Faisal Gill

far-left views on community policing and crime are so extreme that Democratic representative Karen Bass, who is running to be the city’s mayor, withdrew her endorsement.

Faisal Gill, a libertarian Republican-turned-progressive Democrat, is running to become L.A.’s city attorney, a powerful post that will give him the ability to decide what types of minor crimes are prosecuted. "The city attorney is not elected to defend the police," Gill states on his campaign website. He also says he wants to end cash bail, support safe injection sites, and reduce criminal prosecutions. His views have become a liability for Bass, who pulled her endorsement of Gill as she attempts to distance herself from radical elements in her own party.

Bass withdrew her endorsement after Gill pledged to stop prosecuting certain misdemeanors after 100 days, even as L.A. has experienced a rise in crime and violence in the past couple years. Gill’s campaign advocates the sort of progressive law enforcement policies that have made the upcoming race such a slog for Democrats. Voters have turned on progressive San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin, who was recalled, and Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner, who faces impeachment. ... community leaders who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon said that at a time of rising anti-Semitic violence Gill’s past work with a cadre of Islamist groups tied to terrorism financing is fueling fears. Gill served as the spokesman for the American Muslim Council, an advocacy group formed with backing from the Muslim Brotherhood, an anti-Israel Islamist organization that promotes Jew hatred. The council’s founder, Abdulrahman Alamoudi, was sentenced to 23 years in jail in 2004 as part of a terrorism financing case. Gill’s campaign also is receiving financial support from leading members of the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an anti-Israel group known for peddling falsehoods about Israel and Jews.

It now appears that Mr. Norquist’s help has extended beyond facilitating high-level access and influence for various Muslim-American and Arab-American entities with troubling ties to, or at least sympathy for, radical Islamofascists — and even terrorists. Reportedly, his association also helped someone affiliated with such a group to gain a political appointment to an exceedingly sensitive post: “policy director” of the Department of Homeland Security”s Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection division. As the title of this position suggests, its occupant would have access to highly sensitive information about the vulnerability of, among other things, U.S. ports, transportation infrastructure, chemical plants, oil refineries and nuclear power plants to terrorist attack. The incumbent is a 32-year-old lawyer named Faisal Gill. It is unclear what qualified Mr. Gill for such a post. In response to press inquiries, a DHS spokeswoman declined to describe his qualifications or background so it is not known whether he has any prior experience with intelligence or, for that matter, with security policy. What is known is that Gill’s political patrons include Grover Norquist, who was listed by Gill as a reference on employment documents. After all, Gill had been a spokesman for the Taxpayers Alliance of Prince William County, Virginia, which is affiliated with Norquist’s group, Americans for Tax Reform. Gill had also worked in 2001 as director of government affairs for the Islamic Free Market Institute (also known as the Islamic Institute), whose founding president was Grover Norquist. Interestingly, news articles published after September 11 described Gill in another capacity — as a spokesman for the controversial American Muslim Council (AMC). The AMC was founded and controlled by a prominent Islamist activist, Abdurahman Alamoudi. Alamoudi was indicted last October on terrorism-related money laundering charges. While in jail awaiting trial, he has reportedly engaged in plea-bargaining by confessing to participating in a Libyan plot to murder the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. For some reason, Gill is reported to have failed to list his work with the AMC on his “Standard Form 86” national security questionnaire. This is a potential felony violation of the full and truthful disclosure required by law of all applying for clearances. According to two recently published articles in Salon.com, the FBI raised concerns last March about Gill’s non-disclosure of his ties to Alamoudi’s AMC. At the time, he was reportedly briefly removed from his position at DHS. Curiously, however, Gill is said to have been reinstated within days. According to a DHS spokesman, the Department had conducted a “thorough investigation” that found Gill “exceeded all requirements” for his job.

Fortunately, on 23 June, after news reports revealed Gill’s omission, attendant suspension and subsequent reinstatement, the Homeland Security”s Inspector General, Clark Kent Ervin, announced that he would be launching an inquiry into how Gill received a security clearance, despite the omission. For some reason, though, the IG”s report is said to require as much as six-months to complete.

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. That appears to be the strategy of GOP powerbroker Grover Norquist in his wicked project to dress Islamists up as patriotic Republicans so they can infiltrate the government. While he’s managed to get some of his Muslim proteges jobs in the Bush administration, getting them elected to public office has been another story. Voters aren’t buying their makeover. Last November, his crony Faisal M. Gill lost a bid for a seat in the Virginia state legislature. Now another protege, Kamal M. Nawash, has lost his third political race in seven years. Republicans in Virginia’s most affluent county last month overwhelmingly rejected Nawash as their party leader. Gill and Nawash failed despite the ringing endorsements and behind-the-scenes maneuvering of Norquist, who founded the Islamic Institute (where he met his Palestinian wife) with the express purpose of promoting such Muslims into positions of power. Take Nawash, who also happens to be Palestinian. In 2003, Norquist hosted a fundraiser for him at his Capitol Hill townhouse to launch his campaign for the Virginia state senate. And Norquist’s partner Khaled A. Saffuri kicked in $1,279 to help build his war chest. Nawash made for a strange Republican candidate. As an immigration lawyer he defended Arab criminals against deportation, and as legal director of the extremist American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, he fought to deny law enforcement key anti-terror tools. A month before the election, Nawash rushed to the defense of a prominent Islamist leader and political donor, who was arrested on terrorism charges. His crony, Abdurahman Alamoudi, was no dimestore terrorist. It turned out that Alamoudi, according to the Treasury Department, acted as one of al-Qaida’s top fundraisers in America – all the while pumping more cash into Nawash’s campaign than any other individual contributor. Nawash argued the case against Alamoudi was baseless and politically motivated, according to the Islamist internet site IslamOnline.net, which identified him as Alamoudi’s lawyer. “He is just a liberal Muslim, who wants more Muslims to be involved in the U.S. military and politics,” Nawash said of his longtime friend, client and donor. That “liberal” Muslim is in fact a longtime leader in the radical Muslim Brotherhood who’s now serving 23 years in federal prison for plotting terrorism. When Nawash’s opponent in the race used his quotes against him, Nawash denied Alamoudi was a client. He said IslamOnline.net erroneously identified him as the terrorist’s lawyer, even though Nawash’s own brother worked for the website. Documents put the lie to Nawash’s denial. For starters, Nawash’s signature appears at the bottom of a “Power of Attorney” affidavit for Alamoudi at the Fairfax Circuit Court of Virginia. In that 2003 document, Nawash swears: “I am attorney-in-fact for Abdurahman M. Alamoudi.” What’s more, one of his then-law partners, May Shallal Kheder, shows up in court filings as a member of Alamoudi’s criminal defense team. Nawash’s old law firm, Hanania Kheder & Nawash PC, kept an office in Falls Church, Va., in the same building as the Saudi-backed Muslim Students Association, which was founded by the Brotherhood. The Saudi-based World Assembly of Muslim Youth, which sponsors jihad camps that teach boys not to be “miserly with your blood,” also was a tenant at one time. Nawash lived nearby in the Skyline Towers, known by law enforcement as the “Taliban Towers.” Since 9/11, the FBI has paid numerous visits to the apartment complex, which erupted in cheers as the hijackers attacked America. During his campaign, Nawash put up signs at the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center where some of the hijackers received aid and comfort. Dar al-Hijrah is run by the pro-jihad Brotherhood. Ultimately, his bid to become the first Muslim in the Virginia assembly failed. Nawash garnered just 30 percent of the vote, while his opponent, Democrat Mary Margaret Whipple, took 70 percent. The defeat matched his unsuccessful run for the Virginia House of Delegates in 2001, also bankrolled by Alamoudi and his radical Brothers. Bitter, Nawash blamed his 2003 drubbing on Whipple’s tactic of focusing on his ties to a suspected terrorist. “She is a mean-spirited racist,” he said. The ambitious Nawash and his mentor Norquist were not deterred, however. What the protege needed was a little makeover, along with a little time to allow memories to fade. The next year, Nawash for the first time gave money to the GOP (a measly $200 to the Republican Party of Virginia), and proceeded to wrap himself in the American flag. Repositioning himself as a hawk in the war on terror, he set up a moderate nonprofit group called the Free Muslims Coalition to promote “a modern secular interpretation of Islam which is peace-loving, democracy-loving and compatible with other faiths and beliefs.” Suddenly, the man who socialized with and defended radical jihadists was attacking extremism and terrorism “unambiguously,” as he trumpets on his website. Even as his Free Muslims movement at the same time defends Islam against “the venomous attacks by the Christian Taliban,” it has won over many skeptics, including some it’s counted among the so-called Christian Taliban. But it wasn’t enough to win over rock-ribbed Republicans. Earlier this year, Nawash announced he was running for chairman of the Fairfax County Republican Committee in Virginia. He campaigned on a platform of change and diversity – that is, broadening the tent to include more Muslims like him. “We have to attract new people and improve our image,” he said. “We will welcome new people.” He lost the election by another wide margin. Nawash garnered just 30 votes out of 219 at the convention, held last month. Faisal Muhammad Gill Another ambitious Norquist protege, Faisal Muhammad Gill, has suffered a similar fate. Gill, a Republican in name only, is still sulking over his humiliating political defeat last November. Following in Nawash’s footsteps, the Islamic Institute alumnus lost a bid for a seat in the Virginia state legislature. He, too, blames dirty Democrat politics for his Virginia assembly race loss. But like Nawash before him, he has only himself to blame. Gill’s ties to Muslim Brotherhood front groups and known and suspected terrorists turned off not just Democrat voters, but also Republican voters. Doubts arose in spite of heavy lobbying and fundraising by Norquist, who continues to act as an agent of influence for Islamists and their subversive interests in Washington. (The normally stingy Norquist even chipped in $200 of his own money for Gill, while also attending his campaign kickoff.) In fact, it was concerned Republicans – resentful of Norquist foisting a flawed candidate on them – who circulated a flier around Northern Virginia’s 51st district warning voters about Gill’s terrorist connections. “Faisal Gill worked with Abdurahman Alamoudi at the American Muslim Council,” the flier read. “Alamoudi is a supporter of al-Qaida, Hamas and Hezbollah terror groups.” That’s no exaggeration. Here’s what Treasury had to say about him in 2005: “Alamoudi had a close relationship with al-Qaida and had raised money for al-Qaida in the United States.” The flier didn’t even mention the thousands of dollars in campaign donations Gill hauled in from a still-active Alamoudi-tied network of suspected terror fronts raided by federal agents after 9/11. Virginia state records show that Mena Investments, Reston Investments and Sterling Management Group Inc. gave a combined $3,000 to Gill. The Herndon, Va.-based entities are part of the so-called Safa group, a pro-jihad Islamist network which remains under active federal investigation for tax fraud, money laundering and terror financing. (Even Democrat lawmakers in past elections have had to return Safa’s terror-tainted gifts. But Gill, an alleged Republican, had no problem keeping his.)

All three entities are run by M. Yacub Mirza, who like Gill is a native of al-Qaida hotbed Karachi, Pakistan.

-Sperry, Paul. Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington. United States: Thomas Nelson, 2008. 297.

As the author of that Salon.com article, Mary Jacoby noted at the time: "The ties among Alamoudi, the Muslim Brotherhood and Gill help explain why officials are concerned about whether Gill was adequately vetted. These relationships are difficult to understand without immersion in the indictments, court transcripts and case exhibits; the concerned officials said they fear that busy political operatives in the administration simply do not grasp the national-security issues at stake. "There’s an overall denial in the administration that the agenda being pushed by Norquist might be a problem," one official said. "It’s so absurd that a Grover Norquist person could even be close to something like this. That’s really what’s so insidious."....

Indeed, far from showing that the U.S. government engaged in surveilling Muslim who have absolutely nothing in common except their faith as Mr. Gill alleges, the reality is that the individuals have everything in common, most especially a series of overlapping associations and connections which has the Muslim Brotherhood as the pivot point. Yet it’s precisely the surveillance re-evaluation which is now being used as an excuse to rehabilitate Mr. Gill’s image as a noble victim of government surveillance overreach.

Faisal Gill, Former Homeland Security Official Faisal Gill’s emails were monitored by the FBI from April 2006 until February 2008 when the surveillance was terminated. Gill was a spokesman for the American Muslim Council, the organization led by Alamoudi before he was arrested on terrorism-related charges. Gil claims he only met Alamoudi few times despite his prominent position. In 2001, Gill became the director of governmental affairs for the Islamic Free Market Institute. This organization was founded by Norquist and Alamoudi’s close aide. As we chronicled here, the Institute had strong links to Islamist groups at this time. After the 9/11 attacks, Gill joined the White House Office of Homeland Security, listing Norquist as a reference. He then became the policy director for the Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence division. He was suspended after it was reported that the FBI discovered that he did not disclose his links to Alamoudi’s organization in his paperwork. Gill was then cleared. In 2007, Gill ran for the Virginia House of Delegates as a Republican candidate and lost. His campaign received $3,000 from three companies belonging to the Safa Group, a Muslim Brotherhood-linked group in Virginia that was raided as part of a terrorism investigation after 9/11. The Safa Group also financed the Islamic Free Market Institute. Greenwald reports that Gill travelled to Sudan in 2007 as part of work with his law firm that he formed with Asim Ghafour, another target of surveillance. The pair met with officials from the Sudanese government, which is designated as a State Sponsor of Terrorism by the U.S. State Department. The meetings were to discuss representing Sudan in a lawsuit by victims of Al-Qaeda terrorism. The report says “Ghafoor was ultimately retained, and Gill performed the contract work on one case.”

To be fair, former government employees often do business with foreign governments. However, Sudan is a State Sponsor of Terrorism. This relationship alone may not warrant surveillance, but it certainly gives credence to the Intelligence Community’s claim that it had some kind of undisclosed justification for the monitoring.