'Moderate' terror pals

Just as security officials overlooked Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's links to al Qaeda cleric Anwar Aulaqi, who exhorts American Muslims to kill US soldiers, so did our leaders long turn a blind eye to a "mainstream" Muslim group's ties to this same 9/11-tied imam and other Islamic extremists.

For years, our media and government routinely accepted and even promoted the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations as a legitimate voice of Muslim Americans, buying into its claim to be the Muslim ACLU.

In fact, CAIR is a radical Saudi-funded front group founded by leaders of the terror-supporting Muslim Brotherhood to infiltrate Washington and defend extremists. More than a dozen of CAIR's leaders have been jailed or otherwise implicated in support of terrorism -- yet its spokesmen until recently were welcomed in the highest corridors of power. They still boast of meeting with then-President George W. Bush after 9/11.

Holder: Speaking at event where FBI-banned group will participate.

"From its founding by Muslim Brotherhood leaders, CAIR conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists," Assistant US Attorney Gordon Kromberg stated in a recent court filing.

The Justice Department has named CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terror-finance case in US history -- the Holy Land Foundation trial, which ended last year with convictions on all 108 counts. And the FBI last year cut off formal ties to CAIR and its national leaders as well as all 30 branch offices across the country.

That the FBI maintained formal relations with CAIR for years is itself a scandal -- but at least the bureau, unlike other federal officials, has seen the light. Sen. Chuck Schumer is demanding the FBI's anti-CAIR ban "be government-wide policy."

But Attorney General Eric Holder hasn't gotten the message. He plans to speak on Nov. 19 to a Detroit coalition of law enforcement and Muslim groups. The event lists the local CAIR chapter as a participant -- which is bizarre, because the chapter head recently rushed to defend a radical CAIR-tied imam killed in a shootout with FBI agents.

Meanwhile, the media's courtship with CAIR continues apace. In the wake of the Fort Hood killings CNN, PBS, Fox, MSNBC and other networks immediately put CAIR's leaders on the air -- where they predictably insisted the attack had nothing to do with Islam and warned that any "Islamophobes" who make that obvious connection are inviting violent "backlash" against Muslims.

Ironically, a top CAIR official was a member of a terror cell linked to Aulaqi, who also counted some of the 9/11 terrorists and Maj. Hasan in his flock. Aulaqi met with members of the Virginia Jihad Network, which trained to kill our soldiers in Afghanistan.

The group's ringleader, Ismail Royer, worked out of CAIR's national headquarters.

The terrorists were later convicted, and one of their confederates, an al Qaeda sleeper, was busted plotting to assassinate President Bush. Royer himself cut a deal, pleading to a lesser, related weapons charge in exchange for his cooperation. But he's not cooperating: Frustrated prosecutors recently branded him an "inveterate liar" in one filing.

Yet CAIR national spokesman Ibrahim Hooper is heading efforts to spring Royer, his protégé, from prison, where he's serving 20 years.

Federal prosecutors now agree that, far from being a benign nonprofit, CAIR is the spearhead of an anti-American conspiracy to support terrorism and institutionalize Saudi-style rule in America. And they warn in court filings that its participation in that conspiracy is "ongoing."

The media elite are now expressing shock that the military and government officials turned a blind eye to Hasan and his extremist connections. The real shock is that this elite continues to legitimize a group that has similar ties.

Paul Sperry, a Hoover Institu tion media fellow, is author of "In filtration" and the new book, "Muslim Mafia." sperry@sperryfiles.com