hanley_28-29.qxp_Special Report 2/3/22 11:35 PM Page 28
Special Report
CAIR Calls For Investigation of Steven Emerson’s Hate Group
By Delinda C. Hanley
PHOTO BY ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES
mants. After his termination in December, the Columbus office discovered “suspicious purchases” from ammunition and gun retailers made on a credit card that was administered by Iqbal, according to Whitney Siddiqi, community affairs director for CAIR-Ohio. Soon after Iqbal’s exposure, the second man, Tariq Nelson, 48, voluntarily came forward to admit and apologize for working for IPT from 2008 to 2012. Nelson was once an active member of Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, VA. Nelson released a tax form showing that Emerson’s for-profit corporation paid him over $30,000 for just one of his many years of spying. He also supplied other damning evidence of his work for IPT. Both men received (L‐r) Council on American‐Islamic Relations national executive director Nihad Awad, then‐U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (D‐MN) and Gold Star father Khizr Khan discuss President Donald Trump’s Muslim travel thousands of dollars from Emerson’s corporation for spying. ban at a Feb. 1, 2017 press conference in Washington, DC. John Sugg, editor of the Weekly THERE’S A MOLE inside your organization, warned the tipster in an Planet in the 1990s, and a senior editor of Creative Loafing Newspaemail sent last year to the Council on American-Islamic Relations pers until he retired in 2008, has had lots to say about Emerson over (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights group. Soon the e-mailer, the years. “Emerson collects money through a [501(c) (3)] non-profit, a whistleblower from the DC-based Investigative Project on Terrorism the Investigative Project on Terrorism Foundation, and then funnels (IPT), led CAIR to a trove of recordings and transcripts. CAIR’s national that money to his for-profit SAE (as in Steven A. Emerson) Producoffice hired an outside forensic specialist to investigate the evidence. tions,” Sugg wrote in an article published in the January/February In November, the specialist reported to CAIR that two Muslim in2011 Washington Report. Sugg quoted remarks by Ken Berger, pressiders had been sharing information, “including surreptitiously ident of Charity Navigator, a nonprofit watchdog group, to a Nashville recorded conversations, strategic plans and private emails,” with paper: “Basically, you have a nonprofit acting as a front organization, the IPT, the anti-Muslim hate group founded by Steven Emerson, a and all that money going to a for-profit. It's wrong. This is off the charts.” self-styled “terrorism expert.” For years, Emerson paid Muslim inAt a Jan. 12 news conference, CAIR executive director Nihad Awad formants to hand over details of private conversations held by CAIR said his organization had reached out to the FBI about the longtime and other Muslim community leaders to IPT. spying efforts because it was concerned that laws had been broken On Dec. 16, CAIR named Romin Iqbal, the longtime Columbus, and because some of the leaked documents showed that Emerson Ohio CAIR chapter’s executive and legal director, as one of the inforwas communicating with Israeli government officials. Edward Ahmed Mitchell, an attorney and former journalist who serves as CAIR’s national deputy director, showed e-mails from Emerson telling his staff Delinda C. Hanley is executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. to help provide Israeli intelligence officers with research about Students 28
WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
MARCH/APRIL 2022
