Topics: center for security policy, Frank Gaffney, Muslims, Birthers, conspiracy theories, Islamophobia, Far-right, corporations, Northrup Grumman, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Raytheon, General Electric, Politics News
Frank Gaffney has emerged as one of the DC-beltway’s most outspoken critics of American Muslims, purveying conspiracy theories about the infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood into the highest levels of the U.S. government and birther accusations about Barack Obama’s eligibility to serve as president. But even while drawing criticism from civil rights organizations, Gaffney, who served as acting Assistant Secretary of Defense in 1987, has continued to find sources of funding for his organization, the Center for Security Policy, managing a budget of over $3.5 million in 2013.
Salon acquired a copy of the Center for Security Policy’s donor rolls, listing the organization’s biggest donors. And while far from providing the lion’s share of funding, six of the U.S.’ biggest aerospace and defense contractors are supporters of Gaffney’s organization.
The document, which details contributions to the Center for Security Policy during the 2013 tax year, includes donations from: Boeing ($25,000); General Dynamics ($15,000); Lockheed Martin ($15,000); Northrup Grumman ($5,000); Raytheon ($20,000); and General Electric ($5,000).
A number of institutional donors with a history of supporting Islamophobia, including the Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation, are also contributors, but the aerospace industry’s decision to support Gaffney’s highly controversial work is unusual due to his reputation as a member of the fringe, anti-Muslim far-right.
Gaffney, who serves as president of the Center for Security Policy, emerged as one of the most high-profile propagators of conspiracy theories about Obama’s country of birth and his — alleged — agenda to undermine the U.S. government. In a 2008 Washington Times column, titled: “The Jihadist Vote,” Gaffney questioned “whether Mr. Obama is a natural born citizen of the United States, a prerequisite pursuant to the U.S. Constitution” and postulated that “there is evidence he was born in Kenya rather than, as he claims, Hawaii.”
And Gaffney’s assertions become even more extreme when he discusses the influence of a subversive Muslim agenda within the U.S. In a 2010 column for Breitbart.com, Gaffney argued that the Missile Defense Agency logo “appears ominously to reflect a morphing of the Islamic crescent and star with the Obama campaign logo” and is part of a “worrying pattern of official U.S. submission to Islam.”
Gaffney has even gone as far as to suggest that a House committee, based on Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s House Committee on Un-American Activities, should be formed to investigate the Muslim Brotherhood’s alleged infiltration of the U.S. government. “So pervasive now is the MB’s [Muslim Brotherhood’s] ‘civilization jihad’ within the U.S. government and civil institutions that a serious, sustained and rigorous investigation of the phenomenon by the legislative branch is in order,” wrote Gaffney in 2011. “To that end, we need to establish a new and improved counterpart to the Cold War-era’s HUAC [House Un-American Activities Committee] and charge it with examining and rooting out anti-American – and anti-constitutional – activities that constitute an even more insidious peril than those pursued by communist Fifth Columnists fifty years ago.”
Since 2011, Gaffney has repeatedly claimed that Huma Abedin – an aide to Hillary Clinton during her tenure as Secretary of State – was a Muslim Brotherhood operative, a charge so outlandish that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), House Speaker Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) all condemned it. These comments and others led civil rights organizations to denounce Gaffney’s demonization of American Muslims.
