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Sunday, Feb 10, 2013 9:59 PM UTC

John Brennan is a secret Muslim, says anti-Islam activist

Disgraced former FBI agent John Guandolo has a theory about Obama's pick to head the CIA VIDEO

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Topics: John Brennan, Islam, CIA, Islamophobia, John Guandolo, Sharia, Muslim Brotherhood,

John Brennan is a secret Muslim, says anti-Islam activist(Credit: AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

A former FBI agent and current anti-Islam activist believes that John Brennan, President Obama’s pick to head the CIA, is secretly a Muslim and therefore “unfit for duty” in the government.

On Friday, John Guandolo, the vice president of the Virginia-based Strategic Engagement Group (SEG), appeared on the Boca Raton-based radio show of Tom Trento, the president of the anti-”Shariah Islam” group The United West, formerly the Florida Security Council. Guandolo described how Brennan has supposedly “interwoven his life professionally and personally with individuals that we know are terrorists and he has given them access” to top officials in the federal government and “brought known Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood leaders into the government and into advisory positions.”

Guandolo continued that what “some would say is most disturbing, Mr. Brennan did convert to Islam when he served in an official capacity on behalf of the United States when he served in Saudi Arabia” and it “was the culmination of a counterintelligence operation against him to recruit him” by foreign operatives.

Here’s a 10-minute clip from the segment, which had a total runtime of close to 3 hours:

In an email to supporters, Trento hyped the interview, referencing the “very brave Michele Bachmann” who recently accused Hillary Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Trento continued with the caveat that the “organized left” will probably say things like “Trento & Guandolo are Islamophobic haters who have no credibility” and “Show me proof, I mean real proof, not just overwhelming circumstantial evidence” and “Big deal so the head of the CIA is a Muslim, who cares?” Trento offers a response to one of those statements: “We care – because Islam, by DEFINITION, is BOTH a religion and a POLITICAL system. Moreover, by DOCTRINE, full allegiance to the political mandate of Islam (world domination) SUPERCEDES allegiance to anything else, including the United States of America!”

But, as Trento himself implied, Trento and Guandolo each have a long and colorful history of anti-Islam activism.

Guandolo left the FBI after working on the corruption case for former Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson, amid revelations that Guandolo had sexual relationships with agents and a government informant, and then bragged about it with a list of his conquests.  He managed to find work leading seminars about the threat of Islam, occasionally even providing the course to law enforcement officials. Guandolo once said that Muslims “do not have a First Amendment right to do anything.”

Trento has previously accused the Muslim Brotherhood both of having ties to Occupy Wall Street and of infiltrating the American Conservative Union, the group behind the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). He was also part of a multimillion-dollar effort to distribute copies of the anti-Islam movie “Obsession,” in the weeks before the 2008 election.

Jillian Rayfield is an Assistant News Editor for Salon, focusing on politics. Follow her on Twitter at @jillrayfield or email her at jrayfield@salon.com. More Jillian Rayfield.

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