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Faisal Gill At Work
By Greg L | 23 February 2007 | 51st HOD District | 2 Comments
GoodbyeJim has been feverishly digging into Faisal Gill’s resume as a candidate for the 51st District and published an article today discussing one of the few existing records concerning Faisal Gill’s efforts on behalf of the American Muslim Council. There hasn’t been much clarity from the Faisal Gill campaign regarding the details of his work for the AMC, and by default Jonathan Mark has only the thin trail of internet bread crumbs to follow in finding the answers to his questions. He’s getting closer to really picking up on the trail, though.
For those who might have been hiding out in Upper Khazakstan for the past couple of months, Faisal Gill had some sort of relationship with two fairly radical muslim organizations in 1991 — the American Muslim Council, and the “Islamic Institute”, also known as the Islamic Free Market Institute. During the time of Gill’s employment at these organizations, they were lead by Abdurahman Alamoudi, an open supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah, who is now serving a lengthly prison sentence for his participation in a terrorist plot and providing support for terrorist organizations. Gill was either employed directly, if you take his ethics disclosures at face value, or through AG Consulting Group, as he reported on an SF86 Security Clearance Application later on after receiving a Schedule C appointment to the Department of Homeland Security as a “policy director”. His role with the AMC and Islamic Institute is variously described as “lobbyist”, “spokesman” or “director of government affairs” at different times and by different sources.
One of the few documented instances of Faisal Gill acting on behalf of the AMC or Islamic Institute is a curious article on beliefnet which describes an incident when a group of muslim activists walked out of a White House meeting in protest after Abdullah Al-Arian was asked to leave the meeting by the Secret Service. Abdullah Al-Arian is the son of now convicted terrorist supporter Sami Al-Arian, and the Secret Service was apparently acting out of concern that it’s not a good idea to invite family members of those who are under investigation for links with terrorists to the White House to meet with the President of the United States. That seems pretty reasonable to me.
Not so much for Faisal Gill, who launched into a tirade which eventually resulted in President Bush issuing an apology for the incident.
“About 15 or 20 minutes into the meeting a uniformed Secret Service officer came in and was trying to find Abdullah,” Faisal Gill, of the American Muslim Council, told Religion News Service. “Abdullah and a couple of other representatives went out and talked and came back in and one of the representatives said they were asking Abdullah to leave. So at that point everybody said we were all going to leave if Abdullah had to leave, so we did.”
No official reason was given for the request, Gill said, but some suspect the incident was linked to the political activism of Al-Arian’s father. Sami Al-Arian is president of the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedoms, which has battled the U.S. government’s use of “secret evidence” — evidence never disclosed to a defense team — in deportation proceedings to detain people suspected of terrorist activity.
Later on in the article, Gill is quoted as saying:
Gill said he hoped an apology would be forthcoming but hoped the incident would not mar the groups’ relationship with the White House.
“We still want to work with the White House,” he said. “We’re very supportive of the president — we worked hard to get him elected and we still believe him when he says he wants to work with us. Now we’re just asking him to prove it. We just want a regular dialogue with his administration.”
That dialogue is exactly what the AMC and the Islamic Institute ended up getting. Faisal Gill is actually a pretty effective lobbyist, it would appear. Not only does Abdullah Al-Arian get his apology, but the AMC ends up essentially controlling the process for selecting which Imams will serve as muslim chaplains for the Department of Defense. At least one of those goes on to become quite a problem, and ends up under investigation for improprieties at the detention center for terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Whether Faisal Gill had any part in that deal isn’t certain, but the timing of that deal seems somewhat contemporaneous with Faisal Gill’s employment at the AMC, to the extent that period of employment has been disclosed. If not representative of Faisal Gill’s work, it’s certainly an indication of what the policy objectives he was working for at the time.
Faisal Gill was also active in lobbying the Virginia government, as was reported in a press release by Mark Early in reference to legislation involving the use of “secret evidence”, another major policy objective of the AMC:
In a letter to the Islamic Institute, Mark Earley, Attorney General of Virginia and a candidate for the Republican nomination for governor of Virginia, endorsed the H.R. 1266, the legislation in Congress that would repeal the use of secret evidence. He stated that he hopes Congress will “enact legislation, consistent with our national security interests, which will protect the rights of visitors and aspiring citizens coming to the United States from being deprived of their liberty interests based on evidence that is kept secret from them.”
During a meeting with Muslim leaders in March at the offices of the Islamic Institute and at the request of Faisal Gill, Director of Government affairs for the Islamic Institute, Mark Earley made a commitment to send a letter in support of the repeal.
Granted, it’s hard to come down solidly on one side or the other on this issue. The “secret evidence” refers to evidence collected by the FBI, CIA or NSA during the course of counter-espionage or counter-terrorism operations where full disclosure would compromise sources, methods of collection, or other national security interests. In may cases the source of intelligence is an intercept of overseas communications, the compromise of a foreign agent, or some other seriously spooky stuff. Using that information in court is a dicey proposition, as the normal rules of evidence would harm national security interests, so a compromise was crafted under the Patriot Act to allow this sort of evidence to be presented, but ensure that disclosure would be limited to those with appropriate clearances so as not to harm national security. There’s opportunity for abuse in this, which means this has to be handled very carefully, but banning this information from the courtroom would greatly hinder a lot of important prosecutions. This is a good issue to find compromise on, rather than be an ideologue in favor of one extreme or the other.
Compromise wasn’t on the mind of those in the AMC, however. To them, the goal was to entirely prohibit the use of classified evidence altogether, which would result in harming our ability to pursue terrorism investigations. What really makes this maddening is that so many of those who were pushing the hardest to outlaw this sort of evidence are the same folks who would later be convicted of a number of crimes involving terrorism — from money laundering, conspiracy to assasinate a foreign head of state, providing material support for terrorists and other types of sedition. It feels to many that we invited the enemy in to lobby against the precise rules which would be used to protect us from them in the future.
This isn’t only an issue in the 51st District. The influence of troublesome muslim activists continues elsewhere, and for attendees at CPAC next week, Suhail Khan of the Islamic Institute will moderate a panel on Thursday entitled “Terrorism: Is Religious Extremism or Secular Extremism the Problem?” Suhail Khan is notable for his invitation of Sami Al-Arian to the White House.
Small world.
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Thanks for the encouragement!
My recollection is that the secret evidence to which Faisal Gill and the other lobbyists objected in mid-2001 was primarily the use of secret evidence in deportation hearings. After 9/11 all opposition to the use of such secret evidence in deportation hearings collapsed. It is in use to this day.
If the Dems win then secret evidence will remain in use in deportation hearings. No one seriously proposes that the feds should have to give up a secret source in order to deport someone.
If you don’t want potentially to be deported using secret evidence then don’t immigrate to the US. Or wait until you are a citizen before you start engaging in deportable activities.
I read Suhail Khan’s father invited Osama Bin Ladin’s right hand man to the US in the 90s. AYMAN AL-ZAWAHIRI
He is the guy in all the Al Queda Videos.