How Intelligent is our Intelligence?

During the Cold War, America faced an implacable enemy, driven by a supremacist ideology that called for, among other things, the use of an array of covert front groups, stealthy techniques and subversive activities to achieve our destruction.  For many years, our effort to defeat Soviet Communism featured a concerted counter-intelligence effort aimed at achieving that defeat. 


Déjà vu, America once again faces an implacable enemy, driven by a supremacist ideology that calls for, among other things, the use of an array of covert front groups, stealthy techniques and subversive activities to achieve our destruction.  This time, in the place of the Soviet Union and the influence operations run by its intelligence service, the KGB, we confront the Islamic doctrine known as Sharia and the Muslim Brotherhood, which serves as the principal engine for extending its reach.

Now, it seems to me, that we have no counter-intelligence effort comparable to that of the Cold War or remotely commensurate with today’s threat.  Indeed, based on the evidence of the successful penetration and influence operations being run by the Muslim Brotherhood these days, one would be tempted to conclude that counter-intelligence has effectively ceased to be part of our toolkit in keeping America safe and free.

Here are a few examples I find worrisome:
When President Obama engaged in his “outreach to the Muslim world” at the State Department a few months ago, seated in the front row next to the Secretary of State was Imam Mohammed Magid.  Magid happens to be the president of the largest Muslim Brotherhood organization in the country, the Islamic Society of North America.


Also, the White House insisted that the Muslim Brotherhood representatives be included in the audience during the President’s Cairo 2009 address.  The message could not be any clearer:  Far from perceiving the Brotherhood as what it is - an organization determined to destroy the United States and the rest of the Free World - the Obama administration sees them as reliable partners.

That message was again reinforced when, senior U.S. government officials sat down with an assortment of Muslim Brotherhood operatives and groups under the auspices of the Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.  Bin Talal - a major benefactor of Brotherhood causes and enabler of its own and similar Islamist influence operations - endowed his center at Georgetown University with a gift of $20 million.  The investment is paying handsome dividends as it affords the Brotherhood a vehicle for using “interfaith dialogue” as a means of legitimating and promoting its personnel and agendas.

I’m sure you remember Rep. Anthony Weiner, (he’s the one that posted a picture of his wiener on the internet).  I think the most astonishing revelation to come out of Weiner’s public meltdown was the fact that his wife, Huma Abedin, a member of a prominent Muslim Brotherhood family in Egypt, happens to be Hillary Clinton’s Deputy Chief of Staff.


I recently discovered that part of the job of performing background checks for U.S. security clearances has been contracted out to companies instructed to help clean up the serious backlog.  According to employees, they are given quotas of cases to process with one company requiring as many as twenty per day.  Does anyone seriously believe that this is a formula for properly vetting personnel?

Can we possibly hope to survive our time’s ideologically-driven subversion - let alone prevail over it - if we systematically disregard the threat its supporters pose here at home?  We need to revive the sort of serious counter-intelligence capability and practice that we have employed to great effect in the past.  Continuing to do otherwise is to invite, if not assure, our destruction.

The better our intelligence and counter-intelligence is today, the fewer “boots on the ground” required in the future.