I listened last night to syndicated talk-radio host Mark Levin report the breaking news that an Iraqi-American had been indicted as a spy. In addition, he stands accused of secretly funding the October 2002 pre-invasion trip to Iraq of three antiwar House Democrats, Congressmen Jim McDermott (D-WA), Mike Thompson (D-CA), and David E. Bonior (D-MI, now retired). I first posted a clip of that audio on MarkLevinFan.com and then I followed the money.

Last night, the New York Times reported:

The Justice Department said Wednesday that Saddam Hussein’s principal foreign intelligence agency and an Iraqi-American man had organized and paid for a 2002 visit to Iraq by three House Democrats whose trip was harshly criticized by colleagues at the time. The arrangements for the trip were described in the indictment of an Iraq-born former employee of a Detroit-area charity group who was charged Wednesday with accepting millions of dollars’ worth of Iraqi oil contracts in exchange for assisting the Iraqi spy agency in projects in the United States. The indictment did not claim any wrongdoing by the three lawmakers, whose five-day trip to Iraq occurred in October 2002, five months before the American invasion. … Mr. McDermott said through a spokesman that he had been invited on the trip by church groups in his home state and that he assumed that the trip had been paid for by legitimate charitable organizations [All emphasis added in this post is mine]. … The indictment, which was dated Feb. 13 and unsealed Monday in Michigan, said the trip had cost at least $34,000 … The indicted Michigan man, Muthanna al-Hanooti, was identified in court papers as a naturalized American citizen who worked for much of the 1990s and again in 2001 and 2002 as public relations coordinator for Life for Relief and Development, a Michigan-based charity. He pleaded not guilty on Wednesday.

Yet any or all of the Congressmen could have easily learned, prior to their trip to Baghdad, the man funding them had a direct tie to Saddam Hussein’s regime. Shakir al-Khafaji was their contact at Life for Relief and Development and, in the 05/05/2003 edition of The Weekly Standard, Stephen F. Hayes wrote:

In Dearborn, Michigan, one radio station has for years broadcast a weekly, two-hour pro-Saddam program. According to Iraqi Americans who monitored the broadcasts, each program began with the Baath party anthem. Ismail Mansour, a Pentagon-trained Iraqi American working with coalition forces in Iraq, says the regime’s money reached well inside the United States, going to journalists and others. “In America, Saddam friends give money and they make protest,” he says. “In the Arab world, it’s the same thing. They pay money to do that.” One of those “Saddam friends” is Shakir al-Khafaji, an Iraqi-American businessman from Detroit. Since 1992, al-Khafaji has served as president of the regime-backed Expatriate Conferences, held in Baghdad every other year. The government provided subsidized travel for Iraqis living outside of the country.

On September 21, 2006, MilitantIslamMonitor.org (MIM) reported that:

Counterterrorism agents of the FBI and IRS raided what is believed to be one of the biggest Muslim charities in the United States [Life for Relief and Development] on Monday, hauling away a truckload of documents and computers from its Southfield office. The raid was based on sealed search warrants, but the charity’s head of legal services, Ihsan Alkhatib, said the agents are investigating whether the charity conducted business in Iraq before the 2003 war in violation of legal sanctions against the country.
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According to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, agents are investigating whether Life may have illegally distributed money and medical supplies inside Iraq. Agents of the FBI and IRS seized cabinet files and hard drives from the office of Life, a nonprofit group that Muslim leaders say is the biggest Islamic charity headquartered in Michigan.
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Federal agents also raided the Ypsilanti home of the charity’s chief executive officer, Khalil Jassemm, and the Dearborn office of Muthanna Alhanooti, a former official of the charity who has ties to an Islamic party in Iraq. No one was arrested. The agents were from the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and they spent hours interviewing Jassemm, as well as Life’s office manager, Kudama Kaluan, accountant Nael Zenhom, and marketing manager Mohammed Abaza, Alkhatib said.

The next day, MIM furthered report:

An advertisement for a Life for Relief and Development fundraiser was advertised on the website of the Young Muslims (the Al Muhajiroun/Al Qaeda) youth group, which is under the aegis of the Muslim American Society, and the Islamic Circle of North America, should be enough proof to show that the ‘charity’ has militant Islamist affiliations. The speakers list at the event, which included the Council on American Islamic Relations Ghazi Kankan. known for a rally speach at which he proferred “greetings from the Muhajadeen at CAIR” and Zaid Shakir, an ICNA/MAS youth activities coordinator , who condemned the convictions of the Virginia Jihad paintball group, speaks volumes about Life for Relief and Development’s Islamist agenda. LFRD’s president Khalil Jassemm, who spoke at the event, and is a featured speaker at numerous fundraisers throught the country … was also a speaker at the recent fundraiser of the Islamic Center of Boca Raton, whose Imam, Ibrahim Dremali, was labelled an “Islamic extremist” by counter terrorism expert Steven Emerson.

Life for Relief and Developments active participation in Iraqi rallies which compared US sanctions to the bombings in Hiroshima are further proof that their agenda is political and antithetical to American interests. Indeed the LRD’s aid to Fallujah, where American soldiers found medical supplies in terrorists hideouts, could be proof that their aid is being used against American troops in Iraq.

MIM then cited this Washington Post report:

NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq, Nov. 18 [2004] — U.S. soldiers discovered a house in southern Fallujah on Thursday believed by U.S. military officials to be a main headquarters for the network of the Jordanian guerrilla leader Abu Musab Zarqawi, whose group has claimed responsibility for numerous bombings, kidnappings and beheadings across Iraq. A black and white mural painted on a wall in the house, similar to banners shown in videos that have depicted the beheadings of foreign hostages, indicated that the house belonged to an “al Qaeda organization.” Zarqawi has declared his allegiance to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and his group, initially called Monotheism and Jihad, recently adopted the name al Qaeda in Iraq. In the house, the soldiers found documents that translators described as letters written by Zarqawi to his lieutenants, medical supplies from the U.S. Agency for International Development and boxes of ammunition from the Chinese and Jordanian armies. Controlled by insurgents from late April until this month, when American and Iraqi forces mounted a massive offensive aimed at restoring government authority, Fallujah had become a hub for foreign guerrillas who joined Zarqawi’s network, U.S. military officials have said.
…
Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said Thursday that 51 U.S. troops and eight Iraqi soldiers had been killed in fighting in Fallujah and that 425 Americans and 40 Iraqi soldiers had been wounded. About 25 civilians were wounded and treated by U.S. military doctors, but no civilians were killed, Sattler said. Marine and Army units continued on Thursday to clash with insurgents in Fallujah’s Shuhada neighborhood. A Marine and an Iraqi soldier were killed in the fighting. Uniformed, masked insurgents in Shuhada had attacked U.S. troops for several days with more than 15 rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds and sniper fire. U.S. warplanes and artillery subsequently bombed the area, and U.S. soldiers and Iraqi security forces returned there to look through the rubble. The house said to have been used by the Zarqawi network, a simple concrete structure, was discovered Thursday on a block that Army Maj. David Johnson described as a “one-stop shop for terrorists.”

DiscoverTheNetworks.org reported last night:

In 1996, while sitting as ranking minority member of the House Ethics Committee then hearing charges against Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, McDermott received an illegally-recorded cell phone conversation among Republican congressional leaders. McDermott himself then apparently violated the law by giving access to this stolen conversation to the New York Times, which quoted excerpts in a story days later. McDermott agreed to apologize to the House for his behavior, but not to admit wrongdoing.
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In September 2002 [McDermott] traveled to Baghdad along with fellow Progressive Caucus member Rep. David Bonior (D.-Michigan) and Rep. Mike Thompson (D.-California). These lawmakers embraced Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein and created propaganda in his behalf. Interviewed upon his return by George Stephanopoulos on ABC, McDermott declared, as U.S. News & World Report senior writer Michael Barone noted, that President George W. Bush was “trying to provoke a war.” McDermott told the startled Stephanopoulos that he found Saddam Hussein more credible than the President of the United States. “I think you have to take the Iraqis on their value — at their face value,” said McDermott, but “I think the president would mislead the American people.”

At the time, it was believed that the $5,510 travel expenses of McDermott’s trip to Baghdad were paid by the nonprofit organization Life for Relief and Development. This organization shipped food and medicine to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. One of its financial supporters was Detroit-area Iraqi-American businessman Shakir al-Khafaji, who according to an April 2004 investigation published by the Seattle Times received “lucrative vouchers for Iraqi oil from Saddam’s government.”

In addition to his $5,000 luxury junket to Baghdad, McDermott also received a $5,000 check from al-Khafaji that got deposited in the Congressman’s legal fund set up to pay for lawyers in the case involving McDermott’s involvement in the aforementioned cell phone case. McDermott returned this $5,000 — but not the travel money — in April 2004. He told the Seattle Times that he was unaware of the close links between his benefactor al-Khafaji and Saddam Hussein.

“No one has accused McDermott of being a mouthpiece for Saddam Hussein simply for financial reasons,” wrote Hayes [on 05/05/2003]. “…McDermott has been saying stupid things for years with no evidence anyone has paid him to do so.”

Congressman James McDermott (D-WA) can now add ‘willfully ignorant’ to his resume.

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