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HOST:
Right now, you may recall, it was a little over a week ago, John Guandolo was on our program, making some fairly serious allegations against the Congressional Muslim Staff Association, a group of Capitol Hill staffers that he alleges have been having a fairly ongoing relationship through speakers who are tied to questionable, if not terrorist organizations. The most prominent of which would be Anwar al-Alaki in 2001. One of the people he named in terms of aiding and abetting this organization is a gentlemen named Suhail Khan, who, among other things, has been a Congressional staffer himself, a Bush appointee, and is currently a board member of the American Conservative Union. Mr. Khan heard about these allegations and wanted a chance to address them himself. So we said, sure. And he joins us now. Mr. Khan, good morning.
SUHAIL KHAN:
Good morning. How are you?
HOST:
I’m fine. Let’s start with the whole question of the Congressional Staff–the Congressional Muslim Staff Association. Is this a bogus charge in your view?
SUHAIL KHAN:
It is a bogus charge just because the facts aren’t straight. The Congressional Muslim Staffers Association does not sponsor the prayer service in the Capitol. So that is first just an erroneous accusation that they have anything to do with it.
HOST:
Well, and who does?
SUHAIL KHAN:
The prayer services run through the chaplain’s office. The House chaplain. It was established under Newt Gingrich in 1997. The Congressional Muslim Staffers Association came together in 2006. So for about thirteen, fourteen years now, several hundred Muslim-Americans, mostly staffers and other federal employees, gather for prayer every Friday. But then, so, since Speaker Gingrich was the speaker and then through Hastert, Speaker Hastert, Speaker Pelosi and now through Speaker Boehner. So it’s not through the Congressional Muslim Staffers Association. This is a prayer service that was established with the help of Newt Gingrich and the House Chaplain’s office, so–
HOST:
[OVERLAP] Let me ask you a larger question.
SUHAIL KHAN:
Yeah.
HOST:
Because according to material that has been documented, an al-Qaeda official, Anwar Hajaz [PH], who is the–who has been the head of TIBA [PH] International Aid, which is designated by the U.S. government as a global terrorist organization, spoke on Capitol Hill and apparently conducted prayers for CMSA just this past April. So how could they–how could they allow him in without knowing what his background was?
SUHAIL KHAN:
I don’t know that answer for us. That would be something that, you know, the House Chaplain’s office would have to address. Because, first of all, I’m not–you know, I left the Hill in 1999.
HOST:
Yeah, we’re aware of that.
SUHAIL KHAN:
But, yeah. But, again, the CMSA as an entity is not the group that runs the prayers. Again, it’s the–it’s the–it’s individual staffers who are working with the chaplain’s office who are conducting the prayers there.
HOST:
But, obviously, if the CMSA is obviously a group of Capitol Hill staffers who you would assume, along with their members of Congress, have taken an oath to preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States, inviting somebody like Anwar Hajaz to Capitol Hill does call activities into question. Now whether or not it’s the chaplain’s office or whether it is the CMSA, obviously that does invite some speculation as to what’s really going on. That’s where I think this controversy has begun.
SUHAIL KHAN:
No, absolutely. I agree with you. And if that individual did come or was invited in any way to participate in any, you know, services or any type of event in the Capitol, absolutely, I’d be the first to call for investigating how that person was brought in. Absolutely.
HOST:
Well, okay. Then this is the question that we keep coming back to. Because, accordingly, the roll caller evidently videotaped this individual leading prayers for the CMSA. And shortly after this was called into question, you probably are aware that Fox News did a lengthy report on this and CMSA, shortly after Fox broadcast this, shut down their entire website. Now, you know, even for somebody who’s not, you know, on one side or the other in terms of whether or not this is a terrorist-leaning organization or whether this is just Islamophobia, to use a popular term, you have to ask yourself, if you’ve got nothing to hide, why would you shut down the website?
SUHAIL KHAN:
Yeah. I wasn’t aware of the website being shut down. So I, you know, I don’t have any information on that. I mean, my purpose on coming on the show for today was to talk about folks like Frank Gaffney who have been bringing up my name and bringing up issues related to me and my family that are completely false, have been proven false, they know it’s false. So as far as the, you know, the CMSA and the Congressional staffers, I can tell you what I know. I did not know that their website was shut down. So I can’t really respond to that. But again, I’m just, you know, they are–if there were individuals that did come to these prayer services that in any way have any connection to terrorism or support of terrorism, I’d be the first to call for investigation by the authorities within the House working with the chaplain’s office to determine when these folks came. I can tell you one thing, though. That when I read the Fox News piece, most of the people that were named there who had ties either they were not direct ties or not real ties. They were innuendo. In the case of Aliki, obviously, here’s a guy that’s sympathetic and is now working with al-Qaeda in Yemen. But when he allegedly came–again, I left in 1999. When he came in 2003, he was not on anybody’s radar as being somebody who was a problem. At that point, he was an American citizen. You know, I mean–
HOST:
[OVERLAP] Yeah, well, the 9-11 Commission–
SUHAIL KHAN:
[OVERLAP] –but–
HOST:
[OVERLAP] –the 9-11 Commission said that the FBI had been looking into him two years before. So–
SUHAIL KHAN:
[OVERLAP] Right–
HOST:
[OVERLAP] Let me ask you this, though, what–
SUHAIL KHAN:
[OVERLAP] But just–but if you have, you know, you have hundreds of people coming in to the prayer service every week. Thousands over the course of the years. They’re open to the public. Anybody can come in and out of there. And, you know, and–
HOST:
[OVERLAP] Did you have a relationship with him? Have you ever met Anwar al-Alaki?
SUHAIL KHAN:
No. Not to my knowledge.
HOST:
No relationship? All right, another allegation that was made against your family by Frank Gaffney and others is that your father twice hosted fundraisers for Ayman al-Zawahiri out in–
SUHAIL KHAN:
[OVERLAP] Right–
HOST:
–a mosque in California. Is that true?
SUHAIL KHAN:
That’s, yeah, yeah. Frank made that accusation back in 2001 when I was at the White House.
HOST:
Mm-hmm.
SUHAIL KHAN:
When he planted that story with another reporter at Fox News. When Ari Fleischer at the White House investigated that, they found it to be demonstrably false. He has continued to push that story when he had another cohort of his, Paul Sperry, republish that accusation in Investor’s Business Daily. My father passed away in the nineties. A friend of my father’s, on his own, filed a lawsuit against Investor’s Business Daily and they had to publish not one but two retractions saying that that story’s completely false. My father did not invite that person, never knew that person, that person did not raise any money at the mosque as alleged and Frank knows that. And the whole reason why they published not one but two retractions was because the attorney was able to show that these were not only false but Frank knew they were false. So it’s just–
HOST:
[OVERLAP] Well, was this–
SUHAIL KHAN:
Mm-hmm?
HOST:
I was going to ask, because this was originally reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, did they retract this story about this supposed fundraiser?
SUHAIL KHAN:
The story in the San Francisco Chronicle was that this individual had come to the Bay Area and raised money. It did not say that my father had anything to do with it. And it also specifically did not say that this individual had raised money in the mosque that my father was involved with. That’s where Frank came out and just demonstrably made up things in order to go after me as a staffer at the Bush White House. And that–even before he made those accusations, you have to know, Fred, that I was–one of my responsibilities there was to–I’m a big supporter of the Reagan Republic and of missile defense, and so I was one person in the White House that was actually pushing Bush White House officials to engage with Frank Gaffney. Everybody from the National Security Office on down was telling–warning me, don’t deal with this guy. He makes up things. He has no credibility. Then on top of that, on 9-11, after 9-11 occurred, instead of, you know, he’s a friend and so–his way of saying thank you is to start, you know, making these false accusations against me. National security–
HOST:
[OVERLAP] All right, Mr. Khan, we’re going to have to–we’re going to have to leave it at that. We appreciate you coming on the show and maybe we’ll have you on again.
SUHAIL KHAN:
Thank you. Thanks, Fred.
HOST:
All right. You bet. Suhail Khan here on the Grandy Group.