Ashcrofts terrorist friends have been deemed to be terrorists again

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http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N15158540.htm

U.S. shuts offices of Iranian opposition group

WASHINGTON, Aug 15 (Reuters) - The United States has closed the Washington offices of two Iranian opposition groups that released key information about Iran's suspected nuclear arms program, the State Department said on Friday.

The U.S. government took the action after determining that the groups -- the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and the People's Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI) -- are aliases of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian group which the United States has long named as a foreign terrorist organization.

The groups, which had offices two blocks from the White House complex, had been allowed to operate openly in the United States and to hold news conferences at which they divulged information about Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program.

Partly because of the quality of their intelligence about Iran, the groups have strong supporters in parts of the U.S. government as well as in Congress, where 150 lawmakers last year issued a statement of support for the group.

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http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gte643u/AshcroftMKO.htm

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

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.

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.

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