Frank Gaffney

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Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. (born 1953) is the American founder and president of the lobbyist group Center for Security Policy,^[1]

Contents 1 Education and career 2 Angolan presidential election, 1992 3 Project for a New American Century 4 Gaffney-Norquist dispute 5 U.S. troop deaths in Iraq 6 Al Jazeera 7 Criticism of Barack Obama 8 Saddam Hussein, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and the Oklahoma City Bombing 9 References

[edit] Education and career

Gaffney is a 1975 graduate of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University.^{[citation needed]} He holds a graduate degree from the Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.^[1]

Gaffney began his public service career in the 1970s, working as an aide in the office of Democratic Senator Henry M. Jackson, under Richard Perle. From August 1983 until November 1987, Gaffney held the position of Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy in the Reagan Administration, again serving under Perle. In April 1987, Gaffney was nominated to the position of US Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy. He served as the acting Assistant Secretary for seven months,^[2] though his confirmation was ultimately blocked by the United States Senate.

In 1988, Gaffney established the Center for Security Policy (CSP), a conservative national security and defense policy organization. The CSP is subsidized by donors supportive of conservative causes, including the Sarah Mellon Scaife Foundation, the Shelby Cullom Davis Foundation and the William H. Donner Foundation.^[3]

Gaffney appeared on FahrenHYPE 9/11, the conservative documentary that was intended as a rebuttal to Michael Moore's liberal film Fahrenheit 9/11. He is also a regular guest on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews" show.

Gaffney was an executive producer for the documentary Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center. The documentary was created to air as part of the America at a Crossroads series on PBS, but it has not been shown.^[4]

Gaffney is the lead author of War Footing (Naval Institute Press, 2005), a collection of essays that "offer ten specific steps that Americans, as individuals and as communities, can take to ensure their way of life and safety and the future well-being of their children and grandchildren."^[5]

He is a founding member of the Set America Free Coalition, dedicated to reducing dependence on foreign oil, as well as of the current iteration of the Committee on the Present Danger.^[6]

[edit] Angolan presidential election, 1992

In November 1992, Gaffney's Center for Security Policy organization released a report detailing voter fraud in Angola's presidential election. Election officials stopped registering voters 40 days before the election. Polling stations had identical voting results. The MPLA retained a monopoly on television election-coverage. CSP also found widespread vote buying by the MPLA, the discarding of as many as 25% of casted ballots, and electricity blackouts during voter counting. United Nations special envoy Margaret Anstee said she "had never witnessed a more unfair election, even in Latin America."^[7]

[edit] Project for a New American Century

Along with a number of figures who later assumed leading positions in the George W. Bush administration, Gaffney was one of 25 signatories^[8] of the June 3, 1997 "Statement of Principles" from the Project for the New American Century,^[9] an educational and political advocacy organization whose stated goal was "to promote American global leadership."^[10]

[edit] Gaffney-Norquist dispute

In 2002, Gaffney publicly accused Grover Norquist, an anti-tax activist and prominent Republican strategist, for alleged ties to radical Islamist groups attempting to influence the Bush Administration. Gaffney said a press release by the American Muslim Council credited Ali Tulbah, a Bush-White House aide, for getting them access to the administration. Norquist banned Gaffney from the weekly "Wednesday Meeting" of the Leave Us Alone Coalition that Norquist hosted. Norquist later wrote an open letter, accusing Gaffney of "racial prejudice, religious bigotry [and] ethnic hatred," calling Gaffney a "sick, little bigot.... His whole life screams of bigotry, and what he said is just part of a pattern.... Frank Gaffney and Osama bin Laden share the same view on the relationship between the United States and Islam. I agree with the president in rejecting Osama bin Laden's and Frank Gaffney's worldview." David Keene, President of the American Conservative Union, later commented on the Gaffney-Norquist dispute, saying, "I, for one, don't see it. If you read the transcript [of the panel], you can see if Frank was right or wrong, but there was nothing racist or bigoted about it." Norquist's comments so angered Keene that he stopped talking to Norquist.^[11]

In a front-page story in The Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove dismissed Gaffney's assertions regarding President Bush stating "there's no there there."^[12] In an article appearing in the January 2007 edition of Vanity Fair about neoconservatives who pushed for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Gaffney says of President Bush, "He doesn't in fact seem to be a man of principle who's steadfastly pursuing what he thinks is the right course. He talks about it, but the policy doesn't track with the rhetoric, and that's what creates the incoherence that causes us problems around the world and at home."^[13]

[edit] U.S. troop deaths in Iraq

On MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, Gaffney, commenting on the 2003 invasion of Iraq, said, "My position is [that] it is regrettable that any Americans died. It is regrettable that they had to die, but I believe they did have to die. The threat we did know about was the chemical capability that Saddam Hussein had used against his own people. The potential for biological agents were real there was evidence that there was an ongoing nuclear program... The danger was inaction could have resulted in the death[s] of a great many more Americans than 4,000 and that's the reason I'm still delighted that we did what we did."^[14]

[edit] Al Jazeera

In 2003, Gaffney called on the United States military to "take out" the Al Jazeera news network for inciting violence against the Western world by showcasing Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein's "calls-to-arms."^[15]

[edit] Criticism of Barack Obama

In October 2008, Gaffney questioned whether then Senator Barack Obama of Illinois is a "natural born citizen of the United States" and his legal eligibility to be the President of the United States.^[16]

In a February 2009 Washington Times column, Gaffney accused President Obama of "embracing the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood," a militant organization banned throughout the Middle East.^[17]

In April 2009, Gaffney appeared on television and accused President Obama of using coded language to indicate that America would submit to Sharia law.^[18]

In a June 9, 2009, Washington Times article Gaffney wrote: "With Mr. Obama's unbelievably ballyhooed address in Cairo Thursday to what he calls "the Muslim world" (hereafter known as "the Speech"), there is mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself."^[19]

Gaffney continued his "Obama as Crypto-Muslim" theme in another article on February 24, 2010. In his column on Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment blog, Gaffney attacked the administration's plans to modernize and update the missile defense program as "US submission to Islam" from "an Alinsky acolite", citing as "evidence" the redesigned logo of the Missile Defense Agency.^[20]

"Team Obama’s anti-anti-missile initiatives are not simply acts of unilateral disarmament of the sort to be expected from an Alinsky acolyte. They seem to fit an increasingly obvious and worrying pattern of official U.S. submission to Islam ]and the theo-political-legal program the latter’s authorities call Shariah.

"What could be code-breaking evidence of the latter explanation is to be found in the newly-disclosed redesign of the Missile Defense Agency logo.... As Logan helpfully shows, the new MDA shield appears ominously to reflect a morphing of the Islamic crescent and star with the Obama campaign logo."

However, Al Kamen reports that the new Missile Defense Agency logo is over three years old and was actually developed during the George Bush administration. ^[21]

[edit] Saddam Hussein, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and the Oklahoma City Bombing

On March 12, 2009, Gaffney appeared on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews and accused Iraqi President Saddam Hussein of being involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the Oklahoma City bombing, "There is also circumstantial evidence, not proven by any means, but nonetheless some pretty compelling circumstantial evidence of Saddam Hussein's Iraq being involved with the people who perpetrated both the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center and even the Oklahoma City bombing."^[22]

[edit] References