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tangaroaA few years ago there was a kerfuffle about FBI training materials being bigoted against Islam. Examples were given of training materials that were in fact bigoted against Islam, and the one person responsible for those specific materials was fired while a few people on the right claimed without evidence that the Obama administration was censoring rational discussion about the motives of Islamic terrorists.
Now we have this quote from Steven Emerson:
"Numerous experts on Islamic terrorism like myself -- and I had given 143 lectures at the FBI, CIA -- were banned from speaking to any U.S. government counterterrorism conferences," Mr. Emerson told The Washington Times. "Instead, these agencies were ordered to invite Muslim Brotherhood front groups." [punctuation added to make the quote easier to read]
Emerson was one of the first journalists to report on al-Qaeda operating in the United States, back in 1994 before anybody knew there was a wider organization with a name. He approaches the subject from a journalist's perspective, gathering evidence and reporting plainly what the facts are. If they've blacklisted Steven Emerson and his work -- which is mostly the collection, publication, and analysis of primary source documents -- then the Obama administration has in fact banned the unbiased rational study of plain facts about Islamic terrorist organizations.
I am reminded of the saying that the American military in Vietnam did not have ten years of experience fighting the Communists, but one year of experience repeated ten times over. Now our people are forbidden from acquiring that one year of experience.
Potentially related: Ex-CIA officer Clare Lopez reports that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the US government at key points to control the flow of information about Islamic terrorism. Her conclusions are questionable, but she cites her sources.
