GLENN GREENWALD
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GOPers Run 'Witch Hunt' for Muslim Spies
Advocacy group tries to place Muslim interns in Congress. So?
By Harry Kimball
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Posted Oct 16, 09 10:37 AM CDT
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(Newser)
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Four House Republicans are using a document reprinted in a fringe book on a supposed conspiracy to “Islamize America” to call for an investigation into Muslim “spies” in Congress—spies in the form of interns in congressional offices, that is. How “repugnant” and crazy, writes Glenn Greenwald for Salon. The document, apparently stolen from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, is a strategy memo that advocates “influencing congressmen” by placing American Muslim interns in their offices.
The memo is a pretty banal example of the stuff that comes out of any advocacy group, Greenwald writes, but that hasn’t stopped lawmakers from raising the alarm. “If an organization that is connected to or supports terrorists is running influence operations or planting spies in key national security-related congressional offices, I think this needs to be made known,” Rep. Paul Broun tells the Washington Times. CAIR is miffed, but not too flustered. “The most they can come up with is that we placed interns on Capitol Hill?” a spokesman says. “I wish we had placed more interns.”