Was Grover Norquist
    working for Islamic terrorists?

I haven’t seen any follow-up on this [*] since Atrios posted it a while ago. I was waiting for someone to tell me whether John Loftus had any credibility, and whether Keith Olberman of NBC, who seemed to be eating it up, knows the difference between a news break and hot air.

Loftus, a former Nazi-hunting prosecutor for the Justice Department, is accusing Karl Rove’s friend Grover Norquist, the quarterback of the national don’t-ever-tax-rich-folks lobby, of fronting for the people who fund terrorist activity in this country, including Abdurahman Alamoudi. Alamoudi is accused of running money for al-Qaeda and Hamas; he is listed as vice-president of a foundation set up by one of Osama’s nephews. [*] He was also involvedd in setting up the Islamic chaplaincy program that recruited al-Qaeda collaborators to minister to the prisoners at Guantanamo.

As I say, I have no idea whether Loftus talks through his hat or not, but I’d sure like to know. If someone tells me this is bogus, I’ll quote or link as appropriate.

But if no one can tell me it’s bogus, I’d like to hear much more about it.

If this is real, this could be a bigger scandal than the Valerie Plame affair. A direct link between Norquist and an al-Qaeda operative might explain a lot of otherwise inexplicable things, such as the White House decision to allow a sudden evacuation of all the bin Ladens in this country shortly after 9-11, before the FBI got a chance to talk to them, at a time when all U.S. airspace was closed to normal traffic. [*]

Here’s the bulk of the Loftus interview:

LOFTUS: Well, you know, it’s a funny story. About a year-and-a-half ago, people in the intelligence community came and said-guys like Alamoudi and Sami al-Arian and other terrorists weren’t being touched because they’d been ordered not to investigate the cases, not to prosecute them, because there were being funded by the Saudis and a political decision was being made at the highest levels, don’t do anything that would embarrass the Saudi government. So, of course I immediately volunteered to do it and I filed a lawsuit, against al-Arian charging him with being a major terrorist for Islamic Jihad, most of his money came from Saudi charities in Virginia.

Now, Alamoudi’s headquarters were in the same place, he was raided the same day, on March 20. An hour after I filed my lawsuit, the U.S. government finally got off its butt and they raided these offices. And, the stuff that they’re taking out of there now is absolutely horrendous. Al-Arian has now, finally been indicted, an along with Alamoudi, today.

But, who was it that fixed the cases? How could these guys operate for more than a decade immune from prosecution? And, the answer is coming out in a very strange place. What Alamoudi and al-Arian have in common is a guy named Grover Norquist. He’s the super lobbyist. Newt Gingrich’s guy, the one the NRA calls on, head of American taxpayers. He is the guy that was hired by Alamoudi to head up the Islamic institute and he’s the registered agent for Alamoudi, personally, and for the Islamic Institute.

Grover Norquist’s best friend is Karl Rove, the White House chief of staff, and apparently Norquist was able to fix things. He got extreme right wing Muslim people to be the gatekeepers in the White House. That’s why moderate Americans couldn’t speak out after 9/11. Moderate Muslims couldn’t get into the White House because Norquist’s friends were blocking their access.

OLBERMANN: How does this tie back into the thing that apparently pulled the stopper out of the drain, if you will-The developers at Guantanamo bay? How rotten is the system of the interpreters and the chaplains-the Muslim Chaplains that Alamoudi was involved in setting up?

LOFTUS: It’s as rotten as it gets. Think of the Muslim chaplain’s program that he set up as a spy service for al-Qaeda. The damage that’s been done is extreme. It wasn’t just sending home mom and dad messages from the prisoners. These guys, this network in Guantanamo, stole the CIA’s briefing books. Everything that the CIA knew about al-Qaeda is now back in al-Qaeda hands. That’s about as bad an intelligence setback as you can get.

OLBERMANN: John, how does this end up? How far will the investigation into this necessarily have to go to get to the bottom of it?

LOFTUS: There’s a lot more to go. Norquist had a lot of other clients. There’s a whole alphabet soup of Saudi agencies that funded terrorism in this country. They had an awful lot of protection. And, one of the things we may find about 9/11 is that people out in the field weren’t allowed to connect the dots and questions will be asked weather guys like Grover Norquist were part of the problem?