq
By Michael Isikoff
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
THE 27-PAGE DOCUMENT—entitled “A Decade of
Deception and Defiance”—made no mention of any Iraqi ties
to Osama bin Laden. But it did highlight Saddam’s backing of
the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), an obscure
Iranian dissident group that has gathered surprising support
among members of Congress in past years. One of those
supporters, the documents show, is a top commander in
President Bush’s war on terrorism: Attorney General John
Ashcroft, who became involved with the MKO while a
Republican senator from Missouri.
The case of Ashcroft and the MKO shows just how
murky fighting terrorism can sometimes get. State
Department officials first designated the MKO a “foreign
terrorist organization” in 1997, accusing the Baghdad-based
group of a long series of bombings, guerilla cross-border raids
and targeted assassinations of Iranian leaders. Officials say
the MKO—which originally fought to overthrow the Shah of
Iran—was linked to the murder of several U.S. military
officers and civilians in Iran in the 1970s. “They have an
extremely bloody history,” says one U.S. counterterrorism
official.
But the MKO, which commands an army of 30,000
from bases inside Iraq, has tried to soften its image in recent
years—in part with strong backing from politically active
Iranian-Americans in the United States. The MKO operates
in Washington out of a small office in the National Press
Building under the name the National Council of Resistance
of Iran. According to the State Department, the National
Council of Resistance is a “front” for the MKO; in 1999, the
National Council itself was placed on the State Department
terrorist list. But National Council officials adamantly deny
their group has earned the terror label and have aggressively
portrayed itself to Washington lawmakers as a “democratic”
alternative to a repressive Iranian regime that itself is one of
the world’s leading sponsors of terrorism. “You’re talking
about a really popular movement,” says Alireza Jafarzadeh,
the National Council’s chief Washington spokesman, who
insists that the MKO “targets only military targets.”
Only two years ago, these arguments won sympathy
from Ashcroft—and more than 200 other members of
Congress. When the National Council of Resistance staged a
September 2000 rally outside the United Nations to protest a
speech by Iranian President Mohammed Khatami, Missouri’s
two Republican senators—Ashcroft and Chris Bond—issued
a joint statement of solidarity that was read aloud to a
cheering crowd. A delegation of about 500 Iranians from
Missouri attended the event—and a picture of a smiling
Ashcroft was later included in a color briefing book used by
MKO officials to promote their cause on Capitol Hill.
Ashcroft was hardly alone. Among those who actually
appeared at the rally and spoke on the group’s behalf was
one of its leading congressional supporters: Democratic New
Jersey Sen. Bob Torricelli.
That same year, Senator Ashcroft wrote a letter to
Attorney General Janet Reno protesting the detention of an
Iranian woman, Mahnaz Samadi, who was a leading
spokeswoman for the National Council of Resistance. The
case quickly became a cause celebre for the MKO and its
supporters in the United States.
U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service agents had
arrested Samadi at the Canadian border, charging her with
failing to disclose her past “terrorist” ties as an MKO
“military commander”—including spending seven months in a
MKO military-training camp inside Iraq—when she sought
political asylum in the United States several years earlier,
according to court documents obtained by NEWSWEEK.
Senator Ashcroft saw the case differently. In his May
10, 2000, letter to Reno, the Missouri lawmaker expressed
“concern” about the detention, calling Samadi a “highly
regarded human-rights activist” and a “powerful voice for
democracy.” (As part of a later settlement with the INS,
Samadi admitted her membership in MKO but denied that
she personally participated in any “terrorist activity.” While
her grant of political asylum was revoked, the INS dropped
its deportation proceedings and she was permitted to remain
in the United States.)
Alireza Jafarzadeh, the National Council’s top
Washington lobbyist, said he had “several” meetings with
Ashcroft aides about the matter and that he “certainly”
viewed the Missouri senator as a supporter of his group. But
backers of the MKO acknowledge the real lobbying was
done by Iranian-Americans in Missouri who wrote letters and
made repeated phone calls on Samadi’s behalf. How much
Ashcroft got personally involved isn’t clear. A Justice
Department spokeswoman told NEWSWEEK that
Ashcroft’s letter to Reno was the result of a
“straightforward, constituent-type inquiry,” adding that the
current attorney general would never “knowingly” back any
terrorist group. When he signed the joint statement with Bond
that was read at the National Council rally at the United
Nations, Ashcroft did not “intend to endorse any
organization,” the spokeswoman, Barbara Comstock, said.
“He was supporting democracy and freedom in Iran,” she
said. Comstock said Ashcroft currently has “no problem”
prosecuting all U.S.-based terror groups, including the MKO.
Ashcroft isn’t the only one now distancing himself from
the MKO. The Senate’s most aggressive promotor of the
MKO for years has been Bob Torricelli, who in recent years
has circulated numerous letters among his
colleagues—including one as recently as last
year—describing the MKO as a “legitimate” alternative to
the repressive Iranian mullahs and urging that the group be
taken off the State Department terrorist list. Torricelli told
NEWSWEEK he saw his support for the group as a way of
putting pressure on the Iranian regime. “They [the MKO]
were the only game in town,” he said. But Torricelli also said
last week said he would no longer push the group’s cause
after getting hammered over the issue by his GOP opponent,
Doug Forrester, who accused Torricelli of receiving more
than $100,000 in campaign contributions from
Iranian-Americans who supported the group. (Torricelli aides
say the amount is exaggerated and that others, including
some leading Republicans, have also received contributions
from some of the same Iranian-Americans.) As a result of
the September 11 attacks and new concerns about any
allegations of terrorism, Bond also has put his backing for the
group “in abeyance,” an aide said.
Much of the new skittishness among MKO’s
congressional backers also stems from the decision by the
Bush White House to emphasize the connections between
MKO and Saddam. It isn’t the first time this was done.
Former Clinton administration official Martin Indyk, who
served as assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern
affairs in 1997, told NEWSWEEK that one of the reasons the
group was put on the terrorism list in the first place was part
of a “two-pronged” strategy that included ratcheting up
pressure on Saddam. Like the Bush White House, the Clinton
administration was eager to highlight Iraqi ties to terrorism
and had collected extensive evidence of Saddam providing
logistical support to the MKO in the aftermath of the
Iran-Iraq War. (The MKO’s headquarters are located on a
heavily guarded street in central Baghdad.) But the United
States could find no other hard evidence linking Saddam to
terror groups, Indyk said. “That was about all we had on
[Saddam] when it came to terrorism,” Indyk told
NEWSWEEK.
National-security adviser Condoleezza Rice said in an
interview Wednesday on PBS’s “The NewsHour” that the
United States had new evidence from “high-ranking
detainees” that Iraq has provided “some training to Al Qaeda
in chemical-weapons development.” But a top U.S.
law-enforcement official recently cast some doubt about the
strength of the evidence connecting Saddam and Al Qaeda,
telling NEWSWEEK there is far more substantial evidence
that Iran was harboring top Al Qaeda leaders.)
The other “prong” in the Clinton strategy that led to the
inclusion of the MKO on the terrorist list was White House
interest in opening up a dialogue with the Iranian government.
At the time, President Khatami had recently been elected and
was seen as a moderate. Top administration officials saw
cracking down on the MKO—which the Iranians had made
clear they saw as a menace—as one way to do so. Still,
Indyk said the basic decision to label the MKO as terrorists
could be justified anyway. “Yes, they’re bad guys,” he told
NEWSWEEK. “But no—they’re not targeting us.”
Indyk’s comments
lend partial support to one
of the main contentions of
MKO and its
congressional supporters:
that geopolitical
strategy—a tilt toward
Iran—was an important
factor in the State
Department decision to
accuse MKO of
terrorism. “They wanted
to appease the Iranian
regime,” said Jafarzadeh,
the National Council of
Resistance lobbyist.
Still, the Justice
Department appears only to be stepping up investigations
into MKO members. Early last year, the FBI broke up a
ring of Iranians who were raising money at the Los Angeles
airport under the guise of helping suffering children when,
according to a court complaint, they were routing the funds
to the MKO. (A federal judge recently tossed the case out
of court, but the Justice Department is appealing.) Then, last
December, FBI agents showed up at the home of
Jafarzadeh. Armed with a search warrant, the agents hauled
away boxes of documents, including files on the group’s
dealings with members of Congress. One in particular must
have gotten the agents’ attention. It was labeled
ASHCROFT.
© 2002 Newsweek, Inc.
CC
Sept. 26 — When the White House released its Sept.
12 “white paper” detailing Saddam Hussein’s
“support for international terrorism,” it caused
more than a little discomfort in some quarters of
Washington. |
