Controversy
On March 28, 2000, Pete McCloskey, the chairman of CNI at the time, gave the keynote address at the Thirteenth Conference of the Institute for Historical Review, a Holocaust denial organization. His speech was about the Anti-Defamation League and free speech. When McCloskey ran in the 2006 Republican Party primary for congress, there was a public controversy over exactly what he said about the Holocaust at the event. McCloskey was endorsed by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times despite the controversy, but lost the nomination by a 2-1 margin.
According to a 2001 article in Salon.com Abdurahman Alamoudi, a member of the CNIF Board of Directors, said at a November 2000 rally against Israel in Lafayette Park, across from the White House: "'Hear that, Bill Clinton! We are all supporters of Hamas. I wish they add that I am also a supporter of Hizballah." In 2004, Alamoudi pled guilty to financial and conspiracy charges and was subsequently sentenced to 23 years in prison. Eugene Bird explained that at the time he joined CNI Alamoudi was a highly regarded Muslim spokesperson who worked with the United States Department of State. As soon as Alamoudi was convicted, CNI asked him to leave its board.
On May 4, 2004 Eugene Bird appeared on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's ("CBC") National News and commented ""We know that the Israeli intelligence was operating in Baghdad after the war was over...The question should be: Were there any foreign interrogators among those that were recommending very, very bad treatment for the prisoners?" CBC issued a clarification that there was "no evidence for Bird's claims." Two month's later former Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who had been in charge of the Abu Graib prison, claimed that she had met an Israeli who worked as an interrogator at a secret intelligence centre in Baghdad. She also stated that no Israelis worked at Abu Graib itself. Israel subsequently denied her claims, stating that there was "no basis whatsoever to the reports."
Read more about this topic: Council For The National Interest
Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)