NCRI – On Saturday, September, 17, 2011, a senior panel of former Secretaries, Generals, and Governors, as well as State and Justice Departments officials denounced the presence of the Iranian regime’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the United Nations, and urged the removal of Iran’s main opposition, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), from the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organization, according to Human Rights and Democracy International.
The panel of former senior officials included Attorney General Michael Mukasey, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, Commandant of the Marine Corps General James Conway, Deputy Commander of United States European Command General Charles Wald, Ambassador John Bolton, and FBI Director Louis Freeh. The continuing designation of the MEK was acting as a license for genocide at Camp Ashraf, Iraq, the officials said.
Below Remarks by Gov. Ed Rendell.
Thank you all, good morning everyone. You know, we all hope that a decision will be forthcoming on delisting very, very soon, and my hope is that that decision is made on two basic principles. Number one, we should decide on the merits; we should not make a political deal, we should decide on the merits of the case. Number two, we should make our decisions based on the values that this country stood for so long: freedom and democracy. If the decision is made on those two criteria MeK shall be and will be delisted. Now this decision is going to be made by two people basically, Secretary Clinton and President Obama, and they’re both lawyers, they’re both pretty good lawyers. They may not be as good a lawyer as General Mukasey, but they’re good lawyers. And I would ask them, as we did at the rally before the State Department, I would ask the White House and the State Department to look at this as a legal case because it is; you’re interpreting the rules set up by the original delisting standards. Look at it as a legal case and let’s examine the evidence. In law, there’s something called expert witnesses, and juries are allowed to give tremendous credence to expert witnesses and that credence they give to the expert witnesses is even greater when the expert witnesses have first-hand knowledge. Let’s look at the expert witnesses who have spoken out publicly about this issue and who have made their opinion loud and clear.
First we have, and you’ll be hearing from him soon, the former director of the federal bureau of investigation under both president Clinton and president Bush, Louis Freeh, who is was here with us today. He was tasked with having his organization review all of the people living in Ashraf to determine if there were any terrorists, and as he will tell you that review found no terrorists and he has spoken out publicly and has said that the MeK should be delisted. Now, that’s the head of the FBI in a democratic administration and republican administration. But then we have a former Circuit judge and the Attorney General of the United States you heard from. The attorney general was vested with the responsibility during his term in office of being the lead in America’s battle against terrorism, being the lead in protecting our country from terrorism. That attorney general had a very deep responsibility to know who are the terrorists, where they were, who were the threats, where they were, and who weren’t. And you just heard again Attorney General Mukasey has spoken time and time again on this issue, his strong belief based on his observations and all the evidence that was available to him that MeK is not a terrorist organization. Former head of the FBI, former Attorney General of the United States… case closed. But we don’t have to close the case based on those two expert witnesses because we have a whole lot more. We have three decorated and honored Generals of the United States Armed Forces who served in Iraq, and each one of them has said it loud and clear that MeK is not a terrorist organization, that the people in Ashraf are freedom loving citizens of this planet… three Generals who are decorated who are honored, including General Shelton. But that’s not all of the expert testimony we have. We have Colonel Wesley Martin, who, as many of you now, served as the commander of Camp Ashraf, US commander, as well as having counterintelligence duties throughout the entire country. He observed Ashraf residents directly, personally. He was in charge of counter-intelligence for the U.S. Armed Forces in Iraq and he has said loud and clear—in fact, from this hotel he said loud and clear—that MeK is not a terrorist organization.
That should be enough, but it’s not all that we have. We have two bodies that are close allies of the United States: United Kingdom, and European Union. These are respected, trusted allies probably our two strongest allies in the world. They have, by their recent action, given loud and clear expert testimony that they believe MeK is not a terrorist organization by delisting them from their own lists. So think about it, think of all of the expert witnesses that we have. Now, when you’re looking at a legal case to make a decision you also look at physical evidence, and some physical evidence is what they call “circumstantial.” You’ve all heard the term circumstantial evidence, right?
Circumstantial evidence is often the absence of any evidence. You can’t point to one specific thing or one specific act, but you point to the absence of an act. And we can say for sure that there is not one, not a single terrorist source that lists in its database terrorist acts worldwide, not one of the sources has listed any act of violence by the MeK against the United States or any of its allies since 2001—for more than a 10 year period. You could look at all of the sources and they all have databases and they are all online, and if this was a terrorist organization, if there had been terrorist activities in the 10 years you know all these multiple sources would’ve in fact, found a terrorist act, an incident…not one. Overwhelming circumstantial evidence, so we’ve got expert testimony, incredible expert testimony. We’ve got strong circumstantial evidence, but that’s not all we have. We have the judgment of another court, the Court of Appeals in Washington D.C., which has said that the Secretary, the State Department did not have any evidence to meet their own standard. Expert witness, circumstantial evidence, opinion of another court, that ought to be enough. That ought to be enough if we follow the law. If we decide this case on the merits, it’s overwhelmingly not guilty. Delist the MeK, and let’s do it now.
Now we all know that the List itself is a valuable tool. The FTO list is a valuable tool for denying organizations that threaten the United States, remember those words, that threaten the United States. It denies these organizations the opportunity to operate freely in the US. Their currency and assets are frozen, a lot of things happen, a lot of negative things, so it is a valuable tool. And terrorist organizations are dealt a severe blow by being put on this list. It is in fact a valuable tool for combating terrorism, but our interests and the cause of freedom are undermined and ill-served when this terrorist label was applied for political reasons or a bargaining tool, and that’s very, very important to understand. I said “decide this case on the merits.” That’s what we are to do. That’s what American justice is about. That’s what the American democracy is built on. We need to decide this case on the merits. You know everyone talks about the two hostages, two innocent people who were hiking and got lost and were taken by the Iranian government into custody given eight year prison sentences made pawns in this horrible battle they’re waging against freedom in the United States. Well we cannot trade off this case against those two good people. They are good people and they deserve to be free, and they committed no crime, but this case the listing of the MeK has to be decided on its merits. It cannot be a bargaining chip. It cannot be used for political reasons. This country shouldn’t get involved in those types of actions. I believe that with all my heart.
Now I want to say a word about Ashraf because, of course as General Mukasey said they’re related, because the Maliki government tried to justify its horrific actions by saying, “these people are on a terrorist list.” Even if they were in a terrorist list how that justifies shooting unarmed people in cold blood beats the heck out of me, but let’s talk about Ashraf for second. Let’s talk about obligations. First and foremost, the United States has an obligation to live up to its word. We gave our word to innocent people who surrender their weapons based on our were are word, our word that we would protect them. To me two of the finest hours of the United States government and foreign policy occurred when President Clinton sent U.S. air power in to stop literally half a million Muslim Kosovars from being executed from genocide, in Kosovo. And president Clinton’s strategy worked and those people weren’t harmed and went on to be a great victory for freedom and democracy. And when President Obama did virtually the same thing with NATO allies in Libya, he was criticized by a lot of people – “it won’t work, why are you getting United States involved in this?” Well I supported him on television at the time and when it turned out to be a successful enterprise, I said, “that’s what America ought to be about.” If we’re about anything, it ought to be the protection of innocent people from being slaughtered. And remember the key there, the explanation the Obama government gave, the administration gave was we acted because we didn’t want genocide to occur to the people of Benghazi. And there was chance that thousands of people would’ve been slaughtered in Benghazi had we not stepped in.
So we sent our troops into Kosovo to stop genocide to stop the slaughter of innocent people. We didn’t send in troops, we sent air power. We sent air power in Libya to stop innocent people from being slaughtered. And yet on two occasions United States troops were ordered to back off and move out as slaughter of innocent people took place at Ashraf. Shame on us. Shame on us. This is the United States. We’re about protecting human dignity and human rights. That’s been the hallmark of every administration since I’ve been alive. Shame on us, and now we can’t let it happen again. It’s great that the U.N. has made this declaration as General Mukasey said, but any day there could be a third assault on Ashraf unless the United States makes it abundantly clear to the Maliki government that U.S. troops are to be responsible for protecting 3400 people in Ashraf. We gave our word. It’s something we should do. And I want to close by telling you something that I said to the first group from Northern California when they were here several months ago. When I was elected Governor of Pennsylvania, I knew sort of vaguely that I’d be the commander-in-chief of the Pennsylvania National Guard, but I assumed that would be deciding whether the Guard could be activated in floods or snowstorms to help people out.
I never assumed that the Guard would be a fighting force abroad. In fact no Pennsylvania guardsmen had been killed in a foreign conflict since World War II, but that all changed with the Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. Pennsylvania has lost the highest number of guardsmen in proportion to its population of any state in the Union. Every guardsmen, and one actual guardswoman, who died, I wrote a letter to their next of kin, or their family, their parents, or their spouse, or the children and often I will call, almost all the time I would call and talk to them, and as much as I could I would go to funerals or wakes. And the families always wanted to know one thing, why? Why did Tom die thousands of miles away from home for what? For who? I think I’m a pretty good speaker, or think I can answer most questions. That was a difficult question to answer even back then, but I always would tell them, to offer form of consolation,
“Look, they died protecting our long-term interest. They died fighting this war against terror so terrorism wouldn’t be visited upon us. But they also died to try to make it better for the people of Iraq or the people of Afghanistan. They died because we wanted to put in place of a horrible repressive regimes, a decent government, a government that would give those people long-suffering people freedom and democracy of their own.”
And I believed it when I said it. And in some ways I’m happy that I’m not Governor anymore because after seeing with what the Maliki government did at Ashraf, I’m not sure I could tell any Pennsylvania families the same thing. What did we fight for? What did the United States lose almost 5,000 of its young people for — For a government like that, for us to turn our back and allow slaughter to happen? I don’t believe that’s what we fought for. Ashraf is a moral issue, and we have no choice but to do the right thing. Delisting MeK is a legal issue, and the legal case is absolutely overwhelming.
