The new policy maintains the exclusion of adult leaders who are openly homosexual, however.

The BSA said the resolution was approved by 61 percent of the approximately 1,400 Boy Scout leaders from across the nation who voted at the organization’s annual conference in Grapevine, Texas.

In a statement issued after the vote, the BSA said the policy change is effective Jan. 1, 2014, “allowing the transition time needed to communicate and implement this policy to its approximately 116,000 Scouting units.”

The statement said the resolution “reinforces that Scouting is a youth program, and any sexual conduct, whether heterosexual or homosexual, by youth of Scouting age is contrary to the virtues of Scouting.”

Responding to the vote, the Family Research Council “expressed deep disappointment at the Boy Scouts of America.”

“Sadly, the Boy Scouts’ legacy of producing great leaders has become yet another casualty of moral compromise,” said FRC President Tony Perkins. “Unfortunately, Boy Scout delegates capitulated to strong-arm tactics and abandoned the timeless values that have served the organization well for more than 100 years.”

Perkins said the delegates “succumbed to a concerted and manipulative effort by the national BSA leadership despite the BSA’s own survey showing 61 percent of its members in opposition to changing the policy.”

The new policy, devised after an extensive survey of BSA members, is a revision of a proposal issued in January that would have allowed local troops to decide whether or not to accept openly homosexual members and leaders.

The Scouts count more than 2.7 million members and more than 1 million volunteers.

The BSA said in its statement today that the National Executive Committee, which just completed a lengthy review process, has “no plans for further review on this matter.”

“The Boy Scouts of America will not sacrifice its mission, or the youth served by the movement, by allowing the organization to be consumed by a single, divisive, and unresolved societal issue,” the statement said.

The BSA said that while “people have different opinions about this policy, we can all agree that kids are better off when they are in Scouting.”

A coalition of parents, scoutmasters, Eagle Scouts and other scouting leaders opposing the policy change, called OnMyHonor.net, said after the vote that the BSA can no longer use the phrase “timeless values” in good faith.

“It is with great sadness and deep disappointment that we recognize on this day that the most influential youth program in America has turned a tragic corner,” the group said. “The vote today to allow open and avowed homosexuality into Scouting will completely transform it into an unprincipled and risky proposition for parents. It is truly a sad day for Scouting.”

Pascal Tessier, a 16-year-old Boy Scout from Maryland who became one of the faces of opposition to the old policy, said the vote today allows him to earn his Eagle Scout award.

His older brother, Lucien Tessier, launched a petition on Change.org in favor of the resolution.

“Just a few hours ago, I was thinking that today could be my last day as a Boy Scout,” he said. “Obviously, for gay Scouts like me, this vote is life-changing.”

Defenders of the old policy have argued that many scouts who are homosexual have participated in the program without making an issue of their sexuality.

Karen England, executive director of Capitol Resource Institute in Sacramento, said the BSA leadership “has cowered to the financial bullying of homosexual activists.”

“The Boy Scouts are an organization that takes in approximately $500 million a year,” she said. “The homosexual activists have successfully worked their ground-game of pressuring donors and bullying the board members of this iconic institution.”

The BSA’s decision to propose a change in policy, as WND reported, coincided with a sudden drop in major corporate funding that began last summer after a “gay”-rights blogger for the Huffington Post published a collaborative report that named the donors and chastised them for violating their own policy of not discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation.

Call to prayer

Amid emotional public demonstrations today outside BSA headquarters in Dallas and the nearby convention site, OnMyHonor.net posted a call to prayer today on the organization’s Facebook page.

“Would you join us in a time of solemn prayer for our country and for the future of America’s youth? Please pray that He has mercy on the BSA and all of us,” the post said.

Meanwhile, in an op-ed in USA Today yesterday, BSA President Wayne Perry called on the National Council to approve the resolution.

“The BSA’s executive committee unanimously presented this resolution because it stays true to Scouting’s mission and remains focused on kids,” said Perry. “No matter what your opinion is on this issue, America needs Scouting, and our policies must be based on what is in the best interest of our nation’s children.”

OnMyHonor.Net founder John Stemberger has contended that a change in the membership policy would “gut a major percentage of human capital in the BSA and utterly devastate the program financially, socially and legally.”

He has called the policy change “logically incoherent and morally and ethically inconsistent.”

“Opening the Boy Scouts to boys who openly proclaim being sexually attracted to other boys and/or openly identify themselves as ‘gay’ will inevitably create an increase of boy-on-boy sexual contact,” said Stemberger in an open letter to the voting Scout leaders.

This week, the Alliance Defending Freedom delivered a petition with 18,724 signatures to the BSA urging the organization to adhere to traditional American values. Meanwhile, the homosexual-advocacy group Scouts for Equality said it delivered nearly 300,000 petition signatures asking the BSA to end its ban on homosexual members.

Twenty U.S. House Democrats sent a letter to the BSA urging an end to the ban. The Congress members said excluding homosexual scouts and scout leaders “is counter to BSA’s mission to teach our youth to combat discrimination.”

OnMyHonor.Net’s Stemberger says internal estimates by the BSA project an estimated $44 million of lost annual revenue if the policy is changed.

He points to BSA’s own “Voice of the Scout” surveys that indicate tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of parents, scoutmasters and scouts will leave the program if the proposal is adopted.

A member of the National Council previously told WND a decision to change the policy will prompt many at all levels of the organization to quit.

Homosexual-rights groups have said the proposed policy change doesn’t go far enough, because a scout who is homosexual must quit the organization when he turns 18.

John Eastman, a constitutional scholar who has advised the Boy Scouts against broadening the membership policy, told the Washington Times before the vote he believed that some local councils will break off from the BSA depending on the outcome.

“Quite frankly, I think that if anybody’s going to leave, it ought to be the ones that are seeking to change the organization into something it’s not, rather than those who want to adhere to what it has traditionally always been,” Eastman said. “I’m an Eagle Scout myself, my son’s an Eagle Scout and my grandfather was an Eagle Scout. This hits personal.”

About 70 percent of local Scout troops are supported by churches or other religious groups, most of which teach that homosexual behavior is sinful.

Southern Baptist Church leaders urged the Scouts to maintain the membership policy, but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the largest sponsor of Boy Scout troops in the U.S., affirmed the proposal.

The Catholic Church, the third-largest Scout troop sponsor, indicated it wants to work with the BSA even if the policy is changed.

Core values

Last July, after a thorough two-year study, an 11-member committee of professional scout executives and adult volunteers unanimously concluded the policy of not allowing open homosexuals should be maintained.

The BSA executive committee announced that while not all board members “may personally agree with this policy, and may choose a different direction for their own organizations, BSA leadership agrees this is the best policy for the organization and supports it for the BSA.”

In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the right of the Scout organization to exclude homosexuals, because the behavior violated the core values of the private organization.

Hillary Rodham, with chief counsel John Doar (left), bringing impeachment charges against President Nixon in 1974

Analysts’ comparison of the Obama administration’s trifecta of major scandals to Watergate strikes a note of irony for Hillary Clinton, who as a budding political star in 1974 was a researcher for the staff that drafted the articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon, which included charges he attempted to use the Internal Revenue Service to defeat his enemies.

Clinton – who has been accused of covering up politically motivated malfeasance related to the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attack when she was secretary of state – has not commented on the admission by the IRS that underlings discriminated against conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.

Her office did not respond to a request by WND to weigh in as talk of impeachment mounts inside the Beltway, fueled by the Benghazi and IRS scandals along with the Justice Department’s admission that it monitored the communications of Associated Press reporters in the House gallery at the Capitol.

But fresh out of Yale Law School, in 1974, 27-year old Hillary Rodham poured her considerable talent and energy into the case against Nixon as a member of the impeachment inquiry staff advising the House Committee on the Judiciary.

Clinton, whose focus was on the historical grounds and standards for impeachment, ended up drafting a brief arguing Nixon should not be granted legal counsel due to a lack of precedent.

As WND reported in 2008, her supervisor, lifelong Democrat Jerome Zeifman, not only was unimpressed with her work, he called it fraudulent and fired her for unethical behavior.

Zeifman, who was the general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, recalled the episode in a 2008 New York Post column when Clinton was running for president, calling her a liar and an “unethical, dishonest lawyer.”

Franklin Polk, the House panel’s chief Republican counsel, confirmed Zeifman’s story.

In its articles of impeachment against Nixon, the panel charged that the president tried to obtain confidential personal information from the IRS and use income tax audits “in a discriminatory manner.”

Unlike the Obama administration, however, Nixon was unsuccessful, as officials in his administration prevented him from carrying out his plans to the use the IRS against his enemies.

In Article 2 of the articles of impeachment against Nixon, concerning the abuse of the powers of his office, the House panel stated:

He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavoured to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposed not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be intitiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.

Nixon announced his resignation Aug. 8, 1974, making impeachment proceedings unnecessary.

Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, who famously teamed with Carl Bernstein to investigate the Nixon administration, compared Watergate to the Benghazi scandal in an interview Friday with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

Woodward called Benghazi “a very serious issue” and found similarities between Nixon’s release of edited transcripts and the Obama administration’s politically motivated editing of its “talking points.”

Protecting the Kennedys

Zeifman contends Hillary Clinton was collaborating with allies of Sen. Ted Kennedy — a future Democratic presidential prospect — to block revelation of John F. Kennedy-administration activities that made Watergate “look like a day at the beach.”

Her brief, Zeifman said, was so fraudulent and ridiculous, she would have been disbarred if she had submitted it to a judge.

Jerome Zeifman

Polk, in an interview with Dan Calabrese recounted in a WND guest column, confirmed Clinton wrote a brief arguing Nixon should not be granted legal counsel due to a lack of precedent. But Clinton deliberately ignored the then-recent case of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who was allowed to have a lawyer during the impeachment attempt against him in 1970.

Moreover, Zeifman claims Clinton bolstered her fraudulent brief by removing all of the Douglas files from public access and storing them at her office, enabling her to argue as if the case never existed.

Polk confirmed the Clinton memo ignored the Douglas case, but he could not confirm or dispel the claim that Hillary removed the files.

Zeifman said Clinton was hired to work on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who also was Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick case.

‘She conspired to violate the Constitution’

When the Watergate probe concluded, Zeifman said, he fired Clinton from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation. She was one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career.

Zeifman told Calabrese he fired Clinton because she was a liar.

“She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer,” Zeifman said. “She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”

Zeifman said Clinton collaborated with several individuals, including Marshall, special counsel John Doar and senior associate special counsel Bernard Nussbaum, who later became counsel in the Clinton White House. Their aim, he said, was the seemingly implausible scheme to deny Nixon the right to counsel during the investigation.

Nixon announcing his resignation to the nation Aug. 8, 1974

The Kennedy allies, Zeifman said, feared putting Watergate break-in mastermind E. Howard Hunt on the stand to be cross-examined by the president’s counsel. Hunt, according to Zeifman, had evidence of nefarious activities by President John F. Kennedy’s administration, including purportedly using the mafia to attempt to assassinate Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

Polk regarded Clinton’s memo as dishonest because it tried to pretend the Douglas precedent didn’t exist. But, unlike Zeifman, he considered it more stupid than sinister.

“Hillary should have mentioned [the Douglas case] and then tried to argue whether that was a change of policy or not instead of just ignoring it and taking the precedent out of the opinion,” Polk told Calabrese.

But Zeifman argues that if Clinton, Marshall, Nussbaum and Doar had succeeded, House Judiciary members also would have been denied the right to cross-examine witnesses and denied the opportunity to even participate in the drafting of articles of impeachment against Nixon.

Polk recalls Zeifman told him at the time he believed Clinton’s primary role was to alert Marshall if the investigation was taking a turn against the Kennedys’ liking.

“Jerry used to give the chapter and verse as to how Hillary was the mole into the committee works as to how things were going,” Polk said.

Polk remembered some Democrat committee members, as well as nearly all the Republicans, were upset at the attempt to deny counsel to Nixon.

Zeifman said top Democrats, including then-House Majority Leader Tip O’Neill, believed Nixon clearly had the right to counsel.

“Of course the Republicans went nuts,” Polk said. “But so did some of the Democrats – some of the most liberal Democrats. It was more like these guys – Doar and company – were trying to manage the members of Congress, and it was like, ‘Who’s in charge here?’ If you want to convict a president, you want to give him all the rights possible. If you’re going to give him a trial, for him to say, ‘My rights were denied,’ – it was a stupid effort by people who were just politically tone deaf. So this was a big deal to people in the proceedings on the committee, no question about it.”

“I feel like a million bucks. I feel absolutely vindicated. I knew this was going on,” Wayne Allyn Root told WND.

Root, the Libertarian Party vice-presidential candidate in 2008 who has claimed Obama was strangely unknown to him and his fellow Columbia University classmates, recounted his story to WND last October of becoming the target of unusual audits, beginning in January 2011, despite a “spotless” 30-year tax record.

He charged in October that the order to audit him came from Obama himself, and he is even more convinced now.

“I believe this is not rogue agents, who would be risking their pension and careers,” he said.

In October, Root said the order to audit him “must have come from the highest levels of government.”

“Obama is using the power of the IRS and other government agencies to punish his political opposition and intimidate and silence his critics,” Root charged at the time.

At that time he was calling for congressional hearings “to determine if the Obama administration is misusing its power to damage or ruin the lives, drain the finances, or just distract Obama’s critics and political opposition.”

Now, the House Ways and Means Committee has scheduled a formal hearing for Friday to probe the IRS scandal.

In March 2012 hearings before the Financial Services and the Ways and Means Oversight subcommittees, former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman twice denied that the IRS had targeted conservative groups.

On Monday, Root contacted the office of Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., offering to testify before Congress.

Root said that until this week, he would not have expected scrutiny of the Obama administration to get much traction, but with the news Monday that the Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of Associated Press journalists, he thinks the media “woke up overnight and realized this is a tyrant that we’ve got in charge.”

Root has been a relentless critic of Obama in thousands of appearances on political talk shows on TV and radio over the past four and a half years, focusing on what he calls the president’s anti-capitalist policies. He also writes columns and commentaries for many popular conservative websites.

He is the author of “The Ultimate Obama Survival Guide: How to Survive, Thrive, and Prosper During Obamageddon,” which was published last month.

A pre-law and political science major in the class of 1983, like the president, Root told WND that he received an “unsettling” telephone call from an IRS agent in January 2011 who called himself a fan of his and considered it “an honor” to audit him.

Root won a complete victory last summer in tax court, which found no taxes owed in his 2007 and 2008 filings. But then, he said, he and his tax attorney were shocked when he was hit with a new audit just five days later, for 2009 and 2010.

Root told WND in October he knew of many cases like his that pointed to a pattern of abuse by the Obama administration, including audits of high-profile friends who contribute to the Republican Party and GOP bundlers.

Last year, billionaire Frank VanderSloot became the target of investigations by both the IRS and the Labor Department after he gave $1 million to a super PAC that supported Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. The GOP’s biggest donor, Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, said a federal criminal investigation into his company’s business practices was politically motivated. Another casino giant, Steve Wynn, also has been investigated.

This week, Root has received many emails from people who identify as conservative and believe the IRS has been harassing them for political reasons.

He said he was contacted by a Mormon man who said everyone he knew in his small Mormon community was being audited for the first time in their lives.

The man told Root the Mormons are easy to identify because their tax forms show they give 10 percent of their income to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Root said the Mormon man told him, “Everywhere I go, I run into people who are being audited, and they have never been audited before.”

Root sees the alleged targeting of Mormons as consistent with the report Tuesday that the IRS was targeting Jewish groups that are pro-Israel.

“Who in America would be more conservative Republican and donate more to Romney than Mormons?” he asked.

Cloward and Piven

Root has charged that Obama is borrowing from the radical, collectivist strategy of former Columbia professors Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.

The aim is to overwhelm the welfare system for the purpose of collapsing it and replacing it with a system of guaranteed annual income.

“I’ve been saying it since he was elected in 2008,” Root said of Obama, “his goal is the Cloward and Piven plan we learned at Columbia University – you’ve got to bankrupt your opposition and you’ve got to bankrupt the United States of America. You’ve got to bankrupt it with debts, entitlements and spending. And it’s all happening in front of our very eyes.”

The new admission by the IRS, he said, supports his contention that Obama aims to attack business owners who fund conservative candidates and causes until they have no money left.

“If you raise people’s taxes and regulate them to death, and assess IRS liens and audit them to death, eventually the people who write all the big checks to conservative causes will go bankrupt,” he said.

Root acknowledges his assessment of Obama opens himself to charges that he is extreme, but he insists anyone who has met him “would describe him as a family man or a man of faith” who does not exaggerate or “wear a tin foil hat.”

“And yet,” he said. “I believe with every bone in my body that Barack Obama is a Marxist out to destroy capitalism and the United States of America.”

Now, he said, as Obama is hit with a perfect storm of scandals, “you tell me if anything I’ve said now appears to be extreme.”

“No,” he said, “the only extremists here are the radical Marxists sitting in the White House.”

After Obama’s inaugural speech in January, House Speaker John Boehner seemed to agree that Obama was undertaking a scorched-earth political strategy, notably declaring that he believed the president wanted to “annihilate” the Republican Party.

Boehner said the broader goal of the administration was “to just shove us into the dustbin of history.”

Recalling Boehner’s statement, Root commented: “That’s how you become a communist or socialist nation.”

In September, Root announced that he was stepping down from his positions in the Libertarian Party to focus on helping elect Republicans to office who share his small-government values. He reasoned that it’s not enough to have a “philosophical foundation rooted in liberty” if you can’t win as a third-party candidate.

No sign of Obama at Columbia

Root drew wide attention as the Libertarian Party vice presidential candidate in 2008 when he contended that although he and Obama were both pre-law and political science majors in Columbia’s class of 1983, he never even heard of Obama during his time at the university. None of the classmates with whom he’s spoken knew of him either, he claimed. A 2008 Wall Street Journal article cited a Fox News survey of 400 people who were Columbia students from 1981 to 1983 and found no one who remembered Obama.

Root told WND Tuesday it’s telling that still no one from his Columbia days has come forward and declared any knowledge of Obama during that time.

“Every kid I went to school with was a liberal, trending toward Marxist. They all said it. They all said they were proud Marxists,” Root said. “You would think they would defend the president, and you would have students saying, ‘I knew him, and Wayne Root is wrong.’ No one has.”

There’s “just dead silence,” he said.

“Nobody saw him there. There is something wrong with the story, I am telling you.”

Napolitano, however, still has not responded to a request by the lawmaker she indignantly brushed off last week, Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., for a classified briefing on Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi.

Duncan told WND Wednesday he is still pursuing the request and “will leave no stones unturned” in the investigation of Alharbi, whose unusual handling by authorities was reported last week by WND.

“Any time a member of Congress is asking a question on behalf of the American people, that question is worthy of a response,” Duncan told WND after Napolitano’s admission in the Senate hearing Tuesday appeared to justify his concern about the Saudi.

While Napolitano insisted Tuesday that authorities absolved Alharbi of anything to do with the April 15 Boston bombings and had him on a watch list only during questioning, The Blaze has reported the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s National Targeting Center issued an event file for the Saudi calling for his deportation under Section 212 (a)(3 )(B) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. That section makes a foreigner inadmissible to the U.S. for terrorism or related activity.

Wednesday, The Blaze further reported the event file created for Alharbi indicated he was “armed and dangerous.”

In addition, The Blaze said, emails that are automatically triggered when anyone alters an event file of that kind indicated someone removed the deportation reference.

Later, someone tried to destroy both the original event file and an amended version, The Blaze said.

‘Many questions remain unanswered’

Duncan was one of four members of the House Committee on Homeland Security who signed a letter Friday to Napolitano asking for an overview of documents related to Alharbi and a classified briefing in light of media reports that “raised concerns about this individual and adjustments that may have been made to his immigration status, including possible visa revocation and terrorist watch-listing, in the days following the bombing.”

Duncan told WND Wednesday that while Alharbi “is not viewed as a suspect in the Boston bombings, many questions remain unanswered surrounding this man.”

“That is why I have asked for a classified briefing where tough questions can be asked and answers given,” he said. “I stick by that request, and I expect Department of Homeland Security to respond to that request.

“There are important questions regarding this individual’s status, and I will leave no stones unturned as it relates to this investigation,” Duncan said.

Duncan signed the letter to Napolitano along with Reps. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, the committee chairman; Peter King, R-N.Y.; and Candice Miller, R-Mich.

At a House Homeland Security Committee meeting April 18, Napolitano refused to answer Duncan’s questions about Alharbi, saying his inquiry was “so full of misstatements and misapprehension that it’s just not worthy of an answer.”

Napolitano maintained she was “unaware of anyone being deported for national security concerns at all related to Boston.”

However, on Tuesday, responding to Sen. Chuck Grassley, Napolitano admitted that, at least during the time Alharbi was questioned, the Saudi national was put on a “watch list.”

Grassley asked: “With regard to the Saudi student, was he on a watch list, and if so, how did he obtain a student visa?”

In reply, Napolitano initially stated the Saudi “was not on a watch list.”

“What happened is – this student was, really when you back it out, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was never a subject. He was never even really a person of interest,” she said.

“Because he was being interviewed, he was at that point put on a watch list, and then when it was quickly determined he had nothing to do with the bombing, the watch listing status was removed.”

After the bombings at the Boston Marathon finish line, Alharbi was hospitalized with injuries resulting from one of the blasts and reportedly considered a person of interest.

Within 48 hours, however, after two hours of questioning and a nine-hour raid of the Saudi citizen’s apartment in which computers and email records were seized, he was being described by authorities only as a “witness” who had suffered injury. Later, authorities insisted he was not even a witness.

During that time, President Obama met with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal in a meeting that was not on Obama’s public schedule, and Secretary of State John Kerry held a meeting with the Saudi foreign minister that was abruptly closed to press coverage.

See Napolitano’s House panel testimony April 18:

Todd Starnes of Fox News reported that before the bombing, Alharbi had been flagged on a terrorist watch list and granted a student visa without being properly vetted.

The Blaze reported Wednesday that Alharbi was admitted to the U.S. under a “special advisory option,” which is usually reserved for visiting politicians, VIPs or journalists.

The event file cover page indicates he was granted special status without full vetting.

See a local news report on the search of Alharbi’s apartment:

The Blaze noted the event file indicates he entered the U.S. on Aug. 28, 2012, in Boston but says he is a student at the University of Findlay, in Findlay, Ohio.

He has an apartment in Revere, Mass., however.

The Blaze published the text of the cover of Alharbi’s event file:

Subject,

ALHARBI, ABDULRAHMAN ALI E

DOB 03/12/1993

COC SAUDI ARABIA

Subject is an exact match to NO FLY TPN# 1037506192. Derogatory information reviewed by W/C Mayfield and CW/C Maimbourg was found to be sufficient to request Visa revocation. NTC-P is requesting revocation of Foil# e3139541. Subject is inadmissible to the U.S. under INA 212(a)(3)(B)(i)(II). SAO was not completed prior to Visa issuance. Subject is currently in the United States, admitted F1 student, at Boston POE on 08/28/2012. Subject is a student at THE UNIVERSITY OF FINDLAY, 1000 NORTH MAIN STREET FINDLAY, OHIO 45840-3695. Subject has One (1) prior event #1648067, Fins promoted, NT record in place, No scheduled found at this time.  [Emphasis added]

The Blaze published the cover of Alharbi's event file

A spokesman for Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., told WND the committee has not received a response from Napolitano to a letter issued Friday that he signed along with Reps. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, the committee chairman; Peter King, R-N.Y.; and Candice Miller, R-Mich.

Spokesman Allen Klump noted that on the day of the twin bombings in Boston that killed three people and injured more than 200, law enforcement officials said that Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi, who was hospitalized with injuries resulting from the blast, was a person of interest.

Within 48 hours, however, after raiding the Saudi citizen’s apartment and hauling out computers and email records, Alharbi was being described by authorities only as a “witness” who had suffered injury in the blast. Later, authorities insisted he was not even a witness.

The letter from the four congressmen was first reported by The Blaze, which reported further details Monday about Alharbi after WND reported last week of questions that arose regarding the Saudi’s handling by authorities.

Among The Blaze’s reporting today is an allegation that Alharbi was classified as a terrorist but his file was altered.

Klump clarified that the Homeland Security Committee members are not saying Alharbi is a suspect in the Boston bombing but are questioning why he was absolved so quickly, particularly after so much information apparently had been gathered.

“Common sense would indicate that we don’t need to lose the ability to have access to this witness until a complete picture is painted,” Klump told WND.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to WND’s request for comment.

In a hearing last Thursday of the Committee on Homeland Security, Napolitano reacted with indignation and anger when Duncan questioned her about Alharbi’s case.

Napolitano insisted she was “unaware of anyone being deported for national security concerns at all related to Boston.”

The letter notes Napolitano’s response and says that, nevertheless, “media reports have continued to raise concerns about this individual and adjustments that may have been made to his immigration status, including possible visa revocation and terrorist watch-listing, in the days following the bombing.”

“We request the Department provide a detailed overview of the records associated with this individual to include his law enforcement and immigration records prior to April 15, 2013, as well as his current status,” the Congress members state. “We request briefers from the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection.”

The Blaze reported the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s National Targeting Center issued an event file for Alharbi calling for his deportation using Section 212, 3B, which is proven terrorist activity. By late Wednesday afternoon, however, the file had been altered.

The Blaze cited a law-enforcement source who was part of the process of identifying Alharbi.

Todd Starnes of Fox News, meanwhile, reported that before the bombing Monday, Alharbi had been flagged on a terrorist watch list and granted a student visa without being properly vetted.

Sources close to the investigation told Starnes the Saudi is still set for deportation.

Although Alharbi has been studying in Massachusetts, his student visa specifically allows him to go to school only in Findlay, Ohio, according to The Blaze.

Authorities now insist Alharbi had nothing to do with the attack and was not a witness.

Another Saudi, identified as Noura Al-Ajaji, was similarly reported to have been merely an injured bystander.

After the attack, Monday, Alharbi, 22, was questioned by federal authorities for two hours while his roommate, Mohammud Hassan Bada, 20, was questioned for five hours. Monday evening, FBI and ATF agents, along with Boston police officers raided their apartment in Revere, Mass., and hauled out bags of material.

Bada acknowledged to the Boston Herald that the seized items include computers and emails.

Saudi national Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi in a Boston hospital recovering from injuries in the bombing.

But by Wednesday, Revere, Mass., police Lt. Amy O’Hara said federal authorities “are telling us he’s no longer a person of interest,” the Herald reported.

Alharbi’s reported deportation is reminiscent of the high-ranking Saudis, including members of Osama bin Laden’s family, who were precipitously airlifted back to Saudi Arabia after 9/11, even as U.S. airways were shut down. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers who carried out the 9/11 attacks came from the Islamic kingdom.

The developments in Alharbi’s case came as President Obama met Wednesday with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal in a meeting that was not on Obama’s public schedule. The previous day, a meeting Secretary of State John Kerry held with the Saudi foreign minister was abruptly closed to press coverage.

Steve Emerson of the Investigative News Project, who was first to report that Alharbi was set to be deported, said in a Fox News interview that it’s “the way things are done with Saudi Arabia.”

“You don’t arrest their citizens. You deport them, because they don’t want them to be embarrassed, and that’s the way we appease them.”

If the Boston Marathon bombing and the ricin-infected letters to President Obama and member of Congress weren’t enough déjà vu, a deadly explosion Wednesday night at a fertilizer factory near Waco, Texas, revived memories of the horrific 5,000-pound fertilizer-bomb that killed 168 people at the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City exactly 13 years ago Friday.

One of the convicted perpetrators of the OKC bombing, Timothy McVeigh, declared that he acted in retribution for the infamous deadly raid by federal authorities in 1993 on the Branch Davidian cult compound in Waco, which also took place April 19.

The massacre of 32 at Virginia Tech by a senior student took place April 16, 2007, while April 20, 1999 – which also is Adolf Hitler’s birthday – was the day two Columbine High School students chose to carry out an attack in which they murdered 12 students and one teacher.

Meanwhile, this week, a Saudi national who was questioned in the aftermath of the Boston bombing and, according to sources, was set to be jetted back to his homeland, hearkened back to the high-ranking Saudis, including members of Osama bin Laden’s family, who were precipitously airlifted back to Saudi Arabia after 9/11, even as the U.S. airways were shut down.

Many Americans have been unusually uncomfortable this week, to say the least.

“Everybody is very edgy – hyper-vigilant,” Stacey Hader Epstein, 52, a freelance public relations consultant in Atlanta, said in a Bloomberg feature. “It reminds me of what happened after 9/11. It’s good and bad – good in that it brings everybody’s focus back to looking after one another. The negative is it makes everybody paranoid and suspicious.”

Hader Epstein, Bloomberg reported, was passing out free cookies to people nearby in what she called “random acts of kindness” – a practice she started after the Sandy Hook Elementary School slaughter in December.

Whether the current state of edginess goes up or down likely will depend on whether or not the twin bombing Monday that killed three people and injured more than 180 at the finish line of the Boston Marathon was a relatively random act by a disturbed “lone wolf” or part of a larger ongoing threat, particularly the global effort to advance Islam.

An IED attack by an international jihadist group on American soil emulating the roadside bombs that have killed and maimed U.S. troops and citizens in Iraq and Afghanistan would mark a new, disturbing frontal advance in the war on the West declared by Islamic fundamentalists.

Skittish Capitol Hill

Echoing the anthrax attack that began one week after 9/11, federal agents who regularly test letters addressed to the president and others at a secret building in Washington found the legal toxin ricin in letters addressed to Obama and Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., less than 48 hours after the Boston attack.

President Obama meets with Cabinet members after the bombings in Boston Monday.

Paul Kevin Curtis of Corinth, Miss., who was well known to law enforcement authorities, was arrested Wednesday.

Earlier that day, there was further panic on Capitol Hill when suspicious envelopes were hand-delivered to the offices of senators from Alabama and West Virginia.

The deliveries prompted evacuations of the offices and lockdowns of others nearby. In addition, two other senators reported authorities were investigating suspicious letters delivered to district offices.

To top it off, a bomb squad was called to Capitol Hill Wednesday when a bag was left in the entranceway of a Senate building. Police ordered thousands of staffers and aides to stay in their offices.

Meanwhile, in Boston, as media gathered for a scheduled press conference at a courthouse  – anticipating a major breakthrough in identifying the perpetrators of the marathon bombing – police ordered the building evacuated, citing a bomb threat.

Ultimately, there was no press conference on a day in which major media were running with an unconfirmed report that the FBI had identified what CNN’s John King described as a “dark-skinned” suspect.

Special relationship

As MSNBC personalities and other left-leaning media figures openly speculated that the perpetrator was a right-wing extremist, the Internet was abuzz over a report that a Saudi national who was questioned as a “witness” immediately after the bombing Monday was set to be deported.

Saudi national Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi in a Boston hospital recovering from injuries in Monday's bombing.

The reported arrangements came as President Obama met Wednesday with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal in a meeting that was not on Obama’s public schedule. The previous day, a meeting Secretary of State John Kerry held with the Saudi foreign minister was abruptly closed to press coverage.

The reported exit of 20-year-old Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi, a student who resided in Revere, Mass., brought to mind the special flights sanctioned by the Bush administration that gathered some 140 high-ranking Saudi Arabians – including several relatives of bin Laden – and spirited them out of the country within a week of the attacks.

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers who carried out the 9/11 attacks came from the Islamic kingdom.

WND reported Wednesday morning that Alharbi shares the same last name as a major Saudi clan that includes scores of al-Qaida operatives.

Some in the clan are senior al-Qaida members while others are reportedly being held by the U.S. in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.

Federal and state law enforcement agents raided Alharbi’s apartment in Revere, Mass, and reportedly hauled out bags of material. But the Saudi embassy in Washington has said Alharbi was no longer under detention and is not a suspect in the bomb blasts.

So proudly we hailed

Amid the anxious echoes of 9/11, many Americans also are displaying some of the patriotic resolve that arose in the days that followed the attacks on New York City and Washington.

On the ice at TD Garden in Boston Wednesday night, as the Bruins were set to take on the Buffalo Sabres in a National Hockey League match, familiar anthem singer Rene Rancourt launched into “The Star Spangled Banner.”

Rancourt, who has sung for the Bruins for 35 years, soon realized something very special was happening.

As he sang, “What’s so proudly we hailed,” he spontaneously turned from performer to choir leader and set down the microphone on the ice.

He began pumping his fist to the tempo as more than 20,000 proud Americans belted out the anthem as never before.

As the arena lights came on, with no need for a cue, the crowd launched into “USA, USA, USA.”

Watch Rene Rancourt lead the national anthem:

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Ties to a corporate world that has largely accommodated the gay-rights agenda have brought the Scouts to the point of voting on whether they should abandon their century-old policy of forbidding members who openly declare they are homosexual, argues Randy Sharp, director of special projects for the American Family Association.

Sharp’s group is mobilizing supporters to urge Boy Scouts executive board member Randall Stephenson, the CEO of AT&T, to resign.

Stephenson, who is said to be positioned to become the BSA executive board’s chairman next year, has been praised along with Ernst & Young CEO James Turley for publicly opposing the Scouts’ membership policy and vowing to work from within to change it.

“This is a man who’s trying to play both side of the fence, and we think that he doesn’t have the best interest of the Boy Scouts in mind,” Sharp told WND.

Sharp said that at the beginning of the week, AFA counted 175,976 petition signatures urging Stephenson to resign. In addition, hundreds have followed AFA’s suggestion to post messages on AT&T’s Facebook page. Also, thousands of post cards with the same message to Stephenson have been mailed to AFA’s office. They will be delivered to AT&T headquarters in Dallas.

SIGN WND’S PETITION TO KEEP THE BOY SCOUTS STRONG AND MORAL

Sharp, a former scoutmaster himself, contends Stephenson has a conflict of interest as the head of a corporation that has fully embraced the gay-rights agenda.

“You’ve got two entities here. You’ve got an organization, and then you have a company, and their two philosophies on homosexuality are diametrically opposed to each other,” Sharp said. “One honors God and the other honors man.”

Stephenson declined WND’s request for an interview.

In a CNBC feature one year ago, Stephenson was noted for leading AT&T’s adoption of the gay-rights agenda.

“Diversity and inclusion are part of AT&T’s culture and operations,” Stephenson said at the time. “We don’t agree with every policy of every organization we support, nor would we expect them to agree with us on everything. Our belief is that change at any organization must come from within to be successful and sustainable.”

Sharp believes AT&T’s decision to cut funding to the BSA illustrates Stephenson’s personal conflict of interest, arguing board members should lead in a way that exemplifies the Scouts’ values.

On Monday, the BSA’s executive board is expected to release a proposal to change the current membership policy. The proposal will be put before the Scouts’ 1,400-member National Council for a vote May 23.

The executive board could have made the decision at its meeting in February but decided to delay it until May amid strong opposition voiced by its national membership. The board said that after “careful consideration and extensive dialogue,” it “concluded that due to the complexity of this issue, the organization needs time for a more deliberate review of its membership policy.”

Next month, it won’t be the national executive board – comprised of many prominent corporate CEOs – making the decision but rather the BSA National Council, made up of the regional and local Scout leaders.

“These are really the backbone of the BSA,” Sharp said. “These are the people from communities all across America who work hand-in-hand with the young men in scouting. They are not these CEOs and corporate board-room executives who are detached from what Boy Scouts really are.”

Sharp said the council members “are the guys that do the backpacking and pitch the tents and do the outdoor cooking and build the fires and teach the boys.”

“So they understand the danger of having open and avowed homosexuals on campouts with little boys,” he said.

Randall Stephenson

Some argue that Stephenson has every right to press for change from within, because the Scouts are merely acknowledging significant changes in the way society views homosexuality.

Sharp pointed out, however, that last July, after a thorough two-year study, an 11-member committee of professional scout executives and adult volunteers unanimously concluded the policy should be maintained. The BSA executive committee announced that while not all board members “may personally agree with this policy, and may choose a different direction for their own organizations, BSA leadership agrees this is the best policy for the organization and supports it for the BSA.”

One decade ago, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the right of the Scout organization to exclude homosexuals, because the behavior violated the core values of the private organization.

Sharp further argued that Stephenson and Turley are the ones who helped drive the proposal.

“These two men have stated that they are working to change the policy,” he noted.

“The best thing for Mr. Stephenson to do,” Sharp said, “is just retire from the board and say, ‘You know, I don’t agree with the Boy Scouts. My company doesn’t agree with the Boy Scouts. I’m just going to resign my position.’”

As long as Stephenson is within the Boy Scouts, Sharp said, “it’s going to cause a disruption within the organization.”

Diane Gramley, president of the AFA of Pennsylvania, said corporations and heads of corporations need to decide if it is more important “to make less than 5 percent of the U.S. population happy by bowing to the bullying of organizations such as the (gay-rights) Human Rights Campaign or to listen to the voices of the majority of Americans.”

The Family Research Council is also wielding its considerable influence, working directly with scouting parents, scoutmasters and leaders of the faith-based organizations that charter over two-thirds of the packs to help maintain the policy.

Corporate influence

Sharp believes the Scouts would be wise to wean themselves from a financial dependency on corporate donations that has led to putting corporate officers on the board.

“That was well and fine in the ’50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, because these CEOs were men of great moral character,” Sharp explained. “They espoused the values of the Boy Scouts of America. But we’re seeing a climate change in corporate America to where these officers no longer always align with the values of the Boy Scouting.”

Corporate donations largely go to the National Council, which uses the money to provide materials and support for local councils.

Now, he said, is the opportune time to say, “We’re not going to be influenced by corporate America. We need to continue with our value system and stand on our own two feet.”

Sharp said he would be willing to pay a higher fee for membership if it would help the Scouts “get away from these big corporate donations” and become more independent.

“Self-reliance is a value in itself that the Boy Scouts can espouse,” he said.

Homosexuals already in Scouting

As WND reported, a coalition of Eagle Scouts, Scoutmasters and parents have launched a new organization to maintain the current policy and “keep sex and politics out of the BSA.”

The OnMyHonor.Net coalition argues the BSA already “allows anyone to participate, regardless of sexual orientation,” though it forbids “open and aggressive promotion of homosexuality and political agendas.”

John Stemberger, Eagle Scout, former scoutmaster and founder of the coalition contends the current policy is “time-tested and fair, allowing anyone to participate irrespective of sexual orientation.”

“There are currently scouts, Eagle Scouts and scout leaders in uniform with same-sex attractions yet who are in good standing with the program,” he explained.

“This change in policy would transform the BSA into yet another battle ground for the gay agenda.”

He said “sex and politics have no place in scouting.”

“When it comes to sexual behavior modeled before young boys, some as young as 6 and 7 years of age, parents have the final say, not agenda-driven activists.”

As WND reported, some Scout leaders have said a decision to change the policy will prompt many at all levels of the organization to quit. A fourth-generation Scout leader – a recipient of an award for distinguished leadership and a member of the Southern Region committee as well as an ad hoc member of the national committee – said he’s one of many Scout leaders who will not continue with the organization if the policy is changed.

The BSA’s new policy proposal, as WND reported, coincides with a sudden drop in major corporate funding that began last summer after a “gay”-rights blogger for the Huffington Post published a collaborative report that named the donors and chastised them for violating their own policy of not discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation.

The Scouts count more than 2.7 million members and more than 1 million volunteers. The Scout troops, which are hosted by churches and other organizations, are organized into districts, based on geographic boundaries, which in turn are grouped into councils. The councils form 26 areas nationwide, which are further grouped into four regions. The BSA national council sets policy, offers national awards and organizes national jamborees.

SIGN WND’S PETITION TO KEEP THE BOY SCOUTS MORAL

A U.S. citizen, Ghassan Hitto served as vice-president for the Dallas-Fort Worth branch of CAIR, according to The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report. CAIR, the Justice Department discovered, was founded in Washington, D.C., in 1993 as a front for the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S.

CAIR touts itself as Muslim civil rights group, but federal prosecutors in 2007 named CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in a plot to fund Hamas, and more than a dozen CAIR leaders have been charged or convicted of terrorism-related crimes.

Arabic-language analyst Walid Shoebat noted the election of Hitto took place in Turkey, the center of the old Ottoman Empire.

The Muslim Brotherhood was formed in 1928 in Egypt after the demise of the Ottoman Empire with the aim of resurrecting the Islamic caliphate and helping establish the global rule of Islam, as taught in the Quran.

The Syrian interim government is to administer areas seized by rebel forces from Assad’s troops.

At a meeting in Istanbul, Hitto received 35 votes out of 48 ballots cast by the opposition Syrian National Coalition’s members, the Associated Press reported.

Fight back against CAIR’s attack on First Amendment by making a contribution to WND’s “Legal Defense Fund.” Donations of $25 or more entitle you to free copy of “Muslim Mafia” – the book so devastating to CAIR the group is trying to ban it.

The Justice Department tied CAIR to its terror-finance case against the Richardson, Texas-based Holy Land Foundation, which was convicted of funneling more than $12 million to Hamas.

FBI wiretap evidence from the Holy Land case showed CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad was at an October 1993 meeting of Hamas leaders and activists in Philadelphia. CAIR, according to the evidence, was born out of a need to give a “media twinkle” to the Muslim leaders’ agenda of supporting violent jihad abroad while slowly institutionalizing Islamic law in the U.S.

As WND reported in 2010, a federal judge later determined that the Justice Department provided “ample evidence” to designate CAIR as an unindicted terrorist co-conspirator, affirming the Muslim group has been involved in “a conspiracy to support Hamas.”

Hitto, who has worked in the Internet technology industry, helped run a Muslim private school called the Brighter Horizons Academy. He also helped found the Muslim Legal Fund of America, which gave legal aid to Muslims after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Shoebat noted that a Dallas-area colleague of Hitto’s, Nabil Sadoun, was deported after he was found to have ties to the Holy Land Foundation.

Sadoun served on CAIR’s national board and once headed the Islamic Studies Department at Brighter Horizons.

The New York Times reported Hitto was the choice of Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood, which plays a powerful role in the coalition.

Ghassan Hitto

Like the Muslim Brotherhood under Egypt’s former Mubarak regime, Syria’s branch of the movement long has been banned and persecuted by the Assad family.

The Times noted that while Syrian Brotherhood leaders say they seek a civil rather than an Islamic state, some opposition members worry they will impose a religious agenda.

During the Arab Spring, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood leaders made similar assurances before rising to power.

Rogues gallery of terror-tied CAIR leaders

As former FBI agent Mike Rolf acknowledges in “Muslim Mafia,” “CAIR has had a number of people in positions of power within the organization that have been directly connected to terrorism and have either been prosecuted or thrown out of the country.” According to another FBI veteran familiar with recent and ongoing cases involving CAIR officials, “Their offices have been a turnstile for terrorists and their supporters.”

A review of the public record, including federal criminal court documents, past IRS 990 tax records and Federal Election Commission records detailing donor occupations, reveals that CAIR has been associated with a disturbing number of convicted terrorists or felons in terrorism probes, as well as suspected terrorists and active targets of terrorism investigations. The list is long and includes:

FBI agents arresting CAIR founding director Ghassan Elashi in 2002.

• Ghassan Elashi: One of CAIR’s founding directors, he was convicted in 2004 of illegally shipping high-tech goods to terror state Syria and is serving 80 months in prison. He was also convicted of providing material support to Hamas in the Holy Land Foundation terror-financing trial. He was chairman of the charity, which provided seed capital to CAIR. Elashi is related to Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook.
• Muthanna al-Hanooti: The CAIR director’s home was raided in 2006 by FBI agents in connection with an active terrorism investigation. Agents also searched the offices of his advocacy group, Focus on Advocacy and Advancement of International Relations, which al-Hanooti operates out of Dearborn, Mich., and Washington, D.C.Al-Hanooti, who emigrated to the U.S. from Iraq, formerly helped run a suspected Hamas terror front called LIFE for Relief and Development. Its Michigan offices also were raided in September 2006. In 2004, LIFE’s Baghdad office was raided by U.S. troops, who seized files and computers. Al-Hanooti is related to Sheik Mohammed al-Hanooti, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
  

  Muthanna al-Hanooti, wearing traditional headgarb

  “Al-Hanooti collected over $6 million for support of Hamas,” according to a 2001 FBI report, and was present with CAIR and Holy Land officials at a secret Hamas fundraising summit held in 1993 at a Philadelphia hotel. Prosecutors added his name to the list of unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land case.

  Although Al-Hanooti denies supporting Hamas, he has praised Palestinian suicide bombers as “martyrs” who are “alive in the eyes of Allah.”

• Abdurahman Alamoudi: Another CAIR director, he is serving 23 years in federal prison for plotting terrorism. Alamoudi, who was caught on tape complaining that bin Laden hadn’t killed enough Americans in the U.S. embassy bombings in Africa, was one of al-Qaida’s top fundraisers in America, according to the U.S. Treasury Department.
• Siraj Wahhaj: A member of CAIR’s board of advisers, Wahhaj was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The radical Brooklyn imam was close to convicted terrorist Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and defended him during his trial.
  

  Imam Siraj Wahhaj

  “Muslim Mafia,” citing co-author’s Sperry’s previous book “Infiltration” as well as terror expert Steven Emerson’s research, reports that Wahhaj, a black convert to Islam, is converting gang members to Islam and holding “jihad camps” for them. With a combination of Islam and Uzis, he has said, the street thugs will be a powerful force for Islam the day America “will crumble.”

  Wahhaj was a key speaker at CAIR’s 15th annual fund-raising banquet in Arlington, Va., in 2009.

• Randall “Ismail” Royer: The former CAIR communications specialist and civil-rights coordinator is serving 20 years in prison in connection with the Virginia Jihad Network, which he led while employed by CAIR at its Washington headquarters. The group trained to kill U.S. soldiers overseas, cased the FBI headquarters and cheered the space shuttle Columbia tragedy. Al-Qaida operative Ahmed Abu Ali, convicted of plotting to assassinate President George W. Bush, was among those who trained with Royer’s Northern Virginia cell.
• Bassam Khafagi: Another CAIR official, Khafagi was arrested in 2003 while serving as CAIR’s director of community affairs. He pleaded guilty to charges of bank and visa fraud stemming from a federal counter-terror probe of his leadership role in the Islamic Assembly of North America, which has supported al-Qaida and advocated suicide attacks on America. He was sentenced to 10 months in prison and deported to his native Egypt.
• Laura Jaghlit: A civil-rights coordinator for CAIR, her Washington-area home was raided by federal agents after 9/11 as part of an investigation into terrorist financing, money laundering and tax fraud. Her husband Mohammed Jaghlit, a key leader in the Saudi-backed SAAR network, is a target of the still-active probe.Jaghlit sent two letters accompanying donations – one for $10,000, the other for $5,000 – from the SAAR Foundation to Sami al-Arian, now a convicted terrorist. In each letter, according to a federal affidavit, “Jaghlit instructed al-Arian not to disclose the contribution publicly or to the media.”Investigators suspect the funds were intended for Palestinian terrorists via a U.S. front called WISE, which at the time employed an official who personally delivered a satellite phone battery to Osama bin Laden. The same official also worked for Jaghlit’s group.In addition, Jaghlit donated a total of $37,200 to the Holy Land Foundation, which prosecutors say is a Hamas front. Jaghlit subsequently was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the case.
  

  Nihad Awad

• Nihad Awad: Wiretap evidence from the Holy Land case puts CAIR’s executive director at the Philadelphia meeting of Hamas leaders and activists in 1993 that was secretly recorded by the FBI. Participants hatched a plot to disguise payments to Hamas terrorists as charitable giving.During the meeting, according to FBI transcripts, Awad was recorded discussing the propaganda effort. He mentions Ghassan Dahduli, whom he worked with at the time at the Islamic Association for Palestine, another Hamas front. Both were IAP officers. Dahduli’s name also was listed in the address book of bin Laden’s personal secretary, Wadi al-Hage, who is serving a life sentence in prison for his role in the U.S. embassy bombings. Dahduli, an ethnic-Palestinian like Awad, was deported to Jordan after 9/11 for refusing to cooperate in the terror investigation. (An April 28, 2009, letter from FBI assistant director Richard C. Powers to Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz. – which singles out CAIR chief Awad for suspicion – explains how the group’s many Hamas connections caused the FBI to sever ties with CAIR.)Awad’s and Dahduli’s phone numbers are listed in a Muslim Brotherhood document seized by federal investigators revealing “important phone numbers” for the “Palestine Section” of the Brotherhood in America. The court exhibit showed Hamas fugitive Mousa Abu Marzook listed on the same page with Awad.
  

  Omar Ahmad

• Omar Ahmad: U.S. prosecutors also named CAIR’s founder and chairman emeritus as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land case. Ahmad, too, was placed at the Philadelphia meeting, FBI special agent Lara Burns testified at the trial. Prosecutors also designated him as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s “Palestine Committee” in America. Ahmad, like his CAIR partner Awad, is ethnic-Palestinian.(Though both Ahmad and Awad were senior leaders of IAP, the Hamas front, neither of their biographical sketches posted on CAIR’s website mentions their IAP past.)
  

  Nabil Sadoun

• Nabil Sadoun: A CAIR board member, Sadoun has served on the board of the United Association for Studies and Research, which investigators believe to be a key Hamas front in America. In fact, Sadoun co-founded UASR with Hamas leader Marzook. The Justice Department added UASR to the list of unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land case. UPDATE: In 2010, Sadoun was ordered deported to his native Jordan. An immigration judge referenced Sadoun’s relationship with Hamas and the Holy Land Foundation during a deportation hearing.
• Mohamed Nimer: CAIR’s research director also served as a board director for UASR, the strategic arm for Hamas in the U.S. CAIR neglects to mention Nimer’s and Sadoun’s roles in UASR in their bios.
  

  Mohamed Nimer

• Rafeeq Jaber: A founding director of CAIR, Jaber was the long-time president of the Islamic Association for Palestine. In 2002, a federal judge found that “the Islamic Association for Palestine has acted in support of Hamas.” In his capacity as IAP chief, Jaber praised Hezbollah attacks on Israel. He also served on the board of a radical mosque in the Chicago area.
• Rabith Hadid: The CAIR fundraiser was a founder of the Global Relief Foundation, which after 9/11 was blacklisted by the Treasury Department for financing al-Qaida and other terror groups. Its assets were frozen in December 2001. Hadid was arrested on terror-related charges and deported to Lebanon in 2003.
• Hamza Yusuf: The FBI investigated the CAIR board member after 9/11, because just two days before the attacks, he made an ominous prediction to a Muslim audience.”This country is facing a terrible fate, and the reason for that is because this country stands condemned,” Yusuf warned. “It stands condemned like Europe stood condemned because of what it did. And lest people forget, Europe suffered two world wars after conquering the Muslim lands.”

CAIR’s founder Ahmad, while claiming to be a moderate and patriotic American, reportedly told a group of Muslims in Northern California in 1998 that they are in America not to assimilate, but to help assert Islam’s rule over the country.

“Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant,” a local reporter paraphrased him as saying. “The Quran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.”

Ahmad insists he was misquoted. However, the reporter stands by her story, and an FBI wiretap transcript quotes Ahmad agreeing with terrorist suspects gathered at the secret Philadelphia meeting to “camouflage” their true intentions.

He compared it to the head fake in basketball.

“This is like one who plays basketball: He makes a player believe that he is doing this, while he does something else,” Ahmad said. “I agree with you. Like they say, politics is a completion of war.”

Hooper, CAIR’s communications director, also has expressed a desire to overturn the U.S. system of government in favor of an Islamic state.

“I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future,” Hooper said in a 1993 interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “But I’m not going to do anything violent to promote that. I’m going to do it through education.”

IMPORTANT NOTE: The CAIR legal attack on WND’s author is far from over. WND needs your help in supporting the defense of “Muslim Mafia” co-author P. David Gaubatz, as well as his investigator son Chris, against CAIR’s lawsuit. The book’s revelations have led to formal congressional demands for three different federal investigations of CAIR. In the meantime, however, someone has to defend these two courageous investigators who have, at great personal risk, revealed so much about this dangerous group. Although WND has procured the best First Amendment attorneys in the country for their defense, we can’t do it without your help. Please donate to WND’s Legal Defense Fund now.

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Janda, who has taught for 21 years at Concrete Middle School in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains in Western Washington state, pointed to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas and the Taliban as organizations that use violence to “bully people.”

A student whose father is a Muslim was offended by her illustration, and now the notorious Council on American-Islamic Relations has intervened.

Ironically, although CAIR often is called upon as a defender of civil rights, the Justice Department says the organization was formed by members of Hamas in 1993 to put a friendly face on the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S. In 2007, federal prosecutors named CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in a plot to fund Hamas.

The Oct. 29 classroom incident in Concrete, Wash., came to light a month later when the district received a letter from CAIR. The district said the student and her parents never filed a complaint directly with school officials.

Last month, CAIR’s Washington state branch called for a federal investigation, alleging Janda made “racist” remarks about Muslims, KOMO-TV in Seattle reported.

CAIR called on the Department of Justice to step in, KOMO said, charging the Concrete School District didn’t do enough to investigate the comments.

CAIR-Washington announced March 6 that it was going ahead with its own investigation to see if Janda’s alleged offense was “part of a larger pattern of biased education.”

Fight back against CAIR’s attack on First Amendment by making a contribution to WND’s “Legal Defense Fund.” Donations of $25 or more entitle you to free copy of “Muslim Mafia” – the book so devastating to CAIR the group is trying to ban it.

CAIR submitted a public records request to the Concrete School District for information “regarding curriculum, approved texts and materials, internal correspondence, and past complaints against the district.”

“Often one complaint is indicative of a larger pattern of biased education,” said CAIR-Washington’s civil rights coordinator, Jennifer Gist, in a statement. “We are requesting public records from the district to review their materials and past complaints, in an effort to analyze the quality of equal education it affords its students.”

‘We’re not a bunch of racists’

The school district stands behind Janda, calling CAIR’s charge “false information” that was taken out of context. Janda issued a statement explaining that in her Oct. 29 presentation, she was “not talking about Muslims and Arabs in general.”

Janda said she was surprised CAIR filed a complaint without contacting her to get her account of the class discussion.

She said the discussion led to a reference to “some members of groups who employ extreme acts such as Hamas and the Taliban.” Her point, she said, was that people “who intend on imposing their will on others are bullies, whether they be Nazis or others.”

“I was not talking about Muslim believers or Arabs in general but people that were trained to kill.” she said.

“This discussion is not about religious beliefs,” Janda explained. “It is related to a state mandate that public schools teach students about bullying and not allow it.”

Supporters of Janda in Concrete have acquired the legal help of the non-profit group ACT! For America, founded by Brigitte Gabriel, reported Examiner.com blogger Christopher Collins.

Gabriel, a Lebanon-born activist who suffered injury as victim of an Islamic militant attack as a child, said CAIR saw Janda’s remarks “as an opportunity to further its faulty, cynical narrative that Muslims across America are regular victims of discrimination and civil rights abuses.”

She said “a veteran teacher with an exemplary record, who stated something that is factual and provable, is under attack – her good name smeared so that CAIR-Washington can advance its political agenda.”

KOMO interviewed a resident of the town of 700 who defended Janda.

“The kids that I know who’ve gone to the teacher have had no problems,” said Tabithia Hicks. “The teacher was well-liked, well-respected, and to hear this from this, I’m like, wait, this isn’t what we need here in Concrete. We’re not a bunch of racists.”

‘Media twinkle’ on jihad

The Justice Department tied CAIR to its terror-finance case against the Richardson, Texas-based Holy Land Foundation, which was convicted of funneling more than $12 million to Hamas.

FBI wiretap evidence from the Holy Land case showed CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad was at an October 1993 meeting of Hamas leaders and activists in Philadelphia. CAIR, according to the evidence, was born out of a need to give a “media twinkle” to the Muslim leaders’ agenda of supporting violent jihad abroad while slowly institutionalizing Islamic law in the U.S.

As WND reported in 2010, a federal judge later determined that the Justice Department provided “ample evidence” to designate CAIR as an unindicted terrorist co-conspirator, affirming the Muslim group has been involved in “a conspiracy to support Hamas.”

The judge did not dispute “press accounts and blog entries” that “CAIR is a criminal organization that supports terrorism,” according to the ruling.

More than a dozen CAIR leaders have been charged or convicted of terrorism-related crimes.

Now, the future of a Current TV host who has spoken openly of being “born a Muslim” and later rejecting the faith – known as “apostasy” – has added another storyline.

Cenk Ugyur, 42, host of “The Young Turks,” was born into a Muslim family in Turkey but now describes himself as a “fervent agnostic” who has “argued vehemently against religion.”

Cenk Uygur of Current TV

He told Politico in January, however, that unlike some of his Current TV colleagues, he’s open to staying with Al Jazeera, which is owned by the emir of Qatar.

Uygur, who became a naturalized U.S. citizen after moving to the U.S. at the age of 8, had a weeknight commentary show on MNSBC for nearly six months until he was replaced by Rev. Al Sharpton.

Current TV spokesman Tony Scott told WND that Al Jazeera has not determined whether it will retain Uygur and advised checking back in a few weeks.

The transition from Current TV programming to Al Jazeera, which made the purchase to gain access to as many as 50 million U.S. homes, is expected to be completed this summer, according to Scott.

Ugyur and Qatar-based Al Jazeera did not respond to WND requests for comment.

Islam analyst Walid Shoebat wondered what it might mean if “a fundamentalist Arab Muslim network” prominently features an “apostate.”

He noted that according to traditional Islamic scholarship and the practice of many Muslim communities and nations, apostasy is a serious offense, punishable by death.

“In theory, this should pose a problem for Uygur, because Al Jazeera is essentially a media arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is extremely fundamentalist,” Shoebat said. “Uygur, on the other hand, is a Muslim apostate by his own admission.”

But Shoebat believes that Al Jazeera could use Uygur to its advantage, justifying the move with a doctrine taught by one of its presenters, Muslim Brotherhood scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

Qaradawi teaches “Maruna,” the doctrine of “flexibility” or “balance.” He says that if in a particular instance “good and evil conflict with each other,” it’s permissible to allow evil “for the sake of an interest.”

That interest, ultimately, is the advance of Islam.

Shoebat explained that “if Uygur is let go, it will mean that Al Jazeera is being true to Islam instead of to Muruna.”

“Then again,” he added, “according to Qaradawi, Muruna is true to Islam.”

Islam analyst Robert Spencer, director of JihadWatch.org, told WND he simply doubted it will be any problem for Uygur to work for Al Jazeera.

“Uygur is a hardcore leftist and anti-American, and so Al Jazeera will almost certainly find him useful,” Spencer said. “They may even use his rejection of Islam as evidence of their lack of bias and journalistic integrity.”

Uygur’s history of attacking Christianity in the defense of Islam certainly could be seen as useful.

When evangelist Pat Robertson critiqued Islam in 2009 after the deadly attack on Fort Hood by Muslim Army officer Nidal Malik Hasan, Uygur launched into a diatribe against Christians.

“The cult of Christianity, historically has been the single most violent religion on the face of the earth – indisputable,” he said. “The Crusades, where they killed thousands upon thousands; the Inquisition, where they stretched people on a rack; they did torture for an endless number of years; the witch hunts, where you boiled witches alive and drowned them and hung them and … let alone Christians that started things like … World War I and World War II and the holocaust,” he said.

“And I could go on and on … the wholesale genocide of the native Americans, the slavery of Africans in this country,” he said.

Al Jazeera, known as a conduit for messages from Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network, has been criticized for a having a fundamentalist bent.

In 2001, an Al Jazeera journalist suspected of being an agent of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas was arrested in Israel.

Former “Nightline” reporter Dave Marash, who worked for the English Al Jazeera in Washington, said his departure from the network in 2008 was partly based on what he described as an anti-American bias.

Making it palatable

With his 20 percent stake in Current TV, Gore came away with $100 million when the network was sold Jan. 3 for a reported $500 million.

Challenged by many from the left for compromising his purported values for financial gain, Gore found himself on the defensive in many media interviews after the sale.

In a Q&A at the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas, one week ago, he was asked how he could justify the move.

“I knew when I made that decision that my principal obligation was to make the world a better place,” he told the audience.

Gore explained he thought Al Jazeera would stir up American journalism and improve it in a “creative and positive way.”

At the time of the sale, he argued that both networks were founded “to give voice to those who are not typically heard; to speak truth to power; to provide independent and diverse points of view; and to tell the stories that no one else is telling.”

Meanwhile, a man who says he was hired to smooth over the fallout from the sale has sued Gore and Current TV, claiming they owe him money.

John Terenzio’s lawsuit provides details of a presentation he gave to Current TV board member Richard Blum, the husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., reported Fox News.

Terenzio alleges his job was to make the sale to Al Jazeera palatable to U.S. lawmakers, pro-Israel factions, cable operators and the American public.